Rutger, sucking in every breath, his face the color of boiled cherries, stopped and craned his neck to look up at her. He was like a big ball rolling backward, pivoting on little legs. The man looked absolutely exhausted.

“Can’t . . . really run when I’m . . . carrying all of this . . . wood . . . now can I?” he managed to get out between breathing spells.

Mothball glanced at Rutger’s short arms, holding all of two sticks—one of them barely more than a twig. “Yeah, I’m quite shocked you haven’t called someone on the telly to announce you’ve broken the world’s record for stick-luggin’.”

“It probably is a record for someone from the Eleventh.” Rutger nodded toward the door hidden in the canyon crevice, about forty yards away. The two of them stood at the bottom of the Grand Canyon, its majestic red walls of stone towering over them, reaching so far to the sky they couldn’t see their tops. Having finished gathering firewood, they were making their way back to the elevator shaft entrance.

“I reckon Sofia would call you a flimp right about now,” Mothball said as she resumed walking toward the hidden crevice.

“It’s wimp, you tall sack of bones, and if she did call me that, she’d pay the price.”

“Oh, really?” Mothball called over her shoulder. “And wha’ exactly would you do? Sit on her toesies? Bite her shins, perhaps?”

“I’d do whatever it took to teach the young lady some proper manners, that’s what.”

Mothball made it to the small crack of a cave that led to the elevator and dropped her stack of logs onto the ground. She reached her arms to the sky in a long, satisfying stretch. When Rutger finally waddled over and dropped his pathetic two sticks onto the pile, he put his hands on his waist and took deep gulps of air, as if he’d just completed a marathon.

“Congratulations,” Mothball said. “You’re the first tiny fat man to haul two twigs across a weed-scattered spit of sand. Right proud of yourself, I reckon?”

Rutger looked up at her and grinned. “Push the button, or it’ll be your shins that get bitten.”

Mothball’s booming laugh escaped before she could stop it. She looked around to make sure no stray hikers were around to hear it. “Quit makin’ me laugh, ya little ball of bread dough. Get us in trouble, ya will.”

She stepped through the thin crevice and pushed a button that looked like the nub of a rock. She heard the rumble of machinery and pulleys from deep within the mountain, then the low whine of the descending elevator. She groaned, having expected the doors to pop right open since they’d just exited an hour ago and no one else should’ve used it.