Aliens In The Family by Margaret Mahy Read Free Book Online Page A

feeling that generally meant he was losing control of a temporary shape. I'm going to change back! he thought with terror, lying as flat as he could.
    "There they go," said the girl dropping back into the front seat. "I don't think they saw you." Bond's stone burnt him with its own cold fire and, peering despairingly through the gap between the two front seats, he saw the reflection in the rear vision mirror of the girl who had rescued him. She was pretending to pat her hair into place.
    "Here comes my mother," she hissed. "Lie flat!" As she threw a rug over him Bond noticed that on a chain about her neck she wore a stone, larger than his own, but at heart the same stone as the one he wore, which at that very moment melted away like an ice crystal under his palm. The shivery feeling stopped. His stone had found itself, but at least for the present he was going to be able to maintain the heroic shape he had invented back in his School.

Six - Rescuing
    Jake sat in a cane chair in Lewis's room while he showed her his treasured collection of bird feathers. "This is the most beautiful one," he was saying as he held up a very soft, white feather. It was so fine it moved gently with the breath of his words. He laid it down and took up another from the long box. "I found this one up in the hills. I think it's from an eagle." Lewis dreamed of eagles sometimes, and the mere words 'golden eagle' made him feel as if he might grow wings himself and become a flying boy. Once he had started to write a book called 'A Pair of Eagles' and he had written three and a half pages before he lost his pencil box for a week. By the time he found the box again the inspiration had gone.
    "There aren't any eagles in New Zealand," said Jake, so regretfully that Lewis forgave her for reminding him.
    "An eagle could get blown over from Australia," he suggested hopefully, stroking his feather with love. "That's how waxeyes got here—blown over from Australia. It happens all the time." Immediately he said it, he thought it must be true. He could just see the eagle, buffeted by strong winds, being carried along in a cloud of little green fluttering birds—the waxeyes—its wings spread majestically, its fierce yellow eyes staring down through the writhing layers of angry, turbulent air.
    Beside him Jake was thinking of herself as a fierce eagle blown out of its native surroundings into a new world where there was a gentle, kindly, easy life full of pretty things, encouraging her to be gentle and pretty too. She was completely certain, however, that she must not begin thinking that she had any part in such a life because it really belonged to someone else, and once she came to think it might be hers in any way it would be taken away from her. She knew this in the same way she knew she must not let people carry heavy things for her because by now she had learned to carry them for herself, and it was not a thing that any sensible person would want to learn twice over.
    The door opened. "Hi," said Dora brightly. Jake and Lewis turned, both surprised by her happy voice, and saw at once that her voice was probably the only happy part of her. Her curls were a little shorter and a little neater than they had been this morning and she smelt of hair-dressing potions, but her eyes were wide and anxious as if she had just caught a glimpse of a possible werewolf or vampire. She smiled weakly at Jake.
    "Hi," replied Jake.
    "What are you doing?" asked Dora in a chatty voice.
    "Talking about eagles," answered Lewis.
    Dora suddenly decided to tell them what was troubling her. She knelt down beside Lewis, but it was Jake she looked at—her expression asking for her help and at the same time defying her to do her worst. "Can you keep a deadly secret?" she asked, twisting the greenstone at her throat. "I wouldn't bring you into it, but I don't know what to do. I've done something absolutely awful!"
    "What is it?" asked Jake, beginning to look interested.
    "I saved a boy from