Blood Red, Snow White by Marcus Sedgwick Read Free Book Online

he wondered whether anyone was listening. Then he wrote about the new war, the one between the Tsar, and Lev and Vladimir’s bear, and still he wondered if anyone was listening. He suffered like everyone else. He was cold and hungry, and then one day he got ill, from something in the water.
    He got very, very ill, and nearly died.
    When he got well again, he made a decision. He realized how very easy it is to die, and that there were people he needed to see back home before he did anything so drastic.
    There was his mother, waiting patiently at home in the Lakes for news of her sons, one fighting in the war, the other writing about it, each in as much danger as the other. He wanted to see her again.
    There was Tabitha, his daughter, who would have grown up so much since he had last seen her.
    And there was Ivy. He wondered if he’d been wrong about Ivy. They had loved each other once, it was true. Perhaps he’d been too hasty in leaving her. Perhaps there might be something for them after all.
    So he caught a train, and a boat and another train, and then he visited all the people he wanted to see.
    He visited his mother, and he found that he loved her as much as he always did.
    He got on another train and went to see Ivy and Tabitha.
    He found that he loved Tabitha even more than he always had. To his great delight, he found that she still loved him, too. They went for walks together and sang some silly songs and danced down the lane, laughing in the autumn sunshine.
    Things in fairy tales come in threes, that was something else that Arthur had learned as a reader and a writer. Two things go this way, the third goes that. Two things are good, the third is bad.
    So maybe he wasn’t surprised to find that when he went to see if he still loved Ivy, he found that he did not.
    For three days, they fought and wrestled, and he knew it was time to leave again, though he knew that if he left Ivy, he would perhaps lose Tabitha, too.
    But it had to be.
    He kissed Tabitha’s sleeping head once more, crept from the house, and with a broken heart he caught a train early one morning.
    A few days later he caught another train, and then a boat, and then yet another train, and he came back to that great city where history was churning out more stories than could ever be written down.
    *   *   *
    It was Christmas Day.
    A lot had happened since he’d left.
    The people, who now called themselves Reds, had decided that they enjoyed what had happened in February so much, that in October they did it all again.
    Things had not moved on as much as they had hoped and desired, and some people were even suggesting that the Tsar should be returned to power. In response, the last trace of the Tsar’s government was swept away, and anyone who disagreed was swept aside with it.
    Arthur realized he had missed the biggest story of his life and that he had to do something about it. He spent the next couple of days chasing round the city, looking for stories to write down and send back home.
    It seemed to him that the vital thing was to talk to the people in charge, and he soon learned that their names were Lev and Vladimir.
    He couldn’t find Vladimir at all. But a day or so before the year ended, he found Lev in a huge old building that had been a school for rich girls until the coming of the bear had frightened them all away. The school was so big that Lev and his friends decided that the best way to get round it was by bicycle.
    Arthur wandered through cavernous corridors, open mouthed. It was an unusual sight; the building was magnificent, or rather it had been, but its new inhabitants seemed not to care for the richness of the place. It was a mess. Litter lay everywhere. Cigarette ends had been trodden into the carpets, paintings lay slashed on the floor.
    Oh, thought Arthur, so the mighty have fallen!
    Finally, at the end of a long corridor on the first floor, he found the door he had been looking for.
    It was number 67, and on a piece of