Dawn of Fear by Susan Cooper Read Free Book Online Page A

right?”
    Miserably Derek nodded, unable to speak for the sobs that were sending his chest up into his throat. He pressed his head hard into his father’s arm and clutched at his hand.
    â€œI didn’t mean to be rough,” John Brand said. “But you mustn’t ever be outside when a raid’s going on. Never. Never. You know the rules. You must always get into a shelter as quickly as you possibly can. Or if there isn’t a shelter, then into a ditch, or under a tree, or anywhere close to the ground. You aren’t really old enough to be frightened, and because you aren’t, you just must remember the rules. Understand?”
    Swallowing, choking, Derek nodded again. He said, through gulps, “I’m sorry.”
    His father’s arm around him was like an iron bar. He said softly, “We don’t want to lose you.”
    Derek looked up, blinking in the wavering yellow light of the candle, and saw Hugh watching him from wide dark eyes in the opposite bunk, and his mother sitting there silent beside him, holding his hand. She gave him a small encouraging smile, and he saw that her face was wet. “Oh, Mum,” he said unsteadily, nearly beginning again, and lurched across the shelter. “I’m sorry, Mum.”
    She hugged him and wiped his face. “There now,” she said. “But you must remember what Daddy said. Always.”
    â€œWe always get down somewhere if we hear planes when we’re out,” Derek said. “Even if the warning hasn’t gone. Until we can see whether they’re ours.”
    â€œThat’s very good,” his mother said. “Now you get up into your bunk, and I’ll tuck the blanket around you. We may be here for a while tonight. You close your eyes and try to get some rest. You, too, Hughie, lie down now and go to sleep.”
    There was another great thump outside, and the earth gently shook. Opening his eyes, Derek saw from his bunk the jerk of the candle flame and the quiver in the thin dark line of greasy smoke that rose from it to the low curved metal roof.
    â€œDon’t worry,” his father said, watching him. “They’re going away. Our battery has stopped firing. It won’t be too long now.”
    Derek lay there, pressing his boots against the end of the bunk; feeling the blanket rough against his chin; smelling the shelter smell of dank earth and candle grease. He thought sleepily, “But I’m not worried.” He had never been frightened by the bombs. The raids were always an excitement, though a mixed excitement because he knew going down to the shelter made Hugh’s cough worse. That was the only reason for not wanting a raid: that and the camp. Like anybody else, he knew what it was like to be scared by things like the snapping of a large dog, by bigger boys chasing him at school, by being alone in the dark. But the guns and the bombs and the swooping planes, they were different. Nothing about them had ever really bothered him before—not, at any rate, until that fierce moment this evening, with the strange urgent note in his father’s voice and the violence with which he had pulled him down. Derek gulped again at the thought of it. That had scared him all right. It was so totally out of character in his gentle father; he had never seen anything like it before. “I won’t ever hang about again when we’re coming down here,” he thought earnestly; “I’ll get in as quick as ever I can.”
    The thumping of the guns grew more muffled; merged into a familiar, almost comforting background, with Hugh’s occasional cough and his parents’ intermittent soft murmuring below. Derek drifted into sleep, thinking: “I hope the camp’s all right. I hope they didn’t get the camp.”

4
Monday
    T HE CAMP was intact. They were working on it again by the time the next morning was halfway through. The three of them had walked together to