Draw the Dark by Ilsa J. Bick Read Free Book Online

sensation like being on a roller coaster, and I swooped up and down the way you do when you’re on the edge of a dream: not quite asleep but not really awake either. I knew I was in the haymow; the hard edge of splintering wood from the frame dug into my back, and I felt grit beneath my thighs.
    I cranked open my eyes.
    Everything had changed.
    For one, it was high summer. I could tell from the gold and green of the fields stretching away toward the horizon. There were men in the fields to my right, bent over rows of bush beans, trailing lumpy burlap bags, which they filled. Two men on horseback kept watch. Each cradled a rifle. They were uniformed, but I couldn’t make out if they were police or prison guards. To the left, I spotted two horses munching clumps of orchard grass, and still farther on, two jet-black horses ambled toward the mirror-still pond. The aspens were still there but not as tall.
    I don’t know what I felt, exactly. Part of me was confused, convinced I was dreaming. The other part was just . . . scared.
    “Be happy you’re not a prisoner,” said someone behind me. “Otherwise, Anderson would be working you into the ground too.”
    I was so startled I almost fell out of the loft. My heart seized up and I gasped audibly. I turned.
    On the floor of the loft was a mountain of loose, fresh-mown alfalfa. A thick rope, big around as my forearm and strong and new—and not at all that frayed curl I’d spotted before—was knotted around one of the wooden beams, and a sturdy ladder leaned against a post leading to some kind of ledge.
    And there was a boy. He was much younger than me— maybe seven or eight—and thin, with a flop of brown hair and large brown eyes.
    My tongue came unglued from the roof of my mouth. “What? Who . . . ?” But I already knew. His name was on the tip of my tongue: “Pavel.”
    “Yeah? What are you waiting for, David, let’s go!”
    “Go? Go where?” Then: “What did you call me?”
    Pavel made a horsey sound. “Stop fooling around. I know you get to do this all the time, but some of us don’t get the chance, so come on!” The boy whirled on his heel and scampered over to the ladder, ascending the rickety ladder like a small monkey. The soles of his bare feet were black, and he wore grimy corduroy trousers.
    My eyes jerked to my own legs. My paint-flecked coveralls were gone, replaced by a dusty denim overall and a white button-up shirt with short sleeves. What?
What
? I plucked at the fabric, and that’s when I noticed that my hands weren’t right; they were smaller, the wrists bony. A scar curved along the back of my left hand.
    I wasn’t me. I was—
    “David!” High above, Pavel was reaching for the rope that dangled from the highest point of the loft. “Come on, you sissy!”
    “I . . .” I staggered to my feet. They, too, were bare. “Wait, I...”
    “WOOO!” Pavel pushed off. The rope carried him in a swooping arc like a trapeze artist, and then at the peak of his swing, above the thick mound of alfalfa, he let go. With a jungle yell, Pavel dropped like a rock and plowed into the hay. A second later, his head popped up like a jack-in-the-box. “Come on, David, you going to stand around all day?”
    “N-no,” and then I was walking, my body a little stiff, as if I were some kind of android getting used to his new skin, . . . which I guess was true. With every step, more of the body I was in took over and more of
me
, who
I
was, kind of took a backseat. Like an observer in a balcony. I felt my consciousness—me, Christian—pull back into the shadows. By the time I put my— the boy’s—hands on the rope, I wasn’t really me so much as—
    “David!” From my vantage point looking down, Pavel was as tiny as a bug. His head was tipped back, his arms akimbo. “Come on, it’s easy!”
    Heart in mouth, I pushed off. I felt the rush of air through my hair—long, shaggy, fluttering around my ears—and the mow blurred. I wondered, too late, when I