Gravenhunger by Richard; Harriet; Allen Goodwin Read Free Book Online Page B

nuggets of information with her. Since their head-to-head in the attic yesterday, they hadn’t uttered a single word to each other.
    Rose turned away from the window.
    There was nothing more infuriating than being left out of a secret.
    She flopped down on the end of her bed, then jerked back upright.
    Of course! The guidebook! Surely the mound would be mentioned in that.
    Dragging her rucksack out from underneath the bed, she slid back the zip on the top pocket and drew out the booklet.
    Perhaps – just perhaps – she was about to get some answers.

    Phoenix checked his watch.
    Eleven-thirty already.
    A whole hour of trudging up and down in the pouring rain, and so far he had found nothing.
    His plan the previous evening had been to retracehis steps from the house to the mound, starting on the fourth-floor landing just outside the hidden entrance to the attic room. But then it had dawned on him in the middle of the night that the most likely place the little angel would be was where he had tripped and caught his foot in the burrow at the edge of the mound. It made sense to look there first.
    He pulled the hood of his waterproof down over his forehead and stared at the ground once more.
    He had scoured the area around the burrow again and again, parting the tufts of grass and combing the sandy soil with the tips of his fingers, but there was no sign of the angel. He was going to have to go back to the house soon and dry off before Dad returned from the village. He could always sneak out again later on. A lot later on, if necessary – once it had grown dark and everyone had gone to bed. At least then his nosy-parker cousin wouldn’t be watching him out of the window, as she was almost certainly doing right now.
    Phoenix made to leave the mound, then froze.
    A shape was drifting towards him, a shape which seemed at first glance to be no more than a rogue patch of mist, blown this way and that by the buffeting wind, but as he stared harder seemed to take on the form of a human silhouette.
    So he hadn’t been seeing things yesterday …
    For a moment he just stood there, his brainscreaming at him to run – but his legs felt like jelly.
    Now the shape was coming closer…and suddenly he was scrambling down the side of the mound, not knowing what it was that he was running from, knowing only that he had to get away…
    Halfway to the embankment he glanced back.
    The silhouette was still there, flitting over the surface, its outline pale and blurred … but very definitely human.
    Phoenix raced on towards the river.
    At the crest of the embankment he paused, bent double from a stitch in his side and gasping for breath.
    He blinked.
    Directly below him something bright was scudding down the river … something silvery-white…
    Dropping to his knees, he craned forward, but already he could see that the brightness was nothing but the foaming water itself, taunting and teasing him with the illusion of a thousand silvery angels.
    How could he have been so stupid? If the angel had dropped out while he was crossing the tree-trunk bridge, he was hardly going to find it floating on the surface of the river, was he? It would be lying at the bottom, unreachable amongst the weeds and the mud and the rocks.
    He twisted round and lowered himself over theedge of the embankment, his view of the mound slowly slipping from view.
    On its flattened top the strange silhouette had become eerily still…
    …as if it was watching his every movement.

    Rose ran up the narrow staircase to the attic.
    Lunchtime had been a total nightmare.
    Apart from one remark Uncle Joel had made about the brilliant sunshine down in the village that morning, no one had said a thing.
    They had sat round the kitchen table in silence, and if it hadn’t been for the chimney sweep arriving, Rose reckoned they would have stayed there all afternoon, their moods darkening by the minute.
    It wasn’t what she was used to, that was for sure. You could barely get a word in