Green Boy by Susan Cooper Read Free Book Online Page A

tighten round his knife. He said to Math, “If we go down together, back to back, we can cut a way through.”
    But Math didn’t have a chance to answer. Lou swung round in front of them, making the throaty noises that for him were “No, no!” He was shaking his head violently, and he had his hands up, trying to push them both backwards, away from the ditch.
    Math looked down at him in astonishment. He said, “What, then?”
    Lou put his finger to his lips. He held up the other hand with its palm toward them. Then very slowly he began to edge himself down into the pit full of those squirming black monsters.
    â€œAh, no!” Math said, appalled. He started forward, and Lou stopped, frowning, and held up his hand again.
    â€œLet him be,” Bryn said. “He knows what he wants to do.”
    And just as I began to panic, I remembered in an instant where I had first smelled the faint smell that was in the air here. It was the tiny hint of a scent that you could catch once in a while from one of Lou’s favoriteplaythings at home on the island: the little black millipedes, that grossed out Grammie but curled obligingly into a harmless circle in Lou’s gentle fingers.
    I stared down at the pit. These awful-looking things, long as my leg, were gigantic mutant versions of Lou’s millipedes. He seemed to have recognized them at once—but would they recognize him? I had a sudden terrible vision of him down there, screaming, covered with flailing black bodies.
    Lou looked up and caught my eye, and shook his head. He grinned. He knew just what I’d been thinking.
    Then he climbed slowly down into the ditch, and squatted at the edge of the mass of black bodies. He reached down and patted one of them; then knocked on its hard black back with his knuckles, and laughed.
    The millipede curled itself slowly into a circle. So did the next, and the next. And on, and on, until every one of them was curled up like an automobile tire, lying there unmoving, unthreatening, in a harmless heap.
    â€œI’ll be damned,” Bryn said.
    Lou laughed again, and he walked across the ditch, stepping lightly from one black curled body to the next, until he reached the other side. He paused, and looked up at the tree.
    He was still my little brother, and he was alone. I said softly, “Lou? Shall I come?”
    He smiled, but he shook his head, and looked up at the twisted old tree above him. He reached up, and puthis hand on the trunk. All this time the strange wind that nobody could feel had been singing softly through the thin needle-like leaves, in a constant background, rising and falling a little but never stopping. I could hear it, I could see the leaves moving, but I could feel no breath of wind at all.
    Lou was listening intently; you could see the concentration on his face.
    I said softly to Gwen, hesitating a bit because it sounded so ridiculous: “Uh—is the tree talking to him?”
    â€œOf course,” she said, and she gave me a smile so open and cheerful that it was like a hug.
    â€œWell—what’s it saying?”
    â€œNobody knows that but Lou,” she said.
    We all stood there watching Lou and the singing tree, bemused, and in the background, beyond the steel fences, the silent grey city stretched to the horizon in all directions.
    Then the pitch of the tree’s singing changed, grew higher, shrill, and Lou looked up suddenly at the sky, alarmed. A louder noise came roaring toward us, and down over the tall fences came two whirring helicopters like the one that had dived at us when we first found ourselves in the Otherworld. They were small, black and sinister, and they moved very fast. Before we could gather our wits they were hovering low over the ground near the rocks, and a real wind was whirling dust and leaves through the air, turning us all blind and deaf for ascrambling moment. The noise was painful. A figure dropped to the ground from each