In Deep Dark Wood by Marita Conlon-Mckenna Read Free Book Online Page B

didn’t seem to be any way out at all and she felt scared and weary just thinking about it. A part of her wished that she could climb into bed, fall asleep and wake the next morning to find that Bella and the dragons were gone.
    She felt tense and nervous and didn’t know what to do. She paced up and down her bedroom, trying to feel brave and excited and spirited, instead of sick and scared and weepy. She wanted to run away and hide. She wished Rory was there, but he was at the cinema with some school friends and wouldn’t be home for ages.
    Granny and her two best friends, Daisy and Ivy, were downstairs, playing cards and chatting. She’d sat with them for a while, sharing some of Granny’s sponge cake.
    ‘You look done in, Mia, pet!’ Granny had remarked, and suggested that she go to bed early.
    ‘The teachers make them work far too hard in school nowadays,’ said Daisy Donovan. ‘The child looks like a little white ghost after all that homework!’
    Mia could hear their comforting voices below in the sitting room as they chatted the evening away.
    She looked around her bedroom, loving every bit of it, her soft, squashy bed, her pine chest of drawers, so overloaded with clothes she could barely open or close them, the narrow corner wardrobe, her desk and chair and her shelf of books and knick-knacks. All ordinary and normal and wonderful. How could she leave them? She lay on the bed, waiting.
    Rory came in. She heard his footsteps on the stairs. He pushed open her door to tell her about the film and say goodnight. She was tempted for a moment to tell him everything, but instead she rolled over on her side and pretended to be asleep. She waited and waited till she was sure her brother was sound asleep in his own room.
    Bella had told her to come before midnight. Slipping on a pair of trainers and a tracksuit, she worked up the courage to creep across the landing, down the stairs and into the kitchen. Jackie looked up expectantly from her bed in the corner. Mia went quickly to the biscuit tin and bribed the dog with a chewy treat. Turning the key in the back door, Mia let herself out quietly into the moonlit night. She gasped. Bella was already standing there at the door amidst her mother’s pots of daffodils and tulips.
    ‘I knew you’d come, child!’ she said, hugging her, and keeping her scrawny arms around her as they made their way back through the gap in the hedge.
    The old house lay still and dark, most of the furniture and bric-a-brac already removed.
    The dragons were quivering nervously with anticipation, and Mia was soon caught up in the excitement of what lay ahead and the great journey they would make together.
    ‘Here, child!’ said Bella. ‘This is for you!’
    Mia found herself being wrapped into a huge, feathered coat, her shoulders and arms being eased through enormous armholes.
    ‘It’s a flying coat, Mia! Rare and precious.’
    The feathers felt soft and warm around her, feathers of every shape and size. She tried to guess the type of birds they had come from as she touched the shining blue-black feathers that covered her forearms, the grey seagull feathers that ran across her shoulders, and the soft, downy layers of pale white and silver that rippled along her midriff. Owl, thrush, sparrow, magpie, rook, blue-tit – she recognised many of them. Others were rich with strange colours and the exotic hues of birds that had never crossed the shores of her native land. It was magnificent.
    ‘It’s beautiful, Bella,’ she said, caressing it. It fitted her perfectly, covering her whole body.
    ‘Not many people have experienced flying, Mia. This makes you truly special,’ announced the old woman. She then slipped on a feathered coat of her own. The colours weredarker, the plumage stronger, making her thin face and beady eyes look even more birdlike.
    The dragons shoved and pushed each other anxiously, Bella moved amongst them, issuing commands in a low voice. Trig shuffled over beside Mia.