The Boggart and the Monster by Susan Cooper Read Free Book Online

. . .
    He shot upward suddenly into the sky, astonishing a dozing owl and a dozen busy swallows.
“
Nessie!”
he cried joyfully.
“Nessie! Where are you? It’s me, it’s your cuz!
”
    Over the loch he swooped and darted, excited, rediscovering, feeling deep in his misty boggart mind the stirrings of a huge affection he had forgotten long ago. He called and he called, happily, imploringly.
    And down at the bottom of the loch, seven hundred feet down in the mud and slime, his boggart cousin Nessie stirred. He shifted his huge bulk, just a little, hearing a dim echo of a voice he had not heard for hundreds of years. But he was deep, deep asleep, without ever having moved so much as a muscle for a decade, and the call was not loud enough nor near enough to reach his fuddled brain.
    Nessie lifted his head a fraction of an inch, just enough to stir the mud and to cloud the deep, cold water a very little. He heard nothing. He dropped again into stillness, and went back to sleep.

FOUR
    A LL NIGHT the Boggart flittered restlessly to and fro, over the shores and the silent water of Loch Ness. His passing blurred the radar of the local bats, as they swooped low, hunting for mosquitoes, and they scolded him in tiny piping voices. He paid no attention; he was unsettled, caught in a mist of unaccustomed emotion. What was happening to him? For an unattached, carefree creature like a boggart, it was strange to feel anything more intense than a faint twitch of greed — and what he was feeling now was a deep, ancient ache, the longing for family. He whimpered softly to himself, knowing without comprehension that suddenly he felt incomplete.
    He flittered over the dark water, disconsolate, while the moon gradually rose and fell and the bright stars prickled the sky. He called to his cousin, or the thought of his cousin, sometimes aloud and sometimes in the silent speech of the Old Things.
    But still, at the bottom of the loch, Nessie slept on.
    *  *  *
    Jessup woke at first light, sat bolt upright, and banged his head on the roof of the Range Rover. His startled yelp woke Tommy, who rolled over and stared owlishly at him out of his sleeping bag.
    â€œSorry,”
Jessup said.
    Tommy yawned, and tried to push his tousled black hair out of his eyes.
“Now if we’d slept in a tent, you’d not be hitting your head.”
    â€œI was dreaming. I was in one of Harold’s submersibles, and there was this huge white shark, like in ‘Jaws.’ Up against the window, all teeth, trying to bite the glass.”
    â€œI thought you said those submersible things didn’t carry people.”
    â€œThey don’t. It was a
dream,
Tommy.”
    â€œI like the shark,”
Tommy said.
“It could help us cut down on visitors.”
He wriggled out of his sleeping bag and began hastily pulling on his clothes. Jessup suddenly realized how cold he was feeling, and did the same.
    â€œIt’s freezing! And it’s August!”
    â€œYou’re in Scotland,”
Tommy said without sympathy.
“A country for men.”
He rubbed a hole in the mist on the car window, and looked out.
“And boggarts.”
    Jessup rubbed a hole of his own, and saw twigs and sticks of kindling arranging themselves over the dead ashes of the campfire. Two small logs rose into the air and perched on top of the sticks. A large matchboxhovered nearby and opened, and a match jumped out and struck itself on the side of the box. Flaming, it moved gently downward and set light to the twigs. The twigs flared up, as did the kindling, and one side of the little fire glowed brighter than the rest, as if someone were blowing on it.
    Jessup watched, entranced.
“Cool!”
    Tommy scrambled over the back of the driver’s seat and pressed the button to open the tailgate window.
“Not so cool if anyone else sees him.”
He scrambled back again, dropped the tailgate, and sat on the edge, peering