The Dark Flight Down by Marcus Sedgwick Read Free Book Online Page A

still be in there,” Willow said, her voice wavering.
    “Then we’d better tread quietly.”
    Kepler took a step forward, and as he did, his foot kicked something lying in the snow. He looked down and picked it up. With surprise he saw it was the lens.
    “What is it?” Willow asked.
    “It’s the very thing I sent Boy here to collect.”
    They both fell silent, and looked again at the open door of the Yellow House.
    It was dark in the house and they had brought no light.
    As they made their way gingerly inside, Willow and Kepler waited for their eyes to grow accustomed to the gloom. Only the faintest shimmer of light made its way into the house from the torchlit street, showing feebly through the grimy windows high up in the hall.
    They listened keenly, but though no sound could be heard, they didn’t relax. The house seemed predatory, like a vicious animal waiting to pounce.
    They moved upstairs and found themselves drawn inexorably to the spiral staircase that led to the Tower.
    There was a little more light drifting down through the high glass skylight above the third-floor landing, and they were able to pick their way up to the Tower more easily, but still they went cautiously.
    Instinctively, they had found their way to the wounded heart of the house. Kepler led the way, and they immediately saw that the Tower room had had its guts ripped out. The room was stripped of almost everything valuable. All the books were gone, all the scientific apparatus and magical paraphernalia that had given it its identity. All that was left was anything that was too big to move or was broken, the projection table of the camera obscura and the old leather armchair.
    Kepler shook his head.
    “What in God’s name has happened here?” he said.
    Willow said nothing.
    “Dare we risk some light?” she asked. “He kept a packet of matches on the windowsill. . . .”
    Willow fumbled in the gloom, but soon she found the matches where she had seen them last.
    Kepler turned to her and nodded.
    “Very well,” he said. “The villains are long gone.”
    Willow struck a match, and held it up above her head, letting its feeble light cast a glow around the room.
    “Look out!” she shouted suddenly, but at the same moment Kepler had seen that the trapdoor lay wide open, the hatch a gaping black mouth in the floor just inches from where he stood.
    He stepped back a pace.
    “So they stole everything they could. . . .”
    “Who?”
    Kepler shrugged.
    “I don’t know.”
    “But where’s Boy?” Willow asked.
    Kepler looked around the mess.
    Willow squealed and dropped the match, which had burned to her fingertips.
    “Quick!” Kepler said. “Light another one! I saw something.”
    Willow struck another match and once more a little patch of light spread around them.
    “There!” said Kepler. “Over there!”
    “What is it?” Willow asked, and followed Kepler carefully to the edge of the hole left by the trapdoor, where something on the floor had caught his eye.
    He picked it up.
    It was a white feather.
    “What?” asked Willow, desperately. “What does it mean?”
    “It means that our crooks were rather powerful people. And I think it means I know where Boy is. The Imperial Palace.”
    “How do you know?” Willow asked.
    “The feather. The feather is from the uniform of an Imperial Guardsman. That’s where he is.”
    Willow dropped the match, and they were left in darkness again.
    “I will get him out,” Kepler said, but not really to Willow.
    “I’ll help. I’ll come too.”
    “Not this time, girl!” Kepler declared. “I’ve had enough of you tailing around. Boy is mine, and I don’t need your help with anything. Not least Boy. You go back to the orphanage and be grateful I found you a job!”
    Willow said nothing.
    She knew what she was going to do whether Kepler liked it or not, and there was no point in arguing about it. Without another word she left the Tower, and the house, behind her.
    Kepler stood in the