The Legacy by Katherine Webb Read Free Book Online Page A

the wood. We’d hardly seen him for days and he’d forbidden us to spy on him. The weather had been fitful, wind dimpling the surface of the dew pond, too fresh to swim. We’d played dressing up in a spare bedroom; built castles of empty flowerpots in the orangery; made a den in the secret hollow center of the yew topiary globe on the top lawn. Then the sun came out again and we saw Dinny wave from the corner of the garden, and Beth smiled at me, her eyes alight.
    “It’s ready,” he said, when we reached him.
    “What is it?” I demanded. “Go on—tell us!”
    “A surprise,” was all he would say, smiling shyly at Beth. We followed him through the trees, and I was telling him about the den in the topiary when I saw it and was silenced. One of the biggest beech trees, with a silvery smooth trunk and bark that wrinkled where its branches forked, like the crook of your elbow or the back of your knee. I’d seen Dinny climb it before, with a few practiced swings, to sit amidst the pale green leaves far above me. Now, high up where the tree began to spread, Dinny had built a broad platform of sturdy planks. The walls were made from old fertilizer bags, bright blue, nailed to a wooden frame and belling in and out like boat sails. The route up to this fortress was marked by knotted rope loops and chunks of scrap wood, nailed to the tree to form an intermittent ladder. In the hung silence I heard the enticing rush of the breeze, the rustling snap of the tree house walls.
    “What do you think?” Dinny asked, folding his arms and squinting at us.
    “It’s brilliant! It’s the best tree house ever!” I exclaimed, bouncing urgently from foot to foot.
    “It’s great—did you build it all by yourself?” Beth asked, still smiling up at the blue house. Dinny nodded.
    “Come up and see—it’s even better inside,” he told her, moving to the foot of the tree, reaching up for the first handhold.
    “Come on , Beth!” I admonished her, when she hesitated.
    “OK!” she laughed. “You go first, Erica—I’ll give you a boost to the first branch.”
    “We should give it a name. You should name it, Dinny!” I chattered, hoisting up my skirt, tucking it into my knickers.
    “What about the watch tower? Or the crow’s nest?” he said. Beth and I agreed—The Crow’s Nest it would be. Beth hoisted me onto the first branch, my sandals scuffing welts into the powdery green algae, but I could not reach the next handhold. My fingertips crooked over the rung Dinny had nailed into the tree, so close, but too far for me to hang on safely. Dinny joined me on the first branch, let me step on his bent knee until I could reach, but from there my leg would not stretch to the next rung.
    “Come down, Erica,” Beth called at length, when I was red and cross and feeling close to tears.
    “No! I want to go up!” I protested, but she shook her head.
    “You’re too little! Come down!” she insisted. Dinny withdrew his knee, jumped down from the tree, and I had no choice but to obey. I slithered back to the ground and stared in sullen silence at my stupid, too-short legs. I had grazed my knee, but was too disheartened to be excited about the sticky worm of blood oozing down my shin.
    “Beth, then? Are you coming up?” Dinny asked, and I sank inside, to be left out, to miss out on the wonderful tree house. But Beth shook her head.
    “Not if Erica can’t,” she said. I glanced up at Dinny but looked away again quickly, squirming away from the disappointment in his eyes, the way his smile had vanished. He leant against the tree, folded his arms defensively. Beth hesitated for a while, as if unable to choose her next words. Then her hand reached out for me again. “Come on, Rick. We need to go and wash your leg.”
    Two days later Dinny fetched us back again, and this time the trunk of the beech tree was riddled with rungs and ropes. Beth smiled calmly at Dinny and I flew to the bottom of this ramshackle staircase, staring up