The Lie Tree by Frances Hardinge Read Free Book Online Page B

so.’
    Faith realized she was smiling. Being answered simply and without fuss was a relief that felt almost physical.
    She thought of the needle being chiselled in the distant age of endless ice, when reindeer hoofs had pounded the snow even in Britain. She
did
wish she could touch it, she realized. She
wanted to reach out across countless aeons and hold it, just as its maker had once held it. That would be like touching a star.
    Only as they were walking out of the tent did Myrtle fall into step with her.
    ‘Faith,’ she hissed, ‘
must
you make yourself so absurd?’
    Before long, Lambent bounded out of the tunnel with the ‘gentlemen’. Howard looked dusty and confused.
    ‘. . . so our tunnel has not broken its way into the cave yet,’ declared Lambent, ‘but that is nothing that a barrel of blasting powder cannot solve. Let me show you how we
have been lowering ourselves into the cave from above!’
    While Myrtle remained in the ‘Bedouin tent’, Lambent led the rest of the Sunderly family up a much longer zigzag path. At the crest, Faith found herself staring at a dimpled, grassy
plateau, tufted with low bushes.
    ‘Tread carefully!’ Lambent advised cheerfully. ‘This is where our curate’s dog found an unexpected drop, and there may be more!’
    Ahead, in the biggest dimple, was a large, freshly hewn timber platform. Faith realized that there was an oblong hole in the middle. Over the hole was a sturdy frame supporting a great spindle
with a thick chain around it, a little like the mechanism for lowering a bucket into a well. Instead of a bucket, however, there hung a sort of roofless cage, with a square metal base and sides
three feet high.
    ‘I had this old mechanism moved from an abandoned mine on the other side of the island,’ Lambent explained. ‘The hauling is all done by
that
fellow.’ He pointed
towards a sturdy-looking horse to whose halter the loose end of the chain had been attached. ‘We needed something of the sort – the drop is a good thirty feet.’
    Gripping Faith’s hand, Howard stood on tiptoes to peer at the top of the shaft.
    ‘Ah!’ exclaimed Lambent. ‘Our young sportsman is sizing up the basket! Would you like a short ride in it, sir?’ He glanced at the Reverend. ‘What do you think,
Reverend? Would he like to be one of the very first people since the Stone Age to see those caves? We can lower him a dozen feet with one of the men and a lantern, just low enough that he can look
down into the cavern.’
    A quiet light kindled in the Reverend’s eye. He looked at Howard, and she knew that the idea was taking hold.
His son
, seeing a prehistoric cavern while it still wore its
mysteries. It would be a kind of baptism. He gave a barely perceptible nod of consent, and Faith felt an ache of loss and jealousy.
    Faith was vaguely aware that an unhappy-looking Ben Crock was whispering into Lambent’s ear. She caught the words ‘child and ‘risk. But whatever his arguments were, they were
waved away.
    Lambent beckoned, but Howard clung to Faith’s sleeve. His jaw was working again, his face reddening with frustration at his own trapped words.
    ‘He will go down if
I
do,’ Faith whispered to her father, on impulse. She could not resist. Of course she would have preferred it if her father had turned to her and said,
Faith, I want you to see this, I want you to be part of this.
But if all she could do was ride her little brother’s coat-tails, it was better than nothing.
    And the Reverend did not quell her with a look. Perhaps he had noticed that Howard was looking a little less scared by the thought of Faith coming with him.
    He gave a nod. Faith flushed with excitement as the men readied the basket, attaching an oil lamp to a hook on the frame. At Ben Crock’s insistence they also hooked ropes on to the sides,
as guy ropes to keep it from twisting.
    One of the sides of the cage-basket was hinged like a door, and was held open so that Faith and Howard could