The People in the Castle: Selected Strange Stories by Joan Aiken Read Free Book Online

gracious, that’s never Selim ?” gasped Hannah. “Selim! Selim! Is that you? What the blazes are you doing there? Why aren’t you in the forest?”
    And then, as they swept over him, she called, “Here, quick! Grab this!” and dropped the end of the kite line.
    By pure good luck, Miles caught it, and, by pure good luck, the only athletic sport he had ever fancied was rope-climbing. Hand over hand he hauled himself up the dangling line, so that when they passed the barbed wire barricade, he was just a hair’s breadth above it and out of danger.
    Then they were bumping and thrashing through the forest branches. The line broke with a shrill twang and the kite, set free, flew off and vanished in the night sky. Its passengers tumbled down, among bushes and boughs, scratched and bruised, but not seriously hurt. They huddled in a dark group, feeling and hugging one another.
    “Just listen to the words,” said Hannah. “Just smell them!”
    Sure enough, a wonderful fresh, aromatic, rainy, spicy smell floated all around them in the forest darkness, and a soft continuous murmuring rustling, chirping twittering nutritious warbling came from all directions; so that, weak, amazed, sore and battered as they were, still they seemed to be understanding more, in the space of a couple of minutes, than they had ever done before in the whole of their lives.
    “What does—?” began Miles, but Hannah laid a finger on his lips, and a hand on Noel’s trunk.
    “ Hush! Just listen! ”
    Probably they are listening still.

A Room Full of Leaves

    Once there was a poor little boy who lived with a lot of his relatives in an enormous house called Troy. The relatives were rich, but they were so nasty that they might just as well have been poor, for all of the good their money did them. The worst of them all was Aunt Agatha, who was thin and sharp, and the next worst was Uncle Umbert, who was stout and prosperous. We shall return to them later. There was also a fierce old nurse called Squab, and a tutor, Mr. Buckle, who helped to make the little boy’s life a burden. His name was Wilfred, which was a family name, but he was so tired of hearing them all say: “You must live up to your name, child,” that in his own mind he called himself Wil. It had to be in his mind, for he had no playmates—other children were declared to be common, and probably dangerous and infectious too.
    One rainy Saturday afternoon Wil sat in his schoolroom finishing some Latin parsing for Mr. Buckle before being taken for his walk, which was always in one of two directions. If Squabb took him they went downtown “to look at the shops” in a suburb of London which was sprawling out its claws towards the big house; but the shops were never the ones Wil would have chosen to look at. If he went with Mr. Buckle they crossed the Common diagonally (avoiding the pond where rude little boys sailed their boats) and came back along the white-railed bridle path while Mr. Buckle talked about plant life.
    So Wil was not looking forward with great enthusiasm to his walk, and when Squabb came in and told him that it was too wet to go out and he must amuse himself quietly with his jigsaw puzzles, he was delighted. He sat gazing dreamily at the jigsaw puzzles for a while, not getting on with them, while Squabb did some ironing. It was nearly dark, although the time was only three. Squabb switched on the light and picked a fresh heap of ironing off the fender.
    All of a sudden there was a blue flash and a report from the iron; a strong smell of burnt rubber filled the room and the lights went out.
    “Now I suppose the perishing thing’s blown the fuse for this whole floor,” exclaimed Squabb and she hurried out of the room, muttering something under her breath about newfangled gadgets.
    Wil did not waste a second. Before the door had closed after her he was tiptoeing across the room and out of the other door. In the darkness and confusion no one would miss him for quite a