The Road of Bones by Anne Fine Read Free Book Online Page B

the slope to the bushes. The rope slithered down to land in a heap at my side. Clearly Karl thought it less risky to throw the last of it over in case they pulled up the bucket and guessed how he’d helped me.
    Praying for his sake that neither of the guards knew enough about building work to think it strange Karl had only the smallest heap of mortar at his side for all the bricks he was shouting for, I gathered up as much of an armful of the rope as I could carry, and ran for cover.
    Once I was hidden, I snaked the rope end towards me, keeping my eye on the parapet for fear that either of the men hunting me should take it into his head to peer over. As soon as I’d hauled the last of itout of sight, I crept a little further down the bushy slope, and left the bucket lying on its side, the rope trailing after, so even if Karl didn’t get to it first, he would at least be able to argue it had fallen off the parapet and rolled away.
    â€˜That’s why I sent him down again out of turn,’ he would be able to tell them when they questioned him. ‘To fetch back the bucket the young fool knocked off my wall.’
    I stumbled off between the bushes and trees, desperate to convince myself Karl wouldn’t find himself in the worst trouble. And only then, as terror from the dreadful, swaying descent began to fade, did I remember that things could go as badly for me if I were found.
    Or even worse.
    I speeded up till I’d outrun the furthest paths we’d ever searched for firewood. It was getting dark. More out of breath than I had ever been, I finally slowed my pace, telling myself that going more slowly was sensible. Suppose someone who’d been working in the wood suddenly appeared on the path? Surely they’d think a panting, rasping boy far more suspicious than one who was simply strolling along and whistling idly.
    I pursed my lips. I’d no intention of making anynoise at all unless I met a stranger. But even without trying I knew that any attempt to whistle would end in failure. My mouth was parched from fright. I hurried on. And it was only as the relentless thumping of my own heartbeat in my chest and ears gradually calmed that the realization came to me.
    I was in even deeper trouble than I feared.
    How could I go forward? I had nothing with me. No food, no money, no identification papers. Nothing except the rough and ready work clothes in which I stood.
    And I could definitely not go back.
    So I went on. What I had taken to be the silence of the woods turned into almost a comfort of rustlings and flutterings and strange short screeches in the night. What would my mother be thinking? Would the guards think that she and my father were lying when she assured them I had not come home? I felt a sickening in my gut. Perhaps they’d even arrest my parents in my place – we knew it happened – and keep them down in their slimy basement cells in the hope that I’d present myself at their gatehouse the same way young Victor went in search of his brother in Grandmother’s story.
    Grandmother! Surely the soldiers wouldn’t dragher away! She was a wily old bird, well capable of making herself look even older than she was, and acting half-witted. Perhaps she’d have the sense to whimper and drool, and leave them thinking her brain so full of holes and worms she might as well be left.
    At heart, though, I knew that neither my grandmother’s age nor my parents’ innocence would be any protection. If they chose to, the guards would beat them. We knew they’d thrashed confessions out of peasants accused of hiding grain, and wreckers and saboteurs. For years my parents had struggled to convince themselves, ‘They must have been guilty of
something.
No one’s arrested for no reason at all.’ But after the day my mother came home with the news that Simple Talia down the street had been taken away in one of their Black Marias, even that small fraying