13 Treasures Read Online Free PDF Page A

simply have to be buried with one wing.
    The back garden was an overgrown mass of bushes and brambles that had not been tended to in a long time. After trampling through and sustaining several cuts to her arms from the thorns, she found a plant with tiny yellow flowers at the base of a horse chestnut tree, and began to dig. Oberon, who had followed her outside, observed with delight before joining in enthusiastically. He dug several holes nearby at remarkable speed, showering Tanya with dirt, then sat patiently beside her, his wet nose coated with a layer of dark brown earth.
    When her own hole was deep enough, she plucked a single flower from the plant and laid it in the matchbox with the fairy, before placing the box in the earth and filling the hole back in. Afterward her fingernails were caked with dirt, but she did feel a little better. She wandered back around to the side of the house and stood in the shade of a towering oak tree, rinsing her hands under an outdoor tap. As she turned to go back inside, a figure leapt out of the tree and landed about two feet away from her.
    “Hello,” said Fabian. “What are you doing?”
    “Me?” Tanya said indignantly, as her thumping heart returned to its normal pace. “What are you doing hiding in trees and jumping out at people? You scared me half to death!”
    “Sorry,” said Fabian, grinning in a way that infuriated her.
    Tanya glared at him and wiped her hands on her jeans. At twelve, Fabian was a few months younger than she was, but in the year since she had last seen him he had shot up by several inches and now towered over her. Apart from this his appearance remained largely unchanged. He was a spindly-looking boy whose head seemed too large in proportion to the rest of his body. His sandy hair was thick and wavy, and as well as flopping unmanageably in all directions, was in need of a good trim. Unlike his father, Fabian was pale and pasty, reflecting a life spent indoors with his nose crammed in one scientific book after another. Propped on his thin, straight nose, thick spectacles magnified a pair of intelligent blue eyes.
    Tanya’s mother didn’t like Fabian much. She found him insolent, and it annoyed her that he tended to call adults by their first names, including his father and Amos, which Tanya had to admit even she found odd.
    When she had seen him last, the previous summer, Fabian had been roasting insects by deflecting sunlight through a magnifying glass and recording the time they took to burn in a brown leather-bound book that he carried everywhere with him. When questioned, his distracted reply was, “research.”
    His odd appearance now suggested more of the same. He was dressed entirely in green except for brown boots and a hat. He had attached a number of sprigs of twigs and leaves to the hat and the top he was wearing in some sort of camouflage attempt, and clipped to his glasses was a handmade device consisting of two magnifying glass lenses held together by wire and tape.
    “So what
are
you doing?” Tanya asked, her curiosity getting the better of her. “Capturing more helpless creatures to torture and kill?”
    Fabian shrugged. “Actually, it’s more of an… observational project.”
    “What are you observing?”
    He grinned aggravatingly. “What were you burying in the garden?”
    “A dead mouse,” she said, half expecting him to ask her to dig it up so he could experiment on it.
    For a few seconds he simply stared at her.
    “Sad,” he said eventually. “You could’ve given it to Spitfire to munch on.”
    They stood glaring at each other until their eyes watered, neither wanting to be the first to blink or break their gaze. Fortunately Tanya was good at it, having had plenty of practice with the kids at school. Fabian was the first to look away. She felt mildly smug over her small victory as she marched back into the house, leaving Fabian glowering as he clambered back up into the tree.

     
    Back inside, Tanya headed for her