A Dusk of Demons Read Online Free PDF Page A

me—telling me the bacon was not crisp enough, chiding me for breaking the yolk of her egg. But she ate as greedily as I: Food tasted better cooked over a fire we had made ourselves, on an island whose sole occupants we were. Behind us the sun was obscured by the rise of land, but the sea in front was already brightly lit.
    Lying back on the sand, face hidden as she lacedher hands behind her neck, Paddy spoke of my new status.
    â€œWas it really a surprise? Did Mother never give you a hint of it—nor the Master, either?”
    â€œNone at all.”
    â€œI knew nothing, but Antonia must have. There were things she said which make sense now. I think she remembers quite a bit from the time before we came here.”
    Paddy started talking about things that could be done on Old Isle. Sheriff Wilson’s house had a pool, which was connected to the sea and held water at low tide. We might make one like it. He kept fish for the table in his. We could swim in ours when the sea was rough.
    I pointed out it would mean digging a very long channel, since the Master’s house was at least twice as far from the shore. It would be asking a lot of Andy and Joe.
    â€œWe can bring men over from Sheriff’s. And they could build a summerhouse, up by the pines.”
    My latest acquisition seemed destined to go the same way as the previous one: to be shared betweenus, but with Paddy in charge. I wondered if she would want to ride Sea King. Probably not; his size would be likely to daunt even her. Anyway, for the last couple of days he had been suffering an attack of laminitis and was confined to the stables.
    The day passed quickly. We put to rights a tree house in the island’s little copse, which Joe had helped us build on a previous visit, and searched for gulls’ eggs on the rocky ribs of foreshore where they nested. By the time we’d collected a dozen we were hungry again, and made a new fire and boiled them, burning our fingers as we cracked the shells to eat them with salt and butter.
    A mile or so out, someone was lifting lobster pots. There was a reef there where Joe put down pots, but this was not his boat. It was bigger—someone from Sheriff’s probably. Yet so tiny compared with the vessel in the picture.
    I asked idly, “Why did things get small?”
    â€œGull’s eggs? I don’t recall them being bigger. Not much fun for the gull, if they were.”
    â€œI meant boats. And buildings. Remember that ruin we explored on Sheriff’s . . .”
    â€œNot for long, because you were scared of being caught in a forbidden place.”
    As I recalled it, she had been at least as scared, but I didn’t argue. I said, “That book we found which could still be read—with pictures of buildings ten times as high as the Sheriff’s house.” I thought about it. “Twenty times, perhaps.”
    â€œIt wasn’t that they got small: The Demons destroyed them. It says so in Laws of the Dark One —that the Demons will destroy anything built more than six times the height of a man, and lay waste the ground as far all round it. Except for windmills.”
    â€œBut why? What’s wrong about tall buildings, or big boats?”
    â€œIt’s wrong if the Dark One says it’s wrong. You know that. Windmills are allowed for the Demons, so they can perch on the sails. It’s to do with what happened long ago—with the Madness.”
    â€œThen what was the Madness?”
    â€œIt’s not to be talked of. You know that, too.”
    I knew it, but I didn’t know why. “It wasn’t just buildings. There were pictures of enormous machines as well.”
    â€œThey probably weren’t real.”
    â€œThey looked real. And there was that picture of a big machine in a rocky desert place, with words underneath: ‘The first men on the moon.’ ”
    Paddy laughed. “Doesn’t that prove they weren’t