Children of the Knight Read Online Free PDF

the boy immediately, with his sharp wit and keen intellect. And what a beautiful boy, she’d often thought. His hair was silkier than hers! And those green eyes were striking. She’d seen many a girl this year trying to get close to him, but he seemed to shy away from all the kids. She’d occasionally see him during lunch chatting with one of the other skaters, but more often than not he’d be sitting by himself staring off into space. She didn’t know what was troubling him, but she liked him enough to want to find out. However, his attendance was spotty, and he so seldom spoke up in class that it was hard to get to know him. She’d tried calling home, but could never seem to get hold of a parent or guardian at any of the numbers in the school’s computer database.
    “Ms. McMullen, do you know anything about King Arthur?” Those green eyes were open and expectant.
    Jenny’s eyebrows shot up in surprise, and she smiled wryly. “Look around you, Lance, then take a guess.”
    Lance looked around at the posters and photos of castles as though seeing them for the first time. In fact, he never had paid much attention. But he’d always had a good feeling about the pretty young maestra and felt she might be the only one around here he could trust. To a point, anyway.
    Jenny pushed a strand of light-blonde hair back from her face. “If you showed up to class more often, you’d know that Arthurian stories are among my favorites.”
    Lance heard her, but her sarcasm didn’t even register. His gaze remained riveted to one of the King Arthur movie posters, transfixed by the artist’s rendering of Arthur. Pushing his flowing hair back away from his eyes, he shook his head.
    “He don’t look like that.”
    That caught Jenny off guard. “Who?”
    Lance sighed heavily. “No one. Is he real, King Arthur?” He couldn’t take his eyes off that poster.
    “He was, yes,” Jenny replied evenly, slipping into her “teacher” voice. “But where facts end and legend begins no one really knows.”
    Lance pulled his gaze from the poster and looked the pretty young woman in the eye. He was easily as tall as she. “Did he ever die?”
    Jenny was truly mystified. Why the sudden fascination with King Arthur? And those eyes looked so intense, so uncertain. “Well,” she went on, “he was supposedly wounded at the Battle of Salisbury Plain, and then taken to a mystical place called Avalon. There he was to wait out the years, to return one day when Britain needed him most.”
    Lance looked at her in confusion. “What’s ‘Britain’?”
    Jenny pointed to her map of Britain. “England, Lance. You know, the country?”
    Lance shook his head in confusion. None of this added up. “But this ain’t England.”
    Jenny laughed nervously. The boy wasn’t just asking random questions. She knew his style well enough. Something was going on. “Now I’m totally lost. What are we talking about here?”
    Lance stopped then, realizing he’d probably said too much already. “Nothing. Just something I saw on TV. Gotta go, Ms. McMullen.”
    He glanced one final time at the King Arthur poster, then turned and hurried to the door, as Jenny’s fourth period students pushed past him aggressively. One burly boy leered and sneered, “Oh look, Pretty Boy’s back!”
    “Eat shit and die,” Lance muttered as he shoved his way out the door, leaving Jenny gazing after him in consternation. These kids!
     

     
    L ANCEhad not only agreed to Arthur’s plan, but had also accepted the job of teacher to this strange man who seemed to know little or nothing about twenty-first century Los Angeles. Hell, he’d never even seen a cell phone! The whole plan sounded nutty, yeah, but there was something so unusual about Arthur, something so rare that Lance felt, against all his street-born instincts, compelled to trust him. Arthur was genuinely sincere . And that was a quality Lance had never known in anyone, except maybe Ms. McMullen. Could they actually