Cloudland Read Online Free PDF Page A

should I know?’
    After that, they climbed for a long time withoutspeaking. The panic drained out of Lucy and left her weary. Her bones felt heavy. She climbed, one step after another, without thinking.
    At last, Wist led them into a room the shape of an elevator.
    â€˜Where are you taking us?’ demanded Lucy.
    Instead of answering, he shuffled her forwards to face the wall and pushed Daniel after her. Daniel stood rubbing his shoulder where Wist’s hand had touched him. Glancing back, Lucy saw Wist scrabbling in the floor with his long toes. All at once, the floor reached up to grab them.

CHAPTER SIX
The Citadel
    The world cut out. Lucy’s eyes were full of staring whiteness with no shape, no distance, nothing. Only when her chest slammed into her throat, she understood she was falling. Her whole body was a scream, jagged and fierce.
    Lucy landed with a thump on soft cloud. It took her a full minute to realise she was breathing. Nothing hurt. The falling had stopped. Slowly the whiteness faded, and its blurred forms shrank into definite shapes. They had landed in a small, bright room.
    â€˜What is this?’ Lucy demanded. ‘Where are you taking us?’
    â€˜Safe now,’ said Wist. He reached out his hand to help her up. She shook her head and dragged herself to her feet. ‘The Citadel,’ he declared. ‘Safe heart of the Cloud Palace.’
    â€˜We’ll eat here,’ added Jovius, and Daniel stood up.
    Wist ran his hand across the wall. It quivered and pulled apart. Lucy was so used to seeing only emptiness and hearing only silence, she thought at first she was looking into a blizzard. Everything tossed and whirled. Then, as her eyes cleared, she realised she was looking into a vast cavern, crowded with Cloudians.
    â€˜The Citadel,’ sighed Jovius. ‘All the Cloudians have taken refuge here.’
    Daniel edged closer to Lucy. They stared in silence. Lucy could sense Daniel’s solid presence at her side. Apart from that, everything seemed to spin slowly around her. The whole ceiling shone with pearly light. Under its vast stillness, hundreds – even thousands – of Cloudians talked and worked.
    It’s a world
, she thought, and amazement sent small electric shocks up her spine. Following Wist and Jovius through the deserted palace, she had thought she was passing through the ruins of some civilisation lost to time, but this was real and close.
    â€˜They’re
knitting
,’ said Daniel.
    Lucy saw Cloudians tucked into armchairs, clustered along one side of the room. All as fat as Jovius, they sat knitting and chatting with their elbows out.
    â€˜My lot,’ said Jovius happily.
    Over every armchair there floated a misshapen white balloon, which the knitters held by a thread.
    â€˜But those things are alive,’ Lucy whispered. They were floating creatures with long, patient faces. Whenever they moved, they unravelled, and the knitters’ needles flashed. The cloud coats grew at every knitter’s feet while, overhead, the cloud sheep shrank.
    On the other side of the Citadel, a ring of gaunt-faced Cloudians sat cross-legged on clouds suspended, like shag-pile magic carpets, a foot above the floor. They had their eyes closed and their ears stretched out, listening to a Cloudian in the centre of their circle chant with the sound of an out-of-tune radio.
    â€˜Look!’ Lucy whispered, pointing upwards. The air was busy with Cloudians tearing around the Citadel on scraps of cloud, batting a cloud ball back and forth.
    â€˜They can fly!’ said Daniel.
    â€˜I think it’s those cloud boards.’
    â€˜What do they want with us?’ breathed Daniel.
    Wist pinched Lucy’s shoulder and pushed her into the Citadel. His voice rang out: ‘The Protector! The Protector is here!’
    The silence was sudden and so complete Lucy thought the Citadel itself was breathing in. The knitters pushed their coats aside, the