Emily Feather and the Enchanted Door Read Online Free PDF Page B

to have a child. Then after many years of waiting, her baby was born. The mother loved the little girl so much that she told everyone she met how perfect her baby was, how beautiful, how well-behaved, how clever. Even though her husband warned her not to make so much of their daughter, in case it should be unlucky, she couldn’t stop herself.
    Until one morning, when the mother woke, and looked into the baby’s cradle, her perfect child had gone. Left behind in its place was a strange baby that seemed to have been carved out of wood, with ugly staring eyes, and a mouth full of sharp little wooden teeth.
    Emily caught her breath, staring at the illustration. The wooden baby looked like some sort of horrible doll, but even in the picture, she could see that it was alive.
    What had happened to the real baby? That was what Emily really wanted to know, but the story seemed to be all about the family that was left behind. Emily skimmed through the next few lines. The mother walked into the deep woods to find an old woman who might be a witch, to ask her how to get the baby back. But the witch’s remedy cost the mother all the money she had saved up, and even then all it did was cause the wooden baby to fly up the chimney and disappear, back to the underground world of the fairies.
    The real baby never came back. The witch told the mother that she had loved the little girl too much, and that the fairies who had taken her would never give her up.
    When the mother had a second child, she dressed him in ragged clothes, and smudged ash on to his bright hair, so that this time the fairies wouldn’t steal her darling away.
    And as for the little girl – Emily’s heart beat suddenly faster – she was still in the land under the hill, never growing older, never going home.
    Emily slammed the book shut, gasping. She had been so sure that the little girl would be saved in the end – it was a fairy story, after all! Even though the story said she never grew up, the face of the child in the illustration at the bottom of the page was old. Old, and terribly sad, although she was only two or three, in an old-fashioned long dress and a little cap. There were long-eared fairy faces drawn around her, and fairy fingers stroked her arms. She had stared out of the page at Emily, as though she could see her watching.
    Emily shook her head. That was stupid. It was a printed book, that was all. How could the little girl have been looking at her? She brushed her fingers over the pages, trying to decide whether or not to open the book again. She had the strangest feeling that the little changeling girl wanted her to … that she felt Emily understood her story.
    The bell shrilled for the end of break, and Emily jumped so suddenly that she almost dropped the book.
    â€œCome on, Emily.” Rachel had already slipped her library book back on to the shelf, and she was holding out her hand to pull Emily up.
    Emily hesitated. They weren’t supposed to take books out of the library when there wasn’t a teacher there to scan them. But this book felt special, almost as though it had been put in the library just for Emily. She wanted to take it home, so much. She couldn’t just put it back on the shelf. What if someone else took it out? She pulled the book close to her, cradling it fiercely. She needed it!
    â€œEmily, come on!” Rachel was giving her a weird look, and Emily swallowed and forced a smile, and took Rachel’s hand to let her friend pull her off the beanbag.
    She would come back at lunch, and get the book out of the library then to take home. She wanted to read all of it. There might even be another story about the changeling child. One where she got back home.
    For now Emily waited until Rachel turned round, and quickly shoved the book underneath the beanbag. No one would find it there.
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    Emily sped back to the library at lunchtime, eager to find the book again. The room was dark after the