Geek Fantasy Novel Read Online Free PDF

about his parents.
    Droplets began to strike the window. It was soon a deluge, turning the dust on the walkways to mud. Ralph took in the metal hooks set into the old brick walls, and the sky that was a different shade of blue everywhere he looked, though it never lost its substantial British grayness. He creaked open a small triangle of window and reached out a hand to feel the rain, the English rain, the lovely dreary water, bead over the back of his hand. He gazed at the wealth around him, a steerage passenger peering through a porthole.
    “What are you doing?” came Cecil’s voice from down the hallway.
    Ralph pulled back his head, bumping the window frame as he did and nearly knocking his glasses off his face. Maybe it was the vibration of that shock, but he thought he saw a shadowy figure disappear behind the tree. “Feeling the rain,” he said distractedly, scanning outside. The figure was gone.
    “Does it feel like rain?”
    “Yes.”
    “Jolly good. I’ve been sent to show you your gatehouse.”
    “I’ve already been.”
    “You have? What else am I supposed to do with you, then?”
    “I don’t know — ask your mom.”
    “I guess I’ll show you my wing. I know more about it than your building, anyway.”
    Cecil’s section of the castle was decorated in Che Guevara blankets, posters for arty bands whose names were whole sentences, and a suit of armor on which had been draped a camouflage helmet. At the far end was Cecil’s tur-reted bedroom. “You see those signs?” Cecil asked.
    “Yeah.” On the wall were hung category divisions from a chain bookstore, suspended from rusty chains.
    “I helped set up a new bookstore, because if you work just one job you can’t make ends meet, which means I’ve had to work two to make it more realistic. Anyway, my coworkers looked the other way when I lifted some massive signage. Check out where I put them all.”
    TRUE CRIME was above the main door, SPECIAL NEEDS above the bathroom, SELF HELP over the bed.
    “Cool, huh?” Cecil said.
    “Yeah.”
    “I’m going into town now, actually. Do you want a lift?”
    “No, I think I’ll stick around here. Maybe take a nap or something. Thanks, though. Can I let myself out into the gardens?”
    “Yeah. You should really check out the giant tree. It’s been around for like a gabillion years.”
    By all traditional indicators of tree age, this specimen had indeed been around a gabillion years. Four people could stand at the compass points ofits girth and not glimpse one another. Its network of thick leaves funneled the downpour into columns of water, leaving the rest of the area beneath its canopy in mist. Nothing grew under the wide circumference of its branches, besides toadstools and the occasional stand of wildflowers. Ralph dashed along a muddy path, past a vacant stable and through a stretch of dewy moss to reach the tree’s wide trunk. He appraised it as a possible video game background, judged it evocative but hard to render.
    “It’s raining,” said a little girl’s voice.
    Ralph turned and saw Daphne, holding her plastic scepter akimbo and staring quizzically at him. She was soaked through. “I was trying to find you,” Daphne continued, “and I looked all over the whole castle. I didn’t want to get wet, but now you’ve made me. Mummy’s going to be upset with us. She was supposed to take me into town to get some new shoes before dinner, and now I bet she won’t let me.”
    “I’m sorry,” Ralph said.
    “It’s okay. Even though the shoes were pink and really nice. What are you doing?”
    “I’m looking at the tree.”
    “It’s very big, isn’t it? It’s way older than me.”
    “I’d say so,” Ralph said. He wondered how to talk to a child. “Are you a princess?”
    “I’m seven,” Daphne said. “I know I’m not
really
a princess. It just gets so boring around here. My friends are all off in warm places for the summer where they can go swimming and stuff.”
    “I figured