Harvest of Changelings Read Online Free PDF

convinced Miss Windlemere believed the only good stories or poems had to be little homilies, tiny sermons. It wasn’t that Miss Windlemere was opposed to fun in school—after all, Malachi thought, she had put up a May Pole just outside the classroom. Tomorrow they were all supposed to do some sort of dorky dance with crepe paper streamers around the pole and the boy and girl with the highest grades in spelling would be crowned May King and Queen. Just like the little statue of Mary at church, with her floral coronet that Mrs. Nowalski made every week out of the flowers in her garden: pansies, petunias, tiny yellow buttercups, daffodils, paperwhite narcissi. Malachi had asked if the girl had to be like the Virgin but Miss Windlemere didn’t think it was funny.
    Would she ever finish? Malachi opened his eyes to look at the clock and its too slow second hand over the blackboard: 2:05. Another entire hour, sixty more minutes, three thousand six hundred seconds, before school was out for the day. And after that: four more weeks, four more weeks of Miss Windlemere and her flat voice
and this classroom and Vandora Springs Elementary. Twenty days. Never mind the number of hours; it was too many. On the last day of school Malachi would walk out, never to come back. Fifth grade was going to be in a new school: Nottingham Heights Elementary. Malachi wondered if his next teacher would have the same posters placed neatly above each window: Truth is Beauty, Knowledge is Power, The Early Bird Gets The Worm, Variety is The Spice of Life. Posters, Malachi was sure, that had been up on the wall since the school was built, as Knowledge is Power and Truth is Beauty were getting frayed around the edges. Someone had left a spitball on the worm.
    â€œNow, class, take out a piece of paper—don’t rip it out, Ellen, how many times do I have to tell you that?-name and date in the upper right hand corner. Danny, stop staring out the window. Thank you. Now, class, I want you to write your own May poem using your spelling words . . .”
    Geez, another spelling word poem. Danny had the right idea—if Malachi could just get outside. He sniffed the breeze that had found its way into the classroom: warm, light, laced with the faint, faint fragrance of nameless flowers. And was that a cardinal—that flash of red taking flight? If he could just follow that bird—go whenever, wherever—Malachi sighed and got out a piece of paper and watched as the minute hand moved to 2:09. Could he? His wrist on his desk, Malachi raised his hand. His pencil slowly rolled out of its groove and up against his wrist. He had never tried a trick like this before, though. It had only been in the past month, since Malachi’s tenth birthday in March, that he had found out he could do these tricks on a regular basis. Pencils, though, were one thing, clocks were another. But still, if he could move the clock hands to 3:05 and trip the bell in the office, he’d be out of here. The very first trick, back in October, had been an accident. Malachi had dropped the kaleidoscope Uncle Jack had given him under his bed and it had rolled out of reach. Even lying flat on his stomach and stretching his arm as far as he could, Malachi had not been able to reach the metal tube, and there just wasn’t enough space between bed and floor for him to crawl under. Moving the bed wasn’t an option, as it folded out of the wall—the previous owners liked boats, his dad had explained once. He had closed his eyes and imagined the kaleidoscope rolling to him, and it did. Just a few inches, but the kaleidoscope had moved.
    He pinched himself: yes, he was awake. Just because he was on the floor, dust bunnies around his ears, with his eyes closed, didn’t mean he was asleep. Maybe the floor was curved, or maybe the
house was really a boat and had hit a big wave. Maybe there had been an earthquake. The second time Malachi tried, the kaleidoscope