Hawthorn Read Online Free PDF

behind a shroud of tattered clouds.
I’m just feeling sad about leaving Mr. Ward all alone,
I told myself,
and because I haven’t seen Raven all week.
I’d go looking for him tomorrow. For now, I’d feel better when we got back to Blythewood.
    After a half hour had passed I wondered if we’d struck off in the right direction. “Do you know where we’re going, Helen?” I asked, tugging at her shirtsleeve.
    She looked up at me, startled, as if I’d asked her a difficultquestion. “I-I don’t know . . . oh, wait, do you hear that?”
    She held her finger to my mouth, telling me to be quiet. With my Darkling ears I should have heard it first. A bell chiming in the distance.
    â€œIt’s the Blythewood bells. They’re ringing us home! Come on!” She grabbed my hand and pulled me through a narrow path between fallen trees—I didn’t recall so many fallen trees at the edge of the woods. It looked like a tornado had come through here. Also, there was something funny about the bell. Yes, it sounded like one of the Blythewood bells—the big bass one—but if they were ringing us home why weren’t they ringing all the bells?
    My worries were allayed when we came out on the lawn and saw the river glinting to our right and the dim bulk of Blythewood looming under a cloud-cloaked moon. The lawn was so swathed in fog that it was hard to see our feet, much less the castle. Helen stumbled twice, her ankle—and no doubt her older injury—clearly bothering her.
    â€œThose confounded nestlings!” Helen swore. “They’ve left their hockey equipment on the lawn. I’m going to have a word with Dame Beckwith about them.”
    â€œI’m sure Dame Beckwith and our teachers will want to hear about the shadow crows trying to get into the vessel first.” I pictured Miss Sharp, Miss Corey, and Mr. Bellows all gathered around the fire in the library. Funny they weren’t out here looking for us, though. And why was the school so dark? Even if it was very late I’d have thought they would leave lights burning to guide us back.
    â€œHelen,” I said as we reached the edge of the hockey fieldwhere a torn goal net was flapping in the wind. “Don’t you think it’s strange . . .”
    I never finished my sentence. Helen was standing mute and white-faced in the light of the moon, which had come out from behind the clouds. Her face reminded me for a moment of Mr. Ward’s, her eyes as wide as his, her skin as pale as his underground pallor. I followed her shocked gaze up to the tower of Blythewood—only there wasn’t any tower, just the skeletal fragment of one rising up out of the blasted ruin that had been our school.

4

    â€œGONE!” HELEN’S VOICE was so hoarse that for a moment I thought the shadow crows had come back to caw over the gutted remains of Blythewood. Then, rushing forward, she cried, “Nathan!”
    I grabbed her before she could throw herself on the rubble. She turned on me, flailing her arms in my face. “We have to get inside! People might be trapped and hurt . . . Nathan . . . and Daisy and Cam! Dolores and Bea! That’s why they aren’t looking for us, because the school was bombed just like Herr Hofmeister tried to bomb the Woolworth Building. Van Drood has bombed Blythewood! Don’t you see . . . Ava, why are you looking at me like that? Why don’t you let me go help them?”
    â€œHelen,” I said, grabbing both her arms and looking into her wide frightened eyes. “Our friends aren’t in there. Look at it.”
    â€œWhat do you mean? There’s plenty of building left!” She raked her eyes over the rubble, fully revealed now by the merciless moon. “There could be survivors.”
    â€œThen they’ve survived for a long time. Look at the vines and moss growing over the rubble.”