How to Live Forever Read Online Free PDF

was pale and lined, almost transparent. Her eyelids seemed to have grown too tired to hold themselves up, yet there was something about the eyes themselves that seemed as young as his mother. Peter wanted to run, but his feet wouldn’t move.
    â€˜Oh,’ she said when she saw Peter. ‘It is you, the boy, so grown already, so like your father. I thought … well, never mind what I thought. I have lost all track of time as it has of me.’
    She seemed to be expecting someone else. Peter waited for her to tell him who he was supposed to be, but she didn’t. She waved her little hand impatiently at him.
    â€˜Well, help me down,’ she snapped. ‘Do I have to tell you everything? I suppose I do, suppose I do.’
    â€˜I didn’t expect …’ Peter began.
    â€˜Expect, expect, expect what?’ snapped the old woman. ‘No one ever does. Who does? Do you? I certainly expect nothing and yet I suppose I expect everything, yes, everything and nothing. After all, what is the difference? Ah, philosophy, too much of that and that is for sure.’
    She scrambled down from the high-backed chair and stood in front of Peter, no taller than his shoulders. Time seemed to have shrunk her into thesmallest adult he had ever seen, not just short but tiny all over, like she really had been shrunk.
    Archimedes purred and rubbed around her legs. The old woman was so frail she nearly lost her balance.
    â€˜Take care, my furry friend,’ she said, ‘or you will have me over. Anyone would think you had not seen me for days.’
    â€˜I didn’t expect to see anyone,’ said Peter.
    â€˜Do not be ridiculous,’ said the old lady. ‘Of course you did. Of course you did. Why would you have come here otherwise?’
    â€˜I was just exploring,’ Peter lied, unwilling to tell this stranger about his father.
    â€˜No, no, no, no, no, not that easy,’ said the old woman. ‘I am Bathline. Yes, yes, Bathline, that is who I am. Strange it is.’
    â€˜What is?’ said Peter.
    â€˜My name, my name. It is ten years since I heard the sound of my own name. But then it is probably ten years since I heard the sound of my own voice. Unless I talk in my sleep. Do I talk in my sleep? I talk in other people’s sleep, but do I talk in my own? Who can say?’
    She muttered to herself about how long it had taken Peter to find her.
    Peter wanted to protest. He’d been exploring themuseum since he was old enough to walk. He’d been down a thousand corridors and into countless rooms. How on earth could he have known she was there?
    â€˜But you always knew I was here,’ said Bathline.
    â€˜I, er, sort of, well …’
    â€˜Tell the truth, child, you knew I was here.’
    â€˜No. I just sort of always thought there was someone,’ Peter tried to explain.
    â€˜Maybe, maybe,’ the old woman snapped, ‘but you were always on your way here.’
    â€˜But –’
    â€˜Did I not speak to you in your dreams? Of course I did, of course I did.’
    Peter remembered strange dreams in which someone he could never see kept calling him with words he could never quite hear. They had almost driven him crazy until he had learnt to shut them out by waking up. When the dreams came, he sat up in the darkness and rocked to and fro until the voice went away.
    â€˜Was that you?’ he said. ‘I couldn’t hear you. I thought it was just a nightmare.’
    Bathline seemed surprised at this.
    â€˜Oh, people, people, people,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘Do I look like a nightmare? I think you should not answer that. I do look like a nightmare. It’s the mice, the mice. They make nests in my hair. Yes, yes,I know, and my face has more lines than an encyclopaedia.’
    She took Peter’s hands in hers and looked up into his face. The feel of her hands, like just-thawed chicken, made Peter shudder. Her eyes, dark as