Isle of Winds (The Changeling Series Book 1) Read Online Free PDF

don’t you go getting used to it! I’ve a lot to do around here, and there’s not enough polish in the world to make me into a butler.” He laughed gruffly again and set off towards the stairs, lugging Robin’s case.
    “Thanks,” Robin called after him. Then, taking a deep breath, he went through the doors to meet the only living person who claimed him as family.
    Inside, there was a large open fireplace crackling away merrily, in front of which sat his Great Aunt Irene.
    She didn’t look anything like Gran. Gran had been tiny, in typical grandmother tradition. She’d had a tight barnet of curly blue-grey hair and had worn large, old-fashioned cardigans and questionable slippers.
    The woman sitting before him was nothing like that. She was, in fact, almost the Anti-Gran.
    “Well?” she said imperiously from the chair. “Are you coming in or not, child? Don’t stand there in the door. Come in or go out. That’s what doors are for.”
    Robin, feeling a little foolish, shut the door behind him.
    Great Aunt Irene was tall and willow thin. She was wearing a long, old-fashioned dress in pale ivory and her silver hair was pulled back from her head in an elaborate bun. Everything about her seemed sharp. She had sharp cheekbones, sharp eyebrows, and her eyes were as sharp as glass. Even her voice cut through the air.
    She raised her hands and beckoned him forward. “Well, come forward then and let me have a look at you. If I’m to have you living under my roof and in between my walls and over my floor I want to be able to recognise you.”
    “Hello, Aunt Irene,” Robin said. “Nice to meet you.” He had a speech half practised in his head, but it withered like a deflated balloon under her piercing glare.
    Tiny dangling earrings glittered in the firelight as she turned her head this way and that. Dark silvery droplets which glittered as she looked him over. Robin thought she must have been very beautiful when she was younger.
    “Just Irene will do,” she said. “None of this ‘Aunt’ business, if you please. I have no time for honorifics and I don’t wholly approve of familial relations. I have spent a great deal of energy ensuring I have never been a mother or a grandmother or a niece or a sister. I see no reason to start now, even if the Fates have decided it would amuse them to furnish me with a nephew at my time of life, great or not.”
    She stood gracefully. Her back was very straight. “I shall be Irene,” she announced. “And you shall be Robin.”
    Robin couldn’t tell if she was serious or trying to be funny. He settled for a kind of awkward half-smile and nodded. “Sounds good to me.”
    “Do you like your name?” she asked him in a very direct kind of way, peering at him over her spectacles.
    “Um … I suppose. I’ve never really thought about it before. It’s just my name.”
    She pursed her lips. “You could have another if you wish. Some people can’t abide their names, and then they go through life complaining about it, and trying to convince others to call them by some or other tiresome nickname. It’s most annoying. I say just change it and have done with it, or like what you’ve been given.”
    This made a kind of sense to Robin. He nodded in agreement.
    She narrowed her eyes at him. “You are certain, then? There will be no ‘Robby’ in a few months, no ‘Rob’ or ‘Bob’ or ‘Bobby?’ I have neither time nor the inclination to go chasing a hatful of names all over this house. My duties keep me busier than you can imagine and young boys are notorious for having minds as whole as broken mirrors.”
    “No, really,” Robin insisted, unable to suppress a smile. “Robin’s good. I like Robin.”
    She peered at him a moment longer, and then smiled herself, ever so slightly. It was gone as soon as it had appeared.
    “Good. Then we are of one mind and are well met, Robin.”
    He had the terrible fear that she was going to hug him then as old ladies are wont to do, but