King of Shadows Read Online Free PDF

Claire; I even had a second helping of shepherd’s pie, my favorite discovery about British food. But afterward, as we watched a series on television that always made the Fishers fall about laughing, I began to feel sick to my stomach, and slipped out to the bathroom just in time to throw up.
    Claire was on her way to use the bathroom just as I Was coming out. She stared at me. “Are you all right, Nat? You’re white as a sheet.”
    â€œI lost my dinner,” I said. I tried to grin. “It was so good—what a waste.”
    I went into my room and sat on the bed. I felt very cold suddenly; I was shaking all over. Claire must have gone straight back to her mother, because in a few moments Mrs. Fisher was beside me, her arm around my shuddering shoulders, her hand on my forehead.
    â€œIt wasn’t the shepherd’s pie,” I said miserably.
    â€œIt’s that twenty-four-hour virus that’s going round, I reckon. Were you sick? And diarrhea?” I nodded, and she gave me a brisk hug. “Poor Nat. Into bed with you—I’ll get something to warm you up.”
    By the time she came back, I was curled up in bed in my pajamas. She’d brought a hot drink that she made me sip cautiously—hot lemon with some sort of medicine in it—and one of those floppy English hot-water bottles, made of rubber covered with a fuzzy woolly fabric. I cuddled it to me, like a little boy with a warm teddy bear. My head was throbbing. I felt really sick, and about four years old.
    Mrs. Fisher felt my head again gently. “Try to sleep,” she said. “I’ll check you again in a little bit. You’ll feel better in the morning, I promise.”
    She pulled the curtains to shut out the daylight, which lasts longer on English summer days than it does where I come from, and I guess she went away, but that’s all I remember of that night. There’s only darkness when I try to look back, and the feeling of being sick, and the buzzing in my head.
    But I’ll never, ever, forget the next morning.

THREE
    Between night and morning, Nathan Field has a dream, a dream of flying.
    He flies high, high up, in the dream, up into the stratosphere, out into space. Space is dark, and prickled all over with bright stars. Then he slows down, coasting and turning in space, as if he were swimming underwater; and below him he sees the planet Earth, bright in the darkness, spinning like a blue ball.
    He hangs there for a moment, and then he feels a hand take his own. He can see nobody, there is simply the feel of the hand. It holds him firmly, and pulls, and following the pull he dives down, toward the blue planet. It grows larger and brighter, and he can begin to make out the patterning of oceans and continents. Down he goes, down, until he is heading into a white overlay of clouds.
    The hand draws him on, on, into the next day.

FOUR
    â€œNat?” said the voice. It was a young voice, sort of husky, and it had an accent I didn’t recognize: halfway English, halfway American. “Nat?”
    â€œUnh.” I woke up with my face in the pillow, and even before I opened my eyes I knew something was wrong. My face and my body told me that I was lying on a different pillow, and a different bed; hard, both of them, and crackly. The bed was really uncomfortable. I moved my hip; surely it wasn’t even a bed, but a mattress on the floor.
    Maybe I was dreaming. Blurry with sleep, I turned my head, blinking in the daylight, and saw looking down at me the face of a boy I’d never seen before. He had long curly dark hair down to his shoulders, and black eyes, and he looked worried.
    â€œHow do you?” he said. “Is your fever less?” He reached out a cautious hand and felt my forehead.
    I stared at him. “Who are you?” I said.
    â€œHarry, of course. Harry, your new fellow. Have your wits gone, Nat?” He peered at me. “You look—strange, a little.