Leonardo da Vinci: Renaissance Master Read Online Free PDF Page A

EMTs pushed quickly through the door of The Treasure Chest.
    One of them knocked into the desk with the big machine he was carrying.
    Phinneas Pickworth’s treasures that were there flew to the floor.
    Something shattered.
    â€œPulse!” an EMT shouted, and then said a bunch of numbers.
    â€œOxygen!” another one shouted. More numbers.
    Great-Uncle Thorne looked worse than before. Not only was his face as white as marble, it seemed like marble—cold and stony and still.
    â€œGet these kids out of here,” an EMT shouted.
    Felix, Hadley, and Rayne skittered out, lingering with James Ferocious in the doorway.
    Only Maisie couldn’t move. She could only stare as they clapped something onto Great-Uncle Thorne’s arm and something else onto his finger.
    â€œGet that dog out of here,” the same EMT shouted.
    Felix grabbed James Ferocious’s collar and tried to pull him away, but the dog wouldn’t budge. Or stop barking.
    â€œOn my three,” an EMT said.
    The children watched as the EMTs rolled Great-Uncle Thorne onto the stretcher, then lifted the stretcher high.
    â€œWhat is going on?” Maisie and Felix’s mother said, out of breath.
    â€œOut of our way, ma’am,” the EMTs ordered.
    Everyone stepped aside as they carried Great-Uncle Thorne out of The Treasure Chest.
    â€œUncle Thorne,” their mother cried.
    She looked from Great-Uncle Thorne to the EMT vanishing down the staircase to the children and the dog huddled in the doorway of The Treasure Chest.
    â€œWhat is going on?” she said again, but softly, as if she were asking herself.
    â€œI have a merit badge in first aid,” a tearful Rayne explained. “I even got a perfect score giving CPR to the Annie doll.”
    â€œHe fainted,” Hadley said, her voice full of wonder.
    He
had
fainted, she told herself. The first time anyway, as soon as he heard her say that she met Amy Pickworth. So if Great-Uncle Thorne died, then it was all her fault. With this realization, Hadley, too, began to cry.
    At the sight of his mother standing in the doorway, Felix also burst into tears.
    His mother patted Rayne on the back, touched Hadley’s shoulder, and smoothed Felix’s hair as she moved across the threshold and into The Treasure Chest, where Maisie sat sobbing on the floor in the same spot Great-Uncle Thorne had lain. Behind her, broken glass glittered like diamonds in the dying light.
    â€œMom,” Maisie said, but that was all, because what was there to say?
    Her mother looked at Maisie.
    Then she looked up at the stained-glass window sending the day’s last breath of light across the room. She looked at the window with the same expression she wore when she did a jigsaw puzzle. The expression seemed to say,
Ah! I see now how it all fits together.
    Her gaze drifted from the window to The Treasure Chest itself.
    Like everybody who walks into The Treasure Chest for the first time, she could not take it all in. Her eyes flitted from test tubes to talismans to hunks of quartz and amethyst to the shelves groaning with objects; the cluttered desk; the tabletops obscured by stuff.
    â€œWhat?” she began. But she couldn’t articulate what she wanted to say.
    She swallowed, took a breath, looked at Maisie.
    â€œWhat is this room?” she finally managed to ask.
    Maisie lifted her tearstained face to her mother.
    â€œThe Treasure Chest,” she said.

CHAPTER 4
    RENAISSANCE MEANS REBIRTH
    â€œR enaissance means rebirth,” Miss Landers said.
    Except she wasn’t saying it to Felix’s class. She was saying it to the entire sixth grade. A special assembly had been called, and all of the sixth-graders were sitting in the auditorium where
The Crucible
would be performed in a few weeks.
    â€œWe are about to begin an exciting unit,” Miss Landers continued. “It involves art, science . . .”
    But Felix couldn’t listen to what Miss