On the Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness Read Online Free PDF

people’s faces. He saw the way the people cowered away from the sneering Fangs on the jail stoop. There was sorrow underneath all the merriment, and for the first time Janner was old enough to feel it.
    Oskar came back to himself and smiled at the children. “Ah. But it’s a fine day, is it not, Igiby children? There’s a time to think hard and there’s a time to ease up. Now you run along. As the great Thumb of the Honkmeadow wisely wrote, ‘The games are starting soon enough.’” Oskar waved them on with a wink while he puffed his pipe and palmed his hair back to his bald pate.
    With somber hearts, the children made their way down the crowded street. Janner was deep in thought, staring hard at Commander Gnorm, the fattest and meanest Fang in Glipwood. Gnorm’s feet were propped on an old stump, and he was gnawing the meat from a hen bone, his long purple tongue slurping noisily. Gnorm hurled the bone at an old man walking by and the Fang soldiers hissed and laughed as the man bowed and wiped the grease from his face. Janner found it hard to believe that there was a day when no one in Skree had ever heard of the Fangs of Dang.
    Past the jail, in front of the little building that housed the printing press, a cluster of people stood in a circle laughing at something. Above the heads of the onlookers, two ragged boots were kicking around in the air.
    Janner and Tink grinned at one another.
    â€œPeet the Sock Man!” Tink pointed and took off running. “Come on, Leeli! Let’s see what he’s up to.”
    They pushed through the crowd and saw the strange fellow walking on his hands in the middle of the circle. He was chanting the phrase “wings and dings and purple things” over and over, kicking his feet to the rhythm. His cheeks were sunken, his eyes were shadowed, and the creases around them gave him the look of having just finished crying. He wore ragged clothes and was filthy, as were the dingy knitted stockings he wore on his arms up past his elbows.
    Onlookers tossed coins, but to the residents of Glipwood, this was normal behavior for Peet. Earlier that summer, in fact, Peet crashed into the street sign at the corner of Main and Vibbly Way (which was quite innocent, as it was standing still and in plain sight). After insulting the sign’s mother, Peet challenged it to a contest, though it quite stoically showed no sign of retaliation. He took a hard swipe at it, missed, spun in a circle like a circus dancer from Dugtown, and collapsed into the dirt where he snored noisily all that night.
    Janner applauded with the crowd as Peet flipped back onto his feet, adjusted his hair with a flourish, and skipped away with one eye closed and a socked hand in his mouth, leaving the coins in the dust. Janner grinned after Peet, whose bushy head bounced up the dusty side street and around the corner.

    â€œAnd he’s gone,” Janner said.
    â€œDo you think it’s true that he lives up near the old forest?” Tink asked.
    Janner shrugged. “He’d have to be crazy to live there.” In the years before the war, rangers and trappers braved the forest and tamed the deadly beasts that prowled within it. But the Fangs had taken every weapon in the land. Every sword and shield, every bow and arrow, every dagger and spear, every farm tool that could be used as a weapon was locked away and guarded. 3
    â€œWell if anybody’s crazy enough to go near the forest, it’s Peet.” Tink paused. “The Blaggus boys said they saw him riding a toothy cow like it was a horse up by the forest, whipping its rear with a switch and singing a ballad.”
    Janner snorted. “No way. Nobody could survive a toothy cow. Besides, the Blaggus boys are too jumpy to go anywhere near the forest. They’re pulling your strings.” Janner turned to go. “Come on.”
    But he stopped in his tracks and grabbed his brother’s arm. He couldn’t