Silver on the Tree Read Online Free PDF Page A

of evil he had felt when stepping outside the door. He flinched.
    â€œNow, Will, now! Hard!”
    They were both yelling at him. Will swung the garden fork high. The mink stared at him, and screamed again. Will looked at it.
The Dark is rising; killing one of its creatures will not stop the Dark from rising.
He let the fork drop.
    James groaned loudly. Stephen leapt to Will’s side. The mink, teeth bared, ran straight at Stephen as if to attack him; Will gasped in horror, but at the last minute the creature veered aside and darted between Stephen’s legs. Even then it did not run at once for freedom; it dived at a frightened huddle of chickens, seized one by the neck and bit hard at the back of its head, so that the bird went instantly limp. The mink let it drop, and fled into the night.
    James was stamping in angry frustration. “The dogs! Where are the dogs?”
    A beam of light wavered outside the kitchen door. “Barbara took them to Eton to be clipped,” his mother’s voice said. “She’s late because of picking up your father.”
    â€œOh
damn!”
    â€œI agree,” said his mother mildly, “but there it is.” She came forward with the light. “Let’s look at the damage.”
    The damage was considerable. When the boys had sorted noisy hysterical pullets from their dead companions, they had six fat corpses lying in a row. Each bird had been killed by a vicious bite at the back of its head.
    Mary said, bewildered, “But so many? Why so many? It didn’t even try to take a single one away.”
    Mrs. Stanton shook her head in bafflement. “A fox will kill one bird and run off with it, quickly. Which makes more sense, I must say. You say this thing was a
mink?”
    â€œI’m sure,” James said. “There was a piece in the paper. Besides, we saw one this afternoon by the river.”
    Stephen said drily, “Looks as though it just enjoyed killing our chickens.”
    Will was standing a little way off, leaning against the wall of the barn. “Killing for the love of it,” he said.
    James snapped his fingers. “That’s what the paper said. Why they were pests. It said the mink was the only animal besides the polecat that killed for the sake of killing. Not just when it was hungry.”
    Mrs. Stanton picked up a pair of dangling dead chickens. “Well,” she said with brisk resignation, “bring them in. We’ll just have to make the best of it and hope the wretched animal didn’t choose the best layers. And just let him try to come back…. Steve, will you tuck up the rest of them?”
    â€œSure,” Stephen said.
    â€œI’ll help,” said James. “Wow—you were lucky, Steve. I thought it was going to bite you. Wonder what stopped it?”
    â€œI taste bad.” Stephen looked up at the sky. “Look at that moon—we hardly need a torch at all…. Come on. Wood, nails, hammer. We’ll make that hen-run eternally mink-proof.”
    Will said, “It won’t come back.” He was looking at the pimpernel flower drooping wilted and forgotten from Stephen’s buttonhole.
“Good against venomous beasts.
It won’t come back.”
    James peered at him. “You look funny. You okay?”
    â€œOf course I am,” Will said, fighting the turmoil in his mind. “Course I am. Course….”
    His head was whirling; it was like giddiness, except that it seemed also to be destroying his sense of time, of what was now and what before or after. Had the mink gone, or were they still chasing it? Had it yet come at all; were they shortly to be attacked, the hens to begin a dreadful frightened clamour? Or was he … somewhere else … entirely …?
    He shook his head abruptly.
Not yet. Not yet.
“Dad’s tool chest is in the barn now. He moved it,” he said.
    â€œCome on, then.” Stephen led the way into the wooden