The Chestnut King: Book 3 of the 100 Cupboards Read Online Free PDF Page B

head. Three notches stood out in the top of his left ear.
    “Down,” he said to Frank, and his voice was the voice of a woman. Frank knelt in front of him and dropped his chin to his chest. The man drew a silver knife from his belt and set the point on Frank’s neck, at the base of his skull. Henry’s head throbbed. He couldn’t move. He couldn’tinterfere. He couldn’t change the vision. Holding the knife in place with his left hand, the man raised his right, palm flat, poised above the hilt. He looked up. He looked into Henry’s eyes. Without expression, he drove his hand down.
    Henry tried to scream, but his throat wouldn’t open. He tried to push forward, clawing through the image fog even as it faded.
    The world became bright. He was back in memory, sitting on a warm balcony overlooking the fume-trapped city of Byzanthamum. An old man and his wife sat next to each other, smiling at him. Ron and Nella. The woman, white-haired with beautiful eyes and dark, lined skin, leaned forward and gazed into Henry’s face.
    “Are you here?” Henry asked. “You’re a dream-walker. Are you here?”
    “Believe your dreams, Henry,” the woman said. “Yours tell you no lies.”
    “No,” Henry said. “I won’t. No one is going to kill Uncle Frank. The ceremony already happened. No one stabbed him.”
    But Nella was gone. Byzanthamum was gone.
    Henry was barefoot, standing in a black pool in the center of a walled garden. He was facing a white statue, a man tangled in vines, frozen in his struggle to break free. Water poured out of his stone, yell-widened mouth. Henry turned, slowly, shifting his feet on the slick bottom. The tall walls were shaped from a reddish stone, and outside of them Henry could see the spires and towers of a great city.The garden was full of vined arbors and slender, silver-leaved trees. Between the trees and in the arbors, there were set brightly colored rugs and chairs and backless couches.
    Somewhere, a man was sobbing.
    Henry walked forward, and his splashing made no noise. He stepped out of the water and onto the grass. The lawns were wrong. They were weedless, uniformly green, uniformly shorn. Too perfect. Vibrantly dead. The trees as well. Branches were overbalanced, symmetrical to the last leaf. There were no insects, no birds, nothing to live in and love the garden.
    The sobbing grew louder. Henry pushed through trees and stepped into an oval clearing.
    The sobbing stopped.
    Ten men lay facedown on the ground, evenly spaced around the clearing, arms stretched to the center. Some were taller than others, some broader. All lay perfectly still. All wore black. All, though they had different tints of skin, had long hair, oiled blackness spread loose on the grass. All had a small circle shorn bald on the back of the scalp, and in the circle, a small drop of blood, steaming. The man closest to Henry had three notches in his left ear.
    Henry wanted to run. He wanted to jump in the pool, splash water on his face, and wake up. But he couldn’t. His eyes kept seeing, and his body followed them.
    On the other side of the clearing, there were four trees, planted in a square. They were the only real-looking trees Henry had seen, tall, with trunk scars and thick overheadbranches. Between the two closest, there stood an eleventh man. His hair was blond, his cheeks were wet. His head lolled on his shoulders. Henry stepped closer. Both of the man’s arms were outstretched, and his hands were on the tree trunks on either side of him. Henry blinked. The man had no hands, or at least no fingers. Just after the wrists, his arms had grown into the trees. His feet were missing as well. They’d been buried. Grass surrounded his shins.
    Behind the man, centered between the four trees, there was a red couch. On it, Henry could see the shape of a woman, a tall woman with smooth olive skin.
    “Welcome, pauper son,” the woman said. “There is space for another between my trees.”
    He had to run. He had to run