The Choosing (The Arcadia Trilogy Book 1) Read Online Free PDF Page A

the dirty thing that had come out of the earth now spread on her table. Even Livy felt a qualm, but she could clean the table after. In the next few minutes, she'd forgotten about it as she read a section at random, stumbling over words she didn't know and listening as Grandfather Bane carefully and patiently outlined the words, one thumb tilted so he could follow her progress underlining her words.
    "Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more; Or close the wall up with our English dead," Livy read. "In peace there's nothing so becomes a man, As modest stillness and humility: But when the blast of war blows in our ears, Then imitate the action of the tiger." She stopped there, tilting her face up to her grandfather's.
    "Do you understand, girl?"
    She shook her head. It was confusing, too much story about too much history she'd never been taught, set in countries that didn't even exist anymore if they ever had and hadn't simply been figments of the writer's imagination. Her grandfather had told her Shakespeare had written about actual events, but who was to say? It had been hundreds of years ago.
    Trying to place what had happened when in the Before Times was like trying to logic out a dream. But if anyone would know what her parents had so suddenly stopped talking about, it would be her grandfather.
    Livy looked at him contemplatively. He looked strong tonight, and excited, delighted with her find and with her reading, her curiosity and ability to learn.
    "Do you want to stop?" he asked her, sounding sorry.
    "No," she said at once. "Well, not yet. But I wanted to ask you something."
    "My dear girl, my world ruler in training, my rebel and star," he said, a string of nonsense names that delighted her as much as the way he captured her hand and kissed it. “You need only to ask."
    I'll bet , Livy thought, but she tried anyway. "At dinner tonight, mother and father were talking – "
    "And you were eavesdropping," he said good-naturedly.
    "It's the only way to learn anything!"
    He smiled and gestured for her to continue.
    "They mentioned a new tax year," she started, and saw the instant caution come into her grandfather's eyes. He was no longer smiling. Only waiting. "And the Centurions are in Tundra. There's – something is making everyone nervous. But taxes are nothing new. And then they said something about sixteen and I'm the only one just turned sixteen."
    She tried to look calm, to watch his eyes as if of course she expected he would answer her, but sitting beside him at the table, her hands beneath the table were bunched in tight fists.
    She saw the struggle in his eyes as he decided what to tell her, and she saw the relief in them as the family in the next room began to rise, banking the fire and moving the furniture around, preparing to go to bed because the night was now late and the candle and oil lamps expensive.
    A little panicked, she looked to him again. Please, she thought, without quite knowing why; please .
    He let her down. He stood, more easily than he usually moved, and put a loving hand on her shoulder. "Whatever happens in your life, Livy, wherever you end up and whatever you must do, remember yourself. Remember your family and where you come from." Then, smiling, quoting one of the books he'd read to Livy earlier, "To thine own self be true."
    Before her parents came back into the room or her brothers exploded into it to run in circles, trying to exhaust themselves, before Pippa came back to ask one more question about Denny who Livy was actually starting to feel just a tad sorry for, her grandfather added, "To thine own self be true," and disappeared behind his curtain.
    He'd taken the book with him.

Chapter 3
    S he dreamed that night . Of the stories Grandfather Bane had told her. How the world she'd been born into was nothing like the world that had come before. It had been long ago, when there were too many countries in the world to comfortably count, when there had been different beliefs