The Emerald Atlas Read Online Free PDF

mountains and the sky above was streaked with red and Kate was sure she saw wolves lurking in every shadow, the road looped over a saddle between two peaks, the old man called out, “Cambridge Falls, dead ahead,” and there, stretching away from them, was a crooked, sloping valley with a river running down its center like a vein from the mountains above. The town was nestled on the river’s near bank, and the road took them down a lane of shops and houses. More homes, separated by snaking and crumbling stone walls, dotted the hillside. But for all that, most of the windows were dark, smoke came from only a dozen chimneys, and the few people they passed hurried by with their heads down.
    “What’s wrong with this place?” Emma murmured.
    Abraham snapped the reins sharply, forcing the horse into a trot. Both road and town ended at the wide gray-green river, and the old man turned the cart along the riverbank, following a set of fresh wheel tracks in the snow.
    “Where’re the orphanage?” Michael asked.
    “Across the river.”
    “And what’s Dr. Pym like?”
    Abraham didn’t answer right away. Then he said, “Different.”
    “Different how?”
    “Just different. Anyway, he’s not around much. Miss Sallow and meself do most everything.”
    “How many children live here?” Emma asked.
    “Including you three?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Three.”
    “Three? What kind of orphanage only has three kids?”
    This was a valid question and deserved an answer, but they were at that moment traveling along the edge of a gorge some hundred feet above the river—the banks had been growing steadily steeper since they’d left the town—and just as Emma asked her question, the cart slid on the icy track, skidding right up to the lip of the chasm.
    “Do we have to go so fast?” Kate asked as the children tightened their grips on the sides of the cart.
    “Look up,” Abraham said.
    The red had faded from the sky, leaving behind a bruised blue-black. Night was only moments away.
    The old man turned onto a narrow bridge. As the horse’s hooves clattered across the icy stones, the children peered down to the river rushing through the gorge below. Then they were across and Abraham was urging the horse up a winding path.
    “Almost there!”
    Kate had an awful feeling in her stomach. There was something wrong with this place. Something beyond the lack of people or trees or life.
    “Is that it?” Emma exclaimed.
    They’d rounded a hill, and there before them was the largest house the children had ever seen. It was made of black stone, the whole thing bent and crooked, its uneven rooftop spiked with chimneys. There were turrets at the corners and high, dark windows. Only a few lights burned on the ground floor. It seemed to Kate that the house squatted on the hillside like a great dark beast.
    Abraham cracked the reins again and whooped.
    Just then they heard the howl of a wolf. Others took up the cry. But the howls were far off, and the cart was even then pulling up to the house—the same house, Kate was sure, that she had seen in her dream.

CHAPTER THREE
The King and Queens of France

    “Still asleep, are we? The King and Queens of France need their beauty rest, is that it? Lounge all day while others work. That’s the way it’s done in Gay Paree?”
    Kate opened her eyes. Miss Sallow, the old crab-backed housekeeper and cook, was whipping open the curtains, letting in the morning. Emma groaned softly. Michael pulled the covers over his head.
    They’d been put in a bedroom on the fourth floor. Through the windows, Kate could see the village of Cambridge Falls across the river. The old woman yanked the blankets off Michael on her way out.
    “Breakfast in five minutes, Yer Majesties.”
    Since they’d arrived the night before, Miss Sallow had accused the children of acting as if they were “the King and Queens of France” a good twenty times. Where she’d gotten the idea they thought so highly of themselves was a