The Map Read Online Free PDF Page A

cut unevenly across the hallway.
    Jackaby trod in to the right, sniffing the area like a greyhound. “Rodent?” he asked.
    I glanced around my feet. “Should I be looking out for magic rats?”
    “Hm. No . . . not rats.” Jackaby drew a finger along the dusty stone as we walked. “Something . . . bigger.”
    “How much bigger?” I stopped walking.
    The chain behind us
clank-clank-clanked
to life, and the darkness deepened several shades. The arrow-slit shafts of light blinked out one by one as a tremendous shape eclipsed them from the other side.
    “ Miss Rook, ” whispered my employer, “run.”
    We exploded forward, heading to the light at the end of the passageway. The sound of the creature faded behind us, though the echoing rattle of the heavy chain betrayed its steady movement. Jackaby reached daylight moments before I did but skidded to a halt at once. He whirled around and barreled back into me.
    “What are you—?” I began, but in an instant the bright mouth of the hallway where he had stood went black as the ragged, wooly form of a great beast leapt before it. I could hear the snap of jagged teeth and see wild, bloodshot eyes peering after us. It cocked its head back and forth, trying to gain a better view into the tunnel, then ducked and lunged after us, grunting and wheezing as it did. Two scraggly black ears dragged along the ceiling as the beast closed the distance with uneven bounds.
    We scrambled out of the archway and back over the crumbling portcullis where we had come in, but the creature was too fast. I felt its breath on my neck and threw myself forward just as the chain rang out in protest, and the beast was pulled abruptly backward with a strangled whine. I crawled several feet farther before finally turning to survey the animal. Jackaby caught his breath and let out a relieved laugh, marveling at the figure before us. Its black fur was long, but thin and patchy, and its frame was all bony muscle and no fat. It was ten feet tall at its skull, though a pair of scraggly ears reached another two or three feet into the air. I blinked. Chained by the neck to the crumbling castle wall was a massive bunny.
    “ Spectacular, ” said Jackaby. “It must have been bound all this time by an enchantment. You ’ re a very long way from home, aren ’ t you?” My employer leaned in, fascinated. The gargantuan rabbit pulled at its chain, reaching to snap at Jackaby with a pair of yellow incisors. When its manic efforts proved fruitless, the creature shook its head and hopped back to the castle gate to collapse to the ground, resting its head on the curve of the great archway. For all its ferocity, it looked sickly and exhausted.
    “Why on earth would anyone magically enlarge a rabbit to use as a guard dog?” I sputtered.
    “Not a rabbit, and not enlarged,” Jackaby corrected. “A Brobdingnagian Hare. He began this size—well, a bit smaller as a young leveret, obviously, but proportionate in his infancy to the lagomorph you see today.”
    “I swear you just make up every other word sometimes.”
    “This hare comes from an island of giants, Rook. His enchantment has nothing to do with his size and everything to do with his suspended senescence.”
    “That last bit in English?”
    “I ’ m beginning to think a dictionary would have been a far more advantageous birthday gift for you.”
    “More advantageous than being eaten alive by a giant, carnivorous bunny? Yes, most things fall in that category, I think.”
    “This hare cannot age,” Jackaby stated flatly. “That is the enchantment, which explains why it has survived long after the other denizens of this place perished. Then again, it may very well have been the
reason
the others perished. It is a good deal more aggressive than your standard specimen but still a fascinating beast.”
    “ It looks . . . miserable, ” I said. The humongous hare had begun beating a slow rhythm on the stones with its forehead. “So what do we