The Myst Reader Read Online Free PDF

of falling water that left the desert floor dark and flat behind it.
    Atrus looked about him, seeing how every pot was filled to the brim—a score of trembling mirrors reflecting back the sudden, startling blue of the sky. He made to speak, to say something to Anna, then turned back, startled by the sudden hissing noise that rose from the volcano’s mouth.
    As he watched, great billows of steam rose up out of the caldera, as if the dormant giant had returned to life.
    “It’s all right,” Anna said, coming over and placing her hand on his shoulder. “It’s only where the rain has seeped down into the deep vents.”
    Atrus burrowed into his grandmother’s side. Yet he was no longer afraid. Now that it had passed—now that he had
survived
it—he felt elated,
exhilarated
.
    “Well?” she asked quietly. “What did you think?”
    “Where did it come from?” he asked, watching, fascinated, as that massive dark wall receded slowly into the distance.
    “From the great ocean,” she answered. “It travels hundreds of miles to get here.”
    He nodded, but his mind was back watching that great silver-black curtain rush toward him once again and swallow him up, feeling it drum against his flesh like a thousand blunt needles.
    Atrus glanced up at his grandmother and laughed. “Why, you’re steaming, grandmother!”
    She grinned and poked him gently. “And so are you, Atrus. Come, let’s go inside, before the sun dries us out again.”
    He nodded and began to climb the cleftwall, meaning to go and free Flame from the storeroom, yet as he popped his head over the rim he stopped dead, his mouth falling open in a tiny oh of surprise.
    Below him the cleft was a giant blue-black mirror, the shadow of the steep walls dividing it in half, like a jagged shield.
    Coming alongside him, Anna crouched and, smiling, looked into his face.
    “Would you like to learn to swim, little sand worm?”

     
    ANNA WOKE ATRUS IN THE DARK BEFORE first light, shaking him gently then standing back, the lamp held high, its soft yellow glow filling the shelf where he lay.
    “Come,” she said simply, smiling at him as he knuckled his eyes. “I’ve something to show you.”
    Atrus sat up, suddenly alert. Something had happened. Something … He stared at her. “Was it
real
, Grandmother? Did it really happen? Or did I dream it?”
    “It happened,” she answered softly. Then, taking his hand, she led him out, through her own shadowed chamber and onto the narrow balcony.
    The moon was two days off full, and though it was no longer at its zenith, its light still silvered the far edge of the pool.
    Atrus stood there, breathing shallowly, transfixed by the sight, staring down into the perfect ebon mirror of the pool. Not the pool he’d known from infancy, but a bigger, more astonishing pool—a pool that filled the cleft from edge to edge. Staring into it he let a sigh escape him.
    “The stars …”
    Anna smiled and leaned past him, pointing out the shape of the hunter in the water. “And there,” she said. “Look, Atrus, there’s the marker star.”
    He stared at the brilliant pure blue star then looked up, seeing its twin there in the heavens.
    “Is this it?” he asked, after a moment, turning to look at her. “Is this what you were going to show me?”
    She shook her head. “No … Come. Follow me.”
    In the moment before he emerged from the cleft—in that instant before he saw what his grandmother had woken him to see—Atrus paused on the second top rung of the ladder and looked down.
    Below him, far below, it seemed—so far that it was almost as if he had been inverted and now hung out over space—lay the star-dusted sky. For a moment the illusion was perfect, so perfect that, had he let go of the rung, he was certain that he would have fallen forever. Then, conscious that his grandmother was waiting patiently on the other side of the lip, he pulled himself up onto the top of the cleftwall.
    And stopped, stone still, his jaw