The Pirates and the Nightmaker Read Online Free PDF

follow my flight: Mr Wicker. One hand shielding his eyes from the sun, he gazed up at me as if saluting, and in a way, I guessed he was. Clearly, none of the others on the boat had the slightest idea that I was riding the air high above them.
    Stretching my wings and seeking another updraught, I strove even higher and higher until the jolly-boat looked to be little more than a dark leaf floating on the bright water. Now I could see the vastness of the ocean below me and scattered here and there patches of green ringed with gold.
    These were islands, sometimes gathered in small groups, sometimes solitary. I could make out occasionally a tall ship and one of these I could see was not so far from the jolly-boat as the crow flies. I almost smiled at the idea. As the
Loblolly Boy
flies, I corrected myself.
    I flew over some of the nearer islands and it was as if I were flying over a chart, but a chart such as no master mariner could have imagined. Nobody has ever seen the world like this, I marvelled, as the maps of islands spread out below me in wondrous colour and astonishing detail.
    My transformation, my new body and being, my invisibility, and now my flying had all come upon me so suddenly I had no time to come to grips with what it all might mean, or how it might have happened. I had heard of evil magicians who were able to fix you with their eyes then put you into a trance like a waking dream. This is what Mr Wicker must have done, I imagined. I had been lost in the darkness of his glittering eyes, and I had entered that darkness in one form and emerged in another. This was all I could come up with to explain what had happened to me.
    It must be some marvellous dream, even though such a dream I had never before experienced, for it was so utterly real. But at that moment, I did not care. I exalted in this sheer freedom of being a master of the air, I who had been a slave and drudge of a drunken sot. I was ecstatic in this sudden and wonderful erasure of terror, I who had been afraid for weeks of cuffs, of kicks, of the dreaded cat and, just minutes past, of being butchered, of being eaten.
    I knew this dream would end, and possibly badly, but while I was able to soar and dip and dive in a blue sky high above a bluer sea I did not care a whit. I stretched my arms, I stretched my wings, and my silky garments and flowing hair streamed behind me.
    I don’t know how long this first transport into the delight of flying took me. It did not really matter. I seemed to be beyond time as well as beyond the bounds of earthly existence. However, there came a moment when I thought,
And now
… and I realised that the only thing I could think of doing next was to return to the jolly-boat and the man who had somehow wrought this change in me: the stranger, the passenger, Mr Wicker.
    However, no sooner had this thought of returning occurred to me then somehow it became more than a thought. It became something I had no choice about, a compelling summons. I felt myself being tugged, like a fish on the end of a line.
    Obediently, I wheeled about and descended, scanning the sea below for the tell-tale leaf on the water that was the jolly-boat. I must have flown many leagues from it for it was hard to find. Eventually, however, I did spot the little boat bobbing far below and I lifted my wings and circled even lower, and then shortly thereafter dropped lightly into my spot in the bow and folded my wings against my back.
    I was aware that Mr Wicker had been watching my descent keenly all the while, still shading his eyes.
    ‘Well, little Loblolly Boy, you have returned,’ he said. ‘And how was it for you so high in the air?’
    ‘It was wonderful,’ I breathed, still overcome with the miracle of it. All the same, remembering how I had been drawn back to the boat so insistently, I did glance apprehensively at the man who had brought about this transformation in me.
    ‘Good, good,’ he murmured, glancing over his shoulder at the others, most