The Second Forever Read Online Free PDF

see anything?’ said Festival as Peter shone a torch into the fracture.
    â€˜Nothing.’
    â€˜Well, there must be something,’ said Festival. ‘A brick wall or more wood, at least.’
    â€˜There’s nothing there at all,’ said Peter, reluctant to put his hand into the darkness. ‘It’s just completely black.’
    They moved the crowbar and pushed and pulled it until a large piece of wood broke free, making a hole wide enough to squeeze through. Cold dust-free air blew out of the gap and it was damp, like it would’ve been before the world had entered its drought.
    Although the opening was big enough to climb through, neither of them did. Peter moved the torch up and down and it was exactly like he had said.
    There was nothing there.
    No matter where he pointed the beam of light, it simply disappeared into the darkness. Peter reached in and dropped the chisel. It vanished too, and if it had landed somewhere below them, it had made absolutely no sound.
    Neither child said a word, but they were bothterrified. Peter had known the library his whole life. He had been through dozens of secret doors and visited deserted rooms and attics far from the galleries, places where his footprints were the first in a hundred years. He had seen artefacts that could never have come from earth, furniture that could never have held a human. But he had always felt safe and secure, except maybe for the time when he had met Bathline in the far attic – the meeting that had begun his quest to the other world. But even there he had always known he could turn and run back to familiar safety.
    This was different. There was something evil in the darkness inside the wall. Something that was trying to entice them through the gap.
    â€˜There’s something bad in there,’ said Peter. ‘Like it doesn’t belong to this world.’
    â€˜Darkwood,’ they both said at the same time.
    Although they both knew that Peter hadn’t come to any harm when he had fallen into Festival’s world, neither of them would so much as put their hand into the darkness for fear of something grabbing it and pulling them in.
    They nailed the broken panel back into place, covering the missing splinters with sticky tape, and pushed the display case so that the damage was hidden. As they did so, Bastin the mummified CatGod shook on its ebony stand. It should have fallen off, but somehow righted itself just in time. Its dried wrappings split along its back where no one could see it, and a small bone fell out.
    As the two children hurried away, neither of them saw the flicker of light inside the mummy. It was so brief that even if they had seen it, they would have put it down to their imaginations.
    But it wasn’t. Archimedes had witnessed it and sat, waiting for it to happen again. His fear turned to greeting as he anticipated the return of the ancestor who he hadn’t seen for such an incredibly long time. No, that wasn’t quite true. He had seen her almost every day. He had come into the small room and waited in front of the glass case for her return.
    The last time they had been together they were in another country and another civilisation, in a period when cats had been revered as gods. Unlike humans who were mummified with the help of ancient potions and chemicals, cats were merely left out to dry in the sun before being wrapped in their bandages and buried. This, of course, meant that everything they needed to return to life was there, unspoilt by poisons or chemistry.
    The light flickered again and dust fell from the mummy’s bindings as the lungs inside drew air. Life never stopped. It simply transferred its breath ontothe next generation.

‘ W e didn’t come back here on the bat either,’ said Festival when they were back upstairs in Peter’s room. ‘Remember?’
    â€˜But the door we came through will be under hundreds of feet of water now,