The Sword in the Grotto Read Online Free PDF Page A

I felt frozen. I shivered so hard that my teeth chattered, and when I snatched my arm back all the hairs on it were covered in ice.
    â€œArrgh!” I screamed.
    â€œWhat?” squeaked Wanda, looking scared. “What is it?”
    â€œIt’s Edmund. He’s freezing. It’s horrible. Brrr. ” I shivered again. I just couldn’t help it.
    When Wanda saw all the icicles on my arm, her eyes opened so wide that I thought they might fall out. Any minute now, I thought, Wanda is going to panic big-time.
    But she didn’t. She put her hand in her pocket and took something out and then really fast, like a flash of light, she threw a shower of sparkly dust over Edmund. Whhoooosh.
    The dust settled over him like snow. Edmund looked confused for a moment, then he yawned, lay down on the sandy floor, and went to sleep. I was impressed.
    â€œWhat was that ?” I asked Wanda.
    â€œSoporific Snow,” she said. “Dad gave me some from his magic bag. Good, isn’t it?”
    â€œGood? It’s amazing . Wow.” Barry is a conjurer, and sometimes he does tricks for us,but I had never seen one as good as this.
    â€œCome on then,” said Wanda, “we’d better get going.” And she strode off, unwinding the ball of green string as she went.
    â€œHey, Wanda,” I yelled, “wait for me!”

7
THE SECRET TUNNEL
    N ot long after we had got past Edmund, we noticed that the air was different—it felt cold and damp and it smelled of earth. The walls of the secret tunnel changed too—now they were roughly cut rock. The light from my flashlight shone off the damp rocks and we knew that we were no longer inside the house. We were under the ground—this was the real thing.
    The tunnel was quite wide, and Wanda and I walked along side by side. After a while Wanda whispered, “How far down do you think we are?”
    â€œI don’t know,” I whispered back. And then I whispered, “Why are we whispering?”
    â€œBecause it’s scary,” whispered Wanda.
    â€œNo it’s not,” I said really loudly, and my voice sounded hollow like Edmund’s. Well, maybe it was a bit scary.

    Wanda was good with the string. She kept unwinding it as we went, and when I looked back, I could see it stretching along the tunnel. It was nice to think that the end of the string was still there, tied to the secret door under the attic stairs.
    We had walked for about half an hour, and I reckoned we were probably almost underneath the mushroom farm, when we went around a corner and Wanda suddenly said, “Which way do we go now ?”
    In front of us, the secret tunnel split off into two smaller tunnels. They bothlooked narrow and they both looked dark. I didn’t like the look of either of them.
    â€œI don’t know,” I said. “Do you want some chips?”
    Cheese and onion potato chips help you think. I am sure of that, because after we had finished them, we knew what we had to do.
    â€œRight,” I said.
    â€œLeft,” said Wanda.
    So we did rock, paper, scissors—best of three—and Wanda won. Then we did best of five and I won. So we went right.
    Big mistake.
    Â 
    It was okay to begin with. Kind of. The tunnel I had chosen smelled funny. It reminded me of something, but I couldn’t think what. And just as I was about to remember what itsmelled of, Wanda said, “ Now which way?” as if it was my fault that the tunnel had split up again—this time into three ways.
    â€œMiddle one,” I said.
    â€œWhy?” asked Wanda.
    â€œWhy not?” I said. “It doesn’t matter if it’s not right. We can always find our way back along the string and try the other one.”
    Wanda wasn’t happy. “We could be here for days doing that,” she said. “And we haven’t got much more string left.”
    We set off down the middle tunnel, which was an okay tunnel, as tunnels go,