The Sword in the Grotto Read Online Free PDF

but still smelled funny—and then suddenly Wanda screamed.
    â€œArrgh!”
    I dropped my flashlight.
    â€œOh, yuck. Oh, errgh .” Wanda was hoppingabout like something had bitten her.
    â€œWh-what is it?”
    â€œI–I stepped on a dead body ….” Wanda squeaked. “I-it was all squashy a-and horrible. My foot went right through it.” She shivered and grabbed hold of me. “I want to go home,” she whispered.
    Well, that made two of us.
    I went to pick up my flashlight, and Wanda screamed again.
    â€œEverything’s turned white,” she yelled. “Look….”
    I didn’t want to look, but I did. The flashlight shone along the ground, lighting up the floor of the tunnel. It was the weirdest thing I have ever seen—a kind of knobbly white carpet stretched out in front of us.

    â€œMushrooms. You only stepped on a mushroom ,” I told Wanda, annoyed.
    Wanda looked down at her feet. “Oh,” she said. Then she said, “Well, it was a giant mushroom, actually, Araminta. Look—they’re huge. You try stepping on a whole heap of monster mushrooms in a horrible, dark, smelly tunnel and see what you feel like.”
    â€œI just did,” I told Wanda, “and I felt fine. And I didn’t go screaming in someone’s ear, nearly making them deaf, either.”
    Wanda didn’t reply. I thought maybe I should try to cheer her up a bit, so I said, “Well, at least we know where we are now.”
    â€œNo we don’t,” said Wanda gloomily.
    â€œYes we do. These mushrooms must have escaped from the mushroom farm. I bet weare underneath it right now. Which means we are nearly there. Come on , Wanda. It will all be worth it when we find the sword.”
    â€œ If we find the sword,” Wanda muttered.
    We didn’t say much after that except for, “left,” “right,” “left—no, right,” and “oh, I don’t care, you choose.” The trouble was, the tunnel just kept splitting off into different directions, and we had no idea which one would take us to the cave. It was like being in a maze—a horrible mushroom maze, as the whole time we were stepping on mushrooms. At first I felt sorry for them getting squashed, but after a while they just got annoying. They were really slippery, too.
    We kept on hoping that any minute we would find the grotto with the sword in it. But we didn’t. All we kept finding was thegreen string, so we knew we were back to where we had been before. Again.
    After a while Wanda said, “It’s no good. We’re just going around in circles.”
    For once she was right.

8
THE PORTCULLIS
    W anda was not good at going around in circles. She did not take it well.
    â€œAll right, Wanda,” I said. “If we haven’t found the sword in five minutes’ time, we’ll go home.”
    â€œPromise?” asked Wanda.
    â€œPromise,” I said. I knew we’d have to go home soon anyway, since our string was nearly finished.
    Wanda spent the next four minutes and forty seconds staring at her watch and counting the seconds in a loud voice. It was very annoying, especially as I still really wanted to find the sword and give it to Sir Horace for his birthday.
    We were walking down a steep slope. The mushrooms had disappeared, and I knew we had not been here before. Wanda was so busy staring at her watch that she did not notice when suddenly we turned a corner and there it was—the little round grotto with the sandy floor and the sword lying there in the middle of it, just waiting for us, like I had known it would be.
    Incredible!
    â€œWanda,” I said, “look!”
    But Wanda was still droning on, “Twohundred and seventy-eight seconds…two hundred and seventy-nine seconds…two hundred and—”
    â€œWan- da ,” I yelled. “We’ve found it!”
    At last Wanda stopped counting and looked up.