The White Mountains (The Tripods) Read Online Free PDF Page A

and for a couple of days kept well clear of the Vagrants. Twice I saw the man who had called himself Ozymandias clowning and talking to himself in the street, and shied off. But on the third day I went to school not by the back way, the path along the riverbank, but out of our front door, past the church. And past the Vagrant House. There was no sign of anyone, but when I came back in the middle of the day, I saw Ozymandias coming from the opposite direction. I quickened my step, and we met at the crossroads.
    He said, “Welcome, Will! I have not seen thee, these many days. Has aught ailed thee, boy? A murrain? Or haply the common cold?”
    There had been something about him that had interested, even fascinated me, and it was that which had brought me here in the hope of encountering him again. I admitted that but, in the moment of admission, was once more conscious of the things that had kept me away. There was no one in our immediate vicinity, but other children, coming from school, were not far behind me, and there were people who knew me on the far side of the crossroads.
    I said, “I’ve been busy with things,” and prepared to move on.
    He put a hand on my arm. “Wilt tarry, Will? He that has no friend can travel at his own pace, and pause, when he chooses, for a few minutes’ converse.”
    “I’ve got to get back,” I said. “My dinner will be waiting.”
    I had looked away from him. After only a slight pause, he dropped his hand.
    “Then do not let me keep you, Will, for though man does not live on bread alone, it is bread he must have first.”
    His tone was cheerful, but I thought I detected something else. Disappointment? I started to walk on, but after a few steps checked and looked back. His eyes were still on me. I said, in a low voice stumbling over the words:
    “Do you go out into the fields at all?”
    “When the sun shines.”
    “Farther along the road on which I met you—there’s an old ruin, on the right—I have a den there, on the far side where the copse comes close—it has a broken arch for an entrance, and an old red stone outside, like a seat.”
    He said softly, “I hear, Will. Do you spend much time there?”
    “I go there after school, usually.”
    He nodded. “Do so.”
    Abruptly, his gaze went from me to the sky, and he held his arms out above his head, and shouted, “And in that year came Jim, the Prophet of Serendipity, and with him a host of angels, riding their white geldings across the sky, raising a dust of clouds and striking sparks from their hooves that burned the wheat in the fields, and the evil in men’s hearts. So spake Ozymandias. Selah! Selah! Selah!”
    The others were coming up the road from the school. I left him and hurried toward home. I could hear him shouting until I passed the church.
    • • •
    I went to the den after school with mingled feelings of anticipation and unease. My father had said he hoped he would hear no more reports of my mixing with Vagrants, and had placed a direct prohibition on my going to the Vagrant House. I had obeyed the second part, and was taking steps to avoid the first, but I was under no illusion that he would regard this as anything but willful disobedience. And to what end? The opportunity of talking to a man whose conversation was a hodge-podge of sense and nonsense, with the latter very much predominating. It was not worth it.
    And yet, remembering the keen blue eyes under the mass of red hair, I could not help feeling that there was something about this man that made the risk, and the disobedience, worthwhile. I kept a sharp lookout on my way to the ruins, and called out as I approached the den. But there was no one there; nor for a good time after that. I began to think he was not coming—that his wits were so addled that he had failed to take my meaning, or forgotten it altogether—when I heard a twig snap and, peering out, saw Ozymandias. He was less than ten yards from the entrance. He was not singing, or