The Windvale Sprites Read Online Free PDF

after them, ‘Tell all your friends! Let’s get a good crowd here tomorrow, shall we?’
    Nobody answered but the locksmith remarked, ‘I don’t know how you’re going to get this open on live TV, I can’t shift it.’
    ‘It’s all right,’ said Trap, ‘I know a man with bolt cutters.’
    *
     
    Asa had to think of a plan quickly. He had a day to get into the trunk, but when would he ever get time alone? Only after the library was closed and the building was locked. The only way would be to hide somewhere in the library and spend the night there. There was still enough of lunchtime left to speedily cycle home and grab some provisions. A torch and spare batteries, some sandwiches and a bottle of water. It’s never good to lie to your parents except perhaps when you are on the brink of an earth-shattering discovery so Asa left a note to say he was spending the night at his friend Chris’s house and he wrote down the telephone number. This was a confidence trick as his mum already had the number but if it was written down for her she would be less likely to check. Asa would just have to hope she didn’t.
    The first part of the afternoon was spent looking for a likely hiding place until Asa suddenly realised that both the outer doors and the inner doors to the reading room would be locked. This meant he would have to actually be hiding in the atrium when the building was locked. The atrium, of course, was completely bare apart from the locked trunk and the empty pedestal that used to cover it. The pedestal! It was easily big enough to get inside and if he pulled it flat against the wall once he was in it would be impossible to know he was there.
    The rest of the afternoon dragged painfully slowly and Asa kept drifting into the atrium to look at the trunk and the box, wanting to get in to try it for size. When five o’clock eventually came around and everyone had left, Asa got his bag from behind the counter and bid Mr Trap goodbye as nonchalantly as he could manage. Then he walked into the atrium and with a glance behind him ducked down into the wooden pedestal. Once inside he got hold of the edge and tugged the box against the wall and there he sat, hardly daring to move, waiting for the librarian to leave.
    There was space inside the box but not enough to stretch out fully and it soon started to become uncomfortable. When finally, after half an hour, Mr Trap left for home, he locked the doors behind him without noticing a thing.
    Once he had gone Asa pushed the box with his shoulder until there was a large enough gap for his feet to stick out and he could lie down flat. He stayed that way, in the box with his bag as a pillow, and listened to the footsteps of people outside walking back from work until, eventually, he drifted off to sleep.

Tooth’s Works
     
     
    It was dark outside when he was awoken by voices coming up the library steps. It took a few seconds to remember where he was but when he did he pulled his feet sharply back inside the box and listened. It was the group of teenagers who usually hung out by the clock tower. They reached the door and peered in at the trunk but Asa could not make out what they were saying. At one point they rattled the locked doors and he thought they might break in but after another ten minutes they got bored and moved off.
    Asa waited until all was quiet outside and then heaved the box away from the wall.
    Slowly and painfully he inched his way out. It felt so good to be free that he just lay on his back on the marble floor for a few minutes looking up at the ceiling. It was dark in the library but the orange glow from the street lamps outside threw just enough light to see by.
    Asa pulled himself up on to his knees. His instinct was to keep low in case anyone passing saw a shadowy figure in the library and called the police. When there were no cars it was insanely quiet but the echoey entrance hall amplified any noises that Asa made. His nerves were fraught as he