Wonders of the Invisible World Read Online Free PDF

picking toads out of the bucket and setting them on his papers.
    “The traveler. I sent him to talk to you.” She hesitated, finally said the word. “I think he is a prince. He is looking for a palace surrounded by thorns, with a sleeping princess inside.”
    “Oh, him. No. I mean yes, but no I couldn’t help him. I had no idea what he was talking about. Come here and look at this white one. You can do so many things with the white toads.”
    She had to wait a long time before Dylan came home, but she stayed awake so that she could tell him. As he clambered into bed, breathing a gust of beer at her, she said breathlessly, “I saw a prince today. On his way to rescue a princess.”
    He laughed and hiccuped at the same time. “And I saw the Queen of the Fairies. Did you happen to spot my knife too? I set it down yesterday when I was whittling, and it must have strolled away.”
    “Dylan—”
    He kissed her temple. “You’re dreaming, love. No princes here.”
    The days lengthened. Hawthorn blossoms blew everywhere like snow, leaving green behind. The massive oaks covered their tangled boughs with leaves. An early summer storm thundered through the woods one afternoon. Leta, who had just spread Ansley’s washing to dry on the hawthorn bushes around the cottage, heard the sudden snarl of wind, felt a cold, hard drop of rain on her mouth. She sighed. The clothes were wet anyway; but for the wild wind that might steal them, she could have left them out. She began to gather them back into her basket.
    She heard voices.
    They sounded like wind at first, one high, pure, one pitched low, rumbling. They didn’t seem human, which made Leta duck warily behind a bush. But their words were human enough, which made her strain her ears to listen. It was, she thought bewilderedly, like hearing what the winds had to say for themselves.
    “Come into my arms and sleep, my lord,” the higher voice crooned. “You have lived a long and adventurous life; you may rest now for a while.”
    “No,” the deeper voice protested, half-laughing, half-longing, Leta thought. “It’s not time for me to sleep, yet. There are things I still must teach you.”
    “What things, my heart?”
    “How to understand the language of beetles, how to spin with spindrift, what lies hidden in the deepest place in the ocean and how to bring it up to light.”
    “Sleep a little. Teach me when you wake again.”
    “No, not yet.”
    “Sleep.”
    Leta crept closer to the voices. The rain pattered down now, great, fat drops the trees could not stop. Through the blur of rain and soughing winds stirring up the bracken, she saw two figures beneath an oak. They seemed completely unaware of the storm, as if they belonged to some enchanted world. The woman’s long, fiery, rippling hair did not notice the wind, nor did the man’s gray-white beard. He sat cradled in the oak roots, leaning back against the trunk. His face looked as harsh and weathered, as ancient and enduring as the wood. The woman stood over him, close enough for him to touch, which he did now and then, his hand caressing the back of her knee, coaxing it to bend. They were both richly dressed, he in a long, silvery robe flecked with tiny jewels like points of light along the sleeves, the hem. She wore silk the deepest green of summer, the secret green of trees who have taken in all the light they can hold, and feel, somewhere within them, summer’s end. His eyes were half-closed. Hers were very wide as she stared down at him: pale amber encircling vivid points of black.
    Leta froze. She did not dare move, lest those terrible eyes lift from his and search her out behind the bush with Ansley’s trousers flapping on it.
    “Sleep,” the woman murmured again, her voice like a lightly dancing brook, like the sough of wind in reeds. “Sleep.”
    His hand dropped from her knee. He made an effort, half lifting his eyelids. His eyes were silver, metallic like a knife blade.
    “Not yet, my sweet Nimue.