Wulfyddia (The Tattersall Trilogy Book 1) Read Online Free PDF

against his face,
though there was no breeze in the corridor.
    As he turned the corner he realized where he
was going. She was leading him to the great hall, one room that had remained
almost entirely undisturbed since Spencer and his mother moved into the
Haligorn. The great hall unnerved him, and usually he took great pains to avoid
it, but this time he was driven by a strange single-mindedness. All he wanted
was to catch a glimpse of the one who had whispered his name.
    He almost thought he could hear her: in a
sigh that echoed through the castle, in a faint whisper that sounded in his
head. She was reaching out to him, drawing him to her. He padded into the great
hall, expecting his mother to call out to him at any minute, to order him back
to bed. There was no sound. This room too was impossibly illuminated by
moonlight, turning the room so very white that Spencer could see everything,
every detail of the chamber, every mark on his own white skin.
    There was no figure to be seen in the hall,
no woman in white, but he could feel her in the air around him, watching him
and waiting. He hadn’t been in this room more than once or twice, so he had
never noticed the enormous silver framed mirror that was set into one wall. It
was so large that it would have been good for a party, because all of the
guests would have been able to see their reflections at once. For a moment Spencer
could imagine that: an entire ball of ghostly figures dancing their way around the
white, white hall. Ladies turning over their shoulders to catch glimpses of
themselves as they waltzed, men bowing to their reflections….
    “Ssssspencerrrr…”
    “I’m here,” he told her, and his voice echoed
in the hall. There was a flicker in the corner of his vision, and he looked up
and caught sight of his own reflection in the mirror. He was not a very grand
sight, in his striped bedclothes with bare feet and messy hair. But behind him…
behind him something strange was happening to the moonlight. It almost seemed
to be binding together to form a column. No, a figure, swathed in white, too
blurry to see clearly, except for one long, thin hand reaching for his
shoulder.
    Spencer jumped and glanced over his shoulder.
There was nothing there, only empty floor and bare moonlight. He stared back
into the mirror, but her reflection had vanished from there, too.  He looked
from side to side, trying to sense her presence, but suddenly he felt cold and
alone in that big, empty hall. Right before his eyes the light seemed to be
fading, sucked from the air and replaced by darkness. Chilled, he started back
towards his room on tiptoe. It was harder to get back to his room than it had
been to leave it, since the hall grew progressively darker with each step he
took. By the time he was back at his own door there was no sign that it had
ever been illuminated by some unearthly glow. Spencer took a deep breath and
pushed the chamber door open.
    He closed the door behind him, eager to climb
back into his warm cot and escape the chill of the air. But he paused,
squinting, before climbing back under the covers. There was something on his
pillow. The room was so dark it was a miracle that he could even see it, but
because it was so white he could make out the outline. It was the book, the one
that had been secured under his mattress when he left the room. When he looked
closer, he saw that the faint silvery gleam of the spirit frosted the cover, as
though the binding itself had summoned her forth.

Chapter 3
    It was a
white day at Castle Wulfyddia. The rain was no more but the cloud cover
remained thick, blanketing the sky in swirls of swiftly moving clouds, shining
with a pale watery brilliance. A cool, sharp breeze wafted from the mountains,
bearing the taste of last night’s rain.
    “I think
it’s cursed. I must have been sitting there with it for hours, but I don’t even
remember what was inside. I just remember looking up from the book and my
mother was back.”