01 The Call by Michael Grant

Author:Michael Grant
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Fiction:Young Adult
ISBN: 9780061833663
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2010-08-23T10:00:00+00:00

* * *

DEAR MACK,

TODAY I ATE PIZZA. BUT I REALIZED THAT I DO NOT HAVE A STOMACH AND HAD TO SPIT IT OUT ON THE TABLE. LATER I USED A SPOON TO REACH INSIDE MY MOUTH AND DIG OUT A STOMACH. I PLACED THE MUD CAREFULLY IN THE TOILET AND FLUSHED MANY TIMES. NOW THERE IS WATER ON THE FLOOR AND ALSO ON THE STAIRS. I THINK MOM NOTICED.

YOUR FRIEND,

GOLEM

* * *

Fourteen

A REALLY, REALLY LONG TIME AGO…

From the high, crenellated walls of Castle Etruk, Grimluk could gaze down at the endless sea of green trees and fields and see the advance of the Pale Queen’s forces. Wherever they went, they burned.

The endless forest was dotted with dozens of small villages. These her forces burned to the ground. They killed and ate the farm animals, killed and didn’t eat the men, and enslaved the women and children.

All across the many miles that Grimluk could see, there rose plumes of smoke. The enemy seemed to be advancing from every direction at once. Castle Etruk, which Grimluk had gotten to like over the last couple of weeks, was surrounded.

The town below the castle walls had emptied out. Just about everyone had fled. If Grimluk turned to the east, he could see the last of them disappearing into the forest, rushing from their homes as he had rushed from his. The rumor was that there was a gap in the enemy lines.

Gelidberry and the baby had gone, too. They’d had to move fast, so they took only one cow. And the spoon.

Gelidberry had tried to convince him to take it. “You’ll need to eat to keep up your strength.”

“No, Gelidberry, I want our baby to inherit the family spoon someday. And if I die…”

Soldiers still lined the castle parapet. They were armed with swords and pikes and the occasional bow. But no one expected any of these weapons to stop the army that was coming their way.

Wick, Grimluk’s acquaintance from the inn, was among them. He had been promoted to captain of pikes.

But all hope was invested in the Magnifica: the twelve.

Twelve people was not a lot when you actually saw them all together. It was a huge number in the abstract—the only number actually larger than eleven—but when Grimluk looked around him at the shivering, scared mess of young men and women, he was not impressed.

They were seven males and five females. Some were rich, as evidenced by their numerous teeth, their excellent clothing—two of the Magnifica had actual buttons—and their superior education.

The others were poor and wore coarse grain sacks with holes for arms and neck. Some were really poor and wore nothing but strategically placed tufts of grass attached with mud—uncomfortable at the best of times and rather disastrous in a heavy rain.

The wealthiest and best educated of the Magnifica was a woman named Miladew. Despite her station in life, she had befriended a guy named Bruise.

Bruise was poor and ignorant, but he was a capable hunter, as evidenced by the

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