Castle in the Air by Jones Diana Wynne

Author:Jones, Diana Wynne [Jones, Diana Wynne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fantasy, Young Adult, Childrens, Adventure, Romance
ISBN: 9780007369089
Amazon: 0007369085
Goodreads: 40853919
Publisher: HarperCollins Children’s Books
Published: 1990-01-01T08:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

In which Abdullah challenges fate

Abdullah crouched for a while longer, but when the creatures did not come back he began crawling again, in a vague, vain way, hoping to discover what had happened to him. He knew something had happened, but he did not seem to have much of a brain to think with.

While he crawled, the rain stopped, which he was rather sad about, since it was wonderfully refreshing to the skin. On the other hand – a fly circled in a shaft of sunlight and came to sit on a bluebell leaf nearby. Abdullah promptly shot out a long tongue, whipped up that fly and swallowed it. Very nice! he thought. Then he thought, But flies are unclean! More troubled than ever, he crawled round another bluebell clump.

And there was another one just like himself.

It was brown and squat and warty, and its yellow eyes were at the top of its head. As soon as it saw him, it opened its wide lipless mouth in a bray of horror and began to swell up. Abdullah did not wait to see more. He turned and crawled off as fast as his distorted legs could take him. He knew what he was now. He was a toad. The malicious genie had fixed things so that he would be a toad until Midnight found him. When she did, he was fairly sure she would eat him.

He crawled under the nearest overarching bluebell leaves and hid…

About an hour later, the bluebell leaves parted to let through a monster black paw. It seemed interested in Abdullah. It kept its claws sheathed and patted at him. Abdullah was so horrified that he tried to hop away backwards.

Whereupon he found himself lying on his back among the bluebells.

He blinked up at the trees first, trying to adjust to the way he suddenly had thoughts in his head again. Some of those thoughts were unpleasant ones, about two bandits crawling beside an oasis pool in the shape of toads, and about eating a fly, and being nearly trodden on by a horse. Then he looked round and found the soldier crouching nearby, looking as bewildered as Abdullah felt. His pack was beside him and, beyond that, Whippersnapper was making determined efforts to climb out of the soldier’s hat. The genie bottle stood smugly beside the hat.

The genie was outside the bottle in a small wisp like the flame of a spirit lamp, with his smoky arms propped on the neck of the bottle. “Enjoy yourselves?” he asked jeeringly. “I got you there, didn’t I? That’ll teach you to pester me for extra wishes!”

Midnight had been extremely alarmed by their sudden transformation. She was in a small angry arch, spitting at both of them.

The soldier stretched out his hand to her and made soothing noises. “You frighten Midnight again like that,” he told the genie, “and I’ll break your bottle!”

“You said that before,” retorted the genie, “and you couldn’t, worse luck. The bottle’s enchanted.”

“Then I’ll make sure his next wish is that you turn into a toad,” the soldier said, jerking his thumb at Abdullah.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.