The Murdstone Trilogy by Mal Peet

Author:Mal Peet [Mal Peet]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781910200285
Publisher: David Fickling Books Ltd
Published: 2014-08-28T04:00:00+00:00

Time passed, days that left no traces.

Then one morning or afternoon he lifted his eyes from the Taj Mahal and saw that the small window of his study was also joyously blue. He went downstairs and opened the front door upon a new season. The grey old skull of the world had been aerosolled pale green and the air was full of birds talking about it.

He touched the Amulet through his pyjama top and silently told it I am not your slave.

He got dressed. He put on his Barbour and buckled green wellies.

He took the familiar route down the zigzag path of red mud and mottled stones through the sloping pasture. Here and there he caught the coconut whiff of gorse blossom. At his approach, new lambs ran on awkward legs to suckle reassurance from their mothers. At the bottom of the coombe, where Parson’s Cleft emptied its trickle into the main stream, he paused on the little wooden bridge and gazed about him. Catkins, soft greenish worms, dangled against the flawless sky. The tea-coloured water burbled. Those yellow flowers that he could never remember the name of (they weren’t buttercups, he knew that) blazed in patches of sunlight. A bird with a wagging tail (a wagtail, possibly?) alighted briefly on a watersmoothed stone and then flickered away. From high above, the kittenish mew of a buzzard.

He inhaled deeply, twice, and went on. He followed the old lepers’ track that wound its way towards St Pessary. Three hundred metres later, he emerged from dappled shade into pure light. At the small group of tilted rocks known as Three Fingers he stopped. Far enough. Leaning his back against warm and lichen-mottled granite, he lifted his face to the sun like a willing Inca sacrifice. He closed his eyes and something resembling a soft collapse, an intense mellowing, took place within him. For the first time in, oh, who knows how long, he felt as though he was living in his body, that the lively coursing of his blood and juices were for his benefit alone. Yet, simultaneously, he felt on the verge of departure from himself; that at any moment he might be wonderfully, weightlessly, distant.

His face grew warm. His torso absorbed heat; heat like warm fingers reaching into his core. A tingling web of heat, centred on …

Oh, shit.

The Amulet.

Was it? Christ!

He fumbled at his clothing, thrust his hand up inside his shirt. The Amulet was trembling.

No, that was his hand.

No, it wasn’t.

Shit, oh shit!

Now the hot spider occupied the centre of its hot web; he could feel the pulsing of its legs against his chest.

He ran, awkward in the unfamiliar boots, sobbing for breath. As he lurched across the Cleft, a sudden gust of wind set the trees rustling. Or was that nibscratch?

‘Wait,’ he cried, stumbling onto the bridge. ‘Please wait!’

Beyond the edge of his normal vision there was something shimmering, or vibrating.

By the time he’d reached the top of the track he could no longer draw in air; panic alone powered his legs onto the lane.

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