Watch Hollow by Gregory Funaro

Author:Gregory Funaro
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2019-01-07T16:00:00+00:00

Ten

The Caretaker

The second longest day of Lucy Tinker’s life began and ended with the same thought:

The animals!

Lucy awoke worried sick about them. Had Torsten and Meridian waited all night for her to return with the food? Did they make it back to their hiding spot before dawn—and before Tempus Crow had a chance to snatch them? Lucy shivered.

“Some caretaker I am,” she muttered, slipping on a T-shirt. She could just kick herself for being so stupid. Her plan had been to return with more food after Oliver fell asleep, but incredibly, Lucy fell asleep first! And look at the time—8:09 according to her brother’s watch on the nightstand. The animals were already wooden again!

Lucy threw on a pair of shorts and hurried barefoot through the house and into the library. Torsten and Meridian were nowhere to be found, but Lucy noticed the box of Froot Loops she’d thrown away the day before was missing from the wastebasket. She remembered seeing it just before the animals came alive at midnight, so Lucy figured that they must have taken the cereal back to their hiding spot.

“Sorry I didn’t bring more food,” she shouted, hoping the animals could hear her. “I waited for Oliver to fall asleep, but I fell asleep first.”

Lucy slumped into the big leather armchair and looked around. It was another beautiful day, but it was still early, so her windows didn’t look as magical as they would later on, when the sunlight hit them just right.

Funny. When Lucy first saw her windows, she had wished the house was magical. But now that she knew it was, Lucy sort of wished it wasn’t. It was a huge responsibility being the caretaker of a normal house, never mind a magical one—even if it was just for the summer.

Lucy closed her eyes and sank deeper into the chair. She was exhausted, and her thoughts were all muddy—not to mention she could still hear the clock ticking in her head. The clock was the answer, but the Garr was the problem. The clock was good, the clock was light, Torsten had said. But the Garr, a ten-foot-tall tree man who lived in the Shadow Woods, hated the clock and wanted the house for himself.

Lucy opened her eyes and gazed out the window. The Garr lived in the Shadow Woods, yes, but Blackford House was built from shadow wood. So was the clock—or at least, so were the animals that used to power it. And if Torsten was right and it had been Lucy’s magic that had started the clock ticking again last night, then maybe the shadow wood in the house absorbed the goodness of the people who lived here—which meant the Shadow Woods couldn’t be all bad.

This was Lucy’s theory anyway, and one that she had come up with while she was lying awake the night before. The clock, she realized, had started ticking when she was trying to do good, when she was trying to take care of the animals. If only her brother hadn’t had that nightmare and distracted her.

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