Amelia Dee and the Peacock Lamp by Odo Hirsch

Author:Odo Hirsch
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: JUV000000, JUV000000
ISBN: 9781741763775
Publisher: Allen & Unwin Pty Ltd
Published: 2007-09-30T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 14

It was true, everything the Princess’s driver had said. There really had been a palace in an ancient city called Ervahan, and there had been a revolution, and the palace had been destroyed, and the family that had ruled the country had been driven into exile. Amelia had checked.

She found it in a book. The only clue she had was the name of the city, Ervahan, and she didn’t even know where Ervahan was. But the school librarian helped her track it down. It was in a country called Irafia. The book they found was called A History of Irafia, and went back hundreds and hundreds of years. It wasn’t an easy book to read, written in a very dry, uninteresting fashion, but it was bloodcurdling enough, with deception and violence and murderous wars on a monumental scale. Princes always seemed to be plotting against the ruler of the country to get hold of the throne, only to be plotted against themselves. The stories of treachery and bloodshed in the book would have been as scary as anything Amelia had ever read if only the whole thing had been written more excitingly. Way back, about three hundred years ago, a pair of princes had actually managed to stab each other to death in a fight for the throne. That just meant a whole lot of their younger brothers started fighting and set off a fresh series of wars. Finally, in the last century, a very intelligent man came to power and united the country, and there had been peace. But his son wasn’t as wise, according to the book, and besides, by the time he came to the throne, the people were beginning to question whether they should be ruled without having any right to choose their ruler, and one thing led to another, dissatisfaction led to more dissatisfaction, and eventually, fifty-nine years earlier, there had been a revolution.

That was the part that really surprised Amelia. There was nothing unusual about all the tales of war and betrayal. History was full of stories like that. And revolutions as well. But only fifty-nine years ago? The revolutions Amelia knew about, like the French Revolution, and the American Revolution, had happened hundreds of years ago. That was when history happened, long ago. Yet fifty-nine years . . . Fifty-nine years wasn’t that long. It was long, but not that long. There were plenty of people still alive who could remember things that happened fifty-nine years ago. Amelia’s Dee grandparents, on her father’s side, for example, and her Arbuckle grandparents on her mother’s side. Although her grandfather Arbuckle on her mother’s side had become very forgetful in the past couple of years and sometimes forgot Amelia’s name. When that happened, everyone laughed quickly and pretended he hadn’t really forgotten, and was just playing a game, but Amelia knew he really had forgotten, and every time she saw him he seemed to forget more. But Amelia knew that he was over eighty years

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.