Read Online Any Which Wall by Laurel Snyder - Free Book Online Page B

from it. Inside the frame that hovered in the air, they saw a man. The man looked enormous, as wide as two men and taller than most. He was heavily muscled and angry, squinting into the sun. He opened his mouth in a snarl, but before anyone could tell why, the vision faded.
    When Emma saw the man, she shivered. “That was home?” she asked nervously. “He didn’t look like home.”
    “Whoever that man is, he has the posture of a Saxon,” muttered Merlin distastefully. Then he slapped his hands together, ready to be done with them. “Well, I guess that’s that,” he said brightly. “See you around!”
    “But, Merlin,” Susan said, “that really wasn’t home, not at all. We know everyone at home, pretty much, and that man was nobody we know.”
    Merlin knitted his unruly eyebrows and said, “Perhaps, Susan, there is more to your home than you know.Places and times and people you’ve never seen. Things beyond your experience.”
    Susan said nothing in reply.
    “But why would the magic show us that?” asked Emma timidly.
    “Oh, little Emma,” said Merlin. “Even
I
can’t know why magic does what it does, though I know as well as anyone
how
magic does what it does.” Then he yawned. “Okay, time’s up. I’m off to my nap, but I do hope you’ve enjoyed your visit. Good night.”
    “Wait!” said Roy. “What if—”
    “No,” said Merlin, brushing away Roy’s question with a wave of his hands as though it were a flimsy spider web he’d walked through. “No more waiting. We all have visions, and mine wait for me in sleep. You’d best run along.”
    Saying this, he walked over to the lumpy pile of blankets and leaves, picked his nose and wiped his finger on his sleeve, lay down, and turned over. He waved his hands over his own face and said, “Soporifica!” and before his arms could even drop back down, he began to snore deeply.
    The tiny blue fire in the metal bowl blinked out and the room grew cold.

T HERE WAS NO POINT in arguing with the sleeping wizard, and there didn’t seem to be any hope of waking him (though Henry poked a few times just to be sure), so the kids crept from the smoky lean-to into the moonlight of the muddy courtyard. When they did, they found that the pigs had run off.
    A faint grayness was creeping into the sky above the trees, and this reminded them that although they had not yet seen a knight or a jester, they were going to have to head home. Morning was coming and they had to get to bed before their parents woke up.
    “Man, this was kind of a bust,” muttered Henry as they started back for the big wooden door. “I thought I might get to joust or slay a dragon or something. Even a small dragon would’ve been pretty cool.”
    “The visions were neat,” said Susan, blushing again.
    “And I liked Merlin, even if he wasn’t a princess,” said Emma. “He smelled like Halloween.”
    They all made for the door of the stone castle. Once inside, they started back up the stairs they’d come down, but about halfway up the spiral staircase, they heard a faint sound. Someone was crying.
    “The queen!” said Emma excitedly, bouncing up and down. “I want to see the queen. Can we?”
    “We don’t have time,” Susan reminded her.
    “Besides,” said Henry, “she doesn’t sound like much fun at all. Listen.”
    Emma stuck out her bottom lip. “I don’t care,” she said. “It’s my wish and it’s smelly and dark here, and if I don’t get to see something pretty, I’ll decide to cry.” She sat down on the stairs and pouted.
    Emma was good most of the time, but when she wanted to, she could be impossible.
    “Just what we need,” sighed Susan. “Emma in rare form.” This was what Mrs. O’Dell called it when Emma misbehaved. “Can’t we just let her get the queen’s autograph or something?”
    Henry shook his head. “I’m not getting in trouble for a dumb queen,” he said.
    Roy looked at his watch. “I have to side with Henry on this one,” he said.