Read Online Noah Barleywater Runs Away by John Boyne - Free Book Online Page A

something extraordinary inside.
    But to his great disappointment, all it contained was more puppets.
    ‘Oh,’ he said.
    ‘Oh?’ asked the old man. ‘Is there something wrong?’
    ‘Well, I thought there might be photographs perhaps,’ said Noah. ‘I quite like photographs. Or old letters. But it’s just more puppets. Like the ones downstairs. They’re very nice, of course,’ he added, not wanting to sound rude as he picked one out and examined it carefully. ‘Only I thought there might be something different in here, that’s all.’
    ‘Ah, but these are very different,’ replied the old man, smiling at him. ‘The puppets downstairs, well, they were all carved by me. But these are the last remaining puppets that my father carved. They’re very precious to me. Like the great tree outside, they put me in mind of him. They’re all I have left of him.’
    ‘Well, they
are
very interesting, I suppose,’ said Noah, growing a little more intrigued now. ‘Butdon’t you want to put them downstairs with all the other ones?’
    ‘No, I couldn’t do that,’ said the old man. ‘My father wouldn’t have wanted it. Each one tells a story, you see. A very particular story. So they have to be kept together.’
    ‘Well, I like stories,’ said Noah with a smile as he selected one at random, a rather portly puppet of a woman with a series of chins and a furious expression on her face. ‘What does this one tell?’
    ‘Ah, that’s Mrs Shields,’ said the old man with a laugh. ‘My first teacher.’
    ‘You keep a puppet of your teacher?’ asked Noah, raising an eyebrow in surprise. ‘You must have liked school very much then.’
    ‘Some of it,’ replied the old man. ‘Although it wasn’t my idea to go at all. It was Poppa’s. My father, I should say. But that’s another story. I’m sure you’re not interested in how I got here.’
    ‘Oh, but I am,’ said Noah quickly.
    ‘Really?’ asked the old man, his face lighting up. ‘Well, all right then. But I’ll keep it brief. And where should I start? That’s the question. Back in the forest, I suppose.’ He thought about it for a moment and then nodded quickly, as if he was sure that this was a sensible idea. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Back in the forest.’

Chapter Seven

Mrs Shields’ Puppet
    It was my father, Poppa (said the old man), who decided that we should leave our comfortable cottage at the edge of the forest and move deeper into the woodlands. The trees there were so old, they provided much better material for the toys and puppets he carved every day, and he liked the idea of a new beginning too. That year, life had changed so much for us that when we heard of the village – a little past the first, just further on from the second – we thought it sounded like a perfect place to begin our new life.
    I was only eight years old at the time, but I hadn’t lived a conventional life so far. I had a mischievous quality, you see, not unusual in boys my age, and a history of finding myself in the centre of terrible scrapes. I always seemed to end up meeting unusual people who wanted to lead me into harm’s way. I was the type of boy who could be walking down the road to pick up a bottle of milk and find myself transported to a carnival by a cruel kidnapper,or working as a servant for a man who wished me nothing but ill. Every time I released myself from one of these exploits I would make a promise to Poppa that I would never allow myself to be sidetracked again, but every time I made this promise, sooner or later I would break it. It’s not something I’m proud of, but it’s who I was and I can’t pretend otherwise.
    But when I turned eight I decided that I was going to try to be a good boy, and to mark this change in my fortunes, Poppa thought it a good idea to begin our lives over in a place where no one knew either of us.
    ‘After everything that’s happened,’ Poppa told me as he explained his plan, ‘I think a change is exactly what we