Read Online The Dragon Tree by Jane Langton - Free Book Online Page A

stepped off the ladder and took a firm hold on a thick spray of twigs over her head. “Higher, we have to climb higher.”
    “Okay.” Eddy lunged past her and disappeared in a tangle of foliage. “Higher it is.”
    Oliver was right behind him, swinging up like a chimpanzee. He caught up with Eddy so quicklythat Eddy stepped on his hand by mistake. Oliver howled, fell, caught himself, laughed, and vaulted still higher.
    Now they were swarming all over the tree: Cissie and Otis, Rachel and Hugo, Sidney and Frieda, Oliver and Eddy. All of them surged past Georgie, but she was the first to find a scribbled leaf. Tracing the scribbles with her finger, she mumbled them to herself,
“‘Two of every sort shalt thou bring into the ark.’”
And then she shouted, “The ark, it’s Noah’s ark!”
    At once everybody began snatching the scribbled leaves and screaming them out loud.
    “‘The wolf in sheep’s clothing!’” hollered Hugo. “That’s Aesop! Remember the wolf in sheep’s clothing?”
    “‘A fresh west wind singing over the wine-dark sea,’” crowed Cissie, but then she whispered, “
I don’t get it.
”
    Oliver couldn’t figure out his scribbles either. “There’s this monster moving through the night,” he bellowed. “What monster is that?”
    “It’s
Beowulf
, stupid,” cried Frieda. “
Everybod
yknows that.” But then she was puzzled too. “‘Sweet showers of April,’ what’s that all about?”
    “Good gracious me,” said Hugo, smirking down at Frieda. “It’s
Canterbury Tales.
I thought
everybody
knew that. Hey, listen, this one is really gruesome. ‘Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.’ What’s that?”
    Nobody knew, but then Eddy whooped. “I know this one: ‘Tilting at windmills,’ it’s
Don Quixote
.”
    “Hey!” screamed Cissie. “This one’s no good. It’s some crazy language. Eskimo? Zulu? This whole branch is no good.” Leaves showered down from Cissie’s fingers, fluttering through the sunlit spaces below, turning end over end and floating to the ground.
    “These are no good either,” complained Otis. “Oh, wait, here’s one.” He stood up, hanging on to a twig with two fingers, and read in a funny snarling voice, ‘Bah, humbug, said Scrooge.’ Okay, you guys, what’s that?” And everybody shouted, “
A Christmas Carol
.”
    Then Eddy yelled joyfully from his perch high overhead, “Uncle Fred will like this one. It’s HenryThoreau. ‘Old shoes will serve a hero.’ Remember that from last summer?”
    Now they were all climbing higher and higher, swaying in the top of the tree. “‘A white-headed whale with a crooked jaw,’” bawled Oliver. “What’s that?”
    “
Moby-Dick
, stupid,” shrieked Rachel. “But, okay, I don’t get this one. ‘You feel mighty free on a raft.’ What’s that?”
    “Don’t be dumb,” said Frieda. “Everybody knows that. It’s
Huckleberry Finn
.” But then Frieda too was bewildered. “What’s this about an apple barrel? ‘I hid in the apple barrel.’ What’s that?”
    At once a chorus of voices shouted, “
Treasure Island
,” and Oliver said in a squeaky Frieda voice, “Oh,
everybody
knows that.”
    By now they had had enough. Their pockets were stuffed with scribbled leaves. They were hungry, and the air was misty with rain. Blundering down the tree, dropping from branch to branch, they climbed down and around, around and down, all the way to the lowest ladder, and stepped off atlast on the ground. Then, patting their bulging pockets and grinning at one another, they abandoned the tree and hurried indoors, expecting praise and hoping for lunch.
    Behind them dangled a hundred thousand other stories, epics of gods and heroes told beside Greek campfires, sagas unfolded in Danish royal halls, ballads sung by traveling minstrels, sacred stories from Hindu temples and Buddhist shrines, animal fables passed down through generations of children in the African bush, holy parables inscribed by monks in