Read Online The Ever Breath by Julianna Baggott - Free Book Online

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    She scurried to some nearby bushes and started plucking berries.
    “Breakfast?” Truman asked.
    Praddle nodded.
    The berries looked like little fuzzy moons. “Browsenberries,” he said. “I’m usually allergic to berries, but…” Truman wanted to test a theory. What if this really was the Breath World and the Breath World really was Swelda’s home-land, and she really did import all of her foods from this world, and, for whatever reasons, Truman wasn’t allergic to things here? Only one way to know. He popped a browsenberry into his mouth, and as soon as he bit into it and the berry burst and his mouth filled with its tart juice, he remembered, vividly, a tiny bit of the tasting tale:
All those magical creatures—the ones you see now only in dreams and stories—used to walk among us
. He knew in an instant that this was exactly the thing he’d been tasting when Swelda said those words.
    “Praddle,” Truman said, “have you ever been told a tasting tale?”
    She smiled and nodded quickly.
    “Okay, then later, after you hear a tasting tale, if you eat something that was served to you when you were being told that tale, do you remember it exactly?”
    Praddle nibbled her berries and gave a nod.
    Truman ate another handful of berries and Swelda’s words echoed again in his mind:
All those magical creatures—the ones you see now only in dreams and stories—used to walk among us
. …
    “Praddle,” Truman began, “do … do you have dragons around here?”
    “Dragonsss?”
    “You know, lizardlike creatures with small wings and sometimes horns and long tails who breathe fire?”
    “Oh, fire-breathersss. Yesss.”
    Truman felt a prickle of fear. “What about unicorns? Like deer but they only have one horn?”
    “One-horned boundersss,” she said. “Of courssse.”
    “Mermaids? Half woman, half fish?”
    “Bogpeople,” she said. “Very muddy.”
    “Elves? You know, little people?”
    “Yesss, urfsss.”
    “What about centaurs? Half horse, half human?”
    Looking a little tired of all the questions, she just sighed and spread her arms out wide in one big swooping gesture that Truman took to mean,
We have them all!
    Truman shook his head. “It’s hard to believe,” he said. He felt scared and hopeful, both at once.
You come from the long line
—that was what his grandmother had said. Did that long line go all the way back to this place? Was his father here, somewhere? Could he find him?
    Praddle tapped the snow globe. “Thisss wasss Ickbee’sss.”
    “Oh, right,” Truman said, remembering that Swelda had written that in her note. “It’s kind of a strange gift. It has a man in it who’s just been stabbed. It’s a little morbid. Not your regular Christmas tree and snowman. See?” He pointed to the scene and ate some more berries.
All those magical creatures—the ones you see now only in dreams and stories—used to walk among us
.
    Praddle leaned in and then looked up at him, confused. She shook her head.
    “What is it?” Truman asked.
    Praddle tapped the snow globe again.
    He lifted it up and looked more closely. The snow was settling in a small, dark, cluttered room with lots of velvety drapes—what seemed to be a museum. There were taxidermied creatures wall-mounted or standing midgrowl and mid-claw or, in the case of winged creatures, strung from the ceiling midflight. There were lots of variations—horns, beaks, thorny tails, ridged backs, tightly curled tusks, human-looking gazes. There was even a full-sized fire-breather, its wings unfurled, its fangs bared.
    There was also a wall-mounted display of weaponry—from crude spears to slick blades so shiny they reflected like mirrors.
    There was something about the creatures—their terrified eyes, their yowling mouths. These weren’t fake stuffed creatures, like Swelda’s vulture. These animals had once lived, had been hunted down, and now were dead.
    In one corner he saw a finger—a solitary index finger with a