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

wanting to see the snow swirl around the little mud hut again. As the snow churned, the scene disappeared in the white. Camille watched the snow settle slowly, and as it did, a new scene appeared: a sloping hill covered with trees, their limbs weighted with snow. A path wound through the forest, and in the snow on the path there were footprints. Then she turned the globe a little and saw a figure between the trees.
    She turned the globe again, trying to get a closer look. It was a boy in a big fur hat and a jacket made of leaves.
    She peered closer.
    It wasn’t a boy in a big fur hat. It was a boy wearing a wide-eyed cat on his head.
    A boy in blue pajama bottoms.
    “Truman,” Camille whispered. The water in the globe was trembling, because her hands were trembling.
    Just then there was a knock on the bedroom door. “It’s time!” her grandmother’s voice rang out. “The boy has gone through to the other side!”
    “Other side?” Camille echoed.
    “And she’s lost him! Already! May I come in?”
    “Yes,” Camille said, her voice dry in her throat.
    The door swung open. There stood her grandmother,dressed for the day in jeans, a sweater, and her white sneakers. She was wearing the blue woolen hat. “Your brother!” she said. “He’s lost!”
    “Who lost him? How?”
    “Well, my dingbat sister, of course. Let him run off!”
    Camille looked at her grandmother, and her grandmother stared back at her with her one good eye.
    “Truman’s gone
where
?” Camille asked.
    “The Breath World, my dear! Aren’t you listening?” she said, and then she clapped. “Hurry up! Get dressed, pack a small bag, and bring the snow globe. You’ll need it. The worlds are at stake!”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Into the City of Creatures
    The path through the forest was covered with small stones, some of which were crusted in ice and had become slick. Burrs and nettles lined the path. Whenever Truman slipped, the nettles snagged his flannel pajama pants and the burrs gripped on like Velcro. Praddle was curled on his head, keeping it warm, but every time he slid one way or the other, she had to scramble to keep her roost.
    It didn’t help that Truman was easily distracted by all of the creatures. They were everywhere, fluttering, twittering, rustling in the underbrush, howling in the distance. Truman would catch glimpses of them scurrying up a tree or peering at him from a knothole. He could only make out eyes, the swish of a tail, a bit of beak.
    Once he heard a strange clacking noise coming from the dense forest.
    “What’s that?” he whispered to Praddle. “Did you hear something?”
    Praddle swiveled her head in the direction of the noise. “There,” she whispered.
    Truman put his hand on a tree trunk to steady himself and then peered through the trees into a glade. There he saw unicorns—two of them. They looked somewhat young, but each had a brilliant twisted horn, and they were fighting with each other. They didn’t seem violent, though. It was as if they were only practicing. Their coats were a dusty brown, their ears perked. They looked majestic.
    “They’re beautiful,” Truman said. But when he took another step, his foot snapped a twig. The unicorns froze, then bounded deeper into the forest.
    Eventually the trees thinned, and Truman and Praddle came to open farmland. Truman saw a herd of what seemed to be cattle up ahead. But as he and Praddle made their way down the dirt road closer to the herd, Truman noticed that the grazing animals had plumes of smoke swirling above their heads. It couldn’t just be their breath in the cold air. The smoke was thick. It chugged up from their mouths like smoke from old trains. That was when he started to be able to make out the spiky ridges on their backs. One lifted its head and then sat back on its haunches and stretched, unfolding a pair of restless wings. A bell on its neck gave a hollow
tock-tock
, and then the creature settled back down to grazing.
    “Those aren’t