Read Online The Kingdom of Kevin Malone by Suzy McKee Charnas - Free Book Online Page A

imagine,” I said, thinking of melted chocolate running down the branches on hot days.
    â€œHow about nuts for lunch?” Kevin said.
    â€œWhy not?” I said. “It’s been nuts since yesterday.”
    The branches grew low enough so we could pick the nuts by reaching up from our saddles. I gave Kevin one of my sandwiches and ate the other myself. Kevin carried water in a sort of fat leather bottle slung from his saddle. He drank some and shared it with me.
    We could have been on a picnic. But I was not cheerful. The empty landscape got on my nerves. My legs ached from yesterday’s skating and now, in different places, from riding a seelim.
    After eating we followed the road over rolling land through scattered stands of trees. Where was everybody? I was afraid to ask. We left the woodsy hills behind and started across a wide, dry plain. A hot breeze toasted my throat. I tried scratching my seelim the way Kevin had scratched his. It groaned, with pleasure I hoped. Under the scales its skin was soft and cool.
    â€œKevin,” I said, “where are we going?”
    With no warning at all, my seelim squealed and leaped in the air, and I screamed and tumbled off. I landed hard on the back of my shoulders thinking: It’s my fate, it’s just Daisy all over again.
    â€œLet go of the reins!” Kevin yelled, jumping down before his plunging, squalling seelim could dump him the way mine had dumped me. “Don’t let him drag you!”
    Both seelims sped away, leaving us standing in the middle of nowhere—but not alone.
    About ten feet from us a person stood watching—a scrawny little man shorter than either of us, copper-skinned under a coating of sweat-streaked dust and ash. He wore a loincloth roughly the same color as his skin, a lumpy leather pouch slung from one shoulder, and nothing else.
    â€œThat’s what spooked them,” Kevin said confidently, “and he’s just what we need! I told you everything works for me here.” He drew himself up proudly and began to declaim, “Man of the Brangle—”
    â€œYou are pursued,” the stranger observed softly, pointing past us.
    We were. A shifting, swirling crowd of dust-colored animals boiled out of the ragged forest behind us. They were long-legged and long-necked with big, round faces and a funny way of lifting their heads on their curved necks, like camels, or llamas.
    â€œWhat are those? ” I said.
    Kevin shouted, “Sanctuary! Sanctuary for Prince Kavian and his lady!”
    The stranger didn’t say a word, he simply turned and ran. Kevin swore and lunged after him, but the little guy just dropped out of sight.
    â€œCome on, or the Famishers will get you!” Kevin yelled over his shoulder at me. Then he seemed to leap into space and vanish like the coppery man, as if they had both jumped into the Grand Canyon.
    All I could see ahead was dry, bare plain. The oncoming monsters made weird squealing noises behind me—were they laughing? Then two of them out in front opened their mouths and I saw fangs like boars’ tusks.
    I shut my eyes, took a running leap, and tumbled over the edge of a bluff that was invisible until you were right on top of it. Down I slithered in a cloud of dust, into a vast tangle of thorny brush that seemed to stretch on forever.

 
    Six
    In the Brangle
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    T HE DRY, SPINY VINES STABBED and tore. I yelled. Kevin dragged me in deeper after him.
    â€œHurry,” he panted, “they can’t follow us in here!”
    I lumped along after him as best I could, scared and angry. How typical of him to make our only escape from the baddies (and I didn’t have to look again to know that these Famisher-things were not goodies) through a forest of stickers designed to shred you and your best blue jeans.
    The little stranger was gone. Behind us, the brush seemed to squirm back into a thick, spiky tangle as soon as we had thrashed our