Read Online The Magician's Tower by Shawn Thomas Odyssey - Free Book Online Page B

filled Oona’s ears. The chimps seemed to be everywhere, chattering, chortling, throwing things.
    Oona, Roderick, and Adler bolted for the nearest shelter: a wooden table covered with banana peels and half-eaten apples.
    A ripe red tomato collided with the side of Oona’s head as she dove beneath the table.
    â€œOuch!” Roderick cried, sliding in beside Oona and digging something small and hard from his collar. “That was an avocado pit,” he said. “Might as well be throwing stones.”
    â€œThat’s nothing,” Adler said, and then held up a foot-long fish. “This hit me square in the face, so it did.”
    Oona was suddenly worried about what else the chimps might throw.
    â€œWe appear to be in some sort of monkey house,” Roderick said.
    â€œYou don’t say,” Adler replied sarcastically.
    â€œActually, they are apes,” Oona said. “Chimpanzees, to be precise. Not monkeys. I’ve read about them.”
    â€œWhat’s the difference?” asked Adler.
    Oona frowned. “Well, I’m not sure. But I think apes are usually much bigger than monkeys … and stronger.”
    â€œAnd smellier,” said Adler. He squinched up his nose.
    Oona had to agree. The room smelled terrible.
    â€œHow did Isadora get way up there?” Roderick asked, cocking his thumb toward the ceiling.
    Unsure of what he meant, Oona peeked out from beneath the table.
    The tower walls rose up around them like a house of cards built by an unsteady hand. The four walls leaned awkwardly in different directions, yet somehow they managed to meet the high-beamed ceiling three dizzying stories overhead.
    Oona and the two boys were currently in some sort of kitchen area on the bottom floor, where an enormous wood-burning stove sat in the center of the room, atopof which bubbled an equally large kettle of steaming liquid.
    The floor above them—which was not really a floor at all, because there
was
no floor to speak of—was made up entirely of various pieces of floating furniture. Oona blinked in surprise, unsure of what she was seeing.
    The furnishings appeared to hover in the air, with no support from underneath, and her first thought was that some sort of spell had been placed on them. But upon further examination she realized that the furniture was actually suspended by long black ropes that hung down from the high ceiling.
    So far as she could make out, there were two upper levels, one above the other, with a series of steps and platforms built into the walls that led from one level to the next.
    The first level consisted of a sofa, a chandelier, a frighteningly heavy-looking grand piano, and an even heavier-looking red brick fireplace complete with chimney. Oona shook her head, somewhat surprised to see that the fireplace was fully lit. Bits of ash and spark rained down to the lower level of the room as the fireplace rocked back and forth on the straining ropes.
    Farther up, on the topmost level, a second line of furniture also hung from the ceiling, swaying slightly from side to side on their flimsy ropes like bizarre pendulums:a standing oil lamp, a four-poster bed, a chest of drawers, and a mirrored dressing table. At the very top of the room, nearest to the hanging lamp, a rickety landing stuck out of the wall like a crooked wooden finger. It led to a bright red door, and from Oona’s vantage point three stories below, she was just able to make out the word EXIT marked on the door in fat white letters.
    Further examination of the steps and platforms along the walls revealed that the stairs leading from the bottom level to the second were on one side of the room, while the steps that rose from the second level to the third were on the opposite side. This posed quite a problem—how to get from one side of the room to the other with no floor to walk on—though presently Oona realized this was the least of their worries.
    The apes, which were