Read Online The Maloneys' Magical Weatherbox by Nigel Quinlan - Free Book Online

so I went looking for it. And I found it. I found it in all sorts of places. Wherever I found it, I found wonder and excitement and strangeness. But to the people who had the magic, or who watched over it, it was just … normal. ‘OK,’ they’d say with a shrug. ‘Have a look. Give it a go. Touch it if you dare.’ They couldn’t see why I was so interested. They didn’t understand what I got out of it. So, in the end, I prefer to be the Tourist. The Tourist finds the magic in the things everyone else has forgot about or thinks are normal. The Tourist finds things amazing and exciting, and maybe he can remind people how amazing and exciting and magic things can be. I don’t want to be a magician anymore, Neil. I find magic everywhere I go.”
    I didn’t speak for a while, and we sat there in silence together.
    â€œLooking forward to tomorrow?” Ed asked after a while.
    â€œYeah,” I said with a laugh. “Hey, you mean today! It’ll be dawn soon! Everyone’s going to be up and—Ow!”
    I put my hands to my ears. My eardrums felt as though they had been stabbed through with white-hot needles. Ed’s face was twisted with pain.
    â€œIt’s the pressure!” His voice sounded far, far away, many miles underground. “Like in a plane! Air pressure!”
    I doubled over, whimpering. Ed was holding his nose and inflating his cheeks.
    Then every window in the house exploded.

 
    CHAPTER 8
    LIZ
    Everything crashed and broke like a great glasshouse falling apart, with me inside lying on the ground and all the broken glass falling down on me, shiny and sharp and cutting. I woke up with a scream stuck in my throat.
    â€œHello, Liz,” said Mrs. Fitzgerald.
    I sat up too fast, making myself gasp for breath, and then I froze. The last thing I could remember was leaning on Dad while climbing the stairs to bed. Now something was howling somewhere nearby. My room was dim and gray and full of moving shadows. The curtains lifted as a breeze blew in through the broken window. There was glass all over the floor. It was almost dawn. Over the howling, I could hear music playing from the alarm clock radio in Mum and Dad’s room. We should be getting up and going downstairs and waiting for the phone to ring.
    She was sitting on the end of my bed, and she was smiling and her teeth were sharp and her eyes were green and glowing.
    I opened my mouth, but I couldn’t speak.
    â€œGood morning, Liz.”
    Just like that. “Good morning, Liz,” she said, uninvited, unwelcome, with monsters screaming and glass broken all around us.
    â€œI wanted to have a quiet word with you before the sun came up. Things are going to get a little unpleasant, Liz. I want you to know that when this is over, I will forgive you for being my enemy. You can come to me whenever you’re ready, and I will teach you everything I know. You can come with me now, and save your family a great deal of pain. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”
    She was smiling. I’d never seen her smile at anyone else. That made me even more scared. Now she was sitting in the dark at the end of my bed, waiting patiently for me to answer. She’d forgive me? What had I ever done to her? If anyone should be asking for forgiveness it should be her, and it’d be a cold day in hell before she’d get it from me.
    Teach me? To be like her? Who could possibly want to be like her?
    Way down deep in my soul, in a place where I looked at her and saw someone tall and scary and beautiful, and then looked at myself and saw someone small and weak and silly, a tiny little voice whispered. Me, it said. I’d like to be like her.
    â€œWell, Liz?” she demanded.
    I could hear a howling and a knocking, things falling and breaking, shouting and crying, like a war going on downstairs. I threw back the covers and leaped from the bed. She put her hand out, palm forward. Her