Read Online The Puzzle Ring by Kate Forsyth - Free Book Online Page B

drenched in moonlight. She dropped the hag-stone. All was dark and cold. She lifted it to her eye again. All was clear and bright.
    Beside her, Donovan stumbled through the bushes, swearing. She held out her right hand. ‘Here, take my hand. I can see the way.’
    â€˜You must be able to see like a cat. I can’t see anything,’ he grumbled.
    Hannah did not say anything about the hag-stone. She was by nature reluctant to confide in anyone, let alone a boy she had only just met. She wanted to have time to think about what had just happened, and what it meant.
The less said
,
the better
, she thought, repeating one of her mother’s favourite maxims.
    She reached out and took his hand. He held her fingers as lightly as if he was holding some small hurt animal. Hannah led him along the path, the hag-stone held to her left eye, wondering at the clarity of her sight. She felt as if she had strayed into a fairytale, as full of peril as of wonder, a place where anything could happen. She looked about her and saw odd shadows crouched under bushes, and small points of light like gleaming eyes, and her steps quickened with her heart. Donovan kept pace with her, stumbling over snaking roots and stones that Hannah could see clearly.
    When Hannah reached the road that led from the village, she dropped the hag-stone from her eye and was once againstanding in darkness. Only the row of black and white striped posts, with their red shiny triangles of reflective metal, showed where the road ran. The tall gates of Wintersloe Castle were only a few steps away, and Hannah could see the lights of the tiny gatehouse and smell food cooking.
    â€˜I’d better head back. My dad’ll be furious. See you tomorrow, hey?’
    â€˜Okay.’ Hannah gave a wave of her hand and went in through the little gate.
    Donovan began to hurry away down the road, his shoulders hunched under his long black coat.
    As she walked up the shadowy driveway to the house, Hannah lifted the hag-stone to her eye to see the landscape illuminated brightly, then dropped it to see the landscape dark and scary once more. It was a trick she thought she would never grow tired of. Her body fizzled with excitement and amazement and disbelief. All her life Hannah had longed for magical adventures—to ride a unicorn, to find a dragon’s egg, to rub a lamp and conjure a genie. Never had she expected a toad would spit an enchanted stone at her feet. But then, she had never expected to discover she was the lost great-granddaughter of a countess either.

The Black Rose

    â€˜Where have you been?’ Roz cried as soon as Hannah came through the front door. ‘We’ve been calling for you for hours!’
    Hannah stiffened her back. ‘I went up the hill with that boy Donovan.’
    â€˜Look at you! Your dress is torn, your hair’s a mess! You are not to go wandering off with some strange boy!’ Roz’s voice was shrill. ‘It’s dark out there, Hannah! When are you going to learn some sense?’
    â€˜She’s right, my lamb.’ Linnet was standing in the shadows, her face creased with concern. ‘That hill is not a safe place at the best of times, but certainly not at dusk or dawn or midnight. You mustn’t go round it, or climb it, and you must never, ever go inside the cave. Will you promise me?’
    Hannah had no intention of promising any such thing. She glared at her mother. ‘I was just exploring. I didn’t go very far. It’s not my fault I didn’t hear you. It’s a big garden!’
    Roz gave her a little shake. ‘Just stay where I can see you, all right?’
    Hannah wrenched herself free. ‘Oh, don’t fuss, Mum! I’m not a little kid any more. Nothing’s going to happen to me.’
    â€˜Your father was a grown man,’ Roz said through stiff lips, her hand clenched about the ring beneath her shirt. ‘Yet something happened to him, didn’t