Read Online The Three Feathers - The Magnificent Journey of Joshua Aylong by Stefan Bolz - Free Book Online Page A

her wings unfold and the upward winds take her, transporting her almost back to his height. She pushed her wings down and flew past him only to dive again. He could sense her immense joy.
    “I remember!” Her ecstatic thoughts told him. “I remember it, Krieg.”
    He stood at the edge of the sheer drop, looking down and he felt something that he had felt only once since his days of the Great War: It was fear. It paralyzed him, made his mouth dry and made his heart beat against his chest.
    “Be free!” The faintest thought reached him while he watched her disappear into the clouds. “Be yourself and be free…”
    He looked down into the deep for a while longer letting everything that he felt wash through him, take over and envelop him completely. Then he trotted about a hundred yards back from the edge and turned around. This was it. He would do this or die. The thought of the inevitability of his choice let everything around him quiet down. Without hesitation he jumped forward and began to gallop, concentrating only on his hooves racing over the ground carrying him toward the edge, toward either life or death. Thirty yards to go. He had reached his maximum speed. His powerful muscles pushed him further and further. Twenty yards. He could see the edge clearly before him coming ever closer.
    Ten yards. He reached the point of no return. There was nothing stopping him. And with that thought he jumped.
    He fell much faster than he had imagined he would. He had no frame of reference for falling this deep, this far. Back at the waterfall he had gotten a small inkling. But this was a five thousand foot drop.
    “Just let it happen,” he thought to himself. “Just let it happen.”
    Having reached terminal velocity at fifty four yards per second he had the strange sensation of hovering even though the sound of the wind was deafening in his ears. He could not see anything and part of him waited for the inevitable crash when he would hit the ground. Then he broke through the clouds and for a split second he saw Hollow’s Gate far below him and its beauty took his breath away. And then everything went black.
     

9. E AGLES
    Suddenly the ground beneath them gave way and, at first, Joshua thought that Krieg and the Pegasus, together with the cliff behind them, moved away from him. But then he realized that he and Grey were moving away from them! At that moment he knew what the cracking sound was. A large part of the plateau on which they stood was breaking off, taking him and the wolf with it and disappearing into the depth below. And then he fell.
    His immediate concern was for the wolf. “Grey!” He thought frantically as he saw the wolf try desperately to hold on to something and then slide off the breaking rock and fall. Joshua knew at that moment that there was nothing he could do for the wolf. He would never reach him even though he tugged his wings in as much as he could in an attempt to somehow get close to him. The wolf’s weight made him fall much faster than Joshua. He saw him for an instant far below and Joshua thought at that moment that his heart would break. Then the wolf disappeared into the fog and was gone. Out of the corner of his eye Joshua saw the Pegasus break free and the path they came on beginning to crumble. Suddenly there were large rocks flying toward him and his only choice was to unfold his wings and fly, moving away from the falling rocks.
    When his wings unfolded and he flew away from the cliff, he saw the Pegasus and Krieg running along the path as it broke off underneath them. They made it just in time to the second path that lead upward. For a split second Joshua considered flying back toward Krieg but he realized that he would never make it up there again. Then the fog enclosed him and he didn’t see anything anymore. He could hear the wind under his wings but as he made small adjustments, he sailed in almost complete silence. In the distance he heard the rocks breaking off the cliff in an