Bedtime Story Read Online Free Page B

His breathing slowed.
    He never fell asleep when I was reading, but he always closed his eyes. Once when I asked him why, he explained, “When I close my eyes I can see what you’re reading. It’s like a movie inside my head.”
    Although it took more than an hour, we finished
The Hobbit
that night; there wasn’t really a good place to stop in the last few chapters.
    I was slipping the book back into the space on the shelf by the door when he said,
“Lord of the Rings
next?”
    I turned back to him, setting the bookmark on the edge of the shelf. “Maybe,” I said, trying not to sound hurt. “We’ll have to see.”
    He snuggled more deeply under the covers. “Okay.”
    “Time for sleep now, though.”
    “Yeah.”
    “Sweet dreams,” I said as I stepped into the hallway. “Happy birthday.”
    I left the door open a foot or so, the way he liked it.

    The soldiers marched Matthias quickly toward the castle, their boots echoing off the cobbles and the stone walls. Few people were out so soon after sunrise, but those who were gave the men wide berth, stepping into gutters or doorways to let them pass.
    He gasped when they rounded the corner and the castle came into view.
    The castle gates were closed.
    For as long as he could remember, the gates had stood open, guarded, but swung wide onto the broad castle boulevard, the gardens within, and the towers that always seemed to shine against the blue sky. People would come and go freely. But this morning the entrance was blocked with towering wooden doors braced with iron.
    Matthias stumbled slightly when Captain Bream stopped at a narrow iron door cut into a shallow recess in the castle wall, a short distance from the gates. The captain tapped three times on the door, and an eye-slit opened. The eyes behind the door surveyed them carefully, and after a moment a tumbler chunked into place and the door opened.
    Matthias peered into the narrow opening, expecting to see the castle grounds on the other side of the wall. Instead, there was a dim tunnel, lit with torches, sloping into the depths of the castle. Armed guards stood inside.
    “Come on,” the captain said, directing him through the door.
    Matthias’s heart jumped into his throat as he stared ahead, his mind filled with his worst imaginings of the castle dungeons.
    The captain dismissed his men, and they swung the heavy iron door shut as they left. The captain took a torch from one of the guards and started down the hallway.
    Matthias followed silently, the torchlight wavering on the walls. The tunnel angled downward for a while, the walls growing damper, the air thick. Men stood guard at the openings of other tunnels, and they straightened as the captain passed.
    Then the tunnel began to climb. In time, the air became fresher, cooler. The walls and the floor dried. Matthias had lost track of how long they had been walking when they came to a sudden stop at a dark archway, covered by what seemed to be a heavy curtain.
    The captain pushed his torch into a bracket on the wall, then led Matthias through a barely noticeable seam in the middle of the curtain.
    No, not a curtain, Matthias realized as he passed through it: a tapestry.
    He found himself in a wide corridor, flanked on one side by a row of tapestries down the length of the stone wall through which he hadjust passed, and on the other by a series of high windows. A breeze blew cool from outside.
    Matthias stopped in the middle of the corridor. The captain turned to him. His face was hard, and his mouth opened to speak, but he stopped himself.
    Matthias was overwhelmed, and confused. To go from the backroom of the tavern to the heights of the castle …
    He looked first at the wall.
    The tapestries were all about the kingdom. He was standing in front of a weaving of his home: the island at the mouth of the Col River with the walled lower city rising toward the castle, and on the shore, Colcott Town. The next tapestry over was a battle scene, soldiers fighting,