Dear Olly Read Online Free

dodged – but the hobby was always still there, right behind him, and waiting for just the right moment. For hour upon hour the chase went on over the parched high sierras, along lush river valleys, in amongst the roofs and chimneys and aerials of hilltop villages and towns.
    Hero was tiring, and tiring fast now. There was a forest below filling the valley. He saw his one last chance. With the hobby still on his tail, he divedsuddenly down in amongst the shadows of the cork trees. He flitted through the branches, flashed through the dappled light, seeking the darkest depths of the forest. A glance back, and then another. The hobby was nowhere to be seen. On he sped, just to be sure, to be very sure. His eyes scanned the forest about him. The hobby had not followed him. He had lost him. He was safe at last. He landed, his heart beating wildly, and perched there for some time, on the lookout all thewhile for the stubby-tailed silhouette he so much dreaded, listening for the killer kew-kew call he never again wanted to hear.
    Hero had stayed long enough. He had to go, he had to risk it sometime. He lifted off his perch out of the dark depths of the forest and flew away south, straight as an arrow, high over the sunlit sierras.
    The hobby came down on him like a bolt from the blue, missing him by only a whisker at the first pass, so close Hero could see the dark glint in his eye. The bare sierras stretched away to the horizon – they offered no hiding place. Hero dived, and the death shadow followed him. He cried out, steeling himself for cruel claws that would tear the life out of him.
    A gunshot blasted the air about him.
    Hero saw the hobby stagger and stutter in flight, and hurtle to earth, where he bounced and bounced, and then was still. Hunters came running over the hills with their dogs.
    Hero could feel the wind off the sea ahead, and the heat of the desert beyond, beckoning him on. The sea was quickly crossed. He drank from a swimmingpool, beside a hotel of white marble, in Morocco. Children were playing there, laughing with delight every time he came swooping down to dip into the blue of the water beside them. But once the children had gone inside, once he had drunk and fed his fill, Hero set off across the desert. He flew by the moon, by the stars, keeping low over the sand.
    The great red sun came up over the desert and chased away the cold of the night. Still no water, still alone. Hero cried out for his friends again and again as he flew. Tswit. Tswit. Tswit. Never an answering call, never a sign of them. All day and another night and another day, Hero flew, gliding, resting on the thermals whenever he could, for he felt his strength ebbing away fast. Without water he could not go on much longer.And now there came a hot desert wind blowing against him, slowing him. He saw the billowing sandstorm in the distance, and heard its dreadful roaring. To be caught in it would be certain death. He would have to fly over it. With the very last of his strength he beat his way skywards. Try as he did, Hero could not entirely avoid the stinging lash of the fringes of the storm, but at least the murderous heart of it had passed safely beneath him.
    Hero glided now because there was no power in his wings to do anything else. He was completely exhausted. That last stupendous effort had finished him utterly. He floated on the air as far as he could. He called out desperately for his companions. Tswit. Tswit. Tswit. Suddenly, the whole desert seemed to beanswering him. He called again, and from the heat haze below came a clamouring chorus of welcome. The haze darkened and became trees – an oasis of palm trees amongst the sand dunes below him, where every tree was alive with birds, all of them singing out their greetings.
    Hero floated down to join them. They were there in their thousands, swallows and martins, and swifts, too. Hero landed where he needed to, right at the water’s edge. It didn’t matter a bit to him when a