Paper Read Online Free

Paper
Book: Paper Read Online Free
Author: Kell Inkston
Tags: Fiction, Fantasy, Magic, Young Adult, free, fable, kell, inkston
Pages:
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is fake will be
burnt away. Time counts down as they try one failed idea after
another; each time the looming flames of the Overlord’s fury
burning closer and closer. The blacksmith is the only one not
running about in a panic, as he reflects on all that he’s seen and
heard over his years from the fake mayor and his miserable wife .
It is then that the blacksmith comes to a conclusion.
    “ Tenay!” he shouts across
the chaos of people rushing from the town to get to the island’s
edge with their crude makeshift vessels. She doesn’t hear him. He
draws more into his old lungs. “Tenay!” She hears him this time,
and he meets her across the square as the two Ralics flail about
leading the people to evacuate.
    “ Han?” Tenay says, her eyes
wide with fear.
    “ Come with me. I know what
to do. We must go to the only place with books!”
    The two smiths turn to the mayor’s home
and dive in. As the colors of autumn through flame approach the
windows, the two find the library. Han grasps a book, shoves it out
the window, and sees it repel the flame, like magic. He grins,
seeing his hunch was right, and the two go from the library and
start shouting.
    Han and Tenay call out to the others.
“It’s safe in here!” They don’t believe them until Han displays the
properties of the book in his hands–when he runs into the flames
and the townspeople see them wrap near, but not around the
blacksmith.
    Just in time, every soul is turned
around and huddled into the large library. The flames pass, as the
wood, metal, and everything else in their town burns away. After
the passing, the entire town is sitting in the library, even the
ground around it protected by the book’s magic. They are now
floating out on the ocean, and far, very far off, they see the
great, verdant landmass that their ancestors were moved from by the
Overlord–something they will only discover once they’ve reached it.
Everyone takes a few moments of silence to realize their new,
rather ridiculous, situation and then some of them start crafting
survival essentials–hopefully something to row and catch fish with
as well.
    Tenay just stares out at the island in
thought as she sits in exhaustion and picks up one of the library’s
books.
    “ Ralic?” She asks, turning
to her husband.
    “ Yeah?” he says, peeling off
his hero’s garb.
    “ Why was it paper, the very
thing that the Overlord used to device us, that saved us in the
end?”
    Ralic moves his head from side to side
as his father greets his wife after all this time. “How should I
know? That’s not my job,” he says with a smile.
    Tenay kisses his cheek just as Han sits
next to them. “Well, kids, I think it’s because the Overlord used
ignorance to fool us.” The two youths turn to the great–bearded
man. “Words and learning is repulsive to deceptions, because what
is fake cannot also be true. The Overlord’s last trick was to make
us hate paper, and see it as something made for crafting lies. Once
we killed the Overlord, it would make sure that everything on the
island, including the boats we made and the metal we wrought, would
burn away from its magic. As its illusions burned away, the books
were the only real thing on the island, and thus the only thing
that could save us. It was not the paper that saved us, but the
words upon the paper,” Han smiles and embraces the two
kids.
    “ So, how will we prevent
this from happening again?” Ralic says, staring into the
distance.
    Han frowns. “If only we could read,
perhaps the books might hold the answer.”
    “ Um, excuse me,” a weak
voice calls from the side of the library, stepping over. It is the
wife of Ralic the Eleventh–she looks much happier now, Tenay
thinks. “I can read,” she says, “The paper Ralic did his best to
keep me from the library, but he had to leave the house sometime,”
she says with a laugh. “I’d love to teach you how to
read!”
     
    … There you have it, kid,
that’s why the pen is
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