SPARX Incarnation: Mark of the Green Dragon (SPARX Series I Book 1) Read Online Free Page A

inside. Then suddenly, the pressure inside released. I heard a snap.
    I opened my eyes just in time to see the stake whiz past Kabor’s head and whack the bushes right behind him.
    “What the heck?” I said.
    “That was weird,” said Gariff.
    “Huh?” said Kabor, oblivious. He shot me a sideways glance as he squirreled his glasses away. Gariff spoke up.
    “The stake went into some branches overhanging the water there,” he said, looking to Kabor, “and then she flung right back at you… What are the odds?”
    Kabor looked behind him, picked up the stake, and shrugged. “What are the odds of it happening twice?” he said. He then whipped it back in a low arc. This time, it landed with a splash and was whisked away by the current.
    “How does that even happen?” I said, looking to Gariff.
    The burly Stout shifted his weight back and forth with unease in his stance, eyes scanning the treetops. He had no explanation to offer. His cousin broke the silence.
    “It’s a bit gusty up there, that’s all,” said Kabor. “The wind bowed a branch and it snapped back to hit the stake just right.”
    “It didn’t look that way to me… but what else could it be?” said Gariff, scratching his head, eyes still searching. “I can’t think of any other way.”
    I peered into the suspect branches overhanging the creek. The entire incident felt a little unnatural, amplified by the simple fact that bog bodies were nearby. The uneasy feeling was not easy to shake.
    “Time to go,” I said at last, “or we’ll be crossing the mire in the dark.”
    Kabor completely dismissed me and made his way to the next pond.
    *
    Gariff’s annoying cousin had left the two of us standing beside the hole where the post used to be. Like me, Gariff was all for a quick departure, but for different reasons. He had grumbled on and off that, with all the time wasted, we could have made it to the Akedan ruins and back for some “real” treasure hunting. He made one final pitch for it.
    “We can still get there,” he said. “Kabor says there’s secret stairs in d’em ruins somewhere, with a heavy stone door at the bottom openin’ to an arm’ry. The finest blades ever ‘smithed came out of Fortune Bay, they say.” Gariff puffed out his chest. “Some day, they’ll say the same about d’Hills.”
    I rolled my eyes.
    “What are we going to do with a bunch of rusty old blades?” I said.
    He shrugged in a way to suggest he was about to name a long list of fantastic things, and then he listed a bunch of boring things. Besides, trouble followed Kabor like his very own shadow, causing me to wonder what was in store for us if we actually did find those stairs. It suffices to say I wanted no part of his schemes.
    “There’s got to be something good there,” Gariff went on. “Cuz seen it on a really old map, Nud.”
    “He can’t see his hand in front of his face,” I retorted.
    “Well… ya… but he can sort’a see his hand beside his face.”
    I had to give to him that much. His cousin could read, after all.
    “That map was in a box of notes n’letters n’such,” he continued. “Property of the oldest, grizzliest Hill Stout you ever saw. The ole man was ready to pass on and he gave it up for nothing but three dirty jokes. And they had to be good ones.”
    If he had asked for clean jokes, Kabor would have been in trouble.
    No doubt, the old Stout was dead by the time we heard the story, making it impossible to confirm or deny.
    “Well, where’s the map? Cough it up, let’s take a look.” I said.
    I had seen a good many maps and drawings of what Akeda used to look like. There were even maps portraying the old Abindohn settlement that preceded it. Akeda was once a first-rate staging ground for the defense of the bay, settled by Men on the north shore. The Men who had once lived there abandoned it long before my time – Paplov’s too – and moved further north along Dim River to establish Harrow on the shores of Dim Lake.