The Dark Is Rising Read Online Free Page A

bed and pulled back the covers.
    â€œDad must have some wire with that junk in the other attic,” Paul said. “But let’s get this snow out before it melts. Look, there’s more coming in. I bet there aren’t many houses where you can watch the snow coming down on the carpet.”
    He was right: snowflakes were whirling in through the black space in the ceiling, scattering everywhere. Together they gathered what they could into a misshapen snowball on an old magazine, and Will scuttled downstairs to drop it in the bath. Paul wired the skylight back to its catch.
    â€œThere now,” he said briskly, and though he did not look at Will, for an instant they understood one another very well. “Tell you what, Will, it’s freezing up here — why don’t you go down to our room andsleep in my bed ? And I’ll wake you when I come up later — or I might even sleep up here if you can survive Robin’s snoring. All right?”
    â€œAll right,” Will said huskily. “Thanks.”
    He picked up his discarded clothes — with the belt and its new ornament — and bundled them under his arm, then paused at the door as they went out, and looked back. There was nothing to see, now, except a dark damp patch on the carpet where the heap of snow had been. But he felt colder than the cold air had made him, and the sick, empty feeling of fear still lay in his chest. If there had been nothing wrong beyond being frightened of the dark, he would not for the world have gone down to take refuge in Paul’s room. But as things were, he knew he could not stay alone in the room where he belonged. For when they were clearing up that heap of fallen snow, he had seen something that Paul had not. It was impossible, in a howling snowstorm, for anything living to have made that soft unmistakable thud against the glass that he had heard just before the skylight fell. But buried in the heap of snow, he had found the fresh black wing-feather of a rook.
    He heard the farmer’s voice again:
This night will be bad. And tomorrow will be beyond imagining
.

•
Midwinter Day
•
    He was woken by music. It beckoned him, lilting and insistent; delicate music, played by delicate instruments that he could not identify, with one rippling, bell-like phrase running through it in a gold thread of delight. There was in this music so much of the deepest enchantment of all his dreams and imaginings that he woke smiling in pure happiness at the sound. In the moment of his waking, it began to fade, beckoning as it went, and then as he opened his eyes it was gone. He had only the memory of that one rippling phrase still echoing in his head, and itself fading so fast that he sat up abruptly in bed and reached his arm out to the air, as if he could bring it back.
    The room was very still, and there was no music, and yet Will knew that it had not been a dream.
    He was in the twins’ room still; he could hear Robin’s breathing, slow and deep, from the other bed. Cold light glimmered round the edge of the curtains, but no one was stirring anywhere; it was very early. Will pulled on his rumpled clothes from the day before, and slipped out of the room. He crossed the landing to the central window, and looked down.
    In the first shining moment he saw the whole strange-familiar world, glistening white; the roofs of the outbuildings mounded into square towers of snow, and beyond them all the fields and hedges buried, merged into one great flat expanse, unbroken white to the horizon’s brim. Will drew in a long, happy breath, silently rejoicing. Then, very faintly, he heard the music again, the same phrase. He swung round vainly searching for it in the air, as if he might see it somewhere like a flickering light.
    â€œWhere are you?”
    It had gone again. And when he looked back through the window, he saw that his own world had gone with it. In that flash, everything had changed. The snow was