The Forest of Adventures (#1 of The Knight Trilogy) Read Online Free Page A

through the ravages of
battle.

4. INTO TEMPTATION
     
    Overnight the snow had draped
the garden in a soft sheet of whiteness, well and truly burying the
evidence of the hyacinth crime. I didn’t hear Sam leave for college
and I wondered if he’d headed home last night instead of
staying.
    When at last I set off, Blake’s
coat bundled up in my arms, I saw the ghostly remains of Sam’s
footsteps pressed into the snow late last night. Using them as my
guide, I let my own feet press heavily into them imagining them
pressing into the surface of my heart. But amongst the weighty
sadness, there was a flutter as if a fledgling bird was fluttering
its wings; it was the knowledge that today I’d see Blake.
    I walked to college slowly,
enjoying the sensation of the whole world being asleep. By the time
I arrived, I was late even by my standards; time keeping not being
one of my strengths. The whole school was in class and now I had
the dilemma of missing lesson or making an embarrassingly dramatic
entrance into English; and with Blake’s coat!
    Swearing, I glanced at my watch
but before I could register the time, my eyes were distracted by
something laying on the surface of the snow. Crouching down on my
hind quarters with the morbid curiosity of a child, I inspected the
fragile corpse of a butterfly; its rich orange and red wings like a
blood stain against the snow. I looked down in horrified
fascination at the wretched creature, which having been completely
out of time with the rest of the world, had perished as a result. I
reached out my hand to touch it but as soon as my finger made
contact with it, it disintegrated into a coloured dust spreading
out across the snow like a smear of paint on a blank canvas.
    A pair of navy converse alerted
me to the fact that my bizarre behaviour was being closely
witnessed. The embarrassment held me in suspension and I took a
long blink hoping that whoever it was might just vanish. A hand
came down into view, offering me a hand up - the exact opposite of
what I wanted. My desired direction was down into the ground
because I knew without looking that the hand belonged to Blake.
    Rejecting his help, I struggled
to my feet, hot blood rushing to my cheeks. I could barely think
how I would be able to look at him and when I finally managed to
brave it out, all I could see was an amused and curious smile
dancing over his lips.
    Snow began to fall and, whether
it was the blood rushing to my head, or the effect Blake had on me,
I had the sudden feeling of being turned slowly upside down inside
of a snow-globe. Time slid; the snow fell in slow motion and Blake
looked deep into my eyes. I was transfixed on a single snowflake
that was balanced on one of his long dark eyelashes. His brown eyes
were the only promise of warmth in the whole landscape.
    The spell was suddenly broken
by Blake’s warm and amused voice, “Ah! It would seem that we’re
both faced with the same dilemma.’ His eyes flashed with
promise.
    I smiled back in response, not
trusting myself to speak without making a further idiot of
myself.
    “So…are you going to tell me
what is quite so fascinating about that particular patch of floor?”
he said, laughing.
    I shrugged, “Nothing - it was
nothing. I was tying my shoe lace.”
    Blake looked down at my zip up
boots and looked away, letting it go.
    “So to be or not to be?” he
said nodding in the direction of the English block.
    “I don’t know. Dwell’s a real
time beast.”
    He smiled, “Some people just
find time more important than others.” He looked at me and I
couldn’t help but sense he was trying to say something more, that
he was urging me to understand a hidden message but before I could
fathom, he went on, “Look, I don’t know about you but I am freezing
and the thought of Dwell’s frosty reception doesn’t fill me with a
warm glow. However…” he cracked a flirtatious smile, “…hot
chocolate at the bookshop seems tempting. How about it? Can I