The Hotel Under the Sand Read Online Free

her, from her parquet floors to her coffered ceilings trimmed in gold. She was the finest hotel in the whole world. She was my
home
. My first real home.
    “But Fate had other ideas. The wind got so loud the crystal pendants on the lamps shook, and then suddenly the floor pitched from beneath my feet as the hotel went up on end. I went sliding all the way down the marble floor of the Lobby and was catapulted through the front doors into the storm.
    “I scrambled to my feet and turned around in time to see the entire hotel sinking like a ship under the waves of sand, disappearing before my eyes. The last sight I saw was her sign, all those hundreds of little electric bulbs spelling out THE GRAND WENLOCKE, still shining away through the darkness as the Dunes engulfed her.
    “I shouted, and tried to dive after her. I think I intended to try to dig her out. But the sand blew so fiercely I couldn’t see, and then I couldn’t breathe, and… I guess I got buried too.”

4
T HE W IND
    "T HAT’S SO SAD!” said Emma. “Didn’t anyone ever try to dig down and find you?”
    “I don’t think anyone did,” said Winston, tucking away his handkerchief. “If Mr. Wenlocke got away alive, he must have been a ruined man; all his money was in that hotel. When he was moving in I helped him carry strongboxes of gold up to his suite, and he told me he’d put them away himself in his hidden safe place.
    “And what would he have told all his investors, when the hotel sank? Some of them seemed to be—well, not very nice people. He would probably have had to go away and live incognito somewhere.”
    At this point Emma noticed that Winston seemed to be fading again, although he was no longer as upset as he had been. Looking around, she saw that the sky was getting lighter. The long night had ended, and the stars had gone home.
    Winston’s voice continued, getting softer now: “In all this time, you’re the first person I’ve seen. I thought you were one of the guests, arriving at last. Sometimes I get confused…”
    His voice trailed away into silence, and, as Emma watched, Winston began to vanish: first his face and hands, and then his white uniform, and finally there were only the gleaming brass buttons and the winking gold of his badge. Then the first rays of the rising sun touched the high dune, turning everything gold, and she could no longer see where he had been at all.
    “At least he wasn’t a scary ghost,” said Emma to herself.
    She got up and added more sticks to her fire, because she knew it’s important to keep your fire going when you’ve been cast away. Then she went to the creek and washed as well as she could without soap or towels. The frogs watched her, and politely hopped from leaf to leaf as she picked blackberries for her breakfast.
    It was turning into a bright, clear day, hot as summer but with the tired-looking light of early autumn. Emma remembered what Winston had told her about the Storm of the Equinox coming out of a clear sky. It worried her a little because she was pretty sure that there are two Equinoxes every year, one on the first day of spring and the other on the first day of autumn.
    “If this place has such awful weather,” she told herself, “I’d better make myself a much safer place to live.”
    So all that day Emma worked hard, walking up and down the beach, dragging more wreckage to her camp. She dug holes and stuck down tree branches and two-by-fours, making a fence to keep the blowing sand out.
    That afternoon she found the best thing of all: half-buried in the rippled sand was an aluminum rowboat. Its stern had broken away, but the rest of it was all in one piece.
This will never float again, but if I can dig it out, I can turn it upside down and sleep under it
, thought Emma.
It will be just like a tent, only stronger
.
    She spent the rest of the day digging out the boat with a piece of plank, and then dragging the boat up the beach to her camp. It was awfully heavy, but she