The Second Forever Read Online Free

it’s one of those things that can never be unlearnt.’
    â€˜Me too,’ said Peter. ‘Every now and then I dream we are reading the book and all the words come back.’
    â€˜So you didn’t destroy it at all, did you?’ said Peter’s grandfather. ‘You just transferred it into your brains.’
    â€˜If we do manage to write it again and fix things,’ Peter said, ‘we must hide it away as soon as possible, where no one will ever be able to reach it.’
    â€˜We will,’ said Festival.
    â€˜And how do we know it will make everything right again?’ said Peter. ‘It seems ridiculous thatsomething as simple as reading the book could fix all our problems.’
    â€˜I know,’ said Festival. ‘Lots of people think the same, but we have to try. It can’t make things worse.’
    â€˜Yes it can,’ said Peter. ‘The book will exist again.’
    â€˜Maybe we can take it to a remote, deserted place – somewhere lifeless where there is nothing it can influence – and read it another thousand times.’
    They both knew no such place existed. Even the most barren place on earth had not always been that way, and reading the book there would have some consequence, but they also knew that they had no choice. They would have to read it somewhere.
    The children knew too that no matter where they hid the book, someone would eventually find it. It would be impossible to keep its re-birth a secret and, regardless of what warnings they would try to give, there would always be people for whom the lure of immortality would be like a terrible drug that they would do anything to reach. The lure was so irresistible that if they could somehow place the book in the heart of a nuclear reactor, people would be prepared to walk naked into the radiation to read it. And even if they could tie it to an atom bomb and detonate it, the book would emerge unscathed.
    They also knew that in spite of every consequence, they could and would re-create it.
    â€˜What is the worst thing that could happen?’ said Peter’s grandfather. ‘If you do rewrite the book and it does change the weather, millions and millions of people will survive, and if someone finds the book and reads it – even if fifty people or a hundred or two hundred read it – their sacrifice will be small compared to the end of all life.’
    â€˜But . . .’ Peter began.
    â€˜I know it sounds melodramatic, but think about it. How long will it be until there is no water left in our world? A lot of species have already become extinct. We haven’t worried about it as much as we would have done a few years ago because we’ve been too busy surviving ourselves,’ the old man continued. ‘And what about Festival’s world? Today there are five galleries underwater. Tomorrow it will be six and then seven, until there is nowhere left for anyone to go and they will all drown.’
    â€˜I know,’ said Peter.
    â€˜Yes you do, and you both know you have no choice.’
    The two children nodded.
    Peter and Festival had discovered the simple secret about reading the book a second time being able to reverse the curse. As the creator of the book, Darkwood had been unable to regain mortality and now Peter and Festival knew that by re-creating the book,they too could possibly become immortal. Their only consolation was that they would at least have each other.
    â€˜I don’t know if we’ll be able to remember it all,’ Peter said, but he knew that every word was imprinted in the deepest corner of their two brains, and it didn’t live just there, but in every single cell of every part of their bodies. They were the book and it just needed to be brought back and put on paper. If either of them were unable to remember something, the previous words would trigger the other’s memory. If they couldn’t remember everything individually,