Free The Survival Game by Tim Wynne-Jones

civilization.”
    â€œWhat about the oratorio?”
    â€œHmm? Oh, that. I have almost a full first sketch. The only thing that needs a lot of work is the Seven Trumpets bit, which is when all the pestilence and plagues and fires happen. You’ve heard of the four horsemen of the apocalypse? No, of course you haven’t. You are a wild child raised in the woods by wolves. What do you know of anything.”
    He sounded vexed, disappointed. As if he thought he had been talking to someone who understood what he was saying.
    Burl finished off the dregs of his coffee. He swivelled in his chair to look out the window. A light mist rose like cold fire from the folds and creases of the forest. In the bay, a merganser paddled by with a brood of ducklings. Twelve, thirteen – too many to be all her own. Sometimes a pike or a snapping turtle got a mother.
    The Maestro sighed deeply, closed his eyes. “I’m so very tired.” He got up from his desk, crawled across his mattress and searched through the medicine bag. “Tired of the whole thing.” He popped something else into his mouth.
    He heaved himself to his feet, yawned and stretched. He stood at the window next to where Burl sat stoop-shouldered, looking out at the mists burning off the water. As he watched, the sun appeared above the eastern rim of the trees, a white ghost of a thing.
    â€œI don’t know how you found me,” said the Maestro, “but I think I’m almost glad you did.”
    Burl swallowed hard. “I’ll clean up that mess outside,” he said.
    â€œGood for you.”
    The Maestro’s voice was already distant, pulling away. He pulled a string and released an opaque black curtain that covered half the window. From the other side he released a second curtain that blocked out the lake from view. Then he proceeded to the other two windows, until the room was reduced to the mean little glow of the electric light he had turned on at his desk when his candles had burned out.
    â€œI hate to see the sun rise,” he said.

10 THE OGRE
    It was good to get outside. The air was cool, and a wind from the east was already picking up, making the aspens tremble, ruffling the mirror surface of the bay and blowing the mist away.
    Burl quickly went about cleaning up after the bear. The path to the shed was littered with garbage. The shed door had been clawed open; the inside was a mess. He emptied it completely and discovered a hammer head with a broken section of handle still in it. He could use it to make a plate to strengthen the door. Then, when there was time, he could carve a new handle.
    If he were to stay, there were many chores that needed attention. Something would have to be done about the garbage. Burnable things would have to be burned; cans would have to be washed clean of scent and squashed flat. Leftovers would have to be taken to some distant spot, preferably an island – he had seen islands from the clifftop – but, in any case, a long way from the cabin.
    Burl stopped working long enough to imagine hauling his old canoe up here somehow. It was under wrap and in need of repair in the shed out back of his father’s house. It seemed impossible he could ever get back there. And yet this beautiful lake was at Mile 29 – that’s what the Maestro had said. Pharaoh was at Mile 10. The CPR track went pretty well due north out of Pharaoh and then curved west. North by northwest had led him across the base of a triangle joining these two places. Not such a distance and yet so far away, it seemed.
    The chill air made him shiver, and he got back to work. He was pleased that there would be something for him to do for as long as he was here.
    When the shed was ship-shape, Burl searched through the used paint tins until he found one with some creosote in it. He had noticed that the posts under the deck were coated in the thick black coal tar. With a crusty old paintbrush he smeared the largest