Free The Book of Sight by Deborah Dunlevy Page B

to what they were going through now. It was not so comforting to hear that there was something out there they were afraid of, though.
    In all the excitement over the new things she’d been discovering, it hadn’t really occurred to her that there might be dangers, too. Or enemies even. Now that she thought of it, it seemed pretty obvious (after all someone had to be keeping this stuff a secret from everyone), but it was disturbing. It gave everything a new edge.
    It made her more interested in these other kids, too. Her desire to laugh at their earnestness seemed stupid now. She thought of Alex’s eerie intuition about the danger on the junk pile, of Adam’s insatiable curiosity and quick thinking, and of that way Logan had of looking at you like he was reading your mind. If there was some sort of danger out there, they were going to be the ones facing it with her.
    Eve was happy to realize that she had no problem with that at all.

8
Hurrying Along, Stumbling Again
    T he old sword shone in the bright sunlight coming through the window. Adam turned it this way and that, marveling again, as he had so many times since that day he had first read the Book of Sight, at the way the light tripped and danced and played tag with the shadows like a living thing. He was waiting in his room for the others, who were coming over to see the newly cleaned up sword.
    Two weeks had passed since the day they first visited the Dund, and still no one new had come to the ring of trees, and they had made no progress in discovering anyone else who knew anything about the Book of Sight. Mostly, the kids tried to stay close to the Redoubt, waiting for anyone new. But they had also made a few more visits to the Gylf and to the Dund. Their latest visit to the Gylf had been yesterday and when they had passed the place where they had swung on the vines, Adam had told them about the sword.
    With great difficulty he had smuggled it into his house when his mother wasn’t looking, and he had spent a lot of hours since then scouring off the rust. It was undeniably cool to have his own sword, even if it wasn’t a particularly dangerous one. Adam had searched the internet, and he was pretty sure it was a foot artillery sword from the civil war era. It was short and straight and had a brass hilt. From what he’d read, it was more of a weed-whacker than a weapon, but it was still pretty sweet to have an antique sword hidden in his room. He was looking forward to showing it off to his friends.
    Though he really wanted them to see it, he didn’t want to risk smuggling it out of the house and back in again. As long as it was in his room, his mom would never find it. Other than the occasional harangue about cleaning it up, she was too busy to bother much with his room, but in other places around the house she had a disturbing tendency to pop up when you least expected her. A sword wasn’t exactly something you could stick in a backpack or tuck out of sight under a sweatshirt, so they’d arranged for everyone to come by his house after meeting up at the Redoubt that morning.
    Right on time, the doorbell rang. Stashing the sword carefully under his bed, Adam ran down and opened the door. Then he stopped short.
    Instead of Alex, Logan and Eve, it was his best friend James waiting there. Adam quickly recovered.
    “Dude! You’re back!”
    James grinned and stepped inside. “Didn’t you get my text?”
    Adam shrugged, realizing that he hadn’t turned his phone on in days, and James laughed and headed automatically upstairs to Adam’s room. James and Adam had been best friends since they were in kindergarten. They played video games, traded books, and liked all the same movies. James was over at Adam’s house so much, he practically lived there.
    “Yeah, I should have known better. So, what have you been up to?”
    Adam didn’t even know where to start, but he was temporarily saved from the necessity when the doorbell rang again. This time it really was