Free The Children of Hare Hill by Scott McKenzie Page A

feeling wash over him.
    I completed one of the challenges all by myself! he thought.
    Then, as quickly as the feeling of achievement had come, it was replaced by concern for his sister.
    Is she being chased by dinosaurs too? he thought, and headed in the direction of hare number ten—the hare Ben and Charlotte thought they had been looking for when they were separated. That felt like a long time ago, almost as if a different little boy had rolled the dice with his sister.
     

Chapter 18
     
    Charlotte arrived at the sixth hare just in time to see it break out of its spell. She was taken aback.
    But I didn't have to complete a challenge or solve a puzzle , she said to herself, then a thought struck her and she ran back across the bridge onto the island. The bridge where the woman—or was it the witch?—had tried to get Charlotte to go with her had repaired itself.
    This was the challenge , Charlotte realised. The hare had been broken from its spell, so she knew she must have done the right thing. For a brief moment, she considered what might have happened if she had gone across the bridge with the stranger, but she quickly wiped it from her mind. She thought of Ben instead.
    "Charlotte!" came a shout from across the pond. This time it was a voice she recognised, and the boy waving at her was the person she longed to see more than anyone in the whole world.
    "Ben!"
    She sprinted across the bridge and they met with a warm embrace. In their excitement, they bombarded each other with questions like, "What happened to you?" and "Where did you go?" before Charlotte said, "Okay, Ben, you go first. What happened to you?"
    "I went to the tenth hare but you weren't there. Then I went to hare number four, which was the number on my dice when we rolled them together. Then, when I got there, I had to go into the hut and spot animals using some binoculars. It started off with hares and birds, but then I saw a unicorn, a werewolf, and a Tyrannosaurus Rex!"
    Had they found themselves in any other situation on any other day, Charlotte would have written off what Ben was saying as either pure fantasy or the fevered dreams of a child who had had too much cheese before bedtime. She was no stranger to vivid dreams herself. But this was their day in the dreamland of Hare Hill, where anything was possible. She believed him completely; after all they had seen together, why would he feel the need to make up anything more fantastic? She was also relieved that his experience had been exciting and fun, unlike hers.
    "What did you have to do?" Ben asked, and Charlotte told him. She told him about the woman who said she would take her to Ben and her mother, how she had tried to cross the bridge, and how the hares had helped her cast her own spell that sent the woman tumbling into the murky depths of the pond.
    "Wow," Ben said. "Were you scared?"
    "A little," Charlotte said. "But somehow I knew the right thing to do."
    "Do you think it was the witch?"
    "I don't know. I'm starting to think there isn't a witch, not a real one."
    "Why?"
    "Because I've worked out the solution to the Guardian's riddle."
    "Really? What is it?"
    Charlotte recited the Guardian’s riddle.
     
    "My first will glow and also has wings,
    My second can't be found in town, but belongs to these things,
    My third and fourth are in something that might scare,
    My fifth is waiting at Pistol Pond, but isn't a hare."
     
    “It's one of those puzzles where you need to work out which letters are in one word but not the other, or in both words in one line of the riddle, isn't it?” Ben said.
    “That's right,” Charlotte said.
    “I started thinking about it and I thought I'd worked out the first letters, but I can't make it work.”
    “How far did you get?”
    “On the first line, we need a letter that is in ‘glow’ and ‘wings,’ right?”
    Charlotte nodded and Ben continued. “So that gave me ‘W’. Then we need a letter that isn't in ‘town’ but is in ‘things,’ so I