Free The Cat’s Eye Shell by Kate Forsyth

John opened the door and led them into a messy room crowded with all sorts of fascinating things. There were glass jars full of shells and stones and seed pods and fossils, while books were crammed into the bookshelves and piled higgledy-piggledy on chairs, the table and the floor. There were some fragile bird skeletons, a snakeskin, what looked like a rat’s skull, and an enormous yellow tooth that could only have come from a dragon.

    When the children exclaimed over it, John looked pleased. ‘That’s one of the best things in my collection. Come on, I’ll show you what else I’ve got.’
    â€˜I’d rather you showed me the bacon,’ Emilia said wistfully. ‘It smells scrumptious.’
    John laughed, and busied himself getting them some breakfast, talking virtually nonstop. By the time the children had eaten, they knew that his mother had given John the laboratory to try to keep him happy at Firle Place, since he was not permitted to travel overseas or go to school. He spent most of his time fossicking in the woods and on the Downs, and had a fine collection of old flint heads and some ancient coins that he had found in some Roman ruins. He was most interested in Emilia’s charms, particularly in the old coin, and showed her his collection, none of which was gold.
    John also had a prism hanging in the window,which sent rainbows spinning round the room when he moved it into the light, and a pendulum which he set to swinging, and showed Luka how to measure his pulse by its regular motion. In a tray on the windowsill, he had various pieces of bread growing mould, and another tray in which he was propagating a variety of different seeds. Luka thought he knew all about the fruits and seeds of the field and forest, but John told him all sorts of things he had not known – for instance, the seeds of the sycamore tree could be carried so far by the wind that they had been known to land on the deck of a ship hundreds of miles out to sea.
    â€˜I want to make wings like the sycamore seed and see if they will carry me too,’ John said eagerly, ‘but Mother won’t let me, she says it’s too dangerous. I tried once, and jumped off the top of Firle Beacon, but all I did was crash down and sprain my ankle. Mother says I was lucky I didn’t break my neck! She’s forbidden me from tryingany more, but I’m sure I could work out how to make a flying machine, if she would just let me. I haven’t got any money, though, to buy all the materials myself, and although I keep experimenting with different types of wings, so far nothing has flown that well.’
    He began to show Luka all the different types of flying machines he had built, and crashed, over the past few months, but Emilia grew restless and sat down to play with his collection of shells and stones, some of which were very beautiful. Zizi sat and played with her, raising them to her eye and peering inside, and then shaking them as if expecting something to fall out. Tom looked through the books on John’s shelf, and cried out in surprise. ‘Isn’t this book banned?’ he said. ‘I’ve heard of it, vaguely, but I’ve never seen one before.’
    John glanced over. ‘Lots of my books have been smuggled over from the Continent,’ he said.‘Uncle George mainly tries to get books on religion, you know, lives of the saints, and things like that, but sometimes Mother lets me get books on science and medicine. I’d like to be a doctor, you know, if I can’t be an inventor.’
    Emilia thought she had never met a boy who could talk so much. He spoke very fast, with lots of dramatic stresses and flourishes, so that one could not help but be caught up in his enthusiasm.
    â€˜This is the very best thing I’ve ever got, though,’ John said, showing them a long black tube mounted on a stand near the window. ‘It’s brand new. We only got it a few weeks ago.