Free The Dragon Tree by Jane Langton Page A

hall and two more in the study.
    When the whole house was safe from the downpour, there were puddles to be mopped up. Aunt Alex and Uncle Fred got down on their knees with sponges in the front hall. Then Aunt Alex looked up and saw Eddy reach into the closet for his parka. Stumbling to her feet, she said, “Oh, Eddy, it’s not your turn again? Surely no one’s going to chop down that tree in all this rain.”
    “Don’t be too sure,” said Uncle Fred grimly. He stood up and poked in the closet for an umbrella. “It’s just when he might decide to do it.”
    “Sidney’s out there,” said Eddy, popping open the umbrella. “It’s my turn now. I’ll be okay, Aunt Alex. I’ll be nice and dry in the tree house.” He threw open the door, slammed it shut behind him, and plunged down the porch steps into the rain.
    Now the wind was blustering from the east, sending a lawn chair tumbling along Walden Street and hurling a wall of water against the house nextdoor. A gust wrenched the umbrella out of Eddy’s hand and catapulted him across the sodden grass. In the dark he collided with the ladder at the foot of the tree, wrapped his arms around it, and slowly began to climb.
    By now he knew the ascent by heart. From the top of the ladder his hands and feet felt their way from one thick branch to the next. The wind battered against him, but once again the broad spread of leaves over his head was like a giant umbrella.
    Halfway up he met a drowned rat. “What’s it like up there?” shouted Eddy as Sidney scrambled down past him.
    “Peachy keen,” bawled Sidney. For a moment Eddy watched Sidney’s huddled shape drop through the tossing leaves and disappear. Then he looked up and went on climbing, gripping one branch after another, while the tree wallowed and swayed around him. When he fumbled for the stepladder below the trapdoor, he had to hang on, because the tree was reeling and throwing him dizzily left and right. The branches plunged andlifted and plunged again. Holding fast, Eddy looked up and saw the massive crown lash crazily back and forth. He caught his breath. Would the thousands of storytelling leaves be torn away and lost? Would the tree itself survive? Would it last the night?
    Eddy hauled himself up the ladder from rung to rung, and crawled at last into the tree house. The floorboards rocked beneath him, but they were dry, undampened by the rain. Rachel’s pillows were dry too. Shoving them out of the way, Eddy crept to the opening in the wall and looked down at the window of Emerald’s room next door.
    It was dark. All the windows of the house were dark. But then to his surprise he saw a spark of light, not from Emerald’s window on the second floor but from the shuttered window in the attic. It was only a flicker glimmering between the cracks and almost at once it went out, but soon another little flame appeared, and then a dozen all together, flaring up and shining brightly.
    Emerald had struck all her matches alight, squandering them like the girl in the story who litall of hers at once to keep warm in the bitter cold. Here in Concord it was summertime. There was no bitter cold, only the wild wind and the sound of footsteps on the stairs below.

34
ESCAPE!
    T HE TREE HOUSE was a refuge from the rain, but not from the howling wind. The lofty shanty in the sky that had been built so securely by the nine hardworking Knights of the Fellowship was pitching and yawing like a ship on a tumultuous sea. The floor tipped under Eddy and threw him sideways. Struggling to his knees, he floundered back to the window—just in time to see the tiny fires flicker behind the shutters of the window across the way, then flare up and go out.
    Then above the roar of the wind there was a clattering crash. The shutters rattled off theirhinges and blew away. For an instant Eddy saw the dark window, but then a tree limb thrashed against the rain-streaked glass—and the stories on the scribbled leaves began to come