Free Curse of the Spider King by Wayne Thomas Batson, Christopher Hopper Page A

aftr schl. name Anna. drvn the tahoe.
    Great , she thought. Another one. Kat frowned and crinkled her nose. Room B21 was one of three rooms constructed from the old gym locker room when the building was renovated a few years back. Now carpeted and repainted, B21 still smelled like a locker room. The bell rang, and the rest of the students filed in. Ms. Reedley removed her glasses and glared at them until they stopped talking. Her stare could be best described as somewhere between a rabid German shepherd and the warden at the state penitentiary. A hush fell over everyone in the room.
    Kat settled down and laid the heavy book from Mr. Wallace on her desk. The History of Berinfell. Great, Kat thought. History . She squared her shoulders and flipped open the worn cover. And old history at that . It even smelled old. She flipped a few pages. There wasn’t any of the usual publisher and copyright stuff, but she paused to admire the next page: an amazingly detailed sketch.
    Kat loved to draw. She was a natural with charcoal, pen and ink, or even just pencil. But she had never seen a sketch such as this one. It was an orchard of tall, broadleaf trees laden with blossoms and fruit. Splendid patches of grass and long-stemmed flowers wavered at the base of the dark trees. It was as if the trees were wading waist-high in the middle of an ocean of foliage. Kat felt like she could almost smell the fragrant pollen from all the blossoms and hear the muted buzz of the bloom-hopping bees. I want to go there , she thought. After a long look, she turned the page.
    She leafed through several pages until she settled somewhere in the middle of the book. Hm , she thought. This text looks kind of raised, as if it has its own texture. She brushed her thumb across the first letters. The lights in the study hall flickered, the temperature climbed well past the 78-air-conditioned degrees, and the smell of smoke filled the room. A lick of fire appeared on the page and began to grow. Kat shut the book in a hurry. The lights stopped flickering. It was a comfortable temperature again, and the room smelled like gym socks once more.
    Kat looked around. But to her astonishment, no one was staring at her as she thought they would. They carried on as usual—reading, passing notes, whispery giggling—completely oblivious. Didn’t they see? Even Ms. Reedley still sat grading papers, without so much as an eyelash flutter from her lethal gaze. Kat opened the book once more, found her page, and touched the text. No sooner had her fingertips brushed the lettering than the temperature rose, the lights dimmed, and the air filled once more with the smell of smoke. Fire leaped up from the page, but still no one in the room so much as flinched.
    This time, Kat didn’t close the book.
    More and more fire burst through the pages. It danced along the ceiling of the classroom before dropping to patches on the floor, some right at the feet of her classmates. Kat held her breath as huge marble columns rose up from the pages, followed by shards of broken glass, streams of water, and pieces of timber. Room B21 melted away.
    Kat found herself sitting next to a huge basin of water, like a fountain, in an enormous hall. She could even feel the cool spray from the trickling water. But there was something terribly wrong in this scene. Dark smoke rose from many fires and swirled on the ceiling. It was hard to see clearly or breathe. But everywhere she looked, things were broken or burning. And there were lifeless forms strewn about the hall. Bodies. But other forms entered the scene. Some crowded around the bodies. Others ran from one place to another as if on urgent errands. Kat heard voices, turned, and saw that someone nearby was wounded and others were tending to her.
    â€œWhat?” Kat muttered to herself. “They . . . they have pointed ears!”
    P lease, Elle!” Flet Marshall Brynn prompted, wiping the excess saliva away from the wounded