Mammoth Books presents The Books Read Free Page B

had a month’s worth of stories in it? Now, that was
concentrated
entertainment value.
    Myko, squinting at the page, must have decided the same thing. “Okay,” he said, “But you’ll have to carry it. And don’t complain if it’s heavy.”
    “I won’t,” said Sunny, putting her nose in the air.
    Myko glanced at me and did a double take.
    “You can’t take that!” he yelled. “It’s too big and it’s just one book anyway!”
    “It’s the only one I want,” I said, “And anyhow, you got to take all the ones you want!” He knew it was true, too. His doublet was so stuffed out with loot, he looked pregnant.
    Myko muttered under his breath but turned away, and that meant the argument was over. “Anyway we need to leave.”
    So we started to, but halfway down the first flight of stairs three books fell out of Sunny’s skirt and we had to stop while Myko took the safety pins out of all our costumes and closed up the waistband. We were almost to the second floor when Sunny lost her hold on the skirt and her books went cascading down to the landing, with the loudest noise in the universe. We scrambled down after them and were on our knees picking them up when we heard the other noise.
    It was a hissing, like someone gasping for breath through whistly dentures, and a jingling, like a ring of keys, because that’s what it was. We turned our heads.
    Maybe he hadn’t heard us when we ran past him on the way up. We hadn’t been talking then, just climbing, and he had a lot of hair in his ears and a pink plastic sort of machine in one besides. Or maybe he’d been so wrapped up, the way I had been in reading, that he hadn’t even noticed us when we’d pattered past. But he hadn’t been reading.
    There were no books in this part of the library. All there was on the shelves was old magazines and stacks and stacks of yellow newspapers. The newspapers weren’t crumpled into balls in the bottoms of old boxes, which was the only way we ever saw them, they were smooth and flat. But most of them were drifted on the floor like leaves, hundreds and hundreds of big leaves, ankle-deep, and on every single one was a square with sort of checkered patterns and numbers printed in the squares and words written in in pencil.
    I didn’t know what a crossword puzzle was then but the old man must have been coming there for years, maybe ever since it all went down, years and years he’d been working his way through all those magazines and papers, hunting down every single puzzle and filling in every one. He was dropping a stub of a pencil now as he got to his feet, snarling at us, showing three brown teeth. His eyes behind his glasses were these huge distorted magnified things, and full of crazy anger. He came over the paper-drifts at us fast and light as a spider.
    “Fieves! Ucking kish! Ucking fieving kish!”
    Sunny screamed and I screamed too. Frantically she shoved all the books she could into her skirt and I grabbed up most of what she’d missed but we were taking too long. The old man brought up his cane and smacked it down,
crack
but he missed us on his first try and by then Myko had drawn his wooden sword and put it against the old man’s chest and shoved hard. The old man fell with a crash, still flailing his cane but he was on his side and striking at us faster than you’d believe and so mad now he was just making noises, with spittle flying from his mouth. His cane hit my knee as I scrambled up. It hurt like fire and I yelped. Myko kicked him and yelled, “Run!”
    We bailed, Sunny and I did, we thundered down the rest of the stairs and didn’t stop until we were out in the last chamber by the street doors. “Myko’s still up there,” said Sunny. I had an agonizing few seconds before deciding to volunteer to go back and look for him. I was just opening my mouth when we spotted him running down the stairs and out towards us.
    “Oh, good,” said Sunny. She tied a knot in one corner of her skirt for a handle