Noah Barleywater Runs Away Read Free Page A

SEE PAGES 4, 5, 6, 7, 14, 23 AND 40. PLEASE NOTE: THIS BOY IS A MENACE TO SOCIETY AND SHOULD BE APPROACHED WITH GREAT CAUTION OR NOT AT ALL.
    I’ve been called worse
, thought Noah, but the man beside him was having none of it because he let out a great cry at the top of his voice.
    ‘It’s him!’ he cried. ‘Stop him, someone. He’s a thief!’
    Noah leaped off the bench at that and looked around, sure that he would be apprehended at any moment, but fortunately for him, no one seemed particularly bothered.
    ‘Stop him, someone!’ the man shouted again as he ran away. ‘Stop him! He’s getting away with it.’
    And that was the end of the second village, as far as Noah was concerned. He ran and ran until it had turned into nothing more than a great clump of buildings fading away in the distance behind him, and then it disappeared altogether and he couldn’t remember what all the fuss had been about in the first place.

Chapter Three

The Helpful Dachshund and the Hungry Donkey
    Things became a little more muddled after the second village. The path seemed to grow uncertain and the trees merged in front of him, then parted. The light finally broke through to allow him to see his way, then grew dim again and forced him to narrow his eyes to make sure he was walking in the right direction.
    He looked down at his feet and was surprised to see that the crooked path had now disappeared entirely and he seemed to have wandered away from his original trail into a part of the forest that felt very different from everything that had come before. The trees were greener here, the air smelled slightly sweeter, the grass was thicker and more springy beneath his shoes. He could hear the sound of a running stream nearby, but when he looked around in surprise – for he knew that there was no water source anywhere near the forest – it became immediately silent again, as if it didn’t want to be found.
    Noah stopped and stood very still for a moment, glancing back in the direction of the second village, but it was impossible to see anything that far away. In fact, it seemed to have disappeared altogether, leaving nothing in its place but rows and rows of trees, which appeared to crowd together and block his view of what stood behind them. Somewhere through there, he was sure, was the path that he had been following since leaving home that morning. He had only veered away from it once, and that was when he had to run behind one of the trees because he was bursting to go. He thought about it for a moment and remembered that when he was finished and had turned round again to resume his journey, he couldn’t remember whether he had approached the tree from the left- or the right-hand side, and so had simply chosen the direction that felt correct and continued on his way.
    He wondered whether that had been a mistake. But there was nothing he could do now except keep walking, and within a few minutes he was relieved to see the trees begin to separate again in the distance and a third village appear before him. It was much smaller than the previous two and held only a small collection of peculiarly shaped buildings situated at irregular intervals along a single street. It was not quite what Noah was expecting to find, but he hoped that the people would be friendly there and that he might find something to eat at last before he passed out in a dead faint from hunger.
    However, before he could take another step, his attention was taken by one curiously constructed building at the very end of the street, on the opposite side.
    Noah knew one thing about houses: they were supposed to be built with straight walls all put together at right angles to each other, and with a roof sitting comfortably on top to stop the rain from making all the carpets soggy or the birds from doing their business on your head.
    This building, however, was nothing like that.
    He stared at it, astonished to see that every wall and window was entirely misshapen, parts