Shadowland Read Free

seen anything like that before, and he bent forward to look more closely. It was then that he saw that the cats at the head of the procession were carrying a little coffin on their backs, and were making for, were slowly approaching, a small open grave. When my friend had seen the grave, he looked horrified back at the coffin borne by the lead cats, and noticed that on it sat a crown. As he watched, the lead cats began to lower the coffin into the grave.
     
         'After that he was so frightened that he could not stay in that place a moment longer, and he thrust his feet into his boots and rushed on to the house of his friend. During dinner, he found that he could not keep from telling his friend what he had witnessed.
     
         'He had scarcely finished when his friend's cat, whichhad been dozing in front of the fire, leaped up and cried, 'Then I am the King of the Cats!' and disappeared in a flash up the chimney. It happened, my friends — yes, it happened, my charming little birds.'
     
       
     
      The true beginning of this story is not 'More than twenty years ago, an underrated,' etc., but, Once upon a time . . . or, Long ago, when we all lived in the forest. . .
     
     
      PART ONE
     
       
     
      The School
     
       
     
       
     
      Arise and sing the praises
     
      Of the school upon the hill
     
       
     
      School song
     
     
      ONE
     
       
     
      He Dreams Awake
     
       
     
       
     
      The last day of summer vacation: high cloudless skies, dry intense heat; endings and beginnings, deaths and promises, hover regretfully in the air. Perhaps the regret is only the boy's — that boy who is lying on his stomach in the grass. He is staring at a dandelion, wondering if he should pull it up. But if he pulls that one up, shouldn't he also pull up the one growing three feet away, whose leonine head is lolling and babbling on a stalk too thin for it? Dandelions make your hands stink. On the last day of summer vacation, does he care if his hands smell like dandelions? He tugs at thebig tough-looking dandelion nearest him; at least some of the roots pull up out of the ground. He thinks he hears the dandelion sigh, letting go of life, and tosses it aside. Then he slides over to the second weed. It is too vulnerable, with its huge head and thin neck: he lets it be. He rolls over and looks up into the sky.
     
         Good-bye, good-bye, he says to himself. Good-bye, freedom. Yet a part of him looks forward to making the change to high school, to really beginning the process of growing up: he imagines that the biggest changes of his life are about to happen. For a moment, like all children on the point of change, he wishes he could foresee the future, somehow live through it in advance — test the water there.
     
         A solitary bird wheels overhead, so high up it breathes a different air.
     
         Then he must have fallen asleep: later, he thinks that what happened after he saw the bird must have been a dream.
     
         It begins with the air changing color — becoming hazy, almost silvery. A cloud? But there are no clouds. He rolls over onto his stomach and idly looks sideways, where he can see over four backyards. The swing set in the Trumbulls' yard is so rusty it should not stand another year — the Trumbull children are older than he, but Mr. Trumbull is too lazy to dismantle the swings. Farther on, Cissy Harbinger is climbing out of her pool, stepping toward a lounge chair in such a way that you know the tiles are burning her feet. She gets to the chair and stretches out, trying to deepen her already walnut tan. Then there are two wider backyards, one with a plastic wading pool. Here, Collis Folk, the gardener the boy's parents have just let go, is riding a giant black lawn mower around the side of a white house. No dandelions there: Collis Folk is a ruthless executioner of dandelions.
     
         Way down there, past the houses and the yards, a man is walking up