The Chestnut King: Book 3 of the 100 Cupboards Read Free

strange sea that had poured into the house, ground under Henry’s feet like sand. He sniffed nervously and checked his watch. The time wouldn’t be exactly right, the watch always got a little confused shifting worlds, but it was right enough.
    This was the hard part.
    Standing in front of the cupboard wall had always been unnerving. Now that Henry could see, really see, what was going on, it was worse. Each door was like a drain. Swirling threads of life, strands connected to the walls, to the air and the wood in the floor, spun slowly around the open mouths and disappeared. Dozens of open mouths sucking in whatever would come to them. Not always sucking. At times the swirling would stop, and things, scents, flavors, traces, influences, would burble into the room followed by wind or voices, even living things—snails, insects, mice.
    “Witches,” Henry said out loud. “Or babies.”
    The door to Badon Hill wobbled on its one remaining hinge, letting in a cold sea breeze. His door. The door thathad been his first entrance to Kansas. The compass locks in the central door were still set to Badon Hill. That would be the way that Caleb had come. It had been the only way, at least at first. But Henry had something new, his own door arrangement. For now, he was the only one who knew about it.
    On the left side of the wall, there had been two doors that connected to each other. Numbers 24 and 49. Henry still remembered the numbers, even though Grandfather’s journal was at the bottom of the harbor, at least if it hadn’t washed out to sea. And he remembered what they had been called. Cleave. That had been their only name, one word for both of them. Number 24 was open above his bed. Number 49 was gone. He had torn it out.
    With a deep breath, Henry stepped closer to the wall. An angry voice trickled out of a door near the top. Somewhere else, somewhere distant, a woman screamed. A barrage of smells, good and bad, surrounded him. Henry’s throat tightened. This was a much faster way to get home than traveling to Badon Hill and then hopping through faerie mounds, but it still made his head throb, and he always ended up with a bloody nose.
    Where Number 49 had been, there was only a hole in the wall. The wood was splintered around it, and the rusted crowbar Henry had used was on the floor, pushed halfway under the bed. The ninety-nine cupboards had been reduced to ninety-eight.
    Henry knelt on his bed and relaxed the focus in his eyes, letting the wall swirl in front of him, watching onlythe motion, the drain and burble of gaping mouths. Staring straight ahead, he lifted his right hand. The scar was heating up on his palm, but he couldn’t see it. He couldn’t see past the bright, writhing dandelion fire between his wrist and his fingers. The room brightened. The swirlings shifted. Trails and strands moved toward his hand.
    Tears ran down Henry’s cheeks. His pulse beat painfully in his temples. He couldn’t let himself blink. He lost everything when he blinked. Henry flattened his hand on the edge of Number 24 and moved it around the cupboard mouth in a slow circle. The swirl grew. It swallowed the cupboards next to it, and Henry moved his hand a little faster. His mind groped around for help, for strength in the old plank floors, in the rock and sand of concrete plaster, and in the cool air outside the attic roof. It all flowed out of his hand.
    The current thickened, mixing elements. Colors changed, and smells blended, but all of it was tinted gold. All of it answered to the dandelion. The wall had found a single motion. The other cupboard doors had been forgotten.
    Henry could feel the pull now. He was going to flush himself.
    Ignoring the physical wall, the wood of the doors, and the metal of the knobs, ignoring his own size, Henry shut his eyes, held his breath, and leaned into the funnel.
    His ribs popped and compressed. His teeth ground together, and something warm ran down his lip. His fingers found cool stone, and