While the World Is Still Asleep (The Century Trilogy Book 1) Read Free Page A

key! He will make sure he puts it back in its drawer before his parents return.
    The boy grins, then bars the door. He knows he is forbidden to be in there alone. His mother, father, and sisters all know how much he loves his father’s tools. They have told him countless times that the tools are dangerous. But the grown-ups have no idea. The sharp knives his father uses to trim the hooves, the large rasps for filing them smooth, the clinch cutter, and the nails—all kinds of exciting toys.
    But today the boy does not even glance at the tools. Instead, he goes straight to the forge, where his father heats the horseshoes until the iron glows and they can be beaten on the anvil.
    The boy loves fire. The red and gold flames, the heat, the crackle and snap—all of it so thrilling. Lighting a fire is also forbidden, of course. Or rather, FORBIDDEN—in all capital letters!
    When you burn newspaper, the art is in keeping a single page alight as long as possible. This can be done in a number of ways. You can wad the paper up in a special way, or poke it around with a small stick and slowly break it up into small pieces while it burns. It is also fun to wrap horseshoe nails in the paper first, and thin hoof trimmings wrapped in newspaper burn really well. The boy is still undecided about exactly which method is the best, but he plans to conduct several experiments today to find out. In his own fireplace. In the center of the barn, on the stone floor.
    He opens the drawer where his father keeps the boxes of matches.
    Forbidden. All forbidden.
    “Felix? Felix, where are you? You rascal, where are you hiding?”
    The boy’s face tenses. Why does Josephine have to come looking for him just now?
    All he needs is a few minutes to finish his tests for the day. He grabs a match and darts to the back door of the barn and bars that, too. All right. Now his dear sister can scream her head off!
    He smiles.
    He will sweep all the ashes together and open the door when he is done. “What’s the matter?” he’ll ask, meek as a lamb, and show Josephine his wooden horse. “I was just playing in the hay.”
    To reinforce the credibility of his excuse later on, he pulls out one of the bales of hay that is normally used to feed skittish horses as they are being shod. He pushes it into the center of the barn, where he has set up his fireplace on the cold stone slabs. He prefers to think of it as his laboratory. Mr. Günthner, his teacher, has said that there are scientists toiling away in laboratories all over the empire, all hoping to make new discoveries. He hopes to be among them. Filled with scientific fervor, the boy crouches down.
    He burns a twisted up sheet of newspaper and counts to twenty before the last ember goes out. A sheet loaded up with nails will hold the heat—and therefore the embers—until a count of twenty-three. The other trials have yielded worse results.
    This time, the boy sets fire to a new sheet of paper, then takes two long, thin sticks, one in each hand, and carefully pulls the paper apart until he has two burning pieces. Good! How many pieces will he be able to separate the burning sheet into? And how long will they burn?
    As he always does when he is concentrating, he pushes his bottom lip up and over the upper one. Four pieces, five . . . How annoying. The small ones burn up very quickly. A flake of ash sails into his nose, tickling him, and he snorts. The small draft causes one of the bigger burning scraps to fly up. It comes to rest at the base of the hay bale.
    The boy jumps back in fright. A shudder rocks his twelve-year-old body. Hay burns like tinder! Every child knows that! It isn’t for nothing that his father always stacks the bales as far from the forge as he can, around the outer walls. While the boy is still searching for something to extinguish it, the burning scrap of paper wafts up again and flattens itself like gold leaf against the hay bale. A few glowing yellow tongues of flame lick at the