tailieunhanh - The House of Dies Drear by Virginia Hamilton

“Like Great-grandmother Jeffers,” he said to himself. His papa had asked Greatgrandmother to come with them to live. Thomas recalled how she’d been leaning on her bright blue gate at the time. No longer was there a fence around Great-grandmother Jeffers’ house. Its blue pickets had long since fallen and rotted back into the ground. But the gate continued to stand, and Thomas, since the age of ten, had painted it bright blue every spring. | HÒUS Ễ THE HOUSE OF DIES DREAR By Virginia Hamilton THOMAS DREAMED HE walked a familiar forest following a time-worn path of the Tuscaroras. The trail seemed the same as he had known it all his life. The way he walked it without making any sound was true to the way ancient Indian braves had walked it. But now the once familiar evergreens on either side were gigantic. Their needles were as large as railroad spikes. He had no trouble accepting the great new height of the trees or the long smooth size of the needles. It was the awful smell of resin and oil over everything that upset him. The odor nearly choked him the trees gave it off as though they were raining turpentine. He seemed to feel it on his hair and on his hands. His palms itched and his eyes burned. He tried to get the smell out of his mind and stopped on the path to cut an enormous branch from a fallen pine. He made tiny marks on the bark with one of his whittling tools and he didn t find it unusual to be using so small an instrument for such hard work. He d always used whittling tools to cut branches. He had started whistling to himself when a man swung down from a mile-high spruce. Stay back the man said. He lifted the huge branch Thomas wanted and flung it away as if it were nothing. Thomas stood still. He began to feel small. Papa says you will do he told the man but I don t say it. We are going anyway. Carolina is for you the man said. Stay back. He reached for Thomas with arms covered with curls of white hair. His eyes glowed red and then spewed fire. Thomas leaped for a tall pair of stilts against a tree. Fastening them to his legs he turned around on the path. I m running he said. But when he moved the stilts sank into the bed of oversized pine needles covering the ground. The man grabbed Thomas ankles. Thomas fell slowly forward from a long way up. He could hear the wind whistling by his ears as he fell. OPEN 0 ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA I ll never reach the end of the trail he thought. And for the .