Bridge to Terabithia - Katherine Paterson [31]
While they were sitting in the castle on Wednesday, it began suddenly to rain so hard that water came through the top of the shack in icy streams. Jess tried to huddle away from the worst of them, but there was no escaping the miserable invaders.
“Dost know what is in my mind, O king?” Leslie dumped the contents of one coffee can on the ground and put the can under the worst leak.
“What?”
“Methinks some evil being has put a curse on our beloved kingdom.”
“Damn weather bureau.” In the dim light he could see Leslie’s face freeze into its most queenly pose—the kind of expression she usually reserved for vanquished enemies. She didn’t want to kid. He instantly repented his unkingly manner.
Leslie chose to ignore it. “Let us go even up into the sacred grove and inquire of the Spirits what this evil might be and how we must combat it. For of a truth I perceive that this is no ordinary rain that is falling upon our kingdom.”
“Right, queen,” Jess mumbled and crawled out of the low entrance of the castle stronghold.
Under the pines even the rain lost its driving power. Without the filtered light of the sun it was almost dark, and the sound of the rain hitting the pine branches high above their heads filled the grove with a weird, tuneless music. Dread lay on Jess’s stomach like a hunk of cold, undigested doughnut.
Leslie lifted her arms and face up toward the dark green canopy. “O Spirits of the grove,” she began solemnly. “We are come on behalf of our beloved kingdom which lies even now under the spell of some evil, unknown force. Give us, we beseech thee, wisdom to discern this evil, and power to overcome it.” She nudged Jess with her elbow.
He raised his arms. “Um. Uh.” He felt the point of her sharp elbow again. “Um. Yes. Please listen, thou Spirits.”
She seemed satisfied. At least she didn’t poke him again. She just stood there quietly as if she was listening respectfully to someone talking to her. Jess was shivering, whether from the cold or the place, he didn’t know. But he was glad when she turned to leave the grove. All he could think of was dry clothes and a cup of hot coffee and maybe just plunking down in front of the TV for a couple of hours. He was obviously not worthy to be king of Terabithia. Whoever heard of a king who was scared of tall trees and a little bit of water?
He swung across the creek almost too disgusted with himself to be afraid. Halfway across he looked down and stuck his tongue out at the roaring below. Who’s afraid of the big bad wolf? Tra-la-la-la-la, he said to himself, then quickly looked up again toward the crab apple tree.
Plodding up the hill through the mud and beaten-down grasses, he slammed his bare feet down hard. Left, left, he addressed them inside his head. Left my wife and forty-nine children without any gingerbread, think I did right? Right. Right by my…
“Why don’t we change our clothes and watch TV or something over at your house?”
He felt like hugging her. “I’ll make us some coffee,” he said joyfully.
“Yuk,” she said smiling and began to run for the old Perkins place, that beautiful, graceful run of hers that neither mud nor water could defeat.
It had seemed to Jess when he went to bed Wednesday night that he could relax, that everything was going to be all right, but he awoke in the middle of the night with the horrible realization that it was still raining. He would just have to tell Leslie that he wouldn’t go to Terabithia. After all, she had told him that when she was working on the house with Bill. And he hadn’t questioned her. It wasn’t so much that he minded telling Leslie that he was afraid to go; it was that he minded being afraid. It was as though he had been made with a great piece missing—one of May Belle’s puzzles with this huge gap where somebody’s eye and cheek and jaw should have been. Lord, it would be better to be born without an arm than to go through life with no guts. He hardly slept the rest of the night, listening to the horrid rain and knowing that no matter how high the creek came, Leslie would still want