Tuck Everlasting Book to Read for Free

  Contents

Prologue

Affiliate 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter v

Chapter half dozen

Affiliate seven

Affiliate 8

Affiliate 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Affiliate 12

Chapter 13

Chapter xiv

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Affiliate 18

Chapter 19

Chapter twenty

Affiliate 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Epilogue

Become Fish: Questions for the Author

Prologue

The first calendar week of Baronial hangs at the very pinnacle of summer, the top of the alive-long yr, like the highest seat of a Ferris wheel when it pauses in its turning. The weeks that come earlier are but a climb from balmy spring, and those that follow a drib to the chill of fall, but the first week of August is motionless, and hot. It is curiously silent, too, with blank white dawns and glaring noons, and sunsets smeared with likewise much color. Often at night there is lightning, simply information technology quivers all alone. There is no thunder, no relieving pelting. These are foreign and incoherent days, the domestic dog days, when people are led to practise things they are certain to be sorry for later on.

1 day at that time, not so very long ago, three things happened and at first there appeared to be no connectedness between them.

At dawn, Mae Tuck set out on her horse for the wood at the edge of the village of Treegap. She was going there, as she did once every ten years, to meet her two sons, Miles and Jesse.

At noontime, Winnie Foster, whose family owned the Treegap wood, lost her patience at terminal and decided to remember about running away.

And at dusk a stranger appeared at the Fosters' gate. He was looking for someone, but he didn't say who.

No connectedness, y'all would agree. But things can come together in strange ways. The wood was at the eye, the hub of the wheel. All wheels must have a hub. A Ferris wheel has one, every bit the sun is the hub of the wheeling agenda. Stock-still points they are, and best left undisturbed, for without them, nothing holds together. But sometimes people find this out likewise late.

1

The road that led to Treegap had been trod out long before by a herd of cows who were, to say the to the lowest degree, relaxed. It wandered along in curves and easy angles, swayed off and upwardly in a pleasant tangent to the top of a modest colina, ambled downward again between fringes of bee-hung clover, and so cutting sidewise across a meadow. Hither its edges blurred. It widened and seemed to interruption, suggesting tranquil bovine picnics: slow chewing and thoughtful contemplation of the space. And then it went on again and came at last to the forest. But on reaching the shadows of the commencement trees, it veered sharply, swung out in a wide arc every bit if, for the get-go fourth dimension, it had reason to call back where it was going, and passed around.

On the other side of the wood, the sense of easiness dissolved. The road no longer belonged to the cows. It became, instead, and rather abruptly, the property of people. And all at once the sun was uncomfortably hot, the dust oppressive, and the meager grass along its edges somewhat ragged and forlorn. On the left stood the outset business firm, a square and solid cottage with a touch-me-non appearance, surrounded by grass cut painfully to the quick and enclosed by a capable iron fence some four feet high which conspicuously said, "Move on—we don't want you lot here." So the road went humbly by and fabricated its manner, past cottages more and more frequent but less and less forbidding, into the village. Just the village doesn't matter, except for the jailhouse and the gallows. The first house only is important; the first firm, the road, and the wood.

There was something foreign virtually the wood. If the await of the outset house suggested that you'd ameliorate pass it by, so did the look of the wood, merely for quite a different reason. The house was so proud of itself that you wanted to make a lot of noise as you passed, and perhaps fifty-fifty throw a stone or two. Simply the wood had a sleeping, otherworld appearance that made yous want to speak in whispers. This, at to the lowest degree, is what the cows must have idea: "Permit it keep its peace; we won't disturb it."

Whether the people felt that way most the wood or not is difficult to say. There were some, possibly, who did. Only for the nearly part the people followed the road around the forest because that was the way it led. There was no road through the wood. And anyway, for the people, there was another reason to get out the woods to itself: information technology belonged to the Fosters, the owners of the touch-me-not cottage, and was therefore private property in spite of the fact that information technology lay outside the fence and was perfectly accessible.

The buying of land is an odd thing when you come to think of it. How deep, later on all, can information technology go? If a person owns a piece of land, does he own it all the mode downward, in e'er narrowing dimensions, till information technology meets all other pieces at the center of the world? Or does ownership consist only of a sparse crust under which the friendly worms have never heard of trespassing?

In any case, the forest, being on top—except, of course, for its roots—was owned bud and bough by the Fosters in the touch-me-non cottage, and if they never went at that place, if they never wandered in amid the trees, well, that was their affair. Winnie, the only child of the house, never went in that location, though she sometimes stood inside the fence, carelessly banging a stick against the iron bars, and looked at it. But she had never been curious almost it. Zilch e'er seems interesting when it belongs to you—only when information technology doesn't.

And what is interesting, anyway, almost a slim few acres of trees? There will be a dimness shot through with confined of sunlight, a peachy many squirrels and birds, a deep, damp mattress of leaves on the ground, and all the other things just as familiar if not and so pleasant—things like spiders, thorns, and grubs.

In the finish, however, it was the cows who were responsible for the forest's isolation, and the cows, through some wisdom they were non wise enough to know that they possessed, were very wise indeed. If they had made their road through the wood instead of around it, then the people would have followed the road. The people would have noticed the giant ash tree at the heart of the wood, and and so, in time, they'd accept noticed the fiddling spring bubbling up amid its roots in spite of the pebbles piled there to muffle it. And that would have been a disaster then immense that this weary old earth, endemic or not to its fiery cadre, would have trembled on its centrality like a beetle on a pin.

ii

And so, at dawn, that day in the first week of Baronial, Mae Tuck woke up and lay for a while beaming at the cobwebs on the ceiling. At final she said aloud, "The boys'll be home tomorrow!"

Mae'south married man, on his back beside her, did not stir. He was withal asleep, and the melancholy creases that folded his daytime face up were smoothed and slack. He snored gently, and for a moment the corners of his mouth turned upward in a grinning. Tuck about never smiled except in slumber.

Mae sabbatum up in bed and looked at him tolerantly. "The boys'll be home tomorrow," she said again, a little more loudly.

Tuck twitched and the smile vanished. He opened his optics. "Why'd you lot accept to wake me up?" he sighed. "I was having that dream once again, the good i where we're all in heaven and never heard of Treegap."

Mae sat there frowning, a great potato of a woman with a round, sensible face and calm brown optics. "It's no utilize having that dream," she said. "Zero'southward going to change."

"You tell me that every 24-hour interval," said Constrict, turning away from her onto his side. "Anyways, I tin't assistance what I dream."

"Maybe non," said Mae. "But, still, you should've got used to things by now."

Tuck groaned. "I'chiliad going back to sleep," he said.

"Not me," said Mae. "I�

��m going to accept the equus caballus and become down to the wood to come across them."

"Meet who?"

"The boys, Tuck! Our sons. I'm going to ride downwards to meet them."

"Amend not do that," said Tuck.

"I know," said Mae, "but I just tin can't look to run into them. Anyways, it'due south ten years since I went to Treegap. No one'll recall me. I'll ride in at sunset, just to the forest. I won't go into the village. Merely, even if someone did see me, they won't remember. They never did before, now, did they?"

"Accommodate yourself, then," said Tuck into his pillow. "I'grand going back to sleep."

Mae Tuck climbed out of bed and began to apparel: three petticoats, a rusty brown skirt with one enormous pocket, an one-time cotton jacket, and a knitted shawl which she pinned beyond her bosom with a tarnished metal brooch. The sounds of her dressing were and then familiar to Tuck that he could say, without opening his eyes, "You don't demand that shawl in the heart of the summer."

Mae ignored this observation. Instead, she said, "Volition you be all right? We won't get back till belatedly tomorrow."

Tuck rolled over and made a rueful face at her. "What in the world could perhaps happen to me?"

"That's so," said Mae. "I proceed forgetting."

"I don't," said Constrict. "Have a nice time." And in a moment he was asleep again.

Mae sat on the border of the bed and pulled on a pair of short leather boots so thin and soft with historic period it was a wonder they held together. Then she stood and took from the washstand beside the bed a little square-shaped object, a music box painted with roses and lilies of the valley. It was the one pretty matter she endemic and she never went anywhere without information technology. Her fingers strayed to the winding primal on its bottom, only glancing at the sleeping Tuck, she shook her head, gave the little box a pat, and dropped information technology into her pocket. Then, terminal of all, she pulled down over her ears a blueish straw hat with a drooping, wearied brim.

But, before she put on the hat, she brushed her grey-brownish hair and wound information technology into a bun at the back of her neck. She did this quickly and skillfully without a unmarried glance in the mirror. Mae Tuck didn't demand a mirror, though she had one propped up on the washstand. She knew very well what she would see in it; her reflection had long since ceased to interest her. For Mae Constrict, and her husband, and Miles and Jesse, as well, had all looked exactly the aforementioned for lxxx-seven years.

iii

At apex of that same day in the get-go week of August, Winnie Foster sat on the bristly grass but inside the fence and said to the big toad who was squatting a few yards away across the road, "I will, though. You'll meet. Maybe even first thing tomorrow, while anybody's still comatose."

It was hard to know whether the toad was listening or not. Certainly, Winnie had given information technology good reason to ignore her. She had come up out to the fence, very cross, very near the humid indicate on a day that was itself near to boiling, and had noticed the toad at once. It was the simply living thing in sight except for a stationary cloud of hysterical gnats suspended in the heat to a higher place the route. Winnie had found some pebbles at the base of operations of the fence and, for lack of whatsoever other manner to show how she felt, had flung one at the toad. It missed altogether, as she'd fully intended it should, but she made a game of it anyhow, tossing pebbles at such an bending that they passed through the gnat deject on their way to the toad. The gnats were too frantic to notice these intrusions, nonetheless, and since every pebble missed its last marking, the toad connected to squat and grimace without and so much as a twitch. Possibly it felt resentful. Or perhaps it was only asleep. In either case, it gave her not a glance when at last she ran out of pebbles and sat downward to tell it her troubles.

"Look here, toad," she said, thrusting her artillery through the bars of the contend and plucking at the weeds on the other side. "I don't think I can stand up it much longer."

At this moment a window at the front of the cottage was flung open and a thin voice—her grandmother's—piped, "Winifred! Don't sit on that dirty grass. You'll stain your boots and stockings."

And another, firmer voice—her female parent's—added, "Come in now, Winnie. Right abroad. You'll get rut stroke out there on a day like this. And your lunch is fix."

"Run into?" said Winnie to the toad. "That'southward just what I hateful. Information technology's similar that every minute. If I had a sister or a blood brother, there'd be someone else for them to watch. But, as it is, there's but me. I'm tired of being looked at all the fourth dimension. I desire to be past myself for a change." She leaned her brow against the bars and afterwards a short silence went on in a thoughtful tone. "I'one thousand not exactly sure what I'd do, you know, but something interesting—something that's all mine. Something that would make some kind of difference in the globe. It'd be nice to have a new name, to start with, ane that's non all worn out from being called then much. And I might even make up one's mind to have a pet. Maybe a large old toad, like you, that I could keep in a dainty cage with lots of grass, and…"

At this the toad stirred and blinked. It gave a boost of muscles and plopped its heavy mudball of a body a few inches farther away from her.

"I suppose you lot're correct," said Winnie. "And so you'd be just the way I am, now. Why should you have to exist cooped up in a cage, likewise? It'd be better if I could be similar you lot, out in the open up and making upward my own heed. Practice y'all know they've hardly e'er let me out of this g all by myself? I'll never be able to do anything important if I stay in here like this. I expect I'd better run away." She paused and peered anxiously at the toad to encounter how it would receive this staggering idea, only information technology showed no signs of interest. "You call back I wouldn't dare, don't you?" she said accusingly. "I will, though. You'll run across. Maybe even starting time thing in the morning, while everyone's still asleep."

"Winnie!" came the firm vocalism from the window.

"All right! I'm coming!" she cried, exasperated, and so added chop-chop, "I mean, I'll exist correct in that location, Mama." She stood up, brushing at her legs where bits of itchy grass clung to her stockings.

The toad, every bit if it saw that their interview was over, stirred again, bunched up, and bounced itself clumsily off toward the forest. Winnie watched it go. "Hop away, toad," she chosen later on information technology. "You'll encounter. Just wait till morning."

4

At sunset of that aforementioned long mean solar day, a stranger came strolling upward the road from the hamlet and paused at the Fosters' gate. Winnie was once once more in the yard, this time intent on communicable fireflies, and at commencement she didn't notice him. But, after a few moments of watching her, he called out, "Good evening!"

He was remarkably tall and narrow, this stranger standing there. His long chin faded off into a thin, atoning beard, but his accommodate was a jaunty yellow that seemed to glow a little in the fading light. A black hat dangled from 1 hand, and as Winnie came toward him, he passed the other through his dry out, grey hair, settling it smoothly. "Well, now," he said in a light voice. "Out for fireflies, are you?"

"Yes," said Winnie.

"A lovely thing to do on a summer evening," said the human richly. "A lovely entertainment. I used to do it myself when I was your age. But of course that was a long, long fourth dimension agone." He laughed, gesturing in self-deprecation with long, thin fingers. His alpine trunk moved continuously; a foot tapped, a shoulder twitched. And it moved in angles, rather jerkily. But at the same fourth dimension he had a kind of grace, like a well-handled marionette. Indeed, he seemed almost to hang suspended there in the twilight. Only Winnie, though she was half charmed, was suddenly reminded of the strong black ribbons they had hung on the door of the cottage for her grandfather's funeral. She frowned and looked at the man more closely. Only his grinning seemed perfectly all right, quite agreeable and friendly.

"Is this your house?" asked the man, folding his artillery at present and leaning confronting the gate.

"Yes," said Winnie. "Practise you desire to come across my male parent?"

"Perhaps. In a bit," said the human. "But I'd like to talk to you outset. Have you and your family unit lived here long?"

"Oh, yes," said Winnie. "

We've lived here forever."

"Forever," the man echoed thoughtfully.

It was not a question, but Winnie decided to explain anyhow. "Well, not forever, of course, but as long as there've been whatsoever people hither. My grandmother was born here. She says this was all trees one time, just one big forest everywhere around, but it's mostly all cutting down now. Except for the wood."

"I see," said the man, pulling at his beard. "So of course you know anybody, and everything that goes on."

"Well, non especially," said Winnie. "At least, I don't. Why?"

The man lifted his eyebrows. "Oh," he said, "I'grand looking for someone. A family."

"I don't know anybody much," said Winnie, with a shrug. "But my father might. Yous could ask him."

"I believe I shall," said the man. "I do believe I shall."

At this moment the cottage door opened, and in the lamp glow that spilled across the grass, Winnie's grandmother appeared. "Winifred? Who are y'all talking to out in that location?"

"It's a man, Granny," she chosen back. "He says he's looking for someone."

"What's that?" said the old woman. She picked up her skirts and came down the path to the gate. "What did you say he wants?"

The man on the other side of the contend bowed slightly. "Skillful evening, madam," he said. "How delightful to see you looking so fit."

"And why shouldn't I be fit?" she retorted, peering at him through the fading lite. His xanthous suit seemed to surprise her, and she squinted suspiciously. "Nosotros haven't met, that I can recall. Who are yous? Who are yous looking for?"

zhangvand1953.blogspot.com

Source: https://onlinereadfreenovel.com/natalie-babbitt/35064-tuck_everlasting.html

Share this post