Heaven Cent Read Online Free Page B

really griped him, but he had had no effective retort.
    But though Grundy could be a fascinating character, he wasn't much for building houses. Not only had Marrow given some pretty fair advice, he was now protecting Dolph in a pretty neat way. Maybe Dolph really was better off with the skeleton, just as his mother had judged—no, there were bound to be catches!
    In the morning Dolph got up, kicked the house, and it reformed into the walking skeleton. Marrow explained that in the early days he had had to be reassembled by hand, bone by bone, but that with practice he had mastered instant reassembly from any configuration. That was good, because Dolph would have had little patience with connecting a pile of bones individually. Then he changed into the ant and ate part of another crumb. Then he reverted to boy form and they walked to the castle.
    They intersected the enchanted path and followed it right to the main entrance. Even in its desertion, the castle was imposing. It had a good-sized moat half-filled with slimy water, and a rickety drawbridge covered with cobwebs; and the stones of its walls were green with mildew. It looked perfectly haunted: a real delight.
    “Perhaps—” Marrow began.
    Dolph paused in mid stride toward the drawbridge. He still had the sore places from damaged feathers to remind him about heeding adult advice.
    “—I should enter first, to be sure mere is nothing dangerous lurking inside,” the skeleton concluded.
    “But wouldn't it be dangerous for you too?”
    “What could be dangerous to me?”
    Dolph was at a loss to answer that, so he didn't try. Anything that liked to bite legs would have trouble with Marrow's bones, and anything that liked to scare the living would have trouble scaring the dead.
    Marrow crossed the moat first, stomping his bone feet on the old wooden planking of the drawbridge. Nothing gave way beneath him. He reached the huge open gate, and looked around. Nothing stirred. He tapped the stone of the archway leading into the castle proper. The hollow sound echoed and expired. The castle seemed empty.
    Dolph walked across, a little embarrassed at his caution. How did it look for an adventurer to enter a deserted castle so hesitantly? He should have charged in, sword waving! If he had a sword. If anybody had been watching. If it mattered.
    Did it matter? Had his mother let him go because she knew that the Quest was harmless, that there was nothing to find? That all he could do was come here, look through the empty castle, and go home again? With Marrow along to be sure he didn't get lost? Some adventure that would be! Ivy was probably snickering in her insufferable big-sister way.
    Dolph resolved not to return home until he found the Good Magician. That would show them!
    Now all he had to do was figure out how to show them.
    They walked through the entire castle, finding nothing but deserted chambers festooned with cobwebs. The Magician's personal effects had been cleaned up and put away by folk from Castle Roogna shortly after the disaster had been discovered. Anything that remained to be discovered would have been found at that time. There was nothing left for Dolph. As Queen Irene had surely known.
    “There does not appear to be much here,” Marrow observed.
    What else was new? Dolph stared at the floor in deep disgust. He knew that he had no choice but to go home, unless he could find something that no one else had been able to find.
    “However—” Marrow began.
    What possible qualification could the skeleton have now? Dolph had no confidence, but he waited, just in case.
    “—the perceptions of some other type of creature might detect something we can not,” Marrow concluded.
    Dolph shrugged. He became a potato and peered around with his sharp eyes. All he saw was dust and desertion. He became a dogwood tree, and sniffed with his sensitive canine noses. All he smelled was dust and desertion. He became a shock of corn, and listened with his finely-tassled ears.