They drove through the morning, back to the places they called home. Tom put his hand on his pocket, feeling the shape of the little book. The moment he was alone, he would take it out and begin reading it properly. What a find!
Danny closed his eyes and let his imagination wander. When it began to flag, and tiredness threatened to overtake him, he gave in to sleep with a grateful sigh. Maybe he’d find a better story in his dreams.
* * *
On the top of Sentry Hill, a tall figure in a white shirt stood over a patch of scorched earth. He waited for an uncountable time in the hope of seeing the earth re-form and rise up into the shape of the great gray dog he had loved, but there was nothing there. Never again would she come bounding toward him on her narrow purple feet.
He tipped back his head and turned his face up to the sky.
“You can’t steal from me,” he said, quietly. “No one steals from me and gets away with it. Not even Death.”
And then he crouched over the scorched earth and began to gather up the ashes.
Don’t miss the next book in The Book of Storms trilogy
THE COLOR OF DARKNESS
Coming soon …
Ruth Hatfield is a sometime archaeologist, sometime technician who lives in Cambridge, England. When she’s not writing or digging or making circuit boards, she spends her time belting around on a bike and roaming the countryside on her cantankerous horse. This is her first book.
Text copyright © 2014 by Ruth Hatfield
Illustrations copyright © 2015 by Greg Call
Henry Holt and Company, LLC
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Published in the United Kingdom in 2014 by Hot Key Books.
Published in the United States of America in 2015 by Henry Holt and Company, LLC.
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The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:
Hatfield, Ruth.
The Book of Storms / Ruth Hatfield. — First edition.
pages cm
Summary: When his parents disappear after a fierce storm, eleven-year-old Danny, unaccustomed to acts of bravery, comes to their rescue after finding a valuable shard of wood that enables him to talk to plants and animals and battle terrifyingly powerful enemies, including the demonic Sammael.
ISBN 978-0-8050-9998-0 (hardback) — ISBN 978-0-8050-9999-7 (e-book)
[1. Adventure and adventurers—Fiction. 2. Storms—Fiction. 3. Missing persons—Fiction. 4. Supernatural—Fiction. 5. Human-animal communication—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.1.H38Bo 2015 [Fic]—dc23 2014029352
eISBN 9780805099997
First American hardcover edition 2015
eBook edition January 2015
The Book of Storms Page 23