Read Bran Hambric: The Farfield Curse for Free Online Page A

Death, and commotion ensued. A furious sound started down the stairs, and that sound did not belong to an angry troll, as one might first expect, but to Mabel Wilomas. The kitchen door blew open.
    "EEEK!" Mabel screamed, her voice shaking the very foundations of the house.
    Bran winced. Rosie jumped and sent a fried egg flying into the air.
    "What are you cooking?" Mabel demanded, staring in horror at the stove. Bran caught the egg with a plate a moment before it would have fallen to the floor.
    "I’m cooking breakfast, miss," Rosie said quickly. "Like I do every morning."
    "Every morning indeed." Mabel swept into the kitchen and dashed to the medicine cabinet.
    "Look: eggs, sausage, toast," Rosie said, pointing to each one. "A meal fit for a king!"
    "You mean a queen, " Mabel corrected, pulling medicines by the armful out of the cabinet and dropping them on the counter. She was only a bit taller than Sewey’s shoulders and had black hair with dynamic, burnt red streaks, like fire and smoke, piled in a mess on top of her head. She scrambled for a bottle of drops and started to squeeze it over her eyeballs.
    "Make sure"— drop —"you cook those eggs"— drop —"to a crisp," she said, as she dripped the solution into her eyes. "They’ve got to be blackened. Don’t want us getting rispozita poisoning."
    When she finished with the drops, she snatched a long pad of paper from across the counter. "Twenty-eight drops of Endgo’s
    root, twelve teaspoons of slippery elm, two grams of crushed fiddlesticks…" She ran her finger down the list, piling dozens of things onto the counter and taking some of each. "…then Ingrid’s Elixir, then Snapping Leaf, then Yuletide Extract, then the antibodies, then antiantibodies…"
    "And now for the grand finale," Bran said as she came to the last one.
    "…and two hundred-forty drops of cloromorophlorosocillinium!" Mabel finished at the bottom. She took a gigantic rainbow-colored bottle out of the cabinet and began counting drops onto her tongue.
    "The way you’re acting," Bran said, "one might think you were sick."
    " Toxic! " she spluttered. "All the toxicity of this city is bound to kill us one of these days. All those people, stepping outside without even taking a dropper full of something! Why, I just read in the Fitness Witness magazine—" She slammed an inhaler over her mouth and nose. Her lips went on moving, but Bran couldn’t hear it behind the plastic, and she gave the canister three sprays, breathed deeply, and then went into a coughing fit.
    "See, see?" she said, hitting her chest. "Toxins! In the air! And it’s getting worse!" She rushed to the telephone. "I need an appointment, a consultation, ear candling, I need—"
    "A phone book?" Bran offered. She jumped.
    "Throw it away!" she commanded. "That ink will make your ears fall off!"
    He tossed it onto the table and gave up. "Don’t you care at all about the burglar last night?"
    "The burglar?" she snapped. "I bet you didn’t wash after handling it. Get upstairs and clean your head, shoulders, knees, and toes, then wake up Balder, before he gets a whooping cold."
    Rosie knew the drill: she took a sausage out of the pan, wrapped it in a napkin, and handed it to Bran, and he started up the stairs to Balder’s room. He made his way through the toys in the dark, flipping the blinds open to let the sunshine in.
    "Rise and shine!" Bran said, pushing a few toys aside with his foot.
    "Oh, no," Balder whined, throwing the sheets over his head. "Go away!"
    "Time to get up," Bran said. "Mother’s orders."
    "Get out!" Balder demanded. Bran waved the sausage in front of Balder’s nose a few times.
    "Go aw—" Balder started but interrupted himself when he sniffed the air. Bran waved the sausage a few times, and Balder finally snatched it from him, poking his head out. In a second the sausage was down his throat, all in one stuff. When he finished, he licked his lips and sat up, pouting. "I don’t want to get up," he moaned. "I