Read Until Again for Free Online Page B

when you know it’s gonna rain but it doesn’t happen for a long time. It was just dark and – what’s that word? – oh, yeah, ominous. A hoffler ran across the lawn and went down into his hole like someone was chasing after it.
    “’We weren’t supposed to get a storm today’ the king said to the queen. ’It was supposed to be clear and sunny’
    “’Even the sky is worried,’ the queen said. ’Even the birds.’ She pointed to a norbeck mother nudging her babies toward the safety of the bushes with one of her beaks.
    “For a second, the king reached for the queen’s hand and patted it. ’Everything is going to be fine. You’d know it if I didn’t believe that, right?’”
    Becky looked up at her father to see if he recognized those words. If he had, he wasn’t showing it. When had he become so hard to figure out? She continued with the story.
    “The queen nodded to her husband, and they went to their car. As they sat down, Amelan walked up to them, handing a folder to the king.
    "’I’d feel better if I were coming with you,’ Amelan said.
    "’I know you would,’ the king told him, ’but we need you to take care of things here. The palace doesn’t stop functioning when we’re away.’
    “Amelan bowed his head and said, ’Of course, Your Majesty.’ He started to turn away, but then he looked back at the car, staring at them the way Amelan did when he had something serious on his mind. It was like he wanted to say something, but he couldn’t get the words out. Amelan was usually so tough, but today he just looked sad.”
    Becky hesitated for a little while as she thought of Amelan's face and the queen’s face. In the picture she had in her mind, everyone, even the king, looked like they were worried that something scary was going to jump out at them and like their best friend was moving to another country.
    “Babe, do you want me to pick up the story?” Dad said.
    “No, I got it. Just thinking.”
    She stayed quiet for maybe another minute. During this time, she thought about how intense everything was in this scene: the stormy sky, the nervous animals, the worried and sad people. This wasn’t the first time they’d told a Tamarisk story where dangerous things were happening. In those other stories, though, everyone had been courageous and confident. She couldn’t do this story that way. She just couldn’t.
    “As the motorcade began to move, the king took a look back toward the palace and had a thought that sent shivers down his spine. He shook his head quickly, trying to get the thought out of his head, and he faced forward.
    “To get his mind off things, he looked through the papers Amelan had given him. This didn’t help at all. The papers included reports of the latest acts of sabotage, including one that had killed one of the last remaining families of kestertons that scientists had been nursing back to health. The little cats were so delicate and innocent, and the evil, evil -”
    Suddenly and completely without warning, Becky found herself sobbing. The image of beautiful furry creatures getting blown up had taken an already somber story and made it unimaginably worse. It was like there was nothing Becky could do to make this story better. Every word that came out of her mouth just seemed to make it sadder and sadder, even if she didn’t want it to turn out that way. And now all she could do was cry.
    She felt Dad’s arms squeezing her. “Babe, are you okay?”
    This had never happened to Becky before. She loved Miea and the king and the queen and the hofflers and the mohonks and the waccasassas. She thought about them all the time and felt like she knew them the way she knew her best friend Lonnie. But even when things had gotten scary or tense before, she’d never just started crying.
    This wasn’t like anything else though, was it? This wasn’t like any other Tamarisk story, and she realized now that Tamarisk stories would never feel the same again.
    Finally she wiped