Messenger

HarperCollins Children’s Books

An imprint of of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in the USA by ‘Houghton Mifflin Books for Children’ an imprint of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in 2004

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children’s Books in 2014

Copyright © Lois Lowry 2004

Cover design by Charles Brock, Faceout Studio

Lois Lowry asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks

HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication

Source ISBN: 9780007597284

Ebook Edition © JUNE 2014 ISBN: 9780007597291

Version: 2016-12-07

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Read all of the incredible books in The Giver Quartet:

About the Author

Other Novels in The Giver Quartet

About the Publisher

MATTY WAS IMPATIENT to have the supper preparations over and done with. He wanted to cook, eat, and be gone. He wished he were grown so that he could decide when to eat, or whether to bother eating at all. There was something he needed to do, a thing that scared him. Waiting just made it worse.

Matty was no longer a boy, but not yet a man. Sometimes, standing outside the homeplace, he measured himself against the window. Once he had stood only to its sill, his forehead there, pressing into the wood, but now he was so tall he could see inside without effort. Or, moving back in the high grass, he could see himself reflected in the glass pane. His face was becoming manly, he thought, though childishly he still enjoyed making scowls and frowns at his own reflection. His voice was deepening.

He lived with the blind man, the one they called Seer, and helped him. He cleaned the homeplace, though cleaning bored him. The man said it was necessary. So Matty swept the wooden floor each day and straightened the bedcovers: neatly on the man’s bed, with haphazard indifference on his own, in the room next to the kitchen. They shared the cooking. The man laughed at Matty’s concoctions and tried to teach him, but Matty was impatient and didn’t care about the subtlety of herbs.

“We can just put it all together in the pot,” Matty insisted. “It all goes together in our bellies anyway.”

It was a long-standing and friendly argument. Seer chuckled. “Smell this,” he said, and held out the pale green shoot that he’d been chopping.

Matty sniffed dutifully. “Onion,” he said, and shrugged. “We can just throw it in.

“Or,” he added, “we don’t even need to cook it. But then our breath stinks. There’s a girl promised she’d kiss me if I have sweet breath. But I think she’s teasing.”

The blind man smiled in the boy’s direction. “Teasing’s part of the fun that comes before kissing,” he told Matty, whose face had flushed pink with embarrassment.

“You could trade for a kiss,” the blind man suggested with a chuckle. “What would you give? Your fishing pole?”

“Don’t. Don’t joke about the trading.”

“You’re right, I shouldn’t. It used to be a light-hearted thing. But now — you’re right, Matty. It’s not to be laughed at anymore.”

“My friend Ramon went to the last Trade Mart, with his parents. But he won’t talk about it.”

“We won’t then, either. Is the butter melted in the pan?”

Matty looked. The butter was bubbling slightly and golden brown. “Yes.”

“Add the onion, then. Stir it so it doesn’t burn.”

Matty obeyed.

“Now smell that,” the blind man said. Matty sniffed. The gently sautéing onion released an aroma that made his mouth water.

“Better than raw?” Seer asked.

“But a bother,” Matty replied impatiently. “Cooking’s a bother.”

“Add some sugar. Just a pinch or two. Let it cook for a minute and then we’ll put the rabbit in. Don’t be so impatient, Matty. You always want to rush things, and there’s no need.”

“I want to go out before night comes. I have something to check. I need to eat supper and get out there to the clearing before it’s dark.”