The Secret History of Tom Trueheart Chapter One Somewhere in the Dark eastern woods Once upon a time, long ago, near the Land of Stories, lived young Tom Trueheart. He was the youngest of the famous Trueheart family of adventurers. He lived far away from here, and even further from now, in a carved and painted wooden house near a busy crossroads, on the edge of a deep dark forest, in the time of fables. He lived with his kindly mother and with his six older brothers. Tom's six older brothers were all named Jack, after Jack, their father. Their nicknames were Simple Jack, Jack-a-Napes, Jack the Giant Killer, Jack Sprat, or Jack-a-Dandy. These Jacks were well known and celebrated throughout the land. Jack, Jacquot, Jacques, Jackie, Jackson, and Jake were very tall, very beefy, very brave, and very noisy young men. On the occasions when they were all at home together, the little wooden house was so noisy, and so crowded with Jacks, that it almost burst at the seams. All of these six brothers were famous for a very good reason. It was these brave brothers, these same six, fabled, heroic Jacks who had carried out all of the toughest, scariest, and most romantic and exciting adventures so far to have happened in the Land of Stories. All of the great stories had happened to a Jack. Over the years, the youngest son, Tom Trueheart, had grown into an imaginative, kind, and helpful boy. He was not tall or broad for his age, as all his brothers had been; he was slight and wiry. His hair was dark and curled naturally, while all his brothers had hair that was straight and worn long like a Viking warrior's. Tom's hair was hard to tame, and, on the rare occasions when he would let her, his mother had a devil of a time trying to brush it at all. His hair curled around his head in such wild and springy locks that he looked permanently windswept. His eyes were dark, like his mother's, not the clear blue of his father and brothers. From the earliest age he had suffered from bad dreams after listening to all the scary adventure stories of his older brothers. Dreams of wolves waiting in the darkest parts of the forest with big teeth and dripping jaws. Dreams of ogres and giants and dark dungeons and black-cloaked, smiling villains. Even when there was just Tom and his mother and they had a rare quiet evening on their own together, she would insist that they huddle cozily side by side in the inglenook fireplace (the kind you can actually sit inside), and she couldn't resist telling him one or two of the old and really scary stories. Stories, after all, were the family trade. . . . There was just one thing: Tom carried in his heart a worrying secret. A secret he kept locked up very tight inside. He was not like his bigger brothers in one other very important way. He was not at all brave. The Secret History of Tom Trueheart . Copyright © by Ian Beck. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold. Excerpted from The Secret History of Tom Trueheart by Ian Beck All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
