Seeds of Time (4 page)

Kate looked surprised at the conversational tone that Darrell was taking but, eager to mend the rift between them, continued to talk. “This place is actually pretty amazing,” she whispered from her bed in the corner. “Have you seen the computer room?”

Darrell thought back to her whirlwind tour of the school earlier. “I can't remember that much about it,” she confessed.

“Well, they have every system I've ever heard of, Internet access, and a whole slew of things I've never seen anywhere but in
Wired
magazine. Flat screens, voice activated equipment, virtual reality resources. It's unbelievable for a school.”

Darrell turned over in her bed and looked out at the dark, star-dappled sky. “Unbelievable is a good word for it,” she said slowly. “I've never heard of equipment that up to date in a school, and a summer school at that. We certainly don't have it in the computer lab at our school in Vancouver.”

Kate sat up. “My mother told me Professor Tooth has been running a private school in Europe for years and that Eagle Glen School is supposed to be an extension of some special philosophy she uses there.”

Lily spoke up sleepily. “Will you two shut up? I'm really tired and I have early training tomorrow morning. Besides,” she mumbled from deep in her pillow, “if you are talking about state-of-the-art equipment, you can't beat the swimming centre here.”

“I've heard it's really small,” said Kate.

Lily eyes snapped open, and she looked indignantly at Kate. “It is small, but it's well designed. And they say
the coaches are the best. There aren't many swimmers elite enough to train here, you know.”

“I know, I know,” said Kate impatiently.

“I heard Professor Tooth say that you were trying out for the Olympic team in the fall. Is that true?” asked Darrell.

Lily looked from Kate back to Darrell, and the anger in her face drained away. For the first time, she lowered her head with what appeared to be modesty. “I am going to try,” she said quietly.

Kate looked abashed. “What's your event, Lily?”

“My best distance is the two hundred metre IM,” Lily replied with enthusiasm. “I have to develop more strength in the fly, but the front and back are no problem, and the breast is a piece of cake!”

Kate blinked. “I understood about half of that,” she muttered to Darrell.

As quickly as she had awoken, Lily turned over onto her side and the gentle snoring began again.

Darrell lay back in bed. It was now well past midnight, and the moon was setting behind the mountains in the west as she rolled over and drifted off to sleep.

The triple peal of a bell ringing through the building woke Darrell and Kate the next morning at seven o'clock. Lily was nowhere to be seen. A notice pinned on the inside of the bedroom door indicated that breakfast was to be served at 7:30
A.M
. Checking her watch, Kate scrambled to get ready and ran out the door in minutes.

Darrell felt tired and depressed. She was in no mood to rush off to some boring school orientation. She showered, dressed, and, still barefoot, slowly headed downstairs. It was almost eight o'clock by the time she walked into the deserted dining hall. She found a large urn of coffee, poured a cup, and headed outside to complete her morning ritual. At the side of the school, an open door led to the kitchens. She avoided meeting anyone and walked barefoot to stand on a concrete stepping stone outside the kitchen door.

A beautiful summer day was in the making, but the sun had just risen over the mountains behind the school and the air was chill. Darrell stood and stared moodily out over the water. Out of habit, she glanced at her watch. The fragrance of the coffee drew her and she drank it slowly and then glanced at her watch again.

“Ten minutes,” she muttered. “Not a bad start.”

A voice snapped her out of her reverie. She almost dropped her coffee cup.

“Ten minutes? Would that be ten minutes late for Orientation?” Professor Tooth stood at the door to the kitchen, looking calmly at Darrell with her clear, green eyes. Darrell felt emotions warring on her face: guilt, anger, sorrow. Stubbornness won out.

“That's not what I meant,” she said, belligerently. “You're right, I would be ten minutes late for orientation, if I were going. It's just that art classes aren't scheduled until this afternoon, so I hadn't planned to go until then.” Professor Tooth raised her eyebrows, but remained silent.

Darrell felt uncomfortable. It was hard to have an argument with someone who refused to argue back. She tried again.

“This is just something I do every morning. It's ... it's kind of like an endurance test.”

Professor Tooth nodded. She gestured down at Darrell's bare foot, red with cold from standing on the concrete block, and spoke quietly.

“Are you punishing yourself for the loss of your foot, by trying to freeze the one remaining foot you have?”

Darrell frowned, and she could feel a deep crease form between her eyebrows. She had never had to explain this to anyone before, and she wasn't sure she wanted to, anyway.

“It's not that at all. It's just — well, I stand on the cold step to — just to prove I can do it — I guess,” she finished lamely. She felt anger rise up inside her at having to explain something so private to a relative stranger. “Besides,” she added, “it's personal, and I don't think it's any of your business.” She lifted her chin and stared defiantly at Myrtle Tooth.

To her surprise, Professor Tooth laughed. “You're right, Darrell. The things that go on in your head are your own special business. But I am principal of this school, and it's my job to ensure that my students are not a danger to anyone, including themselves.” She looked thoughtfully at Darrell, and then changed the subject. “I think you may want to investigate a few classes other than just those in the Art Studio, Darrell. I have a hunch that you may find answers to your questions in places you may least expect. Now, if you will excuse me, I have a lesson that begins at ten o'clock.” She smiled kindly, but her green eyes bored into Darrell's. “It encompasses some art history that you may find ... enlightening. I hope you can make it.”

She turned and disappeared through the door to the kitchen. Disturbed and puzzled, Darrell made her away around through the front doors and up the stairs to put on a pair of sandals. Perhaps Professor Tooth's history class might be interesting after all. Darrell shrugged.
At least it will fill the time before art starts this afternoon
, she thought, and, grabbing a pencil and some paper, she headed off to find the orientation group.

Professor Tooth's history lesson did prove compelling. Darrell had never attended a class quite like it before. History was supposed to be boring ... it always had been boring, in her experience. But at this school everything was different from what Darrell had come to expect.

Professor Tooth began the class by turning out the lights and gathering the students together on the cold floor. In her strong, quiet voice she started what sounded like a ghost story. The students were completely silent as Professor Tooth spoke. It was the story of the life of a young person in the Dark Ages. Darrell and the rest of the class listened spellbound to the story of a young man named Luke, who lived to be only nineteen before being struck down by the Black Plague that swept through Europe in the fourteenth century.

In the weird twilit classroom, Darrell closed her eyes and watched the pictures play inside her imagination.
The painful difficulty of everyday life, the continuous daily struggle to defeat death or at least to push that bleak hand away for another hour or another day ...

The class concluded with an examination of some of the contemporary art of the fourteenth century. The paintings depicted images both matter-of-fact and gruesome, as death made its way, unimpeded, across Europe and Asia. The combination of Professor Tooth's words and the pictures made Darrell's fingers itch. The art class that followed allowed Darrell some relief, as she was able to spend a merry afternoon sketching corpses in various states of decomposition, plucked from her mind's eye after the morning's lesson.

She walked thoughtfully out of the school at five o'clock. After checking from the arbutus tree that the beach was deserted, she wound her way down the path through the cliffs to the shore below. The day had proven much more interesting than she had anticipated, and she needed some quiet time to think over the latest developments. Though the sun had shone for most of the day, around three o'clock it had clouded over, and now the sky was completely grey.

Darrell wandered down the beach, lost in thought. She'd spoken to her mother briefly on the phone before heading outside. Janice Connor had sounded busy but was clearly very worried about Darrell. Grudgingly, Darrell told her about the interesting classes, and her
mother had hung up sounding like she felt a little better about leaving Darrell at Eagle Glen.

Darrell heard a bark and looked up, delighted, to see Delaney bounding toward her. All her cares forgotten, she dropped to her knees and buried her face in the fur behind Delaney's ears. He smelled comfortingly of salt and sea and healthy dog, and they played tug with a stick from the beach. Darrell felt her heart thump as she patted the dog. It was great to have a friend who was always so happy to see her. The only pet she'd ever cared for was her neighbour's cat, Norton, and he wasn't good for much more than a pat or two every day. After five cheerful minutes, she stood up and wandered toward the giant driftwood stump, Delaney happily wagging behind her.

The shattered stump towered high in front of her, balanced on its system of roots that snaked and crossed like locks of Medusa's hair. As she had seen on her first visit, the surface of the wood was worn and was in places rubbed to a satiny smoothness by the action of the waves. Up close, the wood was a surprise, riddled with tiny holes. Darrell remembered reading somewhere that holes in coastal wood like docks and wooden-hulled ships were wrought, not by worms, but by borer clams, which lived by tunnelling in and consuming the wood.

Darrell ran her hand across the pitted surface, tracing the intricate pattern within the wood. Maybe this old
stump would give her the answer to why she was here this summer. She sighed. Maybe it was as simple as learning to marvel at a world that produced a tree this size that could be brought down and digested by a tiny clam.

Darrell looked down at Delaney as he snuffled with clear interest under the roots of the ancient tree.

“Lucky I have you, boy,” she said. “You're a lot cuter than a wood-boring clam.” Delaney had started to dig a hole at the base of the tree, where one of the roots pushed deep into the sand. She bent to ruffle the fur on his back, but he would not lift his head, even to acknowledge a pat.

“What have you got there, boy?” Darrell was curious. Delaney was digging frantically, in a spot where the sand was soft. Suddenly, with a bark and a wiggle, he vanished from view.

“Delaney! Come back here!” Darrell called, worried. No sign of the dog. She dropped to her knees and stared with some surprise at the hole into which Delaney had disappeared. Apart from the small bit of freshly dug sand, there was an established tunnel under the winding roots of the stump. Without a second thought, Darrell flopped to the ground and, with her stomach on the sand, wriggled into the tunnel after Delaney.

She found it a tight fit only for a moment and then the tunnel widened to allow her plenty of room to move. She could feel air circulating above her head and
slowly stood upright. Delaney barked again and nuzzled her sandy hand.

Darrell found, to her surprise, that she could stand up inside without stooping. She looked up and could see the jagged top of the trunk high above, pointing to the sky. From inside the ancient log, the pounding of the surf grew distant. She stretched out a hand to find the inner wood was smooth, soft, and damp to the touch. There was a smell that she couldn't place; a whiff of old fires left burning to cinders, of smoke, of peace. Instinctively, Darrell pulled back her hand to look for the telltale mark of charcoal, but her skin was clean. She replaced her hand on the inner wall of the log, noticing for the first time the warmth of the wood, in spite of the fact that the sun no longer shone outside. The texture drew her, and she closed her eyes and laid one cheek against the smooth surface.

The sensation was startling. With her hand and face against the wood, she felt as though she could see, taste, and smell the history of the old tree. The sound of the surf beating the ocean rocks into sand on the shore gave an undertone, and with her ear against the inside of the old log she marvelled at the deep, dull beat of drums. The smell of wood smoke, the tang of salt on her tongue, and the steady, solid rhythm filled her senses.

Delaney settled on the soft sand as pictures rose unbidden behind her closed eyelids. Darkness, figures
dancing, wisps of smoke, and licks of flame. She could smell the water more strongly now, or was it the scent of crab being boiled in pots over open fires? She felt the passage of time course from the ancient driftwood tree into her fingertips. She stood rapt, in the grey light within the ancient tree, lost in a world that existed long ago. She opened her eyes and smiled at Delaney, who thumped his tail gently. She wished she had brought her sketchbook to note down the mesmerizing images that filled her mind.

“We'll come back here again, Delaney,” she whispered. She dropped to her knees to pat him and saw that he was curled up on a scrap of tattered towel. She looked around and saw what she had not noticed before, shreds of old bone and a few scraps of well-gnawed wood. A thought dawned, and she grinned.

“Delaney!” she whispered. “This is where you live, isn't it?”

Delaney smiled with his mouth open and thumped his tail on the sand. Turning his head, he sniffed at the tunnel and gave a gentle woof.