The Seeker (13 page)

“What about Ariel, then?” I asked.

“I hate him,” Matthew said with cold venom. I was taken aback at his vehemence, and Dameon actually flinched.

“I’m sorry,” Matthew said. He looked at me. “Ye have to be careful about what ye feel. Sometimes things hurt him.”

“Burns,” mumbled Dameon. “Hate always burns.”

I thought that was true enough.

“Ariel is a Misfit, but he has great authority here,” Dameon explained. “He is Madam Vega’s personal assistant. I have heard that he started off as an informer and proved especially good at it.”

“Do you … I mean, what do you feel when you’re near him?” I asked.

“Lots of things, and none of them good. The ugliness is deep down in him. It’s like being near something that smells sweet, and then you realize it’s that sweet smell that rotten things sometimes get,” he said, then he sighed as if annoyed by his vague explanation. But I found it a curiously apt description.

“And you say Larkin has been here for a long time?” I said, changing the subject because Dameon was looking pale. His powers seemed to demand more of him than mine did of me.

“Since this place was built,” Matthew said extravagantly. “An’ if ye want to know about people …”

I shook my head hastily. “Oh, it wasn’t so much people as Obernewtyn itself I was thinking about. It seems such an odd place. Why would anyone build here in the first place? And when did it become a home for Misfits, and why? There is some kind of secret here, I sense it. I don’t know why I should care. The world is full of secrets, but this nags at me.”

“I feel that, too,” Matthew said eagerly. “As if something is going on underneath all these everyday things.”

“It makes me cold to listen to you two,” Dameon said suddenly. “I don’t deny that I have felt something, too. Not the way you two do, and not by using any power. But a blind person develops an instinct for such things, and mine tells me there is some mystery here. Something big. But some things
are better left unknown.” His words were grim, and I found myself looking round nervously.

Dameon went on. “Sometimes I am afraid for people like you who have to know things. And there’s no point in my even warning you that finding out can sometimes be a dangerous thing. Your kind will dig and hunt and worry at it until one day you will find what is hidden, waiting for you.”

I shivered violently.

“Curiosity killed th’ cat,” Matthew said. I looked up, startled, thinking of Maruman. “That’s what Larkin told me once. He said it was an Oldtime saying.”

“And how would he know Oldtime sayings?” I asked, throwing off the chill cast over me by Dameon’s words.

“From books,” Matthew said calmly. “He keeps them hidden, but I’ve seen them.”

“It seems like a silly sort of saying to me,” I said, though I was fascinated at the thought of hidden books.

“Well, sayin’ it cleared the ice out of me blood.” Matthew looked at Dameon, who seemed preoccupied with his own thoughts since he had uttered his chilling little speech. “Ye fair give me th’ creeps talkin’ that way,” he added.

“Do you know, I was just thinking,” Dameon said. Matthew gave me a “not again” look. “I once thought it was the end of the world to be sent here, the end of everything. But here I sit, content, and with two friends, and I wonder.”

“I know what ye mean,” Matthew agreed. “I near died of fright when Madam Vega picked me to come here. But now I sometimes get th’ funny feeling that this, all along, was where I was meant to come.”

I said nothing but thought of Maruman saying that my destiny waited for me in the mountains.

“Yet, it is not freedom,” Dameon added softly, and we both
looked at him. The bell to end midmeal rang, seeming to underline his words.

“Ah well. Back to work,” Matthew said glumly, and pulled Dameon to his feet. With a wave, they went back across the fields.

Rushton came to stand beside me as I watched them go. “I see you accomplish many things quickly,” he sneered. “I should have thought the orphan life would have taught you caution in choosing companions.”

I said nothing.

“Well, this afternoon, you can show your talents at milking. I don’t suppose your father had cows as well as horses?” he added.

I shook my head and fell into step behind him, hoping he was not to be my teacher for the afternoon. I was beginning to ache from the morning’s work. We went to a big barn, which Rushton said was the dairy. A bearded man was sitting on a barrel near the entrance.

“Louis, this is Elspeth Gordie,” Rushton told the man. “You can have her for the afternoon.”

The old man’s deeply weathered face twitched, but it was too wrinkled to tell if he smiled or not. “I hope she’s quicker than th’ last,” the old man said abruptly.

“Oh, she’s quick all right,” Rushton said pointedly as the old man got to his feet and led me inside. I looked back, expecting to see the overseer’s departing back, but he stood there watching me.

Louis instructed me on milking cows, thoroughly and at such length that I began to wonder if he thought me a halfwit. I understood what he meant long before he completed his explanations.

He reminded me of a tortoise. That is not to suggest, however,
that there was anything foolish or absurd about him. Tortoises, though slow, are dignified and self-sufficient. On the other hand, I had the distinct but unfounded impression that his thoughts were not nearly as slow as his appearance would have me believe. He grunted his satisfaction when I demonstrated that I could milk the cow according to his instructions. Then he gave me terse directions on emptying the bucket into the correct section of a separation vat.

“Nowt like it,” he said wistfully, and I jumped because so far, the only words he had spoken had been orders. He pointed to the milk, and I nodded, wondering if he was slightly unbalanced. “Ye don’t gan milk like that in th’ towns. Watery pale stuff tasting of drainpipes,” he said, patting the cow’s rump complacently. “Ye mun call me Larkin,” he said.

“Oh,” I said, startled at the realization that this was the man who Matthew and Dameon had told me about.

“Lead her out, then,” Louis said easily.

Leading the cow outside to graze, I returned to find that Louis had brought in a second cow and was emptying the bucket of milk into a wooden vat.

“Dinna mix th’ vats up,” Louis cautioned me, and bid me get on with milking.

Sitting at the milking stool, I grasped the cow’s udders. I apologized to her as I began to milk her, but she merely sighed and told me that it was a relief. Louis came to watch me, and I wondered if permission to use his last name was a good or bad sign. It was hard to be sure how he felt with that beard and his leathery face. As I milked, I took the opportunity to question the cow about him. Like most cows, she was a slow, amiable creature without much brain. But she was fond of Louis, and that disposed me to like him.

“Niver gan done that way!” Louis snapped, and I jumped.
I had fallen into a pleasant drowse, leaning my head on the cow’s warm, velvety flank. As I sat up and went on milking, Louis pulled a box up and sat, scraping at a pipe.

“I suppose you’ve been here a long time,” I ventured. He nodded, still busy with his pipe. “I suppose you would know just about everybody here.…” I looked up quickly, and he seemed unperturbed by my questions. But I decided it might be better to ask him about himself before questioning him about anything else. “Were you born in the highlands?” I asked daringly.

Louis chewed the end of his pipe and looked at me thoughtfully. “I were born here,” he said. I stared but he did not elaborate. “After this place became what it is now, I went to work in the highlands, but I dinna fit there, an’ soon enow they put me right back here.” He gave a smile that was both sly and childishly transparent. “Them smart townsfolk think they know everything. They think they can keep things th’ same forever. But change comes an’ things have gone too far to drag ’em back to what they was. Every year there be more Misfits an’ seditioners, an’ one day that Council will find there’s more in th’ prisons than out.” He chuckled.

Matthew had been right about the old man’s interesting ideas. I wondered how I could get him to talk about Obernewtyn. “This place … it’s been here a long time,” I said.

He shrugged, hardly seeming to hear the question. I decided to try another tack. “Do you know Ariel? And Selmar?” I asked.

He nodded, but his eyes had grown wary, and I wondered which name had produced the change. “Oh, aye. I know them all, an’ more. Selmar’s a poor sad thing now. Ye’d nowt know her if ye could see how she were when she first came.
An’ she were th’ hope of Obernewtyn …,” he said bitterly.

I frowned in puzzlement, for the girl that had hammered at my door that first day seemed utterly defective. Apparently she had not been born that way. I was about to ask Louis what had happened to her when he suddenly stood up, knocked his pipe out, and ordered me tersely to get on with the milking and take myself back to the maze gate when I was finished. He stamped on the glowing ashes and walked away.

When I had finished the milking and washed the buckets, I came out of the barn forlornly, thinking I had a bad habit of annoying the wrong people. I had sat down outside the barn to rest for a moment when I heard a soft footfall.

“Don’t tell me you are tired!” came Rushton’s mocking voice. I looked up to find the overseer looking down at me, and suddenly anger surged through me.

“People like you are the worst sort,” I said in a low voice that seemed to surprise him with its intensity. “You make everything so much worse with your sneering and snide comments. I do my work. Why don’t you just leave me alone?”

For a moment, he actually seemed taken aback; then he shrugged. “I hardly think the opinions of one Misfit will trouble me too much,” he said. “Now get up. It is time for you to return to the house.”

I got to my feet, knowing I had been stupid to speak up as I had, for an overseer would certainly have power enough to make me regret my outburst. The weariness in my body had somehow crept into my spirit, and I said nothing as we made our way to the maze gate, collecting others along the way. Rushton left us with an older girl who unlocked the gate and led us through the maze.

I did not see Matthew or Dameon, and guessed they had gone back with an earlier group. I felt isolated and dispirited.

I thought of Enoch’s warm recommendation of Rushton, wondering how they had become friends. Certainly it was impossible to imagine the cold, stern Rushton as anyone’s friend.

Thinking of Enoch made me think of Maruman and wonder again where the story of a cat searching for a funaga had originated. If only he were safe with the friendly old coachman. Surely it must be so. The coach horses could easily have told one of the animals on the farm about Maruman when Enoch came to Obernewtyn. But again I remembered that I’d seen no new faces recently. And what other reason would Enoch have for coming to Obernewtyn save to deliver a new Misfit?

13

I
WAS IN
one of the tower rooms at Obernewtyn, a room I had not seen before. It was very small and round. There was a tiny window and a door leading to a balcony.

I was about to go outside when I heard voices and realized I had no right to be there. I cringed against a wall, seeking a place to hide. Then I heard a strange keening noise, a grinding sound like metal against metal, only more musical. There was a note in the noise not unlike a scream.

As I drifted out of the dream, the noise seemed to carry on into my waking state. It was a tantalizingly familiar sound, I realized, not something that I had ever heard in my life, but a sound that oft came to me in dreams.

Thunder rolled in the air.

I opened my eyes to see Cameo hasten into my room. I usually woke to the sound of the bedroom door being unlocked in the morning, but I knew I had overslept when I saw the other beds were empty.

“Are you all right?” Cameo said. “You yelled out, and I was passing.…” She faltered, unsure of her welcome.

I forced a smile. “I was having a nightmare that a horse was about to trample me,” I said lightly as I climbed out of bed.