The Seeker - Isobelle Carmody [36]
“Nightmares,” I suggested gently.
A tear slid down her nose and dripped onto her clasped hands. “True dreams,” she said. “That’s why they sent me here. But they are getting worse. I dream something is trying to get me, something horrible and evil.” She dropped her head into her hands and wept in earnest.
I patted her shoulder awkwardly. “Perhaps it only feels like a true dream. I have heard it’s hard to tell,” I said.
She looked up, and a wave of exhaustion crossed her face, making her look suddenly much older. “I am so tired,” she said. “I try not to go to sleep, because I’m scared of what I will dream.”
I did not know what to say. She reminded me of Maruman in one of his fits, and there was never anything I could do to soothe him when he was under the sway of his strange dreams. Then the hair on my neck prickled, and I looked up to see Ariel watching us from the open doorway.
“What is going on here?” he demanded.
I glanced at Cameo, who sat white and silent, staring at her feet, and I remembered how she had happily chattered to Ariel when he had taken us to the farms. Yet now she would not look at him, and he regarded her like a hunter deciding when to loose the killing arrow. Perhaps he had appeared in her true dreams.
“What did you want?” I asked insolently, wanting to draw his attention from Cameo. He gave me a hard look, then told us to hurry up and assemble at the inner maze gate, for we had already missed firstmeal.
Thunder rumbled all morning over the farms but no rain fell. The sky was a thick, congested gray with streaks of milky white clouds strung low in fibers from east to west. I ate midmeal with little appetite, despite having missed firstmeal. A foreboding feeling filled me. I could not talk to Dameon and Matthew about Cameo, because two other boys sat near us and engaged them in conversation.
Before we went back to work, Matthew did manage to tell me quickly that the boys he had been talking to were acquaintances of Rushton’s. Matthew found their sudden friendliness suspicious.
“We’d better be careful,” he warned. “I wouldn’t like anyone to find out what we can do. I can just imagine the doctor wanting to experiment on us.”
His words made my blood run cold. “Doctor?” I asked, the word unfamiliar.
“It is an Oldtime word meaning a person who studies healing,” Matthew said.
I wanted to ask more, but there was no chance, for Rushton had arrived and was looking pointedly at us.
Since my outburst at the milking sheds several weeks before, the overseer had been curt, but he did not say anything to me apart from giving me instructions. I had expected some punishment, but nothing happened. That afternoon I was to spend with Louis Larkin learning how to make butter. I spent quite a lot of time with Louis and was looking after the horses and some goats. Best of all, I liked the time I spent alone with the horses. Sharna, who lived with Louis, usually spent that time with me.
I spent midmeals with Dameon and Matthew, and when it was safe, we talked, insatiably curious about the very different lives each of us had lived. Matthew had come from the highlands not too far from Guanette and had been able to hide his abilities under his mother’s guidance. After she died, he had lived alone in her shack, poaching and fishing and generally living close to the bone, and he developed a reputation for being odd. A group of village boys constantly tormented him. Finally, several of the ringleaders in the gang came to harm. One fell from a roof, and another ate poisoned fish. The village called in the Council and claimed Matthew was dangerous. No one could explain how Matthew, with his lame foot, had hurt the boys, but the Council had been convinced, and he was declared a Misfit.
Astonishingly, Dameon was the son of a Councilman, who had left him vast properties upon his death. But a cousin had conspired to have him declared a Misfit. I was amazed at Dameon’s lack of resentment. But he said he had never really felt like a Councilman’s son. Because of his ability, he had always