The Seeker - Isobelle Carmody [38]
“He should have been able to keep th’ books,” Matthew declared, ever the advocate of the Beforetime.
“I dinna know about that either,” Louis said sternly. “Maybe Henry Druid only wanted a look at th’ past an’ had no mind to seek trouble. Then again, maybe he was after some of th’ power th’ Oldtimers had.”
“You mean th’ Beforetimers’ magic?” Matthew asked.
“Magic! Pah!” Louis scoffed. “I dinna think for one moment they was any more magic than us. Not th’ sort of magic ye find in fairy stories, anyhow. Some of th’ things they could do might seem like magic to us now. But ’tis my feeling they was just mighty clever people—too clever for their own good.”
“Well, I think they were magic!” Matthew said stubbornly. “An’ I think Lud would never have destroyed them.”
That was as close as you could get to outright sedition—and to Louis, who we all agreed was interesting but probably not to be trusted.
But the old man only puffed at his pipe for a minute. “Boy,” he said finally. “Ye mun be careful of what ye say. It ain’t safe to be blatherin’ out every crazy notion. As to what ye said, well, ye could be right. But if ye are, then who made th’ Great White? Yer wonderful Beforetimers, that’s who.”
Matthew’s face was stricken, and he did not answer. I remembered that Maruman believed much the same thing.
“However it happened, everything was changed by the Great White,” Louis told him, almost gently. “Even th’ seasons have changed. Once they were all a similar length. Nothing is like it was in th’ Beforetime. The Great White killed th’ Beforetime, an’ it woke lots of queer things. It ain’t th’ same world now.”
He puffed at his pipe again before continuing. “But maybe th’ Beforetimers left some things hidden. Maybe there might be something left, and maybe Henry Druid’s books were nowt harmless. Just in case Matthew is right an’ th’ holocaust were man-made, it might be better to leave that stuff hidden. After all, we dinna want to be finding out how they did it.”
“But we wouldn’t have to use the magic like they did,” Matthew said at last.
Louis shook his head. “Dinna say it, lad. Ye dinna know what ye’d do. Power has a way of … changin’ a person. In th’ end, what would all that power do to yer good intentions?”
From that day on, thoughts of escape began to plague me.
Discovering I was no solitary freak had given rise to the notion that life seemed worth more than just endurance. Obernewtyn hadn’t turned out as badly as I had feared, but any way you looked at it, the place was still a prison. And I wanted to be free. I wanted to find Maruman and make a home for us. I imagined a remote farm where we could live quietly with Dameon and Matthew. Cameo, too.
One cloud-filled morning that same week, I was thinking of how useful our abilities might be in throwing off any pursuit, when I was assailed by a premonition of danger as potent as the one I had experienced before Obernewtyn’s head keeper had come to the Kinraide orphan home. I had such strong premonitions rarely, and they never revealed much—only that some threat loomed.
Later that day, the promise of rain was fulfilled with a vengeance. The dark skies opened, and the raindrops that fell were big and forceful. Everyone took shelter; those in the orchards ran for the nearest buildings, and even the cows and horses came under cover. I stayed in the shed, milking the cows and listening to the drumming noise the rain made on the tin roof. The disquiet that the premonition had roused gradually