The Seeker - Isobelle Carmody [39]
Ariel was waiting at the gate with the others when I arrived, and I was surprised by the air of gloom among them. I thought it was on account of the rain until, when Ariel turned to unlock the maze gate, one of the girls leaned near and whispered, “Madam Vega has returned. Ariel just told us.” Her eyes were frightened, and I felt that old fluttery terror come back into my stomach.
It wasn’t as if anything had really changed, but all at once I realized what had struck me about the atmosphere at Obernewtyn since I had come here. It had been waiting.…
14
I HAD THOUGHT I would be summoned by Madam Vega at once. But as the days passed much as before, I wondered whether I could have been wrong about the premonition.
Then I discovered something that drove my nagging worry over the head keeper to the back of my thoughts. Dameon told me he heard Cameo had been receiving “treatments” from the doctor since Madam Vega’s return. No one knew precisely what the treatments were, but I remembered the talk at my trial concerning a “cure” for Misfit minds. I found it odd and rather frightening that so little was known of the treatments when Cameo could not have been the first to receive them.
Strangest of all was Cameo’s reaction when I asked about her visits to the doctor’s chamber. She just stared at me in surprise and said she didn’t know what I was talking about. With anyone else, I might have thought they were lying, but not Cameo. She was not made for guile.
Dameon suggested that Cameo and perhaps all those who received the doctor’s treatments had been subjected to an Oldtime technique called hypnosis, which could prevent them from remembering what had been done to them. Hypnosis sounded to me like a form of what I called coercion, and I almost said as much. But I had not explained my ability in this area to Dameon or Matthew, fearing they might react uncomfortably to a companion capable of tampering with their minds.
But we agreed, under the circumstances, that I should probe Cameo. To my astonishment, I found a series of blocks at different levels in her mind. They were not natural shields, and I did not see how hypnosis, as Dameon had described it, could have produced them. The worst thing about them was that they were clumsily made and had damaged her mind. This, I thought, might be the reason for both her nightmares and her physical weakening. I suspected I could have forced my way through the blocks, but to do so might hurt Cameo even more.
I withdrew from her, feeling confused and helpless. Most of all, I wondered why her mind had been blocked. What had this Doctor been doing to make him so determined to conceal the nature of his treatments?
It was a week before I saw Cameo again, at a nightmeal. She looked terrible, and Matthew went nearly as white as she was when he saw her enter the dining chamber. He hastened to bring her to join us. When Dameon asked gently where she had been, she would not meet any of our eyes, and said only that she had been ill and resting in a place where they kept sick Misfits. It was impossible to press her any harder. She was clearly happy to see us, and she talked and laughed more as the meal progressed, but there was a brittleness to her behavior, and she had lost a frightening amount of weight.
That night, I had a nightmare. Much as in the dream Cameo had once told me about, I was being pursued through the darkness by something terrible that hungered for me. When I mentioned it to Matthew, he gave me a haunted look and said he had had a similar nightmare, only it was not him being pursued but Cameo while he stood by helplessly.
Dameon said nothing, but it was obvious from the shadows under his eyes that he was sleeping badly, too, even if he had not had nightmares. I asked him if his empathy could give us any insight into what was happening.
“I don’t perceive others’ emotions as clearly as you and Matthew can hear their thoughts. Empathy is much hazier. I can sometimes even project feelings