The Seeker - Isobelle Carmody [41]
“I’m so scared,” she whispered suddenly, turning her tearstained face to me. “It didn’t seem so awful at all when I came here. Not like I expected it to be. But now I keep dreaming of things chasing me and of an old lady laughing.” That sounded like the persona that I had seen during her trance, and I wondered if the blocks were beginning to break down. I debated whether to press her but decided against it, because she looked so ill and exhausted.
The next morning, at firstmeal, I heard someone ask if Selmar had been caught. She had been missing from her bed for more than a week, and I had assumed she had been moved to another room or had been wandering at night as she had been wont to do.
“Caught?” I asked.
“Haven’t you heard?” said the girl beside me. “She was with the twins when they tried to escape, but she got away.”
It had never occurred to me that a defective might be the unknown escaped Misfit. Astonished at this news, it was a moment before I turned to Cameo, who had come to the meal with me. Her face had gone the color of dirty soap, and I wondered why the news that Selmar had escaped Obernewtyn provoked such a look of horror. Looking down at my food, I remembered suddenly what Louis Larkin had said about Selmar being different when she first came to Obernewtyn, and a terrible idea formed in my mind. What if the thing that had turned Selmar into a defective was the doctor’s treatments? I was suddenly determined to question Louis about Selmar, and if he would not answer me willingly, then I would enter his mind and find out for myself what had happened to her.
I was shocked when Louis flew into a rage the moment I mentioned Selmar’s name. He ordered me out of the milking barn, so there was no opportunity to probe him. I had simply to slink away, wondering why he reacted so violently. Only later did it occur to me that he had done so because he knew Selmar had escaped and feared for her. Hadn’t there been real fondness in his voice when he had mentioned her before? Perhaps before she had become defective, they had been friends.
That night, no one knew whether or not Selmar had been caught, but there was a rumor that the twins were being sent to one of the remote Councilfarms that dealt with the cleansing of whitestick. It was no less of a death sentence that if they had been ordered burnt.
Ariel’s absence continued, and more than once I heard it whispered that he was not just involved in the search for Selmar but was leading it. One boy told me that Ariel and his dogs—wolves, really—always chased anyone who ran off. And he always caught them. Remembering Selmar’s reaction to Ariel, I pitied her, though I could hardly credit that he would use wolves to hunt her, for it was said that, unlike dogs, they would not be stayed from a kill.
I decided I would definitely deep-probe Ariel when he next showed himself. I would have tried again with Louis Larkin, but when Rushton came for us at the maze gate the next day, he said coolly that I had offended the old man and he had refused to have me in the milking barn. Therefore I would be mucking out stables that day. Rushton seemed to relish giving me the reassignment, and a cold anger filled me. I decided I would probe him instead. He might only be the farm overseer, but as such he might know something about the hunt for Selmar if dogs were used.
Then I thought of Sharna, and my heart quickened, for he might know something of these dogs Ariel was supposed to be using. But Sharna was not in the stables, and Rushton did not linger, so in a moment, I was alone. Even the horses had already been led out. In spite of everything, it was delicious to be entirely