A large dog lay against a wall just inside the stables. He opened his eyes as I entered and watched me sit on a bale of hay.
“Greetings,” I thought on impulse.
His eyes widened, and he looked around before deciding I was the only one there. “Did you speak, funaga?” he asked with mild surprise.
I nodded. “I am Elspeth,” I sent. “May I know your name?”
“I am called Sharna,” he sent. “What manner of funaga are you?”
“I am a funaga like other funagas,” I replied formally.
“I have heard your name before,” he sent unexpectedly. “A cat spoke it.”
“Maruman!” I projected a picture with the name, but Sharna was unresponsive.
“I did not see this mad cat who seeks a funaga. I heard it from a beast who heard it from another.”
“Do you know where the cat was seen?” I asked excitedly.
“Who knows where a cat goes?” he sent philosophically. “The story was only told to me as a curiosity. Whoever heard of a cat looking for a funaga? I thought it a riddle.”
Rushton entered the stable then. He looked about sharply as if sensing something had been going on, then he tersely told me to follow him.
If he had shown an interest in me the day before, today he seemed at pains to assure me of his total lack of interest. “The stables have to be cleaned every second day,” he said in a bored voice as we entered one of the pens. A rich loamy smell rushed out to greet me. I watched as the overseer demonstrated how to catch hold of the horse’s halter and lead it out. The horses were to be released into the yard leading off the stables, he explained, their halters removed and hung on a hook. Once a horse had been led out, Rushton gave me a broom, a rake, and a pan, taking up a long-handled fork himself.
“You have to lift the manure out in clumps and drop it in the pan, along with the dirtiest hay.” Deftly he slid the prongs of the fork under some manure and threw it neatly into the pan. “When you’ve done all that, rake the rest of the hay to one side, then fork in some fresh stuff.” He forked hay from a nearby pile onto the floor with economical movements. It looked easy.
“You lay the old hay over the new; if you don’t, the horse will eat it.” He handed the fork to me. “There are twelve stables in this lot, so you’d better get on with it. Come and get me at the drying shed if you have any trouble getting the horses out.” I nodded, and briefly those inscrutable eyes searched mine, then he turned on his heel and left.
I turned and surveyed the stables.
“You would do well to mindspeak to them first,” Sharna commented from his corner. Taking his advice, I approached the nearest box and greeted its occupant, a dappled mare with a large, comfortable rear. She flicked her tail and turned to face me.
“Who are you?” she asked with evident amusement. “I have spoken to many odd creatures in my time but never a funaga. I suppose you are behind this.” She directed the latter thought to Sharna, who had ambled over to stand beside me. The mare leaned her long nose close to my face and snorted rudely. “I suppose you want to put me out? Well, I’m not having that thing on my head. Just open the door and I’ll walk out.”
I did as she asked, hoping Rushton would not come back and catch me disobeying his instructions. Sharna muttered about the mare’s bossiness, but I ignored him and concentrated on copying Rushton’s movements as I mucked out the box.
Except for a big, nasty black horse whom Sharna said had been badly mistreated by a previous master, the rest of the horses proved cooperative on the condition I did not use their halters. I had finished and was leaning on a post watching the horses graze when Rushton returned.
“You have been uncommonly swift,” he said suspiciously. The smile fell from my face as I realized I had been stupid.
“Too quick to believe, even if Enoch did recommend you,” he added.
And as I looked into his hard face, I was afraid.
PART II
HEART OF THE DARKNESS
12
“WELL?” RUSHTON INQUIRED grimly.
“I … my father kept horses,” I lied, hoping he did not know how young I had been orphaned.
“And you did not think to mention it during my instruction?” he asked. There was a speculative gleam in his eyes as I shrugged awkwardly. “All right. There are packages of food for midmeal out by the maze gate. Go and eat, and I’ll find something else for you to do in the afternoon,” he said.
I left as fast as I could to escape those curious, watchful eyes.
The packages lay on a piece of cloth on the ground next to a large bucket of milk covered with a piece of gauze. I scooped up a mug of milk but avoided the squashy packages I recognized from my days in the kitchen as bread and dripping. Propping myself against a rain barrel in the sun, I again berated myself for my foolishness in working so quickly. I could have been with Sharna and the horses all day, but instead Rushton was sure to give me some horrible job now that he thought I had wasted his time.
I turned my thoughts to Maruman and wondered if he had been in the mountains. I doubted it. He could not have crossed the tainted ground on foot, and I did not think Enoch’s carriage had returned since my arrival, because I had noticed no new faces at meals.
I was so deep in thought that I did not see Matthew and Dameon approach, and I jumped as their shadows fell across my lap. They sat beside me, and I felt as though everything had changed in a matter of hours. Only yesterday this casual intrusion would have annoyed me, but I found I did not resent the company of this odd pair.
Nevertheless, I felt bound to point out to them that we made ourselves vulnerable by showing friendship openly. “I’m not saying I don’t want your company, but maybe it’s not a good idea to be so obvious,” I ventured, looking around doubtfully at Misfits sitting nearby.
Matthew shrugged. “Elspeth, yer thinkin’ like an orphan. We are Misfits now. What more could they do?”
Burn us, I thought, but did not say it, for that seemed unlikely now. And he was right. I had been thinking like an orphan. The two boys unwrapped their lunches. Dameon rewrapped his with a grimace, but Matthew ate his with a bored expression.
“Have ye come across old Larkin yet?” Matthew asked presently. I shrugged, saying I hadn’t seen anyone but Rushton. “Nivver mind,” Matthew laughed. “Yer bound to see him soon. Ye’ll know when ye do. He’s not th’ sort ye could easily forget.”
“Who is he, a guardian?” I asked curiously.
“There are only three permanent guardians up here,” Dameon explained. “The others come and go. They don’t last long, though.” I thought of Guardian Myrna’s treatment of the hapless Hester and did not wonder.
“Strictly speakin’, Larkin is a Misfit, but he’s much older than the rest of us,” Matthew said. “Do you notice how there are no older Misfits? They send them to th’ Councilfarms. But Larkin has been here forever, and probably the Councilfarms dinna want someone as old as him. But he’s a queer fey old codger. An’ rude as they come—I’m not even sure I like him exactly. But if ye can get him talkin’, he has some interesting ideas.”
“I don’t suppose half of it is true,” Dameon said with a grin.
But Matthew refused to be drawn. “I daresay he does make a lot of it up. But he knows a lot, too. An’ some of th’ things he says about th’ Beforetime make a lot more sense than the rubbish the Herders put about. There’s no harm in hearin’ ideas … unless ye happen to be blind in more ways than one,” he added with an oblique glance at Dameon. I thought it a rather tactless jibe, but Dameon only laughed.
“So where is he, then?” I asked crossly, somehow envious of their casual friendship.
“Well, he’s nowt a man to blow th’ whistle an’ bang th’ drum. In fact, I sometimes think he’d like to be invisible. But he works on th’ farms, so ye’ll meet him soon enough, doubtless,” Matthew said.
I thought of something else. “Tell me, the overseer—is he a Misfit?”
“Nobody really s
eems to know,” Matthew said. “I asked Larkin once, an’ he told me to mind my business.”
Dameon nodded. “He might work for pay, like the temporary guardians. But I don’t know. Whenever I’m near him, I sense a ferocious purpose and drive, though to what I do not know.”
“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?”