5 - An Acceptable Time by Madeleine L'Engle

Author:Madeleine L'Engle [L'Engle, Madeleine]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780312368586
Google: F174RAAACAAJ
Amazon: 0312368585
Goodreads: 24761
Publisher: Paw Prints
Published: 1988-12-31T13:00:00+00:00

Mrs. Murry came into Polly’s room, wearing her nightclothes. “Polly, love. I’m glad this is a double bed. I’m going to sleep with you.”

“Grand, it’s all right. I won’t leave. I won’t go downstairs. I promise.”

“Your grandfather and I will feel better if I’m in here with you.”

“But you won’t be as comfortable—I’ll keep you awake—”

“Please. For our sakes.”

“Okay, Grand, but I really don’t think it’s necessary. I mean, it’s fine with me, but—”

Mrs. Murry laughed. “Indulge your grandfather and me. We just want to make sure one of us is with you.” She got into bed beside Polly. “Let’s read for a while.”

Polly picked up a book, but she could not concentrate. After half an hour her grandmother kissed her good night and turned over on her side to sleep. Polly switched off the light, but she was not sleepy. Hadron was stretched out between them, purring sleepily.

Again the pool was pulling her. Pulling. This time she would resist. She pressed up against her grandmother’s back. Was it Tav’s influence, pulling her toward the pool and the past as the moon pulls the tide?

Polly stiffened. No. No. She would not go to the pool. If she got out of bed, her grandmother would waken, would stop her.

What Tav cared about was protecting the land, the flocks, the people, and Polly could not help feeling sympathy for that. When the O’Keefes had had to leave the island of Gaea, with its golden beaches and azure waters, it had been because of developers, because of greed and corruption, and people lusting for money and power and ignoring the loveliness of the island, the birds and the animals and the natives, who lived much as they must have many centuries earlier. And Benne Seed Island was already being developed, and soon it, too, would be irrevocably changed, with no thought for the birds whose habitat had been the jungly forest, or for the great trees two and three hundred years old.

Is it all greed and corruption? she asked herself. We’ve become an overpopulated planet. People need places to live.

But the condos and resort hotels were for the rich, not the poor. Nobody was building condos in the Sahara or the Kalahari deserts. Not yet.

But three thousand years ago the planet was not overpopulated. There was land enough for everybody. Was drought really bad enough to send tribes away from their home places and into land that belonged to others? Wasn’t the history of the planet one of people taking over other people’s lands? Didn’t Jacob and his people take over the land of Canaan? The Romans and then the Saxons and then the Normans took over the British Isles, and then the British took over India, and if some of the American colonists wanted to live in peace with the Indians, others didn’t. Others took over.

She sighed. There were no easy answers.

The pull of the pool had lessened. Polly nestled against her grandmother and went to sleep.

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