Seaward by Susan Cooper

Author:Susan Cooper
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Margaret K. McElderry Books

CHAPTER 11

The darkness was laughing at her, embracing her; a voice filled it. She heard release and freedom and gaiety, all in the voice that came from nowhere and yet was everywhere, deep and easy and warm.

“Your time’s your own,” said the voice. “Your life’s your own, not hers. Don’t be afraid of her, don’t be afraid of anything. Follow your own way and enjoy it—what can she do to you? Stone faces, for goodness’ sake! Stone people! All those pretentious games! Just keep your toes clear of her clodhopping creatures, and go where you want to go. You’ll like the sea. Remember the breathing of the poplar trees? It sounds like that, the sea, and it feels like this —”

The darkness rocked her, gently, rhythmically; swaying in its grasp she laughed aloud for pleasure.

Then somewhere she heard Westerly’s voice, clear, wary, challenging. “Who are you?”

The rhythm of her rocking was like music.

“I am Snake,” said the darkness. “You know me well.”

Dreamily Cally sensed Westerly’s resistance. He said again, “Who are you?”

“Just now, my boy, I’m the saving of you,” the darkness said, with a touch of irritability. “Time Present and Time Future, yanking you back out of the past. You really must watch for her little tricks. Voices, lights, music—if you let them suck you in, she has you. And you have to be rescued—if you’re lucky—by Snake, grabbing you in that unceremonious way. Though I must say you did better than our Cally here.”

Cally remembered. It was like a discord in the music. “But I heard my mother and father—”

“You heard nothing but memory,” said Snake sharply. “You must go on, to the sea.”

“I heard them,” Cally said. “They were there.”

“They are everywhere and nowhere,” Snake said. He was like a voice from a dream. “They are not in the land of Taranis, not now.”

She said, “You mean they’re dead, don’t you?”

The voice sighed, and the sigh ran through her with the rhythm of the rocking. “Oh selkie girl, selkie girl—wherever they are, they have not become nothing, they are not gone as if they had never been. . . . Your world is all change, all journeying, and nothing that happens and no one that lives is ever lost. You above all should know that, Cally, selkie girl.”

There was a prickling in the palms of Cally’s hands. “What do you mean—‘selkie girl’?”

“I will show you,” he said. The darkness whirled round her, and for a flash she saw his face, and it was the laughing bearded face of a man. Then it was gone, and she was lying on the air, turning, diving, and there was a blue-green light around her, misty and diffused, and she was not in air but in water. Cally who could not swim was swimming, delighting in speed, turning this way and that and up and down; no longer breathing, yet not conscious of holding her breath. She saw the deep sea below her, and in it a thousand schooling fish, all

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