The Dark Is Rising: Part 1: The Finding

No fox could get at the rabbits, in their sturdy row, but the chickens were more vulnerable; a family of foxes had broken into one of the henhouses the previous winter and carried off six nicely fattened birds just before marketing time.

They could see the dark birds thronging over the treetops, more agitated than before, flapping and turning to and fro.

In the first shining moment he saw the whole strange-familiar world, glistening white; the roofs of the outbuildings mounded into square towers of snow, and beyond them all the fields and hedges buried, merged into one great flat expanse, unbroken white to the horizon’s brim.

The smith turned and looked directly at him for the first time, with a kind of compassion in his weathered face.

In the doorway, paused irresolute with one hand on the rickety door, stood the shambling old tramp of the day before.

The long grey hair was the same, and so were the clothes and the wizened, crafty face.

For a second Will stared at him, disconcerted; then he swallowed hard, closed his eyes and thought of the jeweller’s shop his father ran in the little town of Eton.

If you can accomplish that, you will have brought to life one of the three great forces that the Old Ones must turn soon towards vanquishing the powers of the Dark, which are reaching out now steadily and stealthily over all this world.

While the old lady sat motionless in her chair, and he and Merriman stood again beside the hearth, the great hall was filled suddenly with a hideous mixture of moaning and mumbling and strident wailing, like the caged voices of an evil zoo.

Will stumbled to his feet and listened, while outside the door his mother’s voice wept, then grew angry, and threatened; then softened again and coaxed and cajoled; then finally ceased, dying away in a sob that tore at him even though his mind and senses told him it was not real.

She went on, saying more, but her voice was drowned like a rock submerged in a high-tide wave, as the horrible chorus that whined and keened outside the walls rose louder, louder, faster and angrier, into a cacophony of screeches and unearthly laughter, shrieks of terror and cackles of mirth, howlings and roars.

He had spent a cheerful birthday, with a family party so boisterous that he had fallen into bed and asleep with scarcely a thought of the Dark.

In the yellow light from the steadily burning branch Will saw a face contorted with battling emotions: hope and fear and relief wound tightly together by anguished uncertainty.

A dreadful sense of misgiving began to creep over him, like the chill of a cold breeze.

He conjured her to leave by all the names of power that he could remember Merriman using: by the Lady, by the Circle, by the Signs.