The Dark Is Rising: Part 2: The Learning

Ageless, familiar Christmas music permeated the house whenever anyone turned on the radio.

Farmer Dawson is one of the Old Ones, he must be warned about her — and he was distraught that he had not thought of it before.

There were four or five more, one of them the home of lugubrious Mrs. Horniman, who “did” for their mother once a week and had been born and bred in the East End of London until a bomb had blown her house to bits thirty years before.

He was not a very grand butler; his name was Bates, a tall, lean, morose man who could often be seen helping the one aged gardener in the vegetable garden near the Manor's back gate, or discussing his arthritis with Mrs. Pettigrew at the Post Office.

“Enchanting,” Merriman said gravely, surveying them impersonally, and Miss Greythorne’s high imperious tones came ringing past him.

The tall figure jerked upright instantly, swinging round to look for him; but when he saw what was happening Merriman relaxed, merely raising one hand in assent.

Tales of witchcraft and the appalling things that men once did to the poor simple souls they called witches.

Yet it is not good to keep a thing of this kind past the date of its destiny, for it has always been in danger from the Dark, and the endless ingenuity of the Dark would still find a way of using it if they had it in their hands.

He swung round in consternation, but as soon as he met Merriman’s eyes he saw that he already knew.

There was a flash of malice as they looked at one another, and Will knew that he had been right about the limits of the Dark’s seeing.

It might, of course, have been inadvertently thrown away, in mistake for wrapping paper; such things sometimes happened in their crowded Christmas Day.

He could feel his neck prickling, as though with the electricity that hangs strongly oppressive in the air before a giant storm.

It was Will’s first intimation that he could do anything another Old One could not, but there was no time for wonder; with the Gift of Gramarye, he closed off the minds of his brother and the rector behind a barrier that no power of any kind could break through.

Two black rooks were perched on the lych-gate as Will and Paul drew close; they rose into the air slowly, half-hopping, dark incongruous shapes against the white snow.

He stood towering beside the bed in a faint light that seemed to come from within his own form; his face was shadowed, inscrutable.