The Grey King by Susan Cooper

Author:Susan Cooper
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing

Part Two

The Sleepers

The Girl from the Mountains

Will said, “Excuse me, Mr. Davies, is Bran home from school yet?”

Owen Davies jerked upright. He had been bent over the engine of a tractor in one of the farm outhouses; his thin hair was ruffled and his face smeared with oil.

“I’m sorry,” Will said. “I made you jump.”

“No, no, boy, that is all right. I was just a bit further away than this engine, I think. . . .” He made the quick apologetic grimace that seemed to be as near as he ever came to a smile. All the lines on his thin face seemed to lead nowhere, Will thought: no expression, ever. “Bran is home, yes. I think you will find him in the house. Or up by . . .” His light, worried voice trailed away.

Will said softly, “By Cafall.” They had buried the dog the evening before, up on the lower slope of the mountain, with a heavy stone over the grave to keep predators away.

“Yes, I think so. Up there,” Owen Davies said.

Will wanted suddenly to say something, but the words were slippery. “Mr. Davies, I’m sorry about that. All of it. Yesterday. It was awful.”

“Well, yes now, thank you.” Owen Davies was embarrassed, flinching from the contact of emotion. He said, looking down into the tractor’s engine, “It couldn’t be helped. You can never tell when a dog may take it into his head to go for the sheep. It is one in a million, but it can happen. Even the best dog in the world . . .” He looked up suddenly, and for once his eyes met Will’s, though they seemed to be looking not at him but beyond, into the future or the past. His voice came firmer, like that of a younger man. “I do think, mind you, that Caradog Prichard was very ready to shoot the dog. That is something very drastic, and not done normally to another man’s creature, at any rate not before his face. We were all there, it would have been nothing to catch Cafall. And a sheep-chaser can sometimes be given a home, somewhere away from sheep, without having to be killed. . . . But I cannot say this to Bran, and nor must you either. It would not help him.”

His eyes flicked away again, and Will watched, fascinated and disturbed, as the bright echo of another time dropped away like a coat and left the familiar drab Owen Davies with his humourless, slightly guilty air.

“Well,” Will said. “I think you are right, but no, I wouldn’t mention that to Bran. I’ll go and look for him now.”

“Yes,” Owen Davies said eagerly, turning his anxious, helpless face to the hills. “Yes, you could help him, I believe.”

But Will knew, as he trudged along the muddy lane, that there was small chance he, or anyone of the Light, could comfort Bran.

When he reached the edge of the valley, where the land began to climb, he saw very small and distant above him, halfway up the mountain, the figure of John Rowlands like a toy man.

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