Silver on the Tree (Volume 5) (The Dark Is Rising Sequence) - Hardcover

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Susan Cooper is one of our foremost fantasy authors; her classic five-book fantasy sequence The Dark Is Rising has sold millions of copies worldwide. Her books’ accolades include the Newbery Medal, a Newbery Honor, the Boston Globe–Horn Book Award, and five shortlists for the Carnegie Medal. She combines fantasy with history in Victory (a Washington Post Top Ten Books for Children pick), King of Shadows, Ghost Hawk, and her magical The Boggart and the Monster, second in a trilogy, which won the Scottish Arts Council’s Children’s Book Award. Susan Cooper lives on a saltmarsh island in Massachusetts, and you can visit her online at TheLostLand.com.

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1. Midsummer’s Eve

MIDSUMMER’S EVE

WILL SAID, TURNING A PAGE, “He liked woad. He says—listen—the decoction of Woad drunken is good for wounds in bodies of a strong constitution, as of country people, and such as are accustomed to great labour and hard coarse fare.”

“Such as me, and all other members of Her Majesty’s Navy,” Stephen said. With great precision he pulled a tall, heavy-headed stem of grass out of its sheath, and lay back in the field nibbling it.

“Woad,” said James, wiping a mist of sweat from his plump pink face. “That’s the blue stuff the Ancient Britons used to paint themselves with.”

Will said, “Gerard says here that woad flowers are yellow.”

James said rather pompously, “Well, I’ve done a year’s more history than you have and I know they used it for blue.” There was a pause. He added, “Green walnuts turn your fingers black.”

“Oh, well,” said Will. A very large velvety bee, overloaded with pollen, landed on his book and waddled dispiritedly across the page. Will blew it gently on to a leaf, pushing back the straight brown forelock that flopped over his eyes. His glance was caught by a movement on the river beyond the field where they lay.

“Look! Swans!”

Lazy as the hot summer day, a pair of swans sailed slowly by without a sound; their small wake lapped at the riverbank.

“Where?” said James, clearly with no intention of looking.

“They like this bit of the river, it’s always quiet. The big boats stay over in the main reach, even on a Saturday.”

“Who’s coming fishing?” said Stephen. But he still lay unmoving on his back, one long leg folded over the other, the slender stem of grass swaying between his teeth.

“In a minute.” James stretched, yawning. “I ate too much cake.”

“Mum’s picnics are as huge as ever.” Stephen rolled over and gazed at the grey-green river. “When I was your age, you couldn’t fish at all in this part of the Thames. Pollution, then. Some things do improve.”

“A paltry few,” Will said sepulchrally, out of the grass.

Stephen grinned. He reached out and picked a slender green stalk with a tiny red flower; solemnly he held it up. “Scarlet pimpernel. Open for sun, closed for rain, that’s the poor man’s weathervane. Granddad taught me that. Pity you never knew him. What does your friend Mr. Gerard say about this one, Will?”

“Mmm?” Will was lying on his side, watching the weary bumblebee flex its wings.

“Book,” James said. “Scarlet pimpernel.”

“Oh.” Will turned the crackling pages. “Here it is. Oh loverly. The juyce purgeth the head by gargarising or washing the throat therewith; it cures the tooth-ach being snift up into the nosethrils, especially into the contrary nosethril.”

“The contrary nosethril, of course,” Stephen said gravely.

“He also says it’s good against the stinging of vipers and other venomous beasts.”

“Daft,” said James.

“No it’s not,” Will said mildly. “Just three hundred years old. There’s one super bit at the end where he tells you very seriously how barnacle geese are hatched out of barnacles.”

“The Caribbean might have foxed him,” Stephen said. “Millions of barnacles, but not one barnacle goose.”

James said, “Will you go back there, after your leave?”

“Wherever their Lordships send us, mate.” Stephen threaded the scarlet pimpernel into the top buttonhole of his shirt, and unfolded his lanky body. “Come on. Fish.”

“I’ll come in a minute. You two go.” Will lay idly watching as they fitted rods together, tied hooks and floats. Grasshoppers skirled unseen from the grass, chirruping their solos over the deep summer insect hum: it was a sleepy, lulling sound. He sighed with happiness. Sunshine and high summer and, rarer than either, his eldest brother home from sea. The world smiled on him; nothing could possibly be improved. He felt his eyelids droop; he jerked them apart again. Again they closed in sleepy content; again he forced them open. For a flicker of a moment he wondered why he would not let himself fall harmlessly asleep.

And then he knew.

The swans were there on the river again, slow-moving white shapes, drifting back upstream. Over Will’s head the trees sighed in the breeze, like waves on distant oceans. In tiny yellow-green bunches the flowers of the sycamore scattered the long grass around him. Running one of them between his fingers, he watched Stephen standing tall a few yards off threading his fishing-line through his rod. Beyond, on the river, he could see one of the swans moving slowly ahead of its mate. The bird passed Stephen.

But as it passed, it did not disappear behind Stephen. Will could see the white form clearly through the outline of Stephen’s body.

And through the outline of the swan, in turn, he could see a steep slope of land, grassy, without trees, that had not been there before.

Will swallowed.

“Steve?” he said.

His eldest brother was close before him, knotting a leader on his line, and Will had spoken loudly. But Stephen did not hear. James came past, holding his rod erect but low as he fastened the hook safely into its cork handle. Will could still see, through him, the forms of the swans as if in a faint mist. He sat up and stretched out his hand to the rod as James went by, and his fingers moved through the substance of the wood as if there had been nothing there.

And Will knew, with dread and delight, that a part of his life which had been sleeping was broad awake once more.

His brothers walked off to the river, moving diagonally across the field. Through their phantom forms Will could see the only earth that in this elusive patch of time was for him solid and real: the grassy slope, its edges merging into mistiness. And on it he saw figures, running, bustling, driven by some urgent haste. If he stared at them too hard, they were not there. But if he gazed with sleepy eyes, not quite focussed, he could see them all, sun-dappled, hurrying.

They were small, dark-haired. They belonged to a very distant time. They wore tunics of blue, green or black; he saw one woman in white, with a string of bright blue beads about her neck. They were gathering bundles of spears, arrows, tools, sticks; packing pots into wrappings of animal skin; putting together packages of what he supposed was meat, in dry rippled strips. There were dogs with them: fullhaired dogs with short pointed muzzles. Children ran and called, and a dog lifted his head to bay, but no sound came. For Will’s ears, only the grasshoppers chirruped, over the deep insect hum.

He saw no animals but the dogs. These people were travellers; not belonging here, but passing through. He was not even sure whether the land on which they stood, in their own time, lay in his own part of the Thames Valley or in some totally different place. But he knew one thing very clearly, suddenly: they were all very much afraid.

Often they raised their...