And after lunch they filed out through the dead English gardens, over the bloodred clay, to the outbuildings beyond, and there began the subtle study of talent work.
* * *
It was this Charlie had been most eager for, most dreading. The outbuildings were two long gray wooden buildings, like barns, or storage sheds, with roofs that leaked in the rain and floors of dirt. They were not heated and were only just barely—Ribs muttered with a grin—buildings at all.
There were others in the building, adults, some of them very old. Miss Davenshaw separated the kids and they each went off with a different instructor but Charlie she kept herself. “I have some experience with haelans,” she explained. “I will teach you what I can. Ah … you are surprised.”
Charlie, who’d been looking at her black blindfold, tied tightly across her eyes, and frowning at her, felt a heat go into his cheeks.
Miss Davenshaw smiled a sharp smile, just exactly as if she could see. “Oh, not myself, Mr. Ovid. I am obviously not like you. My great-great-grandfather was a haelan. He raised me. That was some time ago. He is … gone, now. But I do know a little of what he could and could not do.”
Charlie, who had been using his talent all his brief life to stay alive, crossed his arms. “I know how it works,” he said. “It just sort of does its own thing. It just sort of—”
“Reacts? Yes. But it can be controlled, too, Mr. Ovid, it is a greater talent than that. Though it will certainly take some effort, on your part. And much patience. If you are willing to learn, that is. Are you willing to learn?”
“Maybe,” he said warily.
They were standing just inside the opened doors and the cold air was muscling over them and Charlie raised his eyes and looked at the loft at the far end. When he lowered them he saw Miss Davenshaw had started walking, through the doors, outside. For a sudden flickering moment he wondered if she knew where she was going.
“You are right to be cautious,” she was saying, just as if he hadn’t been almost left behind. “But you need not fear.”
“I’m not afraid.”
“Hm. Yes. Good.” She led him across the brown grasses to the perimeter of the institute grounds. The sky threatened rain. It was Charlie’s first close approach to the wall and he felt a low buzzing dread in his skull, like he was doing something wrong, like he ought not to be there. He tried to shrug it off but his anxiety only increased.
The stone wall looked ancient, waist-high, covered in black moss, crumbling in parts. It was loosely assembled with weird pancake-shaped stones that might have come from the bottom of the sea. It stretched off in both directions, over the furls and encircling the dark loch and its dark clay cliffs, as far as Charlie’s eye could see.
Miss Davenshaw trailed a long pale hand over the stones as they walked. The red clay was slippery underfoot. Cairndale loomed off across the field, behind the outbuildings, forbidding, strange.
“Do you feel it, Mr. Ovid?” Miss Davenshaw asked quietly, her blind face turned away. “Do you feel the wards? Unpleasant, hm?”
He did; they were the source of his anxiety, his dread. They were like a prickle of electricity all around him, a hum in the air, at a frequency just below sound.
“That, Mr. Ovid, is the glyphic’s doing,” she said. “It keeps us all … safe. Talents such as yourself cannot cross through, from one side to the other, except that the glyphic wills it. It takes a tremendous effort from him to keep the wards strong, I am told. He is never at rest. That is one of the reasons a visit to the island is strictly forbidden. But it would not do to have Jacob Marber, or his litch, walk in here uninvited, would it?”
Charlie suppressed a shudder. That thing that had attacked him in London still gave him nightmares.
“But also,” she continued, “the wards keep us safe from the prying eyes of ordinary folk. They would be most alarmed at what happens here, hm? If any person attempted to enter the grounds uninvited, they would find themselves overcome with a strong sense of unease, a … discomfort. Which would grow most overwhelming. They would turn back before they’d come ten feet, though they would not be able to explain why. Cairndale has a … reputation, because of this. Should you leave the premises, you would see. The locals would regard you with suspicion, with fear.”
Charlie, who had lived all his life under the bitter eyes of white folk, nodded. “I reckon they’d do that anyhow,” he said. “I don’t look like—”
“I know what you look like, Mr. Ovid. You are not the only foreigner at Cairndale.”