Greenwitch by Susan Cooper Page A

suddenly. There was a great flashing and roaring in the depths, all round them; strong currents rose, tugging at their limbs; fish and eels darted wildly round them in all directions, and out of the distant shadow a great shape came. It was the dark thing that carried within it the bright lights that Will had seen; nearer and nearer they came, looming larger and larger, white and purple and green, glaring out of a swelling black mass as high as a house. And Will saw with chill horror that the thing was a giant squid, one of the great monsters of the deep, huge and terrible. Each of its waving suckered tentacles was many times longer than his own height; he knew that it could move as fast as lightning, and that the tearing bite of its dreadful beak-like mouth could have annihilated either of them in a single instant. Fearful, he groped for a spell to destroy it.
    â€œNo!” said Merriman instantly into his mind. “Nothing will harm us here, whatever the danger may seem. The Lady of the Sea is, I think, merely . . . encouraging . . . us to leave.” He swept a low, exaggerated bow to the shadows of the deep. “Our thanks, and our homage, lady,” he called in a strong clear voice, and then with Will beside him he swept up and away, past the looming black shape of the huge squid, away to the great open green ocean, the way that they had come.
    â€œWe must go to the Greenwitch,” he said to Will. “There is no time to lose.”
    â€œIf there are the two of us,” Will cried to him as they swept along, “and we work on the Greenwitch the spell of Mana and the spell of Reck and the spell of Lir, will it give up the manuscript to us?”
    â€œThat must come afterwards,” called Merriman. “But thosespells will command it to listen, and hear, for only they harness the magic with which the Greenwitch was made.”
    They flashed through the sea like bars of light, out of the deep cold, up to the tropic warmth, back to the cold waters of Cornwall. But when they came to the place, beneath the waves beating their long swells against Kemare Head, the Greenwitch was not there. No sign remained. It had gone.

CHAPTER EIGHT

    Â 
    Â 
    WHEN SIMON AND JANE ARRIVED BACK AT THE COTTAGE, THEY found Fran Stanton setting out plates on the dining-room table. “Hi,” she said. “Want some lunch? Mrs Penhallow had to leave, but she made some great-looking Cornish pasties.”
    â€œI can smell them,” Simon said hungrily.
    â€œLovely,” said Jane. “Did you have a good time, where you went?”
    â€œWe didn’t go far,” Mrs Stanton said. “St Austell, round there. Clay-pits and factories and that sort of thing.” She wrinkled her friendly face. “Still, after all that’s what Bill came over for. And there’s a real magic about those big white clay pyramids, and the pools so quiet at the bottom of them. Such green water. . . . Are you having fun? What’s everyone doing?”
    â€œWill and Great-Uncle Merry went for a walk. Barney’s over at the Grey House with Captain Toms. We’re supposed to go there too this afternoon, the captain wants us all to stay for supper,” Jane said, boldly improvising. “That is if you don’t mind.”
    â€œPerfect,” Fran Stanton said. “Bill and I shan’t be eatinghere anyway—I left him seeing some guy near St Austell, and I have to go back tonight to pick him up. This afternoon I came back just to be lazy. Let’s eat—and you can tell me all about that Greenwitch deal I wasn’t allowed to watch, Jane.”
    So Jane, with some difficulty, gave a description of the making of the Greenwitch as of a gay all-night party, an outing for the local girls, while Simon wolfed down Cornish pasties and tried not to catch her eye. Mrs Stanton listened happily, shaking her blonde head in admiration.
    â€œIt’s just wonderful the way these old customs are