The Serpent in the Glass (The Tale of Thomas Farrell) by D.M. Andrews Page B

had come. ‘Scottish air probably.’
    ‘Sorry?’ said Penders, clanking his spoon down into his bowl and eyeing the pot of jam as if wondering if anyone might mind if he ate it neat.
    ‘Nothing,’ replied Thomas.
    Despite his unscheduled forty-winks before dinner, Thomas fell exhausted into his soft bed not long after the meal in the assembly hall. He awoke, quite suddenly, a little later and stared at the door in the gloom of the night. Had he just heard it close? Before he could tell if the click of the door had been in his dreams or not, he heard footsteps outside his room. They were moving away, down the hall. He got out of bed, moved to the door, and gently pulled it open. He couldn’t see anyone down the unlit corridor. It was too dark. But he could hear the footsteps fading, the footsteps of someone, thought Thomas, with a slight limp.

— CHAPTER SEVEN —
    Dreams and Memories
    Thomas looked up at the bright blue sky, vaguely aware that a tall figure carried him away from a large building, from comfort, from home. The scene changed to one of sunlight and trees followed by a blinding light that left him and the man standing before what looked like a giant fireplace filled with glowing coals. Here they paused, but it didn’t last long. A sense of fear filled the figure who bore him, a fear that descended upon Thomas too. There came another blinding light, and Thomas felt a cold breeze as blurred images of a dark forest passed before his eyes. Then came the darkness and the silence.
    Thomas awoke and looked at the wind-up clock he’d brought from the Westhrops. It was seven o’clock. It had been several months since he’d last had the dream. Strange, he thought, that it should resurface again on his first night at the Manor. Maybe the school’s connection with his father had triggered it? He couldn’t be sure if the figure in the dream was some dreamworld fiction or a true memory, but he felt sure the image was that of his father. Today, Thomas determined, he would ask the Headmaster about Fearghal. Mr Trevelyan had told him his father had served in the army, but Thomas hadn’t had the opportunity to ask where he died. If Mr Trevelyan didn’t know anything, maybe he could at least tell him how to contact the representative of his father’s estate. Maybe this representative was even related to him. Yes, Thomas thought, he’d find the Headmaster at the first opportunity and find out more about his father.
    The rest of the students from the upper years of Darkledun Manor had evidently turned up last night or early that morning. Breakfast had been a sea of chatting strangers catching up on lives and matters Thomas knew nothing about. He was glad when Penders finally pushed his empty bowl aside and they left the growing crowd to their toast, cereal, orange juice and chat.
    ‘We’ve got maths as our very first lesson of the year,’ Penders said gloomily, as they walked from the assembly hall toward their form room. ‘Whose bright idea was that?’
    ‘How unlucky.’ Thomas pulled his timetable from the breast pocket of his blazer. He’d only glanced at it briefly to see which room they had registration in.
    Penders nodded in agreement. ‘Yeah, though I’m not sure which is worse — maths or Miss Havelock.’
    ‘She doesn’t teach maths,’ Thomas said, looking at the teacher’s name on the timetable: a Mr Guber.
    ‘No, she’s our form tutor.’ Penders indicated toward the top of the timetable.
    Penders was right: Miss Havelock’s name had been scribbled in small writing next to the form box. Thomas sighed as they turned down a corridor. Why couldn’t he have Mr Trevelyan as their form tutor? Thomas hadn’t paid too much attention to the classrooms on his first visit. Most of them sat in Block A, immediately to the left of the assembly hall. The cream-coloured corridors had no windows, being lit by fluorescent lights. At the end of the first corridor Thomas and Penders found the door to the