On to the next clue. Well, first we
get to see Mr. and Mrs. Drew having their own lives and interacting
other adults! While the kids were running around during the day, Dick
& Ellen (Mom's also got a first name now!) ran into an old
friend, Miss Hatherton. She's a sculptor who lives nearby, and was
one of Ellen's art school teachers. She also “has a passion for
catching sharks”(!?!?!), and is thus ideal company for both
parents. While, on the one hand, she's rather a transparent plot
device to keep the elder Drews busy while Merry and the kids talk,
it's really nice to have adult characters being absent because they
have lives and interests, and not because they are dead. In
universe, she could also be either a plant from the “light”
(distracting the parents so the kids can solve mysteries) or a plant
from the “dark” (distracting the adults around them so the kids
have fewer potential allies), or purely an old friend meeting by
chance.
With their parents thus engaged in
conversation after dinner, the kids catch Merry up on their day and
the clue in the standing stones. I still think it's pretty
conjectural, but to be fair, here's the actual quote from the
medieval manuscript-writer:
“So, therefore, I trust it to this land, over sea and under stone, and I mark here the signs by which the proper man in the proper place, may know here it lies: the signs that wax and wane and do not die.”
The “signs that wax and wane” bit
is more concrete that I was giving it credit for before. It's still
a pretty tenuous conclusion.
Jane gets a few more good bits of
reasoning in, figuring out that a smudge on the map is actually a
moon, and that the next step could involve looking in the direction
the standing stone pointed, by moonlight. Simon gets in the question
I've been wondering about: solar and lunar positions change
throughout the year—not to mention over the course of a day—so
the directions they're getting right now in the summer will be wrong
if the original route was planned in late autumn or early spring.
Merry helpfully tells them that the present season will work
(apparently with some special knowledge of his own). Less than a
page before, however:
“This is your quest”, he said. “You must find the way every time yourselves. I am the guardian, no more. I can take no part and give you no help, beyond guarding you all the way.”
Um, yeah. 1) Why? What's tying his
hands? Some sort of fair-play agreement with the other side? Laws of
arcane magic? A belief in heroic narratives ala HPMOR's version of
Dumbledore? 2) He earlier mentioned that he'd been looking for the
manuscript (not knowing what it was) for years. What was he planning
on doing with it if he can't be involved? Or it is some sort of
quest-preemption thing where he could be the one searching for the grail if he'd found
the manuscript first? 3) So, except for translating the manuscript,
confirming the kid's speculations (the King Arthur connection, the
seasonality of the signs), running interference with their opponents,
rescuing Simon, etc., Merry can't be involved. I guess the last two
could count under 'guarding', but this sanctity of the quest stuff
seems both contrived and unevenly enforced.
The next night--their parents
conveniently off in Penzance for art talk and fishing with Miss
Hatherton--Jane, Simon and Merry head back up Kemare Head to test
their hypothesis about the next clue involving the moon. Barney stays at the Grey House on manuscript duty,
kept home by Mrs. Palk on account of a very bad sunburn (she thinks
the others are going night fishing). Up on the headland, they work
out the next sign: a rocky outcrop outlined by moonlight when viewed
from the standing stone. Merry vanishes, and Jane and Simon find
themselves confronted by the “man in black” (inconceivable!) who
chased Simon last chapter. They flee and find Merry on the path:
apparently, their enemies showed up and he went off to deal with
them, but missed one.
Jane gets another revelation
as the chapter ends: by moonlight, she recognized the “man in
black” as the vicar who she asked about Trewissick's coast, and who
saw her sketch of the map. I suppose this explains the bad feeling she had about him. It also brings are total villain count to four: Mr. Withers, Miss Withers, Bill Hoover (revealed by Merry to be the son of Mrs. Palk's "good for nothing" brother), and the vicar/"man in black".
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