Free The Seeker by Isobelle Carmody Page A

tongue.
    Presently, the cook rang a bell. Young people of varying ages filed in through the double doors. Soon all the tables were full. The diners did not look at us at all but ate with steady concentration, then left, their seats soon taken by others. The meal consisted of a bowl of thick stew and freshly baked bread. The food smells made me feel dizzy with hunger. In town, food had seldom been this good or this fresh, but we had never had to work too hard. I wondered wistfully what the others did and regretted that I had fallen foul of Ariel.
    “Ye gan eat now,” the cook said finally, and thrust a generous helping into my hand. My stomach growled in appreciation. I sat at a nearly empty table and devoured the food. Only when I had spooned up the last morsel did I look up.
    “Hello,” said a soft voice at my elbow. I turned to look at a young blond girl sitting nearby. She smiled, and I was astonished that anyone would ever want to condemn her. Even her ungainly clothes could not hide the delicacy of her features and her slender bones. Her hair was like cream silk. She endured my examination without embarrassment, until it was I who looked away from her clear, naive gaze.
    “I am Cameo,” she whispered. I looked at her again, and such was the sweetness of her expression that I might have smiled back, but Lila, seated at the end of the table, was watching us.
    “I am not interested in your name,” I said in a repressive voice, worried that Ariel would punish the girl for her kindness toward me. But when the brightness of her face dimmed, I wished I had not been so terse.
    A sharp cuff on the side of my head was the cook’s signalthat my short respite was over. I rose and began to clear plates. The afternoon was spent washing all the midmeal dishes and scrubbing down the jagged kitchen floor, then serving stew and unwatered milk for nightmeal.
    Every bone ached by the time Ariel took me to my permanent room, and I was too exhausted to care that I was not alone. At that moment, the Master of Obernewtyn himself could have been my roommate and met as little response.

10
    M Y INITIAL EXHAUSTION wore off as I became accustomed to the hard physical labor in the kitchen, but it was replaced by a terrible mental despair. I could not endure the thought of going on in such a way forever, and yet there seemed no opportunity of finding Enoch’s friend who might be able to help me move to the farms to work.
    My sole comfort came from a conversation I had overheard at midmeal one day, which had implied that most of the house workers went down to work on the farms to prepare for the long wintertime. I prayed this was so, and that I would be among those dispatched to the farms. But I had arrived in the spring, and my calculations told me no extra workers would be required until the beginning of summerdays.
    I shared my sleeping chamber with four other girls, including the strange disturbed girl I had seen on my first morning, Selmar, who now ignored me. Remembering the mess inside her mind, I thought it possible she had simply forgotten our meeting. She was, I noticed, permitted to wander more freely than the rest of us.
    There were surprisingly few guardians at Obernewtyn. Most responsibility seemed to be taken by senior and favored Misfits, though none was so favored as Ariel. I had heard nothing of the mysterious master and had seen no sign of Madam Vega.
    Altogether, life at Obernewtyn was a matter of grim endurance rather than terror. I thought a good deal about Jes. I had imagined myself a loner, never needing anyone, but now I saw that I had never really experienced loneliness. In Rangorn, there had always been my parents, and in the homes, there had been Jes and later Maruman. I had discounted Jes, but now I often found myself longing to talk to him, even if we spoke of nothing important.
    One day late in spring, Ariel came to the kitchen to announce that I was to take a tour of the farms with some other Misfits. Even the