The Dark Is Rising

by Susan Cooper

Any great gift of power or talent is a burden, and this more than any, and you will often long to be free of it. But there is nothing to be done.

If you were born with the gift, then you must serve it, and nothing in this world or out of it may stand in the way of that service, because that is why you were born and that is the Law.

So do not let them put you into fear or despair.’

‘There’s not really any before and after, is there?’ he said. ‘Everything that matters is outside Time. And comes from there and can go there.’ Mr Beaumont turned to him in surprise, ‘You mean infinity, of course, my boy.’ ‘Not altogether,’ said the Old One that was Will. ‘I mean the part of all of us, and of all the things we think and believe, that has nothing to do with yesterday or today or tomorrow because it belongs at a different kind of level. Yesterday is still there, on that level. Tomorrow is there too. You can visit either of them. And all Gods are there, and all the things they have ever stood for. And,’ he added sadly, ‘the opposite, too.’