The Dark Is Rising (The Dark Is Rising, #2)

by Susan Cooper

“The Walker is abroad,” he said again. “And this night will be bad, and tomorrow will be beyond imagining.”

“Minds hold more than they know,” the tall man said.

Any great gift or 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.

Our wood is one which the Dark does not love. Rowan, Will, that’s our tree. Mountain ash. There are qualities in rowan, as in no other wood on the earth, that we need.

water was the one element that could in some measure defy all magic; for moving water would tolerate no magic whether for evil or good, but would wash it away as if it had never been made.