The Quiet Room adjacent to the schoolhouse was seldom locked. It was used primarily to punish naughty children by confining them for an hour or so. They were never locked in; an honor system had always sufficed. At other times, the room was available for any adult who sought a private place to meditate without the religious associations of the village chapel (where the elders rotated as lay preachers, offering a bland Christian service every Sunday). The door's being closed meant the room was in use.
Noah was locked in, though, Lucius thought as he closed the door, and settled himself in the least uncomfortable chair. It chilled him to think of Noah Percy's fate; months had passed, and this was his first visit to the room where his assailant had been held.
He was locked in--everyone agrees on that. I'm not clear as to how he escaped.
Crime was so new to the village that its residents would have been hard-pressed to decide how to try--or punish--Noah for his attack on Lucius. But Lucius knew he would have recommended mercy. Noah was never normal mentally. He was lucid enough to bear some responsibility for what he did, but the terror he endured afterward was punishment enough.
He wished fervently that Noah were still alive.
Sighing, he quieted his mind and began trying, for the hundredth time, to make sense of what had happened after he was wounded.
As he'd heard the story, Ivy had asked her father's permission to go to the nearest town and seek a cure for the infection that threatened to claim Lucius's life. After all these years, Edward Walker had revealed that a villager would be allowed safe passage through the forest if he or she carried a pouch of magic rocks.
"Magic rocks"?
If I can accept blood smelling like violets, why do I have a problem with magic rocks?
No, I'm not being unreasonable. There is a difference. The phenomenon of mystics' shedding violet-scented blood has been reported for centuries. Those "magic rocks" sound like something out of a fairy tale for children.
Walker had sent his daughter on her mission with two male escorts. They were to guide her through the forest--to set and keep to a safe course, and to prevent the blind Ivy's running afoul of hazards like ditches. But then they were to wait, holding the "magic rocks" for protection against the forest creatures, while she alone went on to the town.
Why? Is that town so evil that Mr. Walker believed only his strong-willed daughter would be able to resist its temptations?
Or...did he want only a blind person to visit the world beyond the forest, because he feared what others might see?
Ivy's escorts had panicked and left her, while much of the forest lay ahead. They'd returned to the village separately, not having even each other for protection. But despite their not having the "magic rocks," they had not been attacked. Ivy, with the rocks, had been attacked.
After she'd killed one of the forest creatures in self-defense, no others had molested her. She'd been outside the forest for some time, waiting for a helpful man named Kevin to bring medicine; the creatures must have found the slain one's body. Yet they'd allowed Ivy to return to the village, and retaliated by killing a presumably fleeing Noah.
Again, why? If they were reluctant to harm a woman, or a blind person, Ivy wouldn't have been attacked in the first place.
The seeming illogic of the creatures' behavior--and Edward Walker's--made Lucius's head ache. He regretted that Ivy hadn't visited a town and been able to report her impressions. "Kevin"--a name he'd never heard before, but a normal man, whose speech she'd said was not unlike theirs--had left her to wait where he'd found her till he returned with the medicine.
How did she get home safely? It's surprising that she'd made it to the end of the woods after her sighted companions deserted her. She was surely at risk of losing her way on the return trip. She could have wandered in those woods till she died of exposure!
I turn these questions over and over in my mind and get nowhere. Perhaps I should focus on something else. How did Noah escape?
He went over to the door and examined the lock. It wasn't broken, and he saw nothing to indicate it had ever been repaired or replaced. Nor did the door show signs of damage. He'd been told the windows had been shuttered and the shutters bolted when no guard was on duty; he had no reason to doubt that. Now he stepped outside, and verified that the shutters and their bolts were intact. Aside from being freshly painted, as it was every spring, the structure looked exactly as it had when he was a child.
He went back in, and at that point, lit a small oil lamp. Days were still short in April. But despite the deepening shadows, he was in no haste to leave.
He looked around, puzzling over Noah. Did he overpower someone who brought him food? After what he'd done to me, they had to know he might be irrational. How could anyone have been caught off guard?
Is there a cellar? What if there is? It would be harder to escape from that than from the above-ground level. But I should consider all possibilities.
He pulled up the rug...and was about to drop it again when he saw the barely discernible outlines of what appeared to be not one, but several trapdoors.
A quick check revealed that all but one were merely loose sections of floorboard that could easily be lifted. It looks as if these cavities were used for storage. Storage of what?
The one actual trapdoor opened to reveal a very ordinary flight of stairs. There can't be another way out of that cellar! A window near the ceiling would be visible from outside. But Lucius had resolved to leave no nook or cranny unexplored. So he took up the lamp, and began his descent into the depths.