28

Michael stood in the porch until he heard the car approaching along the lane. Then he walked down the drive to the gate. The car pulled in at the side of the road, and Mr Cleever smiled up at him through the window.

"Very good to see you, Michael," he said. "Care to hop in?"

He leaned over and opened the passenger door. Michael walked round the front of the car and got in. Mr Cleever reversed in the driveway and sped off along the green lane, past the Monkey and Marvel, and sharp right onto a rough farm track.

"A short cut," Mr Cleever said. "It's a little bumpy, but you won't lose your breakfast."

Michael looked out at a row of copper beeches at one end of the field, beyond which the tower of St. Wyndham's could just be seen. Then he said: "The Four Gifts. You said you'd tell me what they are. And how to use them." His voice sounded curiously flat and small, sucked away through the window into the blue immensity of the day. He disliked its weak and tinny sound, its irritating lightness. It would not suit him at all.

Mr Cleever gave a little laugh, and tapped a jig on the steering wheel with his fingers. "The Four Gifts," he said. "Yes, the Four Powers. Well, you've already used the first two quite proficiently. I hardly need to tell you what those are, do I?" He looked sideways at Michael, eyebrows raised.

"The Sight," Michael said. "That must be the first. And Fire is the second."

"It is indeed. And you can feel very pleased with yourself for demonstrating it so early. In some of us it took weeks to unleash the flame."

"I didn't do it on purpose. It just came."

"Fuelled by anger. Quite. It's a hallmark of all the gifts, Michael, that they are deeply given, and closer tied to our emotions than our rational minds. Although with practice, as you've found with the Sight, we can learn to control them. Whoops!"

One of the car's front wheels dropped into a tractor rut and they lurched forward violently. Mr Cleever struggled with the steering for a moment, then got them back on track.

"Four-wheel drive would be preferable for this route," he said, "but needs must. I don't want us to take the village road just at the moment. Right, you've experienced the first two gifts, and it might shock you to know that some of us never get beyond them. Paul Comfrey, for instance, good man that he is, has never got close to the third. Doesn't have the knack for some reason."

"You mean I might never— What are the other two?" Michael felt a shock of pride at the thought of any limitation.

"Oh, don't worry. I'm just telling you it's possible, that's all. Personally, I think you'll achieve the others in no time. You're very strong. The Third Gift, now that's in some ways the most delightful of all. It's flying, Michael; or Levitation if you prefer. That really is something."

"Flying!" Michael could hardly restrain his wonder, or impatience. "How high can you go? How long can you keep it up? That's . . ." Words failed him. "Wow."

"How high?" Mr Cleever laughed softly. "My boy, truly I do not think there is any limit to how high we might go. I say might, because of all things we must not be observed, and if you go above tree level in daylight, you will be observed by every man, woman and child in the whole parish."

"But at night though?"

"At night – yes, it's different then. Once, about ten years ago, when my gifts were young in me, I flew on a moonless night above Fordrace, as high as the Wirrim. I looked down on the orange lights and the dark rooftops, and using the Sight, I saw the owls floating below my feet. No one could see me; they were jewelled ants beneath my silent flight. Now say that is not a glorious power to have, Michael my boy! And here, we go right."

He turned through a gate, into another field, filled with sun-ripened barley. A narrow gap just afforded them room to drive along the edge, beside a shallow ditch. Michael's eyes were ablaze with a savage delight.

"When I receive that gift," he said, "I shall use it every night, and sometimes during the day. I can't think why you don't use it more often, or go further. I shall go to London, and cross the sea with it, and spy on people in their houses!" He chuckled with delirious glee.

Mr Cleever shook his head sadly. "Nice thought, but sadly, it doesn't work like that. There are limitations."

Michael frowned. "Such as?"

"Such as being unable to go too far from the Wirrim. And a worse one yet . . ." He let the sentence drift away, and seemed reluctant to discuss it further. Instead, he continued in a cheerier tone: "But the Fourth Gift, if you attain it, gives you the most power of all of them. I have this, and I use it as regularly as I am able. It's the power to enter people's minds, Michael, and encourage them to give up their secrets to you. You can do it in various ways, with various degrees of subtlety, but just imagine the power that gives!"

Michael said nothing. He was imagining.

"You have to be careful with it," Mr Cleever went on. "When done at full force, it leaves even the least intelligent person a little distressed. They take a dislike to you without quite knowing why. But used in discrete moments, once in a while, you can learn anything you wish, and with that knowledge, a lot of things can be achieved."

"But Mr Cleever," Michael said, "if you can read people's minds, you should be Prime Minister or something by now. Not just councillor of this crap place."

He was surprised by the force of Mr Cleever's reaction. The car stopped with a jolt in the track; Mr Cleever hit the steering wheel with the palms of both hands, and Michael's eyes flared with the pain of his reflected rage.

"You know nothing," Mr Cleever snarled, turning the force of his glare full on him. "Nothing but what I am telling you. How dare you doubt my abilities, when you, who have only discovered the Second Gift today, are being instructed in the powers by me, man to man? I have not done this with anyone before! None of the others has been so honoured. And I wouldn't do it with you either, if I didn't think your energy was vital to us! If you listen to me, boy, your powers will be truly limitless. But if you cross me, I'll leave you to discover your limitations entirely on your own. And you won't like them, believe me."

He turned away sharply, and started the car. It bumped along over the fields.

"I'm sorry," said Michael, though his heart raged within him.

"And don't lie to me either," said Mr Cleever. "You've forgotten already about the Fourth Gift. And it works all the easier with those of us with the Power. You should have noticed the bond already. The presence of one of us, and what we do, affects the rest, especially if we're close by."

"I've noticed. I felt it with you last night. And with Stephen."

"Ah, yes. Your brother. We're going to have to have a talk about him. But that can come later."

They were at the end of the field, which for the last few minutes had wound steadily uphill. Mr Cleever turned left through a gate fringed with dark low trees and almost immediately the hill steepened. The car advanced very slowly along an atrocious track. A bank of grass, caught in the shadow of the trees, rose on their right. All of a sudden, Michael saw a set of tumbledown roofs appear over the fringe of the bank.

"That's the Hardraker Farm!" he said.

"Got it in one." Mr Cleever fought with the gear-stick to bring the car up the last and steepest incline. At length, they emerged at the top of the bank and trundled slowly over the field towards the buildings. "This is our operational HQ," Mr Cleever said as they turned into the central farm yard. "Right now, it's the base for the most important thing that's happened in these parts for the last sixteen hundred years."

He pulled over in front of the farm house and turned off the ignition. "And you, Michael my boy, are the most important part of all."