Orsine Walkers, Chapter 24 to 26

The children are starting to see the strange and unnerving side of Doctor Berghast and of the school they call their home. Cairndale is no longer a refuge or place of belonging for them, it is dangerous and not what it seems, sent their to train their abilities only because they serve a “use” that Berghast needs. Marlowe out of all the children, is the most “useful” in his plans of mapping out the world of the dead and monstrous, which he had already begun long before Marlowe was born by sending other talents into the orsine and have them return with their findings from traversing the land. The drawings and scribbles of this map is unfinished in Berghast’s journal and he very well intends to complete the full picture. The reasons for him wanting to know the landscape and regions of this dead world may be for study and a better understanding of this other place that is connected to the living world, but it is gravely suspected that Berghast’s intentions may be more personal, more selfish. Perhaps he wants to control the dead world and the spirits and shadow monsters that wander through it. He tells the children he wants to destroy the drughur, but I believe he may want to wield it or become the wielder of the world it comes from by destroying it. We got to visit the Spider as well, which was very cool. Charlie, Marlowe, Ribs, Komako, Oskar and his flesh giant Lymenion boated with oars across the darkened loch during the night and went inside the cellar leading to the crypt and into a room of winding tree roots and gnarly branches. These were beautifully written scenes, the conversations between the Spider and the children. He showed them visions that scared them all and also gave them fresh information to continue their plans of finding the missing talents. I also love the way the story makes me feel what the land or place the characters are in feels like, whether its the woodsy and earthy crypt of the Spider’s nest or Berghast’s study that Charlie and Marlowe were sent to after their visit with the Spider, to reveal their true purpose of being found and brought to Cairndale by the Doctor. Charlie says the Doctor’s room has so many oak doors that make it look like an old railway station, circling the room with Berghast’s desk in the middle. There’s much to learn what’s behind all those doors that only the Doctor has the key to and what they all open. I know that one of them is a small underground cellar where he keeps the litch Walter Laster chained to for questioning. Another door could be his entrance into the orsine. The shining Marlowe is revealed to have been born inside the orsine and that is why is gift is so special and powerful. He can walk among the dead without it harming him. He is a child of the orsine and the living world. The only way other talents can go through the orsine is by wearing this wood and armour plated glove Berghast calls the artefact and he needs Charlie and Marlowe to find it for him, which is lost in the other world. Charlie has the gift to also walk the orsine unharmed, only because he can heal and his talent keeps him alive. I am ready for these boys to go in and to read more of this monstrous world by actually being in it and I’m happy its them two, for their love makes their gifts stronger. I have met the talents and now I’d like to meet the monsters.