Read Online Seeds of Time by K. C. Dyer - Free Book Online

morning after the walk with Brodie, Darrell stood at her easel and clutched her paintbrush with the familiar feeling of anger and puzzlement gnawing at her. She glanced up at Mr. Gill as he helped out a student across the room. Once again, the face of Leonardo da Vinci flashed through her mind. In less than a moment, she made a decision.
    At least Mr. Gill doesn’t dictate one style over the other
, she thought as she dug around in her box of supplies.
Let’s see what he thinks of this
.
    At last, she had begun her self-portrait.
    When she woke early the following Saturday and glanced at her watch, the date caught her eye. Darrell realized with surprise that she had been at Eagle Glen for nearly a month. It was not yet six o’clock, so she pulled the pillow over her head to try to go back to sleep. Eagle Glen catered only to boarding students, so classes were not completely cancelled on the weekends but instead ran to a modified schedule, allowing more free time for personal interests. Darrell planned tospend the day mucking about with her self-portrait in the art studio. She was working with acrylics for the first time and really enjoying the flexibility of the colour and texture of the paint.
    Lying in bed, her mind still whirled with the questions she had written in her notebook. She found that she could not go back to sleep after all. Breakfast wasn’t served until nine on Saturdays. Darrell grabbed her sandals and her backpack with her camera and art supplies and ran down to the kitchen anyway. She poured a cup of coffee and quickly headed outside to size up the day. The sun had not yet risen over the mountains, and Darrell walked over to the concrete slab outside the kitchen door and automatically stepped up on it in her bare feet to drink her coffee.
    She thought about the time she had spent every day, training Delaney, and how she had just taught him how to sniff out which of two closed hands held a treat. She was particularly proud of the way he seriously placed his paw on the hand holding the treat and then waited patiently for his reward. Delaney was a swift learner, and she had a sudden urge to see him before class.
    Maybe I’ll skip this today
, she thought suddenly and hopped off the slab, before her bare foot had even a chance to feel cold. She drained her coffee, put on her sandals, and then ran over and scrambled up the arbutus. She had not noticed Conrad on the beach since theincident with Kate and Brodie, though she had spied him racing in his boat with his friends. He had been speeding along the north end of the beach near a group of large boulders that had tumbled from the cliffs down into the sea.
    From her perch the beach looked deserted, and she decided to go down and investigate something she had seen on her walk with Brodie. She felt in her pocket for the bun and bacon she had taken from the kitchen on the way to grab her coffee.
    The boulders near where she had seen Conrad in his boat formed a barrier that effectively hid part of the rock wall from anyone further down the beach and created a little protected cove. Darrell walked down to have a look at the cove and also at a little cleft she had noticed in the rock while hunting for fossils with Brodie.
    As Darrell emerged from the winding path, Delaney bounded joyfully up the beach to meet her. He snuffled her hand, and she gave him the bacon and bun she had brought from the kitchen.
    â€œWe’ll check your water later, Delaney,” she said. “Let’s go see if Conrad’s been on this part of the beach.” Glancing around a little nervously, she made sure that there were no boats in the water or distant figures on the stretch of shoreline before she headed back toward the rock wall.

    The morning was still grey and the water was calm, but the humid, sluggish air warned of an approaching storm. The high tide meant Darrell and Delaney had to skirt very close to the cliffs to get around the massive reach of