92 pages • 3 hours read
Susan CooperThe Dark Is Rising
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 1973A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Part 3, Chapters 9-13Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 3: “The Testing”
Part 3, Chapter 9 Summary: “The Coming of the Cold”
The snow continues to fall for days as food and fuel run low in the village. The Walker continues to be nearly incoherent. He has no memory of Will or of anything that has happened to him recently until Will happens to bend over, exposing the four Signs strung on his belt. Seeing them, the Walker screams and recoils.
Later, Will goes with his father and his brother Robin to the village store for supplies. The villagers in the store are feeling the strain of the last few days. The endless snow feels hostile to them. Merriman enters the store and announces that Miss Greythorne is inviting everyone to the Manor for shelter. The villagers in the shop are grateful and relieved, but Will’s father is standoffish toward Merriman. He dislikes Miss Greythorne’s presumption of noblesse oblige and tells Will and Robin that there’s no need to add to the crowd at the Manor.
However, Will wants to go to the Manor, where the other Old Ones are gathering against the Dark. Will also wants to get the Walker out of his home. He provokes the Walker into a “fit” by showing him the Signs, persuading Will’s father to take the old man to the Manor, where there is a doctor to look after him. As they are preparing to leave for the Manor, Will catches a glint of triumph in the Walker’s eyes.
At the Manor, the villagers are comforting one another with music and stories and community. Miss Greythorne, the lady of the Manor, is reading a fantasy story, The Phoenix and the Carpet by Edith Nesbitt, to a group of children.
Merriman transports Will through time to the great hall where he first encountered the Lady. She tells Will that his next task is to recover the Sign of fire and break the cold of the Dark. Will returns to his present day. He hears a pounding at the door. Knowing he must answer it, he opens the door and confronts the Rider. Raising the Signs, he forces the Rider to fall back, but in opening the door, he gives the Walker the power to call the “Lords of the Dark.” As he calls out their names, nine great candles spring up and fill the hall with cold light.
The Old Ones gather, and when the Walker sees Merriman he recoils. Will recognizes the Walker as Hawkin, and Merriman tells Hawkin there is still time for him to turn back to the Light.
Part 3, Chapter 10 Summary: “The Hawk in the Dark”
Hawkin rejects the chance to return to the Light. He recalls the old injuries Merriman caused him—risking his life for a mere book and then forcing him to carry the Sign of bronze for 600 years. He blames Will as much as Merriman. He calls out again to the Masters of the Dark. The nine cold candles close in around the Old Ones, and the cold of the Dark grips the manor where the villagers are gathered. It puts out the fires and threatens to freeze everyone.
The Walker grabs Will, babbling that he will take both the Signs and Will’s place as the Sign-Seeker. The Walker becomes increasingly upset until the doctor, who has been tending the people at the Manor, gives him a sedative. When the Walker loses consciousness, the Dark can no longer enter the house. Will repels the Rider with the four Signs he already possesses and the burn scar—a kind of sign representing fire—on his arm. The deadly cold breaks.
The Old Ones take the candles of winter and place them in a candle-holder. The candles disappear, leaving in their place the Sign of fire—multicolored gold set with tiny gems and an inscription saying, “The Light ordered that I should be made” (193). The moment Will takes the Sign, the snow outside turns to rain.
Someone pounds on the door of the hall. It is Will’s brother Max. He tells them that Mrs. Stanton has fallen down the stairs and broken her leg.
Part 3, Chapter 11 Summary: “The King of Fire and Water”
When the Stantons return home, James tells Will that Mary has disappeared. Will goes out looking for her. The road is becoming a river with melted snow. He encounters Old George from Dawson’s farm. Old George warns Will that they have work to do. Will is to take the white horse to the Hunter while Old George gathers the Wild Hunt. Before leaving, he reminds Will that moving water won’t carry magic.
Left alone, Will looks around and sees the carnival head from Stephen floating down the stream of melted snow pouring through Huntercombe Lane. He wants to get it back, but he remembers that running water repels magic. The head will be safe from the Dark as long as it is in the water.
Will leaves the road and comes upon the white horse. He mounts her, and she carries him to the Thames River. She leaves him on an island in the middle of the river, and Will hears discordant singing. He finds himself staring at a twig on a nearby tree. He has been caught out of time by the Dark. Hawkin stands before him and tells Will his sister Mary is here. Will refuses to believe him. Hawkin calls the Rider, and Will is frozen again. The white mare smells something in the wind and gallops away.
A column of black mist covers the island, and the black Rider stands before Will. Mary sits atop his black horse. She thinks she is having a lovely ride with their father’s friend, Mr. Mitothin. The Rider shows Will the talisman he uses to control Mary—the hair he plucked from Mary’s sleeve wrapped around a wooden cross-quartered circle, the birth sign Dawson carved for Will. He tells Will that through those two items, he now controls both Mary and Will. The Rider threatens to kill Mary unless Will hands over the Signs. Will must choose between love of his sister and obedience to the Light. Will reminds the rider that the Dark cannot use the shape of the Sign in any of its own magic. He refuses to surrender the Signs. The black horse leaps into the air over the river and throws Mary off its back. She lands in the snow on the riverbank. Merriman sweeps by riding the white mare and carries Mary to safety.
Hawkin and the Rider disappear. The island begins to break apart, and an ancient Viking ship rises from the ground. A king lies under a canopy holding the Sign of water. Merriman appears and tells Will the king has been waiting for Will to take the Sign from him. The king was part Viking and a great champion of the Light in the Dark Ages. Will takes the Sign. The Viking longship is struck by lightning, bursts into flame, and floats away down the river.
Part 3, Chapter 12 Summary: “The Hunt Rides”
The Dark makes one last effort, throwing its full strength against Will and trying to capture the Signs before they can be joined. Merriman takes Will up on the white horse. Pursued by the black storm, they race through the dark. Will hears a high yelping sound in the sky. They go to Herne’s Oak in the Great Park near Windsor Castle. Merriman and Will dismount. The horse trots eagerly toward the oak and the shadow waiting beneath it.
Old George comes, carrying the carnival head, which he hands to Will. Will takes the head to the shadow that is now mounted on the white mare. The hunter sets the mask on his shoulders. Will sees that the head is alive, half man and half animal. The hunter calls his red-eared white hounds. The Wild Hunt pours into the sky. The towering cloud pillar of the Dark surges forward in its last chance to crush Will. Will is helpless against it, but then he hears the yelping of the hounds, and the Hunt falls on the pillar of the Dark. Nothing can resist the Wild Hunt. In the last moment, the Rider throws Hawkin down from his horse and flees. The dark is routed for now.
Merriman goes to Hawkin. His neck is broken. Hawkin opens his eyes and begs Merriman to allow him to die. Merriman tells him he was always free once he paid back his debt to the Old Ones by giving the second Sign over to Will: “All your choices have been your own” (229). Hawkin calls Merriman “Master” one last time and dies.
Part 3, Chapter 13 Summary: “The Joining of the Signs”
On Twelfth Night, in a time between the past and the present, all the Old Ones of the world gather at the smithy where Will first met the white horse. Through the throng of gathered Old Ones comes a procession of boys—the same that Will saw carrying the bier. Instead of the wren, the bier carries the Lady. She rises from the bier, fully recovered.
John Wayland-Smith joins the six Signs with gold chain that Will can wear around his neck. When the Signs are joined, the Old Ones disperse, and Will and Merriman return to Will’s time. As they walk from the Manor back to the Stantons’ home, Merriman remarks that it is difficult to be both an Old One and a little boy, and Will replies that it isn’t always. Merriman has two gifts from Miss Greythorne at the Manor. One is for Will—an old horn to use at some time in the future. The other is the old flute that Paul played at the Manor while Will was retrieving the Sign of wood. At the Stantons’ house, they learn that Will’s mother only has a sprained ankle, not a broken leg. Mary is home safe. Will finds the carnival head lying behind a tree near the house. Merriman leaves Will until they meet again. He passes through the Doors of Time and disappears.
Part 3, Chapters 9-13 Analysis
Part 3 consists of a series of challenges of strength and wisdom, which Will must overcome in order to finally join the Signs and repel the Dark. The power of the Dark is growing toward its greatest strength, which will peak on Twelfth Night. From a benediction on Will’s birthday, the snow has become a weapon of the Dark, harkening to the common association of dark and cold with evil and destruction. The reactions of the villagers illustrate why darkness and cold are so often used as a metaphor for evil: Will’s neighbors lack the food or means of warmth to deal with even a fairly short period of isolation.
Will’s independent father resists the sense of obligation and dependence he feels in response to Miss Greythorne’s hospitality. For the other villagers, however, this is a welcome opportunity for shelter and closeness to other people. Community provides more than physical warmth, including emotional and psychological “resources.” The scene at the Manor resembles the author’s own experience of huddling with her family in their bomb shelter while the Light and the Dark war overhead. Likewise, Miss Greythorne reading to the children echoes the author’s mother reading to her younger brother. Music is another source of strength. It cannot keep out the Dark, which is a more-than-human force, but it is a weapon against the smaller evils in the human heart.
When Will first met Merriman, Will was deceived by the Dark into opening the doors of the hall. Merriman made it clear to Will that his error had caused them to lose the aid of the Lady, holding him accountable for his errors, however innocent his intent. Now Merriman demonstrates his own fallibility. His mistake—his misestimation of Hawkin’s resolve—bears fruit when Hawkin calls the Masters of the Dark into the hall. For all their wisdom and strength and millennia of experience, the agents of the Light can make mistakes, and their mistakes directly affect the fate of mortals.
Will’s next test is to repel the Dark and seize control of the candles of winter, taking the power of cold away from the Dark. Once he accomplishes that, he is given the Sign of fire: The test is of his strength and resolve, and the Sign is his reward for achieving the goal, not the goal itself. The Sign of fire was probably inspired by the Alfred jewel, which was on display at the Ashmolean Museum when Cooper was at Oxford. The jewel was inscribed with a similar epitaph: “Aelfred commanded to make me.”
Will’s sister Mary is the least sympathetic of his siblings. She is self-involved and frivolous; the fact that the Rider uses one of her hairs to control her speaks to her vanity about her hair. By putting the least likable member of the family in danger, the author allows the reader to see the depth of Will’s love for his family and the importance of that connection for him. By forcing Will to sacrifice his sister to save the world, the author illustrates again the implacability of the Light—that Dark May Be Evil but Good Is Not Nice.
When Will returns home after the joining of the Signs, he finds his world returned to the status quo. He is returning to the ordinary world after the completion of his quest, but he returns changed and with greater wisdom. That new understanding brings with it a degree of isolation, but Will finds that his family is unchanged, and he fits into his role there better than he expected. Nevertheless, Merriman’s promise to return and Will’s discovery of the head foreshadow future adventures.
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