Text Leveling System

The Dark is Rising

RDQ:	2477	Max Word/Sent	46	Total Words	2271		Diff Words	787
Lex	970	Ave Word/.Sent	10	Hi Freq occurs	1595	70.2%	Hi freq	312	39.6%
AR	5.7	Long Sentences	20.5	Low Freq occurs	194	8.5%	Low freq	157	19.9%

Midwinter's Eve
"Too many!" James shouted, and slammed the door behind
him.
"What?" said Will.
"Too many kids in this family, that's what. Just too 
many." James stood fuming on the landing like a small 
angry locomotive, then stumped across to the window-seat and 
stared out at the garden. Will put aside his book and pulled 
up his legs to make room. "I could hear all the yelling," he 
said, chin on knees.
"Wasn't anything," James said. "Just stupid Barbara 
again. Bossing. Pick up this, don't touch that. And Mary 
joining in, twitter twitter twitter. You'd think this house was 
big enough, but there's always people."
They both looked out of the window. The snow lay thin 
and apologetic over the world. That wide grey sweep was 
the lawn, with the straggling trees of the orchard still dark 
beyond; the white squares were the roofs of the garage, the 
old barn, the rabbit hutches, the chicken coops. Further 
back there were only the flat fields of Dawsons' Farm, dimly 
white-striped. All the broad sky was grey, full of more snow 
that refused to fall. There was no color anywhere.
"Four days to Christmas," Will said. "I wish it would
snow properly."
"And your birthday tomorrow."
"Mmm." He had been going to say that too, but it would
have been too much like a reminder. And the gift he most
wished for on his birthday was something nobody could give]] 
him: it was snow, beautiful, deep, blanketing snow, and it 
never came. At least this year there was the grey sprinkle, 
better than nothing.
He said, remembering a duty; "I haven't fed the rabbits 
yet. Want to come?"
Booted and muffled, they clumped out through the 
sprawling kitchen. A full symphony orchestra was swelling 
out of the radio; their eldest sister Gwen was slicing onions 
and singing; their mother was bent broad-beamed and red-
faced over an oven. "Rabbits!" she shouted, when she 
caught sight of them. "And some more hay from the farm!"
"We're going!" Will shouted back. The radio let out a 
sudden hideous crackle of static as he passed the table. He 
jumped. Mrs Stanton shrieked, "Turn that thing DOWN."
Outdoors, it was suddenly very quiet. Will dipped out a 
pail of pellets from the bin in the farm-smelling barn, which 
was not really a barn at all, but a long, low building with a 
tiled roof, once a stable. They tramped through the thin 
snow to the row of heavy wooden hutches, leaving dark
footmarks on the hard frozen ground.
Opening doors to fill the feed-boxes, Will paused, frowning. 
Normally the rabbits would be huddled sleepily in corners, 
only the greedy ones coming twitch-nosed forward to 
eat. Today they seemed restless and uneasy, rustling, to 
and fro, banging against their wooden walls; one or two even 
leapt back in alarm when he opened their doors. He came to 
his favorite rabbit, named Chelsea, and reached in as usual 
to rub him affectionately behind the ears, but the animal 
scuffled back away from him and cringed into a corner, the 
pink-rimmed eyes staring up blank and terrified.
"Hey!" Will said, disturbed. "Hey James, look at that. 
What's the matter with him? And all of them?"
"They seem all right to me."
"Well, they don't to me. They're all jumpy. Even Chelsea. 
Hey, come on, boy-" But it was no good.
"Funny," James said with mild interest, watching. "I dare 
say your hands smell wrong. You must have touched something ]]
they don't like. Same as dogs and aniseed, but the 
other way round."
"I haven't touched anything. Matter of fact, I'd just 
washed my hands when I saw you."
"There you are then," James said promptly. "That's the 
trouble. They've never smelled you clean before. Probably all 
die of shock."
"Ha very ha." Will attacked him, and they scuffled together, 
grinning, while the empty pail toppled rattling on the 
hard ground. But when he glanced back as they left, the 
animals were still moving distractedly, not eating yet, staring 
after him with those strange frightened wide eyes.
"There might be a fox about again, I suppose," James 
said. "Remind me to tell Mom." No fox could get at the 
rabbits, in their sturdy row, but the chickens were more 
vulnerable; a family of foxes had broken into one of the 
henhouses the previous winter and carried off six nicely 
fattened birds just before marketing time. Mrs Stanton, who 
relied on the chicken-money each year to help pay for 
eleven Christmas presents, had been so furious she had kept 
watch afterwards in the cold barn two nights running, but 
the villains had not come back. Will thought that if he were 
a fox he would have kept clear too; his mother might be 
married to a jeweler, but with generations of 
Buckinghamshire farmers behind her, she was no joke when the 
old instincts were roused.
Tugging the handcart, a home-made contraption with a 
bar joining its shafts, he and James made their way down 
the curve of the overgrown drive and out along the road to 
Dawsons' Farm. Quickly past the churchyard, its great dark 
yew trees leaning out over the crumbling wall; more slowly 
by Rooks' Wood, on the corner of Church Lane. The tall 
spinney of horse-chestnut trees, raucous with the calling of 
the rooks and rubbish-roofed with the clutter of their 
sprawling nests, was one of their familiar places.
"Hark at the rooks! Something's disturbed them." The 
harsh irregular chorus was deafening, and when Will looked]] 
up at the treetops he saw the sky dark with wheeling birds. 
They flapped and drifted to and fro; there were no flurries of 
sudden movement, only this clamorous interweaving throng 
of rooks.
"An owl?"
"They're not chasing anything. Come on, Will, it'll be getting 
dark soon."
"That's why it's so odd for the rooks to be in a fuss. They 
all ought to be roosting by now." Will turned his head reluctantly 
down again, but then jumped and clutched his 
brother's arm, his eye caught by a movement in the darkening 
lane that led away from the road where they stood. 
Church Lane: it ran between Rooks' Wood and the 
churchyard to the tiny local church, and then on to the River 
Thames.
"Hey!"
"What's up?"
"There's someone over there. Or there was. Looking at 
us."
James sighed. "So what? Just someone out for a walk."
"No, he wasn't." Will screwed up his eyes nervously, 
peering down the little side road. "It was a weird-looking 
man all hunched over, and when he saw me looking he ran 
off behind a tree. Scuttled, like a beetle."
James heaved at the handcart and set off up the road, 
making Will run to keep up. "It's just a tramp, then. I 
dunno, everyone seems to be going batty today-Barb and 
the rabbits and the rooks and now you all yak-twitchetty-
yakking. Come on, let's get that hay. I want my tea."
The handcart bumped through the frozen ruts into 
Dawsons' yard, the great earthen square enclosed by buildings 
on three sides, and they smelled the familiar farm-smell. 
The cowshed must have been mucked out that day; Old 
George, the toothless cattleman, was piling dung across the 
yard. He raised a hand to them. Nothing missed Old 
George; he could see a hawk drop from a mile away. Mr 
Dawson came out of a barn.]] 
"Ah," he said. "Hay for Stantons' Farm?" It was his joke 
with their mother, because of the rabbits and the hens.
James said, "Yes, please."
"It's coming," Mr Dawson said. Old George had disappeared 
into the barn. "Keeping well, then? Tell your mom 
I'll have ten birds off her tomorrow. And four rabbits. Don't 
look like that, young Will. If it's not their happy Christmas, 
it's one for the folks as'll have them." He glanced up at the 
sky, and Will thought a strange look came over his lined 
brown face. Up against the lowering grey clouds, two black 
rooks were flapping slowly over the farm in a wide circle.
"The rooks are making an awful din today," James said. 
"Will saw a tramp up by the wood."
Mr Dawson looked at Will sharply. "What was he like?"
"Just a little old man. He dodged away."
"So the Walker is abroad," the farmer said softly to himself. 
"Ah. He would be."
"Nasty weather for walking," James said cheerfully. He 
nodded at the northern sky over the farmhouse roof; the 
clouds there seemed to be growing darker, massing in ominous 
grey mounds with a yellowish tinge. The wind was rising 
too; it stirred their hair, and they could hear a distant 
rustling from the tops of the trees.
"More snow coming," said Mr Dawson.
"It's a horrible day," said Will suddenly, surprised by his 
own violence;after all, he had wanted snow. But somehow 
uneasiness was growing in him. "It's-creepy, somehow."
"It will be a bad night," said Mr Dawson.
"There's Old George with the hay," said James. "Come 
on, Will."
"You go," the farmer said. "I want Will to pick up something 
for your mother from the house." But he did not 
move, as James pushed the handcart off towards the barn; 
he stood with his hands thrust deep into the pockets of his 
old tweed jacket, looking at the darkening sky.
"The Walker is abroad," he said again. "And this night 
will be bad, and tomorrow will be beyond imagining." He]] 
looked at Will, and Will looked back in growing alarm into 
the weathered face, the bright dark eyes creased narrow by 
decades of peering into sun and rain and wind. He had 
never noticed before how dark Farmer Dawson's eyes were:
strange, in their blue-eyed county.
"You have a birthday coming," the farmer said.
"Mmm," said Will.
"I have something for you." He glanced briefly round the 
yard, and withdrew one hand from his pocket; in it, Will saw 
what looked like a kind of ornament, made of black metal, a
flat circle quartered by two crossed lines. He took it, fingering 
it curiously. It was about the size of his palm, and quite 
heavy; roughly forged out of iron, he guessed, though with 
no sharp points or edges. The iron was cold to his hand.
"What is it?" he said.
"For the moment," Mr Dawson said, "just call it something 
to keep. To keep with you always, all the time. Put it 
in your pocket, now. And later on, loop your belt through it 
and wear it like an extra buckle."
Will slipped the iron circle into his pocket. "Thank you 
very much," he said, rather shakily. Mr Dawson, usually a 
comforting man, was not improving the day at all.
The farmer looked at him in the same intent, unnerving 
way, until Will felt the hair rise on the back of his neck; then 
he gave a twisted half-smile, with no amusement in it but a 
kind of anxiety. "Keep it safe, Will. And the less you happen 
to talk about it, the better. You will need it after the 
snow comes." He became brisk. "Come on, now, Mrs 
Dawson has a jar of her mincemeat for your mother."
They moved off towards the farmhouse. The farmer's wife 
was not there, but waiting in the doorway was Maggie 
Barnes, the farm's round-faced, red-cheeked dairymaid, 
who always reminded Will of an apple. She beamed at them 
both, holding out a big white crockery jar tied with a red 
ribbon.
"Thank you, Maggie," Farmer Dawson said.
"Missus said you'd be wanting it for young Will here,"]] 
Maggie said. "She went down the village to see the vicar for 
something. How's your big brother, then, Will?"
She always said this, whenever she saw him; she meant 
Will's next-to-oldest brother Max. It was a Stanton family 
joke that Maggie Barnes at Dawsons' had a thing about 
Max.
"Fine, thank you," Will said politely. "Grown his hair 
long. Looks like a girl."
Maggie shrieked with delight. "Get away with you!" She 
giggled and waved her farewell, and just at the last moment 
Will noticed her gaze slip upward past his head. Out of the 
corner of his eye as he turned, he thought he saw a flicker of 
movement by the farmyard gate, as if someone were dodging 
quickly out of sight. But when he looked, no one was 
there.
With the big pot of mincemeat wedged between two bales 
of hay, Will and James pushed the handcart out of the yard. 
The farmer stood in his doorway behind them; Will could 
feel his eyes, watching. He glanced up uneasily at the looming, 
growing clouds, and half-unwillingly slipped a hand into 
his pocket to finger the strange iron circle. "After the snow 
comes." The sky looked as if it were about to fall on them. 
He thought: what's happening?
One of the farm dogs came bounding up, tail waving; then 
it stopped abruptly a few yards away, looking at them.
"Hey, Racer!" Will called.
The dog's tail went down, and it snarled, showing its teeth.
"James!" said Will.
"He won't hurt you. What's the matter?"
They went on, and turned into the road.
"It's not that. Something's wrong, that's all. Something's 
awful. Racer, Chelsea-the animals are all scared of me." 
He was beginning to be really frightened now.
The noise from the rookery was louder, even though the 
daylight was beginning to die. They could see the dark birds 
thronging over the treetops, more agitated than before, flapping]]

Subjective Criteria

Illustrations: No support

Dialog: Multiple speakers

Dialog: Broken dialogue

Dialog: Unlabeled Speaker

Vocabulary: Many difficult words

Language: Many descriptive words

Sentences: Some Long/Complex

Text structure: Story/Poem

Inferences: Several Implications

Complexity: Several ideas - closely related

Concepts: Abstract/Difficult

Sequence of Events: Mostly chronological

Mature concepts: With common experiences or clear fantasy

Features

Integral Setting - Cultural/Regional

Complex plot

Foreshadowing

Mood/tone

Topic

Fears

Good/Evil

*Fictional Ideas/Charac

*Feelings, Behaviors

Birds

Low Frequency Words

abroad	abruptly	affectionately	agitated	amusement
aniseed	anxiety	apologetic	as'll	bales
blanketing	booted	cattleman	chasing	cheeked
chestnut	chorus	clamorous	clumped	contraption
cowshed	cringed	crockery	curiously	curve
dairymaid	dawson	dawson's	dawsons	deafening
decades	distractedly	disturbed	dunno	earthen
edges	eldest	enclosed	eyed	familiar
farm's	fingering	flurries	footmarks	forged
fuming	furious	further	generations	grey
handcart	harsh	heaved	henhouses	hideous
hunched	hutches	imagining	improving	instincts
intent	interweaving	jeweler	joining	leapt
lowering	massing	midwinter's	mincemeat	missus
mounds	movement	mucked	muffled	nervously
northern	nosed	ominous	orchard	orchestra
ornament	ought	overgrown	paused	peering
pellets	piling	pockets	previous	promptly
properly	quartered	racer	rattling	raucous
refused	relied	reluctantly	reminder	restless
rimmed	rookery	rooks	roosting	roughly
roused	rubbish	rustling	scuffled	scuttled
shafts	shakily	sleepily	slicing	snarled
spinney	sprawling	stable	stanton	stantons
static	stirred	straggling	stumped	sturdy
swelling	symphony	terrified	thames	throng
thronging	thrust	tiled	tinge	toothless
toppled	towards	tramped	twitch	twitchetty
twitter	uneasily	uneasiness	unnerving	unwillingly
upward	vicar	villains	violence	vulnerable
weathered	weird	wheeling	withdrew	yak
yakking	yew