2017/100: The Dark is Rising -- Susan Cooper

2017/100: The Dark is Rising -- Susan Cooper

Then he was flying again, at large in the blue-black sky, with the stars blazing timeless around his head, and the patterns of the stars made themselves known to him, both like and unlike the shapes and powers attributed to them by men long ago. The Herdsman passed, nodding, the bright star Arcturus at his knee; the Bull roared by, bearing the great sun Aldebaran and the small group of the Pleiades singing in small melodic voices, like no voices he had ever heard. Up he flew, and outward, through black space, and saw the dead stars, the blazing stars, the thin scattering of life that peopled the infinite emptiness beyond. And when he was done... he knew the mystery of Uranus and the despair of Mercury, and he had ridden on a comet's tail. [p. 105]

Reread, with the intention of joining in with the seasonal read-along: in the end I didn't, but wallowed in fond memories, tinged with a wistful sense of 'if only real-world evil were that simple'.
( somewhat spoilery )