Darkhenge

by Catherine Fisher

  “That’s not fair,” he snapped.

  “Maybe, but Marcus and I go way back and he vouches for Jimmy.”

  “Others know! That girl in the pub!”

  “My students. They won’t cross me.” She stepped up to him. “Don’t you, either. This is big for me. Most archaeologists never ever in all their careers come across something as amazing as this. This time no one’s going to get in my way.”

  She gave him a hard look and stepped back down into the central area. “Go and put the kettle on.”

  In the dingy trailer, he filled the kettle and banged it on the stove in fury. She couldn’t speak to him like that! He didn’t need her stupid job and he couldn’t care less about her stupid career. Unable to find the matches, he slammed the drawer in disgust and leaned on the drain board, glaring out of the tiny window. Then he turned around.

  First he closed the trailer door and slipped the catch. Next he went into the office. There was a desk with papers all over it, a finds tray with pieces of bone, a scatter of tools. Invoices and bills were pinned to notice boards. Near them was a hook and on it were keys.

  Rob glanced out the window. No one had come through the metal fence. It struck him for a moment that the metal fence was doing the same job as the wooden timbers had done centuries ago: keeping the unwanted people from seeing the mysteries inside.

  He turned back, and took down the keys.

  The one for the gate was large, easy to find; he’d seen Marcus open up with it in the mornings. But if he took it, they’d know.

  He put the key back with the others and opened a drawer. Papers. Pens. A box of clips, erasers, pencil stubs. A brown manila envelope with THURSTAN’S LOCKSMITHS. That shop was by the bus station in Swindon. He tipped the envelope up, and a key slid out.

  It was the spare.

  “Rob! Can you bring me some plastic bags?”

  Jimmy had his head around the fence; instantly Rob shoved the key in his pocket, the envelope to the back of the drawer, and slid out into the kitchen. “No problem!” he yelled, grabbing the matches from the table and cracking one into blue flame. “And the tea’s nearly made.”

  All afternoon the key seemed heavy in his pocket. When he managed to forget about it, it stuck in him as he knelt or stretched stiff legs. Clots of peat fell from his sleeves, trouser knees, from the silver foil Maria had put around his packet of sandwiches, from the handle of the chipped tea mug. His hands were black, his nails clogged. As his temper cooled, guilt clogged him too.

  He began to wish he hadn’t taken it. Could he get it back without anyone seeing? Or maybe it would just be easier to tell Vetch he hadn’t been able to get it, he thought. But the poet had an uncanny way of knowing things. About Chloe, for instance.

  Hour by hour, the soil level dropped. By four o’clock the timber fence was a meter deep and still they hadn’t found the bottom. Crouched in the heat, Rob smelled the enclosing rotting smell of peat; he pulled out a lump with his hands and it cracked open.

  A small, gleaming beetle lay within, perfectly preserved.

  He smiled, and touched it, and then almost crushed the thing with a convulsion of shock.

  The beetle moved. It crawled onto his wrist and stood poised.

  It uncreased small wings and flew away.

  Rob looked around.

  There were hundreds of them. He could see them now. They were crawling out of the buried henge, out of the heaps of soil in buckets and barrows. The air was alive with tiny whirrs and flashes of iridescent carapace, bronze, gold, green as shiny foil.

  Like the bird, like whatever had made that hole, they were emerging.

  “Do you think,” he said later to Father Mac, sitting in the presbytery garden picking soil off his hands, “that Chloe will ever wake up?”

  The priest’s large sandaled feet crossed at the ankle. Lighting a cigarette, he flicked a glance at Rob. As usual, he showed no surprise. After a while he said, “It’s possible. At least things will change.” He shook the match out. “Chloe’s condition is a mystery. None of them understand it, even that specialist your mum flew in. It’s a freak situation.”

  “That word again.”

  “Word?”

  “Freak.” He gave a sharp, painful laugh. “She’s preserved. Like the timbers in the henge. Not living, not dying.”

  Father Mac said nothing for a moment. Then he leaned forward and blew smoke into the roses. “Feeling the strain, son?”

  “Maybe.”

  “There are two options, you know that. She wakes—and that gets less likely as the days go on. Or she deteriorates. Brain activity stops.”

  “And they remove the feeding tube? Mum would never—”

  “She may have to.”

  “You say that?”

  The priest gave a heavy shrug. “Rob, if the brain is dead then the time has come. The Church believes death should not be artificially withheld—you know that. As for Katie”—he frowned—“when—if—the time comes, she’ll do what’s right.”

  Rob didn’t want to answer. It was as if they weren’t talking about a person, about cheeky, stroppy Chloe, sentimental over cats, bossy with her friends, who wouldn’t eat ice cream because it rotted your teeth, but spent a fortune on sweets. He fingered the key in his pocket, turning it over, until he realized what it was. Father Mac smoked silently. Around them the summer garden darkened, smelling of lavender, and of the candle on the table that the moths dipped into and singed themselves against until Father Mac reached out and snuffed it with his thick, strong fingers. “Get home to bed,” he growled. “Your mother needs you.”

  Rob said, “I found Chloe’s diary.”

  Mac was silent.

  “She’d written this thing … about me. About me pinching one of her drawings and making fun of it. I’d forgotten all about it. She sounded really gutted.”

  Mac looked out at the roses. Then he said, “Don’t get it out of proportion. Little girls of that age—”

  “But I’d forgotten. What else have I forgotten?”

  “You had arguments. It’s normal.”

  He nodded. Unconvinced.

  The downs were silent. As Rob cycled along the road into Avebury, there was no traffic, though the pub windows were lit. Under the moonlight the great stones stood in their extraordinary cumbersome stillness, vast gray shapes. Their outlines were strange against the early stars, revealing faces and sharp noses, frowning brows. He turned past the church, the tires of the bike skewing loud against dry loose stones, down the silent street lit by one faint lamp, along the high wall, around the corner and over the tiny gurgle of the Winterbourne, almost dry. Beneath the bridge a disturbed duck rustled in the weeds.

  The lane to his house was very dark. On each side untrimmed hedges reared, walls of shadow. He rode more slowly. Then he stopped, balanced with one foot on each side of the tipped bike, his breath loud.

  Someone was standing near the gate.

  He could see only a dark figure leaning against an oak tree there. But he knew who it was.

  “How did you find out where I live?” he breathed.

  Vetch straightened. His face was a mask of shadow and green glimmer. “As I told you, one of the poet’s gifts. One of the three hot splashes of the Cauldron.” He held up his right hand and turned it over; Rob saw that the back was burned: three fearsome scars lacerated the white skin. “Knowledge costs,” Vetch said quietly. “As you’re finding out.”

  He tipped his head, looking at Rob. “You’ve got the key.” It wasn’t a question.

  “Yes. Look—”

  “Did she threaten you?” Rob nodded. “That’s because she feels threatened. She senses me out here, waiting.” For a moment he seemed almost sad; his smile barely there. “Knowledge has to be stolen, Rob. Snatched from under the eyes of the wise, from the Muse’s Cauldron, as Prometheus stole fire from the gods. They punished him. For eons his guts were torn out by an eagle. You know something about that.”

  Rob flipped the bike pedal up
and rode past him, into the gateway. “I’ve changed my mind,” he said firmly. “I’m not getting involved. I want it all to stop.”

  “It won’t stop.” Vetch came up behind him. “Whatever you or I do, the henge is emerging. But it’s a chance. A gateway.” Rob heard his voice alter; the calmness went out of it. “What is it, Rob, you want most in all the world?”

  “You know what.” Rob turned.

  Vetch nodded. The starlight lit the star mark on his brow, and it shone, silver bright. “Then bring the key, at midnight. Because for me the henge leads home. And for you, it’s the way to the place where Chloe is.”

  Rob’s indrawn breath almost choked him. “You’re crazy,” he whispered.

  But halfway up the stairs he was stopped by a jolt of memory that went through him like pain, so that he shivered and gasped out loud.

  He had remembered where he had seen Clare Kavanagh before.

  The hawk, the dog, the otter, the woman.

  Hunting Vetch into the circle.

  T. TINNE: HOLLY

  Now this caer is surrounded too. The outer walls were meshed first; then we heard a crash and the gates fell; a great trunk bursting through the glass.

  He caught my hand and made me run with him up the wide stairs, all made of crystal.

  “It’s no use,” I said, breathless. “The trees will get inside. Why are you so afraid of them?”

  I remember reading somewhere that if you’re kidnapped, you talk to him. Get to know him. You get under his skin.

  He sat on the top step and rubbed his hand through his hair. “Never mind. I have a secret passageway to get us out.”

  I folded my arms. “Is the mask because you think I might recognize you?”

  He shrugged.

  I grinned. Mac would be proud of me. I’m beginning to work out a plan.

  The green holly

  Was a fierce fighter;

  His dark spines defended,

  Piercing palms.

  “THE BATTLE OF THE TREES”

  Rob didn’t undress.

  He lay on the bed and stared up at the ceiling.

  In the next room, he guessed, his mother was awake too, thinking of Chloe.

  Was a coma like being asleep? Did you know if it was night or day? Was Chloe’s mind working, even now, calling out to them, searching for a way back through the tangled forest of dreams and memories?

  Tormented, he rolled over.

  All he had to do was stay here, get undressed, go to sleep. They were drawing him in, these people, and he didn’t want to be drawn. He was the artist, he did the drawing. The pun pleased his tired mind; he smiled.

  When he woke, the alarm clock in his drawer was pinging.

  He groped for it, flicked it off, then looked at the dial blearily.

  Midnight.

  He’d barely slept an hour. Slowly, he sat up. Had he set the clock? He didn’t remember. After a moment he crossed to the open window and edged back the curtain. The drive was dark, but he could make out the outline of a car parked in the lane. It flashed its lights rapidly, a silent glimmer.

  Vetch was that sure of him.

  It made him want to go straight back to bed, but he didn’t, and wearily he came to know that he wouldn’t. There was something here he had to find, to touch and understand. He checked his pocket for the key, pulled a dark jacket on and went out onto the landing.

  The house was silent.

  A clock ticked somewhere. Through an open window the smell of roses drifted.

  His parents’ door was closed; Chloe’s ajar, and the doorway was black. He went quietly down the stairs, let himself out and slipped into the shrubs that lined the drive, so that if his mother looked out the window she wouldn’t see him.

  The bushes were holly and rhododendron, old and straggly, their centers grown open. Pushing through them, he felt as if he had stepped into that tangle of dreams and branches, the sharp smells of soil and prickly leaf close against his face. And then there was empty space, and the gate. As he unlatched it, it creaked.

  The car door opened; Rosa whispered, “Jump in. He’s meeting us there.”

  As they drove he was silent. She gave him one look, then concentrated on the dark lanes, the sharp bends. He wanted to talk to her, but some stubbornness kept him morose. Instead he watched the black humps and hollows of the prehistoric landscape, the immensity of the stones as the car purred past them through the sleeping village.

  They parked away from the site, then walked quietly. Two fields on, a fox ran across in front of them. Rosa smiled. “That might be Vetch.”

  Rob said, “You don’t really believe he can shape-shift.”

  She shrugged. “I have no idea what he can do. To be born from the Cauldron means to have knowledge of the stars and trees and beasts, and to be a bard means entering into the lives of those beings.”

  “New Age twaddle,” he said, wishing Dan was there.

  She laughed. “Listen, Rob. The first night he came, he told us a story. His story. About a boy who was once asked to stir a magic Cauldron, full of power, full of inspiration. He stirred it for a year and a day and at the end of that time three hot splashes came out of the Cauldron and burned his hand. He put his hand to his mouth and he tasted them. In that instant he became a poet, the greatest of poets. Taliesin himself. But the woman who owned the Cauldron is the Muse, the Goddess. She hated him for stealing her magic. She hunted him through field and sky and river, each of them changing shape. She still hunts him. She’ll kill him if she catches him.”

  They all spoke this mystical mixed-up language. But the woman had been real. He had no idea what to make of any of it.

  “I suppose she’s called Clare,” he said acidly.

  Rosa looked at him in surprise. “In the story she’s called Ceridwen.”

  Rob shook his head. He didn’t answer.

  Vetch was waiting in the field corner, where the hedges rose up, dark and rustling.

  “They’ll hear us,” Rob said simply.

  “They’ll neither hear nor see us,” Vetch said, “because I’ll close their eyes and ears. We’ll just be shadows.”

  “Sure. And the dog?”

  “Animals like me. Don’t worry, Rob.” He held out his hand. After a second, Rob took the key out and dropped it in the man’s palm. Vetch smiled.

  They climbed the field gate cautiously, its wooden bars slippery with dew, ridged and powdery under Rob’s tight grip. On the left, in the darkness of the overgrown hedge, the trailer was a pale glimmer, its windows black squares.

  Vetch looked at it. “Two men. Asleep.”

  “So you’ve already checked them out.”

  “If you say so.”

  Rosa said, “What about the dog?”

  “Out here somewhere. Close.”

  In the darkness, quite unexpectedly, rain began to fall, a soft rain that pattered in the leaves. Vetch ignored it. He walked across the field, sidestepping hollows and mounds of spoil, upturned wheelbarrows, areas cordoned off with fluttering tape and tiny flags. Before him the metal fence loomed up in the dark. The others followed, Rosa close, Rob trailing behind, irritable with guilt.

  Vetch reached the fence and took out the key. He slipped it into the lock, but before he could turn it Rosa hissed, “Master!”

  A low growl.

  The Alsatian had risen up from the grass, lips drawn back, teeth bared, and slavering. The growl was a terrifying threat in its throat, a threat that in seconds would leap and bark and tear and bite.

  Rob moved, but Vetch put a hand out to stop him. Then the dark-haired man crouched. He and the dog faced each other.

  “Come to me,” Vetch commanded.

  His voice was quiet, grave. To Rob’s surprise the dog’s growl ended instantly. It stood, trotted forward, licked Vetch’s hand and lay down.

  Vetch gave Rob a glance and turned back to the fence.

  “Knowledge of beasts,” Rosa whispered. “See?”

  “Lots of people can do that.�
� But it amazed him, the animal’s complete trust. Max was fierce with anyone; even with Jimmy around, Rob had never gone very near him.

  The gate opened; Vetch slid in, the others behind him like shadows. Once inside, Rosa clicked on a flashlight.

  Droplets of spray hissed through the light like a golden curtain.

  Rob watched the two of them as they looked down at the henge. Rosa stared at the ring of timbers, dark and ominous, rising out of the ridged soil.

  She let out a breath of awe. “It’s amazing. What is it?”

  “Clare says an enclosure.” Rob was watching Vetch. “A ritual site.”

  The poet had not moved. He was very still, the light catching his eyes, the glittering spray pattering around him. He stood with his arms around himself, a dark figure against the darkness, and there was a tension about him that made them both fall silent. Now, without speaking, he made his way around the timber ring to the entrance, the narrow gap that Marcus had spent all day troweling. Climbing through, he went to the center of the henge, knelt and, to their astonishment, turned his head and crouched so low that his ear was pressed to the ground. His hands spread on the surface, feeling it gently, as if it was softest fleece. “Have they found anything here?”

  “Not as far as I know.”

  “They will.” He raised his head. “I hear the voices of the trees, calling me back. The Trees of the Summer Country, of the Region of the Summer Stars. I hear the birch and the oak, the elm. The forests of the Unworld.” He gazed down, propped on his hands, as if the peaty soil was the opening of a well, a transparent glass floor he could stare through. For a moment he seemed lost in that vision. Then, a little stiffly, he climbed to his feet, brushing soil from his fingers. “The way down will be here.”

  “Down?”

  Vetch turned his head. In the darkness, rain glinted, caught in the hooded glow of the flashlight. Vast shadows flashed and slid over the dark timbers. Concerned, they saw he looked worn and tired. He caught hold of the henge with one hand to support himself, and the fine mist of the sprays that kept it wet fell on him in the torchlight like a million minute stars.