“Like that thing on the station windows and on the war memorial. What d’you think it is?”
“Your guess is as good as mine,” Rachel said, about to knock.
Before the knocker touched wood, the door swung open, revealing Celia Root behind it in an electric wheelchair.
The old lady flung her arms out wide. “My poor darlings … I’ve been so worried…”
Rachel and Adam fell into the hallway and into their grandmother’s open arms, all three promptly bursting into tears.
The kettle whistled on the Aga and Granny Root’s wheelchair hummed across the tiled kitchen floor as she moved to take it off. For the hour or more since their arrival, Rachel and Adam had been recounting the strange events of their journey to their horrified grandmother.
For a woman in her late seventies, Celia Root was remarkably well preserved, and though the wheelchair gave the impression of frailty, it was only that. Though heavy, her make-up was immaculately applied and her silvery-blonde hair looked as though it was set on a daily basis.
“You poor things,” she said. “What must you think of us?”
“Shouldn’t we call the cops or something?” Adam said.
The old woman smiled indulgently. “There hasn’t been a station here for years, darling. We have a local constable who pops in every few weeks, but he has two other villages to deal with. There’s really not much goes on around here.”
“We were probably just unlucky,” Rachel said.
“That’s right,” Granny Root said. “I’ll have a word with the commodore up at Waverley Hall. He’s the local magistrate, tends to sort these things out…”
Rachel and Adam looked at each other. What on earth was a commodore?
“Anyway, you’ve got the worst behind you now.” She smiled and squeezed Rachel’s hand. “Now you can relax, and start to enjoy yourselves.”
Sitting at the long kitchen table, Adam tapped out a number for the umpteenth time on his mobile phone and, after a long pause, thumped it down again.
“Nothing. Is there anywhere around here you can get a signal, Gran?”
“I don’t really understand these mobiles, dear. You could try the telephone again.”
Rachel’s earlier attempt at calling home on the land-line had met with nothing but static and a series of electronic bleeps. The third time she’d dialled, a recorded voice had told her something she didn’t understand in French, and New York had never felt further away.
“The weather’s been a bit unpredictable, dear,” her grandmother said, “and it sometimes affects the line. We had a power cut just last week, on Tuesday … or was it Wednesday?”
Rachel smiled affectionately, while Adam wondered what kind of Third World backwater they’d ended up in, where phones didn’t work and power failed in the rain.
Granny Root put a large plate of warm scones on the table in front of Adam. “Help yourself, darling.”
Adam grabbed two scones and put them on his plate, slathering them with butter and jam, and shoving the first one into his mouth almost whole. His grandmother’s eyes widened slightly, then softened into a smile.
“You poor darling, you’re half starved.”
While Rachel buttered her own scone with considerably less urgency than her brother, Granny Root brought a teapot to the table and looked at Adam. “Milk and sugar?”
Adam, mouth half open and full of scone, looked at his grandmother and mumbled.
“Not with your mouth full, dear. What has your mother been teaching you?”
Adam wiped the remaining jam and crumbs from the corner of his mouth with a knuckle. “Oh … sorry, Gran. Can I get a soda?”
Celia Root appeared not to understand, or not to hear. “Sweet with plenty of milk after the shock you’ve had.” She opened a drawer in the long table and took out a knitted cosy, which she fitted snugly over the teapot.
Rachel giggled. “Gran, why are you putting a hat on the teapot?”
Celia looked at Rachel blankly, then back at the teapot and laughed out loud as if she had momentarily grasped the absurdity of the tea cosy from Rachel’s point of view. Seeing her eyes glittering, Rachel caught a glimpse of the handsome woman her grandmother must have been forty years before; the one Rachel had seen in those black and white photographs.
The old woman put her hand on the back of Rachel’s, and looked her in the eye. “You are so like your mother,” she said.
Rachel blushed, enjoying the compliment, basking in the warmth of her grandmother’s approval.
Granny Root turned and smiled at her grandson. “Whereas Adam, I think, takes more after his father.”
Adam, who was feeling nervous and vulnerable, as though he were making a bad impression, did not take this comparison very well. “Right,” he snapped back, “except I haven’t walked out on my family, have I?”
Rachel dived in. “C’mon Adam, that wasn’t what Gran meant. It wasn’t all Dad’s fault, anyway. Let it go.”
“I may have some orange juice in the pantry,” Granny Root said loudly, desperately trying to change the subject.
“So Mom made him get a girlfriend?” asked Adam, his voice thick with sarcasm.
“Adam, you’re being a pain.”
“And who do I get that from, Rachel?”
Celia Root backed her wheelchair away from the table, moved over to the other side of the room and busied herself with an old radio on the windowsill. Outside, the golden light had turned to bronze and the sky had gone a dull blue-grey. The air was still heavy though, and Rachel felt short of breath. She held her hands up in surrender, trying to placate her brother. “Adam, Dad wasn’t happy.”
“Great. So now, none of us is.” Adam stared intently at the pattern of flowers bordering his plate and rolled the remaining crumbs of scone around with his forefinger.
Granny Root could stand no more. “Children, please. You’re very tired.” She raised a hand to silence them and, with the other, turned up the volume of the radio. “Please … the wireless. I never miss this…”
A rich voice like that of a Shakespearean actor began to intone words that sounded like gobbledegook to Rachel and Adam.
“…issued by the Met Office on behalf of the Maritime and Coastguard Agency at one seven three oh on Friday, thirteenth of August. There are warnings of gales in Viking, North Utsire, South Utsire, Forties, Cromarty, Forth, Tyne, Dogger…”
Rachel and Adam looked at their grandmother, confused.
“It’s the shipping forecast,” she said. “Sounds like there’s a storm coming.”
In the village, the landlord hurriedly took down the umbrellas from the deserted benches outside The Star. The raindrops grew heavier, sticking the shirt to his back and bouncing off the long, waxed bonnet of the burgundy-coloured Bentley parked outside. The landlord made for the entrance, stepping daintily to avoid slipping on the wet cobbles in front of the pub, and slammed the heavy wooden door behind him.
Another thunderclap. Then the sky opened and the rain came down in torrents, lashing against the windows of The Star and washing away the dust of a long, hot afternoon.
From his vantage point high in the old oak, the boy watched the landlord go inside. Then nimbly, unhindered by the damp branches and dense foliage, he climbed his way down, limb by limb, to the foot of the tree.
He stopped for a moment in the shelter of the tree to watch the sign of the shooting star swinging wildly in the storm. Then he turned and padded across the wet green towards the inn.
* * *
“Same again, commodore?”
Commodore Gerald Wing pushed a large cutglass tumbler across the bar and stacked three pound coins neatly next to it. Without waiting for an answer, Tom Hatcham, the landlord, took the glass, and put it up to the optic of the whisky bottle behind the bar. A rumble of thunder overhead rattled the ancient windows.
“Nice for the ducks.” Hatcham pushed the large whisky back across the bar and scooped up the coins. The enormous grey dog that lay at Commo
dore Wing’s feet let out a heavy sigh, as if to acknowledge Hatcham’s banal comment.
At a table, four villagers played dominos in silence. In the corner, Gary and Lee Bacon sipped illegal pints of lager and lime and poured coins into The Star’s slot machine. The landlord and the commodore were happy enough to turn a blind eye. It was generally thought better to have youths like the Bacons where they could be watched, rather than have them running free, causing all sorts of trouble.
As if triggered by another clap of thunder that sounded outside, the heavy door of The Star flew suddenly open and a huge gust of wind sent beer mats and bits of paper flying. All eyes turned to see a slight, feral-looking boy framed in the doorway. He wore a dark hooded sweatshirt and track-suit bottoms. As he pulled back his hood, water dripped from his long black hair, running into wide green eyes that flashed, vivid against an olive complexion. He stood, soaked to the skin, and he stared into the bar with an unblinking intensity.
Tom Hatcham threw a glance at Commodore Wing. The commodore nodded back. Hatcham stepped from behind the bar and strode to the door, squaring up to the boy, who did not move a muscle.
“Go. Away.” Hatcham put his face close to the boy’s, blinking away the splashes of rain that flew into his eyes through the open door. The boy did not flinch, nor give any sign he had heard Hatcham’s words. Seeing that he was having no effect, the landlord took the handle of the heavy door and shut it in the visitor’s face.
“Nicely done, Tom,” one of the domino players said, breaking the silence.
Another nodded. “Enough undesirables for one day.”
At the fruit machine Gary Bacon sniggered into his lager.
Hatcham watched for a moment as the boy’s distorted dark shape – still visible through the frosted glass in the pub door – drifted slowly away, and then, in the blink of an eye, seemed to disappear.
As if obeying the commanding tone of Celia Root, the sky was growing darker by the second and, from their bedroom, the twins listened to the thunder getting louder, closer, shaking the walls of the cottage round them.
Rachel got up and walked across to the window. Sheet lightning fluttered in the distance against the sky and, below her in the garden, the foxgloves danced as they caught the heavy drops of rain on their petals. Once again, Rachel heard the low hum of bees buzzing. She watched as the flowers appeared to come to life and smiled as, one by one, an army of insects emerged from the trumpets of the foxgloves, their back legs heavy with pollen, and flew, snaking off against the dark sky to their hive.
“It’s not even eight o’clock, and it’s black as night out there,” Rachel said. “Adam…”
She got no more than a groan from her brother, who was flat out on one of the twin beds, half asleep already.
Thunder erupted above her head and she winced at the sound of it, smelling the electricity all around and feeling the hairs stand up along her arms. A few seconds later, lightning broke across the moorland beyond the garden, and in its bright snapshot she saw a familiar circular shape, and something moving around in it.
She moved close to the window, pressed her face to the glass, and waited.
It was as though the next flash lasted five or ten seconds, as this time she saw the shape clearly. It was the same shape she and Adam had seen everywhere that day: a symbol of three intersecting crescents forming a continuous, pointed clover leaf, bounded by a large circle. But this time it was huge and cut out from the chalk on the land itself; white against the scrubby grey of the moor.
The air was filled with the hiss of static, and the rain drumming on the thatch, and the low drone of bees rumbling on beneath them.
Another flash, and another, like bulbs exploding.
Rachel called to her brother again but did not look away from the window.
It was as though she was looking down on the chalk carving through a tunnel of light. The circle must have been a half a mile away, perhaps more, but she could clearly make out the figure that marched around inside. She narrowed her eyes, desperate to see more, and stared, unblinking, until she was sure about exactly what she was seeing.
There was a boy inside the chalk circle.
From the size of the moving figure, Rachel was able to estimate that the circle was maybe sixty feet across. She watched the boy trudge round and round, head down through the rain, tracing out the intersecting lines, pacing faster and faster, almost automatically.
As though he were moving in spite of himself.
“Adam, you need to come and see this.”
There was no reply from the bed and Rachel continued to watch, almost as if she knew what was coming next, as the boy turned, walked deliberately to the centre of the circle and looked up.
She knew that he was looking at her. That somehow he could see her in her tiny window. She could hear the thump of her own heart taking its place in the complex rhythm of the rain and the bees, and she watched through the blackness as the boy raised an arm and pointed up at her.
Suddenly, the window cracked, loud as a gunshot, and a jagged line crept down the glass from top to bottom.
Rachel stepped back. Wanting to scream, wanting to run. Unable to tear her eyes away from the boy.
Staring out at him through the thickening curtain of rain.
Breathless…
Through the mist, the outlines of two figures appear like ghosts. One shape is male, one female. They walk towards each other, their paths crossing, then diverging, walking away as if pacing out a slow, elaborate folk dance. Then, as one, they turn again and stand face to face. They move automatically and, as the mist disperses and the figures become solid beings, it becomes clear that they are tracing out a pattern, cut out of the soil at their feet.
The woman is wearing a flowing, embroidered gown. Her hair is long and braided, concealing her face as she swings her head from side to side, as if in a trance. The man wears something highly polished, armour perhaps, that catches the pale yellow sunlight and glows through the mist. His face is hidden by the nose section of the pointed helmet he wears, and, embossed on the breastplate of his armour is the same, three-bladed symbol that they pace out below their feet.
The man moves towards the woman, slowly, deliberately.
Their hands reach out for each other and they touch…
* * *
Rachel blinked away the vision and found herself sitting on the edge of the bed, a yellow shaft of sunlight streaming between the curtains and on to the misaligned, pink roses of the wallpaper opposite.
Her brother was still fast asleep, a twist of dark hair only just visible on the pillow, sticking out from under thick blankets. Rachel stood up and went to the window, where a stray bee from the garden below walked lazily up and down the length of the window frame, looking for an exit that didn’t exist. Rachel lifted up the latch and pushed open the window. The bee let out an angry-sounding buzz, before finding the cool air and tumbling out into the wet garden below.
Rachel knelt down, stuck her head out of the window and breathed in the clear, morning air. Beyond, she could see the chalk circle, exactly as the night before, but now brighter and more defined, the grass surrounding it greener in the rising sun. Rachel considered her dream. Where it had come from was clear enough. But what did it mean?
Who were the two strange figures? A knight and a maiden…?
Rachel’s thoughts were interrupted by her grandmother’s shrill voice from the bottom of the stairs.
“Rachel! Adam…”
Rachel pulled herself back into the room, catching the back of her head on the window frame. She yelped in pain, waking her brother.
Adam groaned and pulled the blankets over his head.
Rachel rubbed her head and called back weakly, “Coming, Gran…”
Adam had been particularly reluctant to get out of bed, still claiming jet lag and a sore nose from the day before. It was understandable, but, despite her own tiredness and a slight bump on the back of her head, Rachel felt strangely energized. Excit
ed, even.
Granny Root seemed a little more at ease, too. It was a lovely morning and the old lady heartily encouraged them to eat a mountain of toast and several bowls of lumpy porridge. Maybe the whole storm thing had affected everyone’s mood the day before, Rachel thought. Atmospheric pressure, or something.
Half an hour later, Rachel and Adam stood at the end of the garden behind the house, looking across the moor at the chalk circle.
“I can’t believe it’s that old.”
Adam’s interest in the place had suddenly perked up over breakfast, when their grandmother explained to them about the chalk circle. The three-bladed shape within the outer circle gave the village its name: Triskellion. There were many theories as to its significance, but most agreed that it was a Celtic symbol, formed by three, intersecting circles, and was anything up to three thousand years old.
“Nothing’s three thousand years old.” Adam shook his head in disbelief as he and Rachel waded across the dewy grass, looking at the carved shape in the distance. A high breeze sent the shadows of clouds racing across the moor and over the Triskellion itself, making the landscape appear to move; fluid somehow, more alive.
The circle, when they finally got there, was far less impressive than it had been from a distance. For five minutes Adam traced out the chalky grooves while Rachel looked in vain for the footprints of the boy she had seen the night before.
“I mean, it’s so, like … big,” Adam said.
Rachel looked back towards the village. “Maybe so you can see it from a long way away.”
“That’s just it though,” Adam said. “How did they know what they were cutting out without seeing it from above?”
Rachel looked down on the curve of chalk at her feet, and conceded that her brother, with his customary, pedantic logic, had a very good point.
The vast open space of the moor was a novelty for Rachel and Adam, accustomed as they were to the skyscraper-hemmed streets of their native city. In the same way that looking up at tall buildings can make some people dizzy, the wide space and expanse of sky suddenly began to make Rachel feel unsteady on her feet. Unsteady, until Adam shoved her playfully, and ran. Rachel recovered herself and laughed, chasing her brother over the spongy moss of the moor, which gave extra spring to her footsteps.
Triskellion Page 3
