Winter

by William Horwood

  Amongst the frozen shards Stort saw Ingrid running, her hair bright with reflections of the fire of the Library behind, the silhouette of Reece raising his weapon to take aim, the image horribly sharp though the blizzard raced across it. On either side, as it seemed, then in front and behind as well, black megaliths rose up, forest-like and impenetrable.

  All was suddenly as still as ice and felt like death corporeal.

  He turned Bohr to look and said, ‘This is where we made a faux pas, as some might say. This here, this now. No hurry, time is with us, the dance dictates its own graceful measures. Judith, take his hand, show him the steps, dance him back, help him to help Ingrid dance safely out of the megaliths and back . . . back . . . back . . .’

  The dark day lightened, the air shimmered, the ground shook and the White Horse stamped again but backwards, as if taking its hoofs off the Earth.

  Bohr stood with Judith, holding her hand for a moment before, realizing he was doing so and it being strange to do it with a virtual stranger, he let it go.

  Stort stood frowning and a little puffed.

  ‘That was the theory,’ said Stort, ‘but where’s the lady?’

  ‘My love,’ chided Judith, ‘you should trust yourself more.’

  He looked about, half expecting to see Jack and Katherine, their dance having been so like the time before. But now was different: same place, same couple and different version of the same world.

  Bohr said, ‘I thought that someone was coming, a female . . .’

  ‘You’ll know her when you see her and when you do, for Mirror’s sake, this time take your opportunity!’ said Judith.

  Then: ‘Stort!’

  ‘Judith!’

  Older they were now, ready for a nap back in their own bed.

  The Horse knelt, they mounted and Stort said, ‘Wait a little, just a moment, just to see. I’m curious.’

  They watched from across the river, from the spot where, many lives before, Stort had camped with his good friends and they first spied Erich Bohr and Ingrid Hansen begin their fatal dance. A different time, for now he stood alone, bewildered by the day and the thought he had been there before and that he was waiting for someone whose name he did not even know; whose life had not yet crossed his in this particular world but which resonated still from another.

  ‘Déjà vu,’ he muttered as they watched him almost giving up, but not quite. ‘She’ll probably not come.’

  A rented car came down the little hill from Durrington, bright and shiny like the spring. It tootled along hesitatingly, its driver no more than a shape behind a windscreen that reflected the white sky.

  Bohr watched in trepidation as it pulled into the car park, stood idling a moment; then, the engine stopped, a tall young woman got out. She stood staring, her eyes everywhere, trying to make sense of what she felt, where she was and why it didn’t seem strange at all that the man who stood there, as if he had been waiting there forever trusting that one day she would finally come, raised a hand in shy greeting and began to walk towards her.

  Nor did it feel strange that she, her heart beating, found herself walking towards him.

  He reached out a hand and she took it.

  ‘I’m Erich Bohr,’ he said.

  ‘Ingrid,’ she replied.

  But Stort and Judith only half saw that moment and none of what followed because the White Horse was up and away and over the hills, knowing, as it usually did, that they had things to do.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  A four-book series like Hyddenworld is always a significant project for a publisher and my first thanks go to Pan Macmillan for supporting it – and me – in so many ways from concept to publication. In particular the three editors involved: Peter Lavery, Julie Crisp and Bella Pagan. Without their combined efforts and patience over six years or so this story would not exist. To their names I want to add that of Will Atkins, who has been what the trade calls my structural editor for Winter and Harvest, meaning the person who reads the final draft and points out the many errors of its ways and enables their correction. He has been a pleasure to work with.

  I have been lucky, indeed blessed, to have a different sort of ‘structural editor’ in Jackie Brockway, whose friendship and unwavering editorial eye have been with me constantly for the last three books of the series. Without her, Hyddenworld would not have emerged in its present form. Nor would it have been anything like the fun to write. Her unseen but not quite silent presence in and around the creative process would surely be a joy for any author but has been far more than that for me.

  The work of two academics in particular inform Hyddenworld. Professor David Harvey of the City University of New York was one of my tutors at Bristol University when I was an undergraduate studying Geography with Economics. His lectures were then, and remain still, models of clarity and vision; and his huge and powerful body of work critiquing urban systems and capitalism underlies the human aspect of the Hyddenworld. He has made sense for me of the economic chaos of a troubled world, created by the governments we ourselves have given power to. I am grateful, too, to Professor Mike Parker-Pearson of the UCL’s Institute of Archaeology. His warm and exciting elucidations of the rich prehistoric landscape near which I live, through talks and books describing the findings of the Stonehenge Riverside Project, inform the hydden view of henges as between-world portals. My interpretation of his work and that of the many other archaeologists involved is, of course, my own.

  BY WILLIAM HORWOOD

  The Duncton Chronicles

  Duncton Wood

  Duncton Quest

  Duncton Found

  The Book of Silence

  Duncton Tales

  Duncton Rising

  Duncton Stone

  The Wolves of Time

  Journeys to the Heartland

  Seekers at the WulfRock

  Tales of the Willows

  The Willows in Winter

  Toad Triumphant

  The Willows and Beyond

  The Willows at Christmas

  Other works

  The Stonor Eagles

  Callanish

  Skallagrigg

  The Boy with No Shoes (Memoir)

  The Hyddenworld series

  Hyddenworld: Spring

  Awakening

  Harvest

  Winter

  First published 2013 by Macmillan

  This electronic edition published 2013 by Macmillan

  an imprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited

  Pan Macmillan, 20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR

  Basingstoke and Oxford

  Associated companies throughout the world

  www.panmacmillan.com

  ISBN 978-0-230-77127-7

  Copyright © William Horwood 2013

  The right of William Horwood to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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