Darkhenge

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.

“I told you,” he breathed. “The way to Chloe.”

Suddenly Rob’s patience snapped. Not caring if anyone heard, he yelled, “I should never have brought you here! Get out!”

Rosa said, “Rob—”

“Look at him! Using me! Getting at me through Chloe. It’s sick—I’m sick for sticking around with you.” He was shaking; he clenched his hands.

Vetch straightened and came up to him. “We can help Chloe.”

“You can’t. No one can.”

“You and I can. There is a way to find her.”

“Shut up. Shut up!” He turned, groping for the gate, blind.

Vetch moved gently around, into his way. “You want her to die, is that it?”

Rob’s head whipped up. “What!”

“You want her to die. That would end it tidily. It would be over.”

“You pathetic—”

“Your parents would mourn, but even for them it would be a secret relief. They would be free to remember Chloe as she was. After a while, all their attention, all their love, would come back to you. It would be just you, and them.”

Rob’s fist swung in a blow of fury, but before it slammed home Vetch had gripped his wrist. His grasp was surprisingly strong. He said, “It’s hard to hear it said aloud. But there is a place inside you that feels these things.”

“No.”

“It’s there, Rob. Dark as coal, a ring around your heart, like this henge. But maybe inside that, deeper and darker, is something else, and it would emerge if you let it, if you scraped at it and dug away at it, let all the creatures of your imagination come out of it, birds and beasts from depths you have no knowledge of. That’s where Chloe is, Rob.”

Water spray hissed in the silence. Bats flitted over the trees. By the gate Max made a small snuffle as he laid his chin on his paws. Rosa stood watching, her eyes wide and scared.

Slowly, Rob pulled his arm away.

He felt shaken, exhausted. As if some barrier had been scrambled over, some resistance broken down in him. “All right.” He looked up. “Find her then. Show me what to do. I’ll do whatever you say.”

Vetch said, “What we do is wait until the henge is fully exposed. In the meantime, you take me to see her.”

Rob stared. “In the nursing home?”

“We can go secretly. Your parents needn’t know.”

Rob shook his head. He felt bewildered. The bats dizzied him, swooping after invisible insects. “The nurses will tell them.”

Vetch smiled his rueful smile. “Say I’m a friend.”

“Can you…?” He hated to ask it, loathed himself, had to get it out. “Do you mean you can wake her?”

“I don’t know. It depends how many caers she’s entered, how far in she is. I will certainly try.” He jerked his head at Rosa, and the girl clicked the flashlight off quietly.

And Rob stared, because there was light in the henge, and it was seeping from the ground, the faintest phosphorescence, like trapped starlight. And the bats were pouring from a cavern where the soil had collapsed, tens and hundreds of bats, a whirling cloud of darkness that flapped and twisted and split above the treetops into blurs and zigzags. Their high squeaks punctured the night.

Vetch stood in the curtain of spray, and looked up at them. “Let them fly, Rob,” he said.