It was Katherine, followed by Jack, arriving to slump into some garden chairs nearby.
‘You could have some wine,’ said Mrs Foale, helping herself to another glass.
The nights now felt safer and more relaxed, as if the malevolent spirits of the previous weeks had fled. Jack thus felt confident that nothing sinister would or could happen before they departed for Northumberland.
40
ON WASELEY HILL
Three days before the night chosen for the bonfire, Margaret announced at breakfast, ‘I was thinking of driving over to have another look at Waseley Hill. Anybody want to come along and keep me company?’
It was a bright, warm day and they were feeling lazy. They looked at each other both thinking the same thing: that it would be good to have the day alone together, without chores.
‘Any special reason for going there?’ Katherine wondered indifferently. ‘It’s up near Birmingham isn’t it?’
‘It was where we took you out for a walk soon after the accident, and where we sort of decided to have you come and stay with us.’
Katherine’s interest was piqued.
‘But the main reason is that I have to go to see the farmer on whose land Arthur was once thinking of doing a dig before he saw another way to search for what he wanted. Arthur used to spend a lot of time up there, so the farmer’s naturally been wondering where Arthur is.’ She stared for a moment at the table. ‘Waseley’s where Beornamund is meant to have lived.’
Whatever Jack and Katherine’s previous inclinations, they now agreed a day out would be good.
The drive north was easy, and fortunately the farmer wasn’t too worried about Arthur’s long absence from the site.
‘He’s a busy man I dare say and the site’s well away from the public path. Do you want to take these young folk over there now, Mrs Foale? It’s dry underfoot, as there’s been so little rain this last week.’
The river itself was not much more than a stream, but it had carved out its own steep little channel over the years. This was filled with gorse and brambles, and the exploratory trench Arthur had dug and then refilled was already growing weeds.
‘So this is what exactly?’ Jack wondered aloud.
‘Probably nothing, but Arthur supposes that if Beornamund really did have his workshop right beside the river, it would have been up here somewhere rather than down in the Deritend area which historians reckon is the oldest part of the city. Whichever is right, at least we’ll get a better view up here.’
They climbed on up through sheep pastures to the source itself: a spring of clear water running from a muddy scar in the hill to flatter ground below, which was strewn with reeds wherever it was not churned up by livestock.
Though there was nothing much else to see, they stood staring in delight at the clear bright water bubbling straight out of the ground.
‘It’s easy to see why a spring so often became a place of worship in pagan times,’ observed Margaret. ‘It’s the beginning of things, a source of life, which is why explorers have always been obsessed with tracing the source of great rivers. It’s like returning to the original home. Many such locations are associated with deities, but this one is best known for an ordinary craftsman who actually lived here, creating items you can still find in our greatest museums.’
She then recounted the legend of Beornamund to her silent audience.
‘How near to the truth it is, we’ll never know, but he certainly lived somewhere along the banks of the Rea, between here and the broader stream it runs into.’
‘So that lost piece of the pendant called Spring is still here somewhere,’ said Katherine dreamily.
‘Maybe,’ said Margaret. ‘I like to think so.’
Jack had walked a little way off and now stood looking across the city of Birmingham, though he could see little more than a blue haze of pollution, above which rose a few towers and some cranes, signifying yet more urban development.
He thought back to his meeting with the Peace-Weaver on White Horse Hill, and realized that as she was wearing a long dark cloak which completely covered her neck he wouldn’t have seen the pendant, even if she was wearing it.
‘Jack?’
He didn’t turn round but carried on staring across the city.
‘So it was Beornamund who gave his name to the place,’ said Margaret, finishing her discourse. ‘It’s really Beornamund’s Ham or settlement, which through time became corrupted into Beornmundingaham, and sometimes even Brummagem . . .’
Jack shivered uneasily to think of what degree of cataclysm could reduce so vast a city to ruin.
There had been times back at Woolstone when his premonitions of terrible things had been bad enough, but here they felt a thousand times worse.
It felt like the sun had suddenly gone in and everything turned cold.
Like the bad spirits were following them, even here.
‘Let’s go,’ he said. ‘Okay?’
They headed back to the car in silence.
41
OLD SCARS
Katherine grew more relaxed each day that passed, becoming more talkative and less prickly. One afternoon, the bonfire nearly complete, the pair of them lay in the grass talking.
‘My mum loved bonfires, but so did my dad before . . . you know.’
As Jack lay on his back, he had found his mind drifting, though he wasn’t sure to where. Then suddenly he realized what Katherine had said that was so unusual: she had mentioned her father.
‘You hardly ever talk about your dad,’ he observed quietly.
‘I . . . well, no. But since Mum died I often think about him.’
‘Can you remember him much?’ he asked, sitting up.
Katherine stared at him blankly.
Jack thought of an image he could never forget: a man on fire, desperately trying to get the car door open on Katherine’s side. Failing to do so, and slowly, so slowly, curling up into the fire of which he had become part, the last view of him just a dying man, lost to Jack’s sight behind the burning vehicle. The memory still haunted him.
‘No,’ said Katherine, ‘I can’t remember him too well, but . . .’
‘But what?’
‘But I do know what he looked like, from photographs at least; and sometimes . . . I think I can remember the . . .’
‘The what?’
Katherine half-shrugged and looked away for a moment.
Then she said, ‘The feel of being picked up by him, his arms around me. I’m sure I can remember him often doing that.’
They looked into each other’s eyes and Jack knew she wasn’t telling the whole truth, not exactly. It was his own arms she remembered most, and him pulling her from the car. She had subverted that recall into a final memory of her dad, because she needed to have at least something about him to hold on to. It was all she really had.
‘But you remember him clearly?’ asked Katherine.
‘Yes,’ said Jack firmly. ‘Yes, I do.’ He then fell silent, and they both felt it better to say no more on the subject right then.
‘Better finish the bonfire,’ he muttered finally.
‘Okay,’ she said, glancing over at it. ‘But I think it’s pretty well finished already.’
‘I’ve lost track of the days,’ Jack admitted. ‘When are we actually lighting it?’
‘Tomorrow night.’
He sat up and turned to face her, his expression deadly serious. ‘I want you to stay close by me, Katherine, tonight and tomorrow night. The day after that we’ll be gone, and it’ll be all right.’
‘It’ll be all right anyway,’ she replied, puzzled.
‘I don’t want anything bad to happen to you,’ said Jack.
‘Nor me you,’ she said, daring to reach out a hand to ruffle his hair. ‘Nor me you, Jack.’
It was the nearest they got to saying what they really felt about each other. The truth was they had already begun to say it without words.
The following morning, they found the
mselves meeting in the conservatory, which they had avoided since Clare’s bed had been removed. Things had been getting back to normal, so far as they ever could, but the house now felt as if – for the time being – it had given them all the protection it could.
There, Jack felt a sudden tremor of doubt, as if the bad spirits were hovering again.
‘It’s time to leave here,’ he said, staring around, and then back into the garden. ‘We ought to go today. It’s not safe here any more for any of us. But especially you.’
‘Why me?’
He didn’t answer but his expression showed his fears for her.
‘I’m not a little girl any more, Jack,’ she said, echoing just what he had told Clare and Mrs Foale.
‘I know and maybe . . .’
‘What?’
A new thought had come into his head, he was not sure where from.
No you’re not, and maybe that’s what they’ve been waiting for. Sure the chimes and Clare and all that has protected you, but could it be that now you’re a woman they want you like the Peace-Weaver said? But what difference does that make? Maybe just that they knew the two of us would have a different feeling for each other when we became adult.
Katherine was shaking her head, unimpressed by his belief they should leave at once.
‘It’ll be time to go the day after tomorrow,’ she replied. ‘By then, we’ll have done all we can and all we should. Anyway the bonfire’s a good end and a good beginning, and we can’t leave it smouldering when we go.’
Jack grunted doubtfully.
‘According to the Foales, pagans have ritualistic fires at the beginning of each of the four seasons, which is when we’re meant to get closest to the Otherworld. We’re doing it at a different time because of when Mum has died. But death also opens unseen doors . . .’
‘If you’re hoping to intrigue me you’re failing, Katherine! All you’re making me want to do is get you both out of here.’
Jack liked none of it. Since his meeting with Imbolc, he believed anything possible.
‘What we’re talking about isn’t some mystical joke but something real. It’s portals to the Hyddenworld. Arthur must have found out how they work. But I can’t imagine it.’
‘Nor me.’
It was her turn to look nervous and he put his arms around her.
‘We’re freaking each other out!’ she said. ‘But I still want the bonfire.’
‘All right. By this time on Friday we’ll be on our way to the cottage in Northumberland. We’ll be away from it all.’
He wished he felt as confident as he tried to sound. Also, the conviction was growing inside of him that he was going to have to find a way to track down Arthur Foale. How, he had no idea as yet. First he would make sure that Katherine and Mrs Foale left Woolstone safely, and then try to make his own way into the Hyddenworld.
He held her closer still.
‘It is all kind of intriguing, isn’t it?’ she said.
Her fingers could feel the bumps and ridges of the ten-year-old burns through his cotton shirt.
Sensing this, he wanted to pull away, but she held him closer. She let her fingers linger where they were before sliding one hand to his neck.
Jack tensed.
‘It’s all right,’ she said gently.
He tried to pull away again, but still she wouldn’t let him go.
‘Supposing Mrs Foale finds us?’ he said.
‘Let her,’ said Katherine, suddenly kissing him on the mouth.
Katherine finally pulled away, blushing and embarrassed at her forwardness. Jack’s pulled her back to him.
He looked into her eyes, grinned and kissed her again, gently but quite firmly.
She closed her eyes, her lips moist to his.
Their bodies moved closer still, their arms around each other before Jack moved his right hand up her back, over her neck and then to the back of her head, his fingers in her hair.
They kissed some more, moved their hands to a hug. She whispered with a smile, ‘So . . . do you want tea?’
His answer was another kiss and so was hers.
They held each other, beginning to relax, feeling their bodies close, feeling good.
As if on cue, Mrs Foale’s voice sounded from the kitchen. ‘Are you two there? Would you like a cup of tea?’
They both smothered a laugh, separated and went to join her.
42
SHADOWS
The sky had cleared completely by late afternoon, and a pale sliver of moon appeared early, then a slight north-easterly breeze set in and the temperature started to fall. By six o’clock it was quite cool, with the moon showing ever clearer.
Katherine and Mrs Foale began putting out a row of old jam jars with nightlights in them, which they ceremoniously lit at seven, making a meandering path of light in the twilight, all the way from the house and on either side of the bonfire, right to the entrance to the henge itself. It was meant to light the spirits on their way back and forth from the Otherworld. Once Jack might have doubted it but now he didn’t. He wished he could believe that all the spirits would be benign.
They had supper at eight – thick parsnip soup made by Mrs Foale, mopped up with chunks of homemade bread.
At half past nine Jack went out with a torch to check that everything was in place. It wasn’t quite dark but the air felt unnaturally cold. Fortunately the earlier breeze that had lowered its temperature had subsided.
He had matches in his pocket and had earlier put a bunch of scrunched-up newspaper and firelighters right at the centre of the bonfire, with a tunnel into it to make it easier to light, and then quickly retreat. He had put to one side a pile of wood and cardboard ready to fill the gap left behind once he had lit the tinder. It was a trick that Arthur Foale had taught them and which they had now shown Jack.
‘It was Arthur’s father taught him,’ explained Mrs Foale, ‘and so do the simple but important things of life travel down through the generations. As for fire, why, that connects us with the beginnings of life itself.’
Now, standing in the darkness, Jack thought of such things, and might have thought of others too, if he had not, for the first time since the day of the funeral, again felt wary here in the garden, the gathering chill of the night seeming alien, the slightest sound in the undergrowth magnified by the still air.
He moved very cautiously, looking right and left, and even over his shoulder, and then headed back towards the house for safety. Annoyed with himself, he went back beyond the bonfire, into the shadows on the far side of the henge. He shone his torch directly into the open space of the henge itself, but there was nothing to be seen there but grass. Nothing at all . . .
Then a sudden movement inside the henge to his right, and after playing his torch there and finding nothing, he turned it off and stopped still, listening with his head to one side. He could hear something all right, movement as quiet as fingers sliding over the bark of a tree.
He aimed his torch at the source of the sound again and turned it on, to find two eyes staring back at him.
‘A fox!’ he said aloud, and in disgust, and stamped his foot slightly to send it scampering away into the shadows.
Then more movement, this time up by the house.
‘Jack? Are you there?’ It was Mrs Foale.
He chose not to reply at first, not wishing to disturb the quiet of the night, but retreated instead into the shadow of the bonfire, and from there slipped away into the trees.
To his alarm, she left the house and came straight towards him along the dark path between the nightlights. He didn’t move, feeling that, having not replied to her summons, he would now look an idiot if he made his presence known. But then he changed his mind and was about to call out, but stopped just in time. He might only frighten her.
Caught up in his own hesitations, Jack could only stand still and see what would happen.
Mrs Foale reached the bonfire, paused briefly, then moved on to stand between the two conifers and s
tare ahead into the henge.
She stood there a long time, the night darkening around her, before she suddenly gave a loud sigh and said clearly, ‘Oh, Arthur.’
Then, a moment later, she added more quietly, ‘You should never have gone back. It was never your world . . .’
Gone back . . . ?
This was the confirmation Jack needed that it was possible to go back and forth to the Hyddenworld. He just had to find out how.
Mrs Foale sighed again and bowed her head. As Jack stood listening in the darkness, he wished he could be anywhere else but here as an unwilling witness to this private moment. Yet, even so, he had learned something that might be important.
‘May the spirit bless you this night, my dear,’ she continued in a whisper, ‘and guide your soul safely home.’
Then she turned around suddenly and went back into the house.
Jack was about to follow her, when he heard movement again. Definite and purposeful, it was off to one side of the henge and it felt in some way malevolent.
He realized that Mrs Foale’s unexpected arrival might have served to mask the sound of his own movement towards the far side of the henge.
There was a sharp, thin utterance – a call of sorts. Very slowly he moved his head to the right, and peered through the trees into the dark interior of the henge.
A black figure, quite small? Or just an animal? A shadow? As he stared, trying to fix its shape on his retina, it shimmered away into nothing. Jack stayed just where he was, concentrating so hard that his eyes began to water. Still he did not move a fraction.
Movement again, on the far side of the henge this time. But there he could see nothing. Another call sounded and then movement much nearer, very near. He had the feeling, sudden and absolute, that someone was so close he could have touched him. Someone who knew he was here.
Unable to hold still any longer he turned sharply, a twig cracking beneath his feet, and stared hard into the gloom over to his left. He saw nothing but a shimmer of dark light darting among the trees. The chimes sounded frantically as if something had brushed against them, and that sense of a presence bled instantly away into the night.