***
No-one was out in the fields early enough to see the two young women, one carefully carrying a twig and the other holding a basket with an odd-looking ‘doll’ in it. Dog walkers avoided those fields because of the horses and rabbits – and there were more convenient open spaces nearby.
Walking through the estate to the pub was a bit riskier, but so early in the morning the streets were empty. They practised their power-walking just in case, and soon arrived at the car park.
During their earlier visit, Vicky had engaged the barman in innocent conversation regarding security problems at the pub, and discovered they were minimal – therefore so were the security systems. There was a CCTV camera covering the front driveway, and one over the back entrance, but nothing watching the route from the lane to the big tree. There was a dog, the kind which barked at everyone, but it had been hit by a car a few days before and was still at the vet’s. The landlord lived on-site, but as he worked ’til after midnight, he was unlikely to be active at dawn.
So they had the car park to themselves, and although the oak was in a shady corner, its topmost branches were already in sunlight.
Blackbird climbed into the shrubs surrounding the oak, and placed his hands against the giant trunk. After a few moments he declared the tree was willing to be grafted with Aelwen, so Heledd took her penknife and cut into the bark.
‘Should we make an offering to the tree?’ Vicky asked.
‘Is no need. Trees don’t need things from people, just to be left alone. Fairies used to tell humans to make gifts to the forest to make the forest seem important. Because human people think “cost” is the same as “value”.’ Blackbird must have noticed Vicky’s surprise at his sudden leap in English skills, as he coolly explained, ‘A teacher woman taught me that many years ago. She was a good friend.’ Then he suddenly became embarrassed and changed the subject, asking Heledd if she’d finished the grafting.
‘It seems to have taken,’ she replied. ‘What happens now?’
‘That piece of Aelwen is sharing memories with the big tree. When she’s found the spell she needs, she will grow a blossom. The spell is in the flower.’
Vicky raised an objection to the idea of oak trees growing ‘blossoms’ – surely oak flowers were tiny inconspicuous things - but Blackbird declared, ‘Aelwen loves beauty, and so do I. Besides, plants communicate with smells. It’s not just sounds and shapes which hold knowledge.’
Eventually the tip of the twig swelled, and changed colour, until a simple white flower blossomed at its end. Blackbird asked Vicky to pluck it for him, and she handed it to him carefully, watching as he sank his face into it and inhaled deeply.
Making sense of scents, a spell from a smell – she was tired, and couldn’t stop the silly puns running through her thoughts. Could precise information really be coded in an aroma? But then, smells had a chemical basis, didn’t they, and shocking as it may seem, she knew that most human cognition was basically just the result of chemical processes in the brain. She had studied IT for many years, and still couldn’t really believe that a series of 1s and 0s could create the virtual worlds which danced across computer screens all over the world. And she knew there were other ways of encoding and transmitting information that humans could barely comprehend. Whale song. Migratory behaviour. The mystery of the honey bees’ waggle dance, performed in the darkness of a hive to provide directions to a source of nectar. So maybe it wasn’t so odd to communicate by perfume.
Blackbird was in that strange state of mindfulness that Demi-Lee had had to adopt to cast the cloaking spell. Vicky knew better than to interrupt , or even distract him by talking to Heledd. She cast her eyes around the car park and the nearby houses, anxious about being spotted, then noticed a manhole cover a short distance away, in the middle of a parking bay. Was that the old well? Searching the rest of the car park with her eyes, she realised it must be, it was the only possible candidate. How sad! All those tales and memories, those magical encounters, lidded with cold iron. She wondered about the nixies who had lived within, and wondered if they were still there, trapped in the dark, or whether they had fled or died.
Blackbird was now looking thoughtfully into space, as if trying to interpret what he’d learnt. He held the blossom to his face once more, as if making sure he’d extracted everything he could, and seemed satisfied, if troubled, by what he’d learnt. Lifting the flower above his face, he bit through the stem and sucked out the nectar.
The he placed his palms against the oaktree once more as if thanking it, and Vicky guessed that whatever it was, was over.