Darkhenge

  She wanted to scream into a tantrum but couldn’t;

  she felt chilled, and subdued, as if while she had slept another part of her had been forgotten. Instead she climbed onto Callie and paced through the frozen mesh. Once she looked back, hearing something shiver, and tinkle, thinking Vetch had come after her. She almost wanted him to be there. But only the red tunnel twisted into dimness, snow falling through it.

  She was alone. And though she told herself not to be stupid, she knew she was scared. She wished the King would catch up with her. He was her only friend now. Had he left her because of what she’d asked him to do? Had she pushed him too far?

  It took a while to find a passage that was clear, and when she did, it led into a place where the red threads had been wound around a network of dark timbers, weaving in and out of them to form a high wattled fence, higher than she could see over. She walked the horse around it, curious. The entrance was on the far side, a thin gap, that you’d have to turn sideways to squeeze through.

  An eye slit. Would she?

  She drew Callie to a halt, and had almost decided to dismount and take a look when, from inside the structure, the bell rang.

  It was so loud!

  She put her hands to her ears; with a shudder, Callie reared up, and Chloe had to grab at the reins in panic. All through the Woven Caer the echoes of the great chime vibrated; icicles fell like daggers, birds fluttered, the whole frail structure trembled, slid, began to collapse.

  Instantly Chloe kicked her heels in and urged the horse into speed. Ears flat, Callie galloped, leaping snowdrifts and tangles of wool, her rider hanging on low under the drooping roof, not knowing where they were going, until with a sudden emergence into moonlight they were out, racing over a broad white down-land under the perfect circle of the moon.

  Hauling the snorting horse around, Chloe stared back.

  Silently, without speed, the Woven Caer was crumpling. It fell inward softly, imploding and springing back like a great pile of fibers.

  Snow settled on it and guilt shot through her like the stab of a knife. Had she left Vetch to smother in there?

  Before she could think of it a hawk swooped out of the snow, straight into her face.

  Chloe screamed and ducked.

  The bird was fast; it dived and veered off, but it was the second attack that caught her, a green plover that came straight at her head so that she lost balance, and with a scream of terror fell off into the drift, hands out.

  She fell into snow and yet into some past where the snow was chalk and hard and there was a black car skewed across the lane, and people running and running toward her. A car horn blared. Her fingers bled onto chalk and flint.

  “NO!” she screamed. “I won’t remember! I won’t!”

  Shaken, she scrambled up. Callie was shivering, blowing smoky breaths of fear, her eyes white. The birds rose, swooped, screeched down.

  Chloe ran.

  Vetch had got his hands and half his body free when the bell rang. As soon as he heard it he knew what it was, so when the owl flew down and turned into the King, staggering dizzily against him, he shoved the masked figure off impatiently. “The bag. Do you have it?”

  “Clare does.”

  Vetch said, “What?”

  “Too hard to explain.” The King’s fingers worked at the knots and tangles hopelessly. “I’ll never get all this undone! The castle is collapsing!”

  Vetch looked grim. “I know that. Keep still.”

  “But—”

  “Keep still!” It was hard like this. From so far away. He gripped the frozen red strands hard with his left hand, put the thumb of the right to his mouth and bit. A tiny fleck of blood welled up through his skin; he tasted its salt, quickly closed his eyes.

  Far away, in other worlds, through dreams and nightmares, heroes walked.

  One of them was powerful, a giant. In the darkness of his mind Vetch made the words come, made them strong. Strong enough to cross distances of silence and mistrust.

  “Mac. Mac, listen to me. I need you. I need your help.”

  Chloe struggled. She forced her way, waist deep, up the smooth snow slope, tearing a ragged gash in its beauty. Ahead of her the banks rose, immense and shining, a rampart of snow and chalk, the Ice Caer, the seventh fortress, Caer Siddi itself. Behind, like an inexorable shadow, the forest pursued her, sending out roots and tendrils to trip her, and tug at her, and she screamed and fought with fury against the clogging drifts.

  The snow was another betrayal. It seemed hard and then crumpled, its surface crunching.

  However she struggled, the forest was faster. It loomed behind her, over her. Its shadow darkened her. And as she scrambled and tugged her boots out and hauled herself up to the caer, the hawk and the plover came down right in front of her; she dodged around them, plunging for the dark, narrow gap of sky that was the entrance ahead.

  “Chloe! Chloe! It’s me. It’s Rob.”

  She stopped.

  He was standing right behind her, but she didn’t turn. She didn’t move at all.

  “I’m sorry.” The snow creaked. “About all of it. I didn’t know how you felt. Maybe, back there, you didn’t know either.”

  “And that makes it all right?” Now she turned.

  The trees were lined up behind him. Clare was there too, looking tired and bedraggled. Chloe smiled at her sourly. “You’ve gone over to them, I see. All of you are against me now.”

  She folded her arms inside the muff, pleased at how Rob shivered in his ridiculous summer clothes. “Well, you listen to this. I’ve come this far. I’m going inside the caer. For once I’m going to do something that I want to do, decide something all for myself, with no one else telling me. Can you understand that, Rob?”

  He looked at her. She was so assured, so strange across the snow.

  “I can understand that, Chloe,” he whispered.

  I. IPHIN: PINE

  I turned and grabbed it all. The knitting, the cell phone, Rob’s painting off the wall.

  Katie jumped up; John stared. “Mac, for God’s sake…”

  I flung the door open, dumping all the stuff into the corridor. “Dan! Rosa! Get in here.”

  The music went off, the cuddly toys went out. We cleared the place. A white, gleaming emptiness. Then I slammed the door and wedged a chair against it.

  Bells exploded into panic. A nurse thumped outside. I folded my arms and looked at Rosa.

  “This is it. Now we pray. Your druid needs our help.”

  We formed a ring around Chloe, holding one another.

  A dark circle.

  As I struggled for breath inspiration saved me.

  Heaven’s lord would set me free.

  THE BOOK OF TALIESIN

  Chloe ran into the entrance, Rob and Clare behind her like shadows.

  Before them, the vast interior gusted with snow. This caer had no roof but the sky, and that was lost in the blinding drifts. Its ditch was water-filled and frozen. On each side, huge as petrified giants, great stones rose, a stark, blunt ring of them, snow settling in their holes and crevices.

  They all knew this place. This was Avebury henge, the great circle as it must once have been before its village cluttered it, and roads divided it.

  Between the enormous entrance stones Chloe trudged purposefully, sinking knee deep into the snow, and as Rob followed her in, he saw that a ring of fire had been lit, great balefires crackling between the stones. Outside, the trees gathered. All around the great bank they closed in, a besieging force hundreds of miles deep, a black rustling army pressed tight, and out of them creatures slunk, fox and otter and hare and bear, climbing the bank, outlined against the moon. He thought he saw people come out and stand there too, ancient hunters with spears, as well as Marcus and Jimmy, all the tribe with their fluttering colored banners planted in the chalk, as on the day he had hauled Vetch into the circle.

  Dan climbed up, and Chloe’s friends from school, and his mum and dad, and Mac, his arms folded, looking
disapproving, and yet in the blizzard they blurred and thinned, as if whoever’s mind it was that had brought them here was barely strong enough to hold them to this place.

  Chloe said nothing. Her face was set in a cold white control that scared him, and she struggled forward without looking around.

  Clare muttered, “Vetch isn’t here.”

  “He’ll come.”

  She glanced at Rob sideways, sour. “You trust him too much.”

  “I like him. Mac liked him.” That surprised him. He hadn’t even known he knew.

  Chloe crossed a second ring of fires and reached the central circle; the southern one, with its odd row of smaller stones, and in the center a mighty obelisk.

  Rob stared up at it in awe. Thin and leaning, its blue shadow stretched over the snow. A third flame ring surrounded it, the flames lapping the stones, so that there was only one entrance, a narrow gap. Chloe stopped. Her shadows, hundreds of them, flickered and leaped.

  She turned. “This is it, Rob.”

  His heart jumped. “Chloe, I can’t go back without you. I won’t.”

  She smiled ruefully. “Yes you can. Because you got used to it, didn’t you? Me lying there. Me being so still. You got so used to it you were starting to think I wouldn’t wake. Even that it would be better that way.”

  “Yes!” Furious, hot tears in his eyes, he marched up and yelled in her face. “Yes I did! All right! I did! I didn’t know that’s what I was thinking, but I was, and who can blame me! I had to protect myself, Chloe, had to build a fortress around me. Day by day a few more stones. Because it would have been unbearable otherwise.”

  Shocked, she stared at him.

  “And Mum was doing it, and Dad and Mac, we were all hardening at the edges and that’s okay! That’s normal! It didn’t mean we’d given up! It didn’t mean we didn’t love you.”

  A movement to his left. He saw Clare glance over quickly.

  The blizzard stopped.

  It stopped so abruptly they were all surprised; their breath clouded the clear air. Above them cloud streamed away; the stars were suddenly burning, the strange constellations of the Unworld, fiercest blues and reds.

  And within the circle, they saw that the tall stone was the immense backrest of a chair. The seat itself was a horizontal slab, and over it lay a length of red cloth, each corner weighted with a small hanging golden apple. On each side a single twisted hazel tree grew, heavy with nuts, and before the throne a well opened in the ground, a small round circle of water, reflecting the stars.

  Chloe took a step toward it.

  “Chloe!”

  To everyone’s astonishment the voice was Mac’s.

  He was climbing awkwardly down from the bank and was walking forward between the stones, his bulk more solid with each step. Rob felt overwhelming relief, joy like a sudden weakness behind his knees.

  Chloe stared in dismay. “How did you get here?”

  Mac shrugged. “Vetch is a little … tied up. He asked me to have a word.” Reaching into his pocket, he drew out the cigarettes and familiar lighter. Striking the flame, he bent his head to it. “Well, not just me,” he said indistinctly.

  Chloe looked around.

  They were coming down from the bank, a tribe of men and women in crazy-colored clothes, and Dan trailing behind them, giving her a weak grin. “Hi, Chloe,” he said nervously.

  “This is mad. I didn’t bring you!” She felt panic rise; fought it down. “Don’t come any closer, any of you. You’re not really here. You’re back there.”

  “And so are you.” Mac blew the cigarette smoke out gratefully. “Lying still and crooked with your mum and dad beside you going through agonies. I never thought, girl, that you’d do that to them. I never thought you could treat us all with such contempt.”

  Tears sparked in her eyes. His rebukes had always hurt her; when she spoke she knew her voice was small. “I’m not. It’s just—”

  “Pure self-indulgence.” Mac looked around at the vast stones. “Seems to me I know this place. You could have used the church, Chloe, for your inmost caer.” He looked behind her at the Chair. “Though that looks vaguely familiar.”

  She couldn’t bear this scorn. “I only ever wanted you to think as much of me as you do of Rob!”

  Mac pointed a stubby finger at her. “Not true. Jealousy, Chloe, that’s what this is. A deadly sin. Don’t fool yourself.” His voice softened. “And I do love you, you silly girl, as much as Rob. We all do.”

  “There you are. Silly girl. That’s how you think of me, Mac, and even you can’t see it.”

  That silenced him. She saw him grimace.

  After a moment he said, “I’m sorry, Chloe. What you say may be true. And it’s true I feel I have a responsibility to Rob—I am his godfather and that’s important. Maybe it means you’ve lost out. But if you want me, I’ll be yours too from now on. If any of us remember any of this.” He hesitated, throwing the cigarette down and grinding it under his heel. Then he looked up. “There’s a forest like an army out there. But I think we could bring your mum and dad through it, if you—”

  “No.” She shook her head firmly, taking off the white muff and crumpling it in her hands. “No thanks, Mac.” She was suddenly sure she would cry. It was rising up inside her; what a fool she’d look, before all these people, and up there on the bank, all the kids from school.

  She glanced at the Chair. “If I sat there I could send all of you away.”

  Clare said, “Could you?” Tucking her muddy hair back, she came and caught Chloe’s arm.

  Chloe pulled away, irritated. “Get off me.”

  “I know what you’re thinking. You think if you sit there you’ll rule the Unworld. I thought that too. But people can still hurt you, Chloe, they still will. There is nowhere in this world or any other where you can hide from them.”

  “I’m not hiding—”

  “That’s exactly what you’re doing. I know what it is to take refuge in revenge. Spending eternities damaging yourself, just for the sake of seeing him hurt.” She stepped back, watching the girl carefully. “But if you go back and face things, you can change them.”

  Stubborn, Chloe snapped, “Everyone always thinks they know best—”

  “We do,” Mac growled.

  Rob edged a step closer. There was one way he could stop her. If he could get past her, he could sit in the Chair himself. But a flicker of doubt came and went, the thought of Chloe and his parents without him, and it must have shown on his face, because with a gasp of anger she turned from him and ran, dodging Mac, sliding between the fires.

  “No!” Rob yelled.

  Something shoved past him, a musky-smelling roebuck, its flank iced with sweat. Between Chloe and the Chair it ran, and shivered into a man in a dark coat, breathless and weary. Before she could stop herself Chloe ran right into his arms. She screamed and kicked in fury; Vetch held her tight.

  “You won’t stop me!”

  “I know I won’t.” Vetch sounded worn; he forced her to turn her head. “He will.”

  Rob spun in surprise.

  The King of the Unworld stood behind them in the circle. He wore his final mask, of ice and silver birch, and in the red light it was a shimmer, and his face and hands and clothes were garish in the heat and scorch. Sparks rose from the flames behind him.

  “It’s me, Chloe,” he said sadly.

  “You!” She stepped toward him; Vetch kept hold of one wrist. “You were the one who brought me here in the first place!” She tipped her head, trying to see him clearly through the smolder. “Why did you do that? Who are you?”

  He came forward. And as he reached out and took her fingers they saw that his hands were crusted with bark, his nails gnarled and lichened. Small threads of root clung to his clothes.

  “I didn’t bring you. You called me and I came for you, and I wanted you to stay. You know who I am, Chloe, because you dreamed of me, put me together from all the words and syllables you know. That’s what poets do. They make
people out of sound and images. Out of leaves and seeds.”

  She stepped back, eyes wide.

  He smiled. “You made me from the forest, Chloe. I’m anything your imagination wants me to be.”

  Vetch let her go. Carefully, and very slowly, she reached out to lift off the King’s last mask. He stood still, letting her, his eyes dark behind the silver. Her fingers touched the icy bark. Then, as if she feared what she might find beneath, she pulled her hands back.

  He smiled at her.

  “Do you still want me to stay?” Chloe whispered, “Won’t you be all alone without me?”

  The King said, “I want you to make your own choice.”

  She looked at him, then turned to Rob, and Mac. “What about you?”

  “He’s right,” Mac said unexpectedly. His voice was a rasp of pain. “Decide, girl.”

  Rob couldn’t look at her. His face was hot; when he raised his eyes he could only see how much she had grown, how much she looked like him.

  “Rob?”

  He nodded, silent.

  Chloe turned to Vetch. The poet said gently, “You see, you do have power. Words give you power, to create or destroy.” His eyes flickered to Clare. “Even to forgive. Be generous to yourself, Chloe. Go home.”

  She sighed, then walked around him to the Chair.

  None of them moved. She gazed down at the velvet seat and Rob knew that she could sit there now if she wanted to, that none of them could stop her; that she could settle herself back against the cold stone, and raise her hands and command the weather and the words and the Unworld.

  They had come to the seventh caer, and the decision was hers.

  AE. PHAGOS: BEECH

  The machines are silent.

  We are a dark ring around the bed,

  a forest of trees.

  Neither of mother or father

  were we made,

  not our body or our blood.

  But of nine kinds of elements,

  of God’s fruits of Paradise,

  of the flowers of the primrose,

  the blossom of trees and bushes.