A small, gleaming beetle lay within, perfectly preserved.
He smiled, and touched it, and then almost crushed the thing with a convulsion of shock.
The beetle moved. It crawled onto his wrist and stood poised.
It uncreased small wings and flew away.
Rob looked around.
There were hundreds of them. He could see them now. They were crawling out of the buried henge, out of the heaps of soil in buckets and barrows. The air was alive with tiny whirrs and flashes of iridescent carapace, bronze, gold, green as shiny foil.
Like the bird, like whatever had made that hole, they were emerging.
“Do you think,” he said later to Father Mac, sitting in the presbytery garden picking soil off his hands, “that Chloe will ever wake up?”
The priest’s large sandaled feet crossed at the ankle. Lighting a cigarette, he flicked a glance at Rob. As usual, he showed no surprise. After a while he said, “It’s possible. At least things will change.” He shook the match out. “Chloe’s condition is a mystery. None of them understand it, even that specialist your mum flew in. It’s a freak situation.”
“That word again.”
“Word?”
“Freak.” He gave a sharp, painful laugh. “She’s preserved. Like the timbers in the henge. Not living, not dying.”
Father Mac said nothing for a moment. Then he leaned forward and blew smoke into the roses. “Feeling the strain, son?”
“Maybe.”
“There are two options, you know that. She wakes—and that gets less likely as the days go on. Or she deteriorates. Brain activity stops.”
“And they remove the feeding tube? Mum would never—”
“She may have to.”
“You say that?”
The priest gave a heavy shrug. “Rob, if the brain is dead then the time has come. The Church believes death should not be artificially withheld—you know that. As for Katie”—he frowned—“when—if—the time comes, she’ll do what’s right.”
Rob didn’t want to answer. It was as if they weren’t talking about a person, about cheeky, stroppy Chloe, sentimental over cats, bossy with her friends, who wouldn’t eat ice cream because it rotted your teeth, but spent a fortune on sweets. He fingered the key in his pocket, turning it over, until he realized what it was. Father Mac smoked silently. Around them the summer garden darkened, smelling of lavender, and of the candle on the table that the moths dipped into and singed themselves against until Father Mac reached out and snuffed it with his thick, strong fingers. “Get home to bed,” he growled. “Your mother needs you.”
Rob said, “I found Chloe’s diary.”
Mac was silent.
“She’d written this thing … about me. About me pinching one of her drawings and making fun of it. I’d forgotten all about it. She sounded really gutted.”
Mac looked out at the roses. Then he said, “Don’t get it out of proportion. Little girls of that age—”
“But I’d forgotten. What else have I forgotten?”
“You had arguments. It’s normal.”
He nodded. Unconvinced.
The downs were silent. As Rob cycled along the road into Avebury, there was no traffic, though the pub windows were lit. Under the moonlight the great stones stood in their extraordinary cumbersome stillness, vast gray shapes. Their outlines were strange against the early stars, revealing faces and sharp noses, frowning brows. He turned past the church, the tires of the bike skewing loud against dry loose stones, down the silent street lit by one faint lamp, along the high wall, around the corner and over the tiny gurgle of the Winterbourne, almost dry. Beneath the bridge a disturbed duck rustled in the weeds.
The lane to his house was very dark. On each side untrimmed hedges reared, walls of shadow. He rode more slowly. Then he stopped, balanced with one foot on each side of the tipped bike, his breath loud.
Someone was standing near the gate.
He could see only a dark figure leaning against an oak tree there. But he knew who it was.
“How did you find out where I live?” he breathed.
Vetch straightened. His face was a mask of shadow and green glimmer. “As I told you, one of the poet’s gifts. One of the three hot splashes of the Cauldron.” He held up his right hand and turned it over; Rob saw that the back was burned: three fearsome scars lacerated the white skin. “Knowledge costs,” Vetch said quietly. “As you’re finding out.”
He tipped his head, looking at Rob. “You’ve got the key.” It wasn’t a question.
“Yes. Look—”
“Did she threaten you?” Rob nodded. “That’s because she feels threatened. She senses me out here, waiting.” For a moment he seemed almost sad; his smile barely there. “Knowledge has to be stolen, Rob. Snatched from under the eyes of the wise, from the Muse’s Cauldron, as Prometheus stole fire from the gods. They punished him. For eons his guts were torn out by an eagle. You know something about that.”
Rob flipped the bike pedal up and rode past him, into the gateway. “I’ve changed my mind,” he said firmly. “I’m not getting involved. I want it all to stop.”
“It won’t stop.” Vetch came up behind him. “Whatever you or I do, the henge is emerging. But it’s a chance. A gateway.” Rob heard his voice alter; the calmness went out of it. “What is it, Rob, you want most in all the world?”
“You know what.” Rob turned.
Vetch nodded. The starlight lit the star mark on his brow, and it shone, silver bright. “Then bring the key, at midnight. Because for me the henge leads home. And for you, it’s the way to the place where Chloe is.”
Rob’s indrawn breath almost choked him. “You’re crazy,” he whispered.
But halfway up the stairs he was stopped by a jolt of memory that went through him like pain, so that he shivered and gasped out loud.
He had remembered where he had seen Clare Kavanagh before.
The hawk, the dog, the otter, the woman.
Hunting Vetch into the circle.
T. TINNE: HOLLY
Now this caer is surrounded too. The outer walls were meshed first; then we heard a crash and the gates fell; a great trunk bursting through the glass.
He caught my hand and made me run with him up the wide stairs, all made of crystal.
“It’s no use,” I said, breathless. “The trees will get inside. Why are you so afraid of them?”
I remember reading somewhere that if you’re kidnapped, you talk to him. Get to know him. You get under his skin.
He sat on the top step and rubbed his hand through his hair. “Never mind. I have a secret passageway to get us out.”
I folded my arms. “Is the mask because you think I might recognize you?”
He shrugged.
I grinned. Mac would be proud of me. I’m beginning to work out a plan.
The green holly
Was a fierce fighter;
His dark spines defended,
Piercing palms.
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.