“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.
C. COLL: HAZEL
In the attic room, he dragged furniture across the door. The window shutters creaked, despite the bar across them. Branches slithered. The stairwell must already have been choked.
“They’re coming!” I screamed. A tendril of ivy slid under the door; he stamped on it, tore it up. Another came, and another.
I backed against the window. Putting my hands behind me, I fumbled for the shutter catch. If I could open it I could scream for help. To Mum and Dad. To Mac, because surely Mac would hear.
Before I’d found the catch, the ivy was around his wrists and ankles; he yelled, kicking and twisting.
Gently, I unlatched the shutter.
It burst wide.
Chief bard am I among the bards of Elphin,
My country the region of the summer stars.
On Sunday there was mass, and then lunch. Father Mac always came because Maria did the best roast in Wiltshire, and afterward he and Rob sometimes walked out on the downs or along the Ridgeway. Rob didn’t want that today. He realized he didn’t really want to be alone with Mac at all, because his godfather was a man who knew him too well, could read his moods. Mac already knew something was wrong.
Loitering about at the back of church, he helped an old man collect hymn books and watched his mother chatting to her friends at the door. As always she was perfect, her hair glossy, her makeup professionally expert. Looking at her, he saw how she animated each sentence, bore the weekly sympathy, the brittle pretense that they were coping, she was coping. He couldn’t do that. Maybe people guessed, because none of them ever said anything about Chloe to him.
Dad was outside, in the car. He couldn’t do the chatting either.
Mac came down the side aisle in black shirt and trousers and old sandals that flapped. He whipped a pile of newspapers into a bin, growled a few gruff reminders to various parishioners, and said, “Let’s go.”
As they turned, Rob saw Vetch.
The poet was standing under the statue of Saint Francis, looking up at the kindly wooden face. Saint Francis had birds on his shoulders, tiny wooden sparrows that Rob had always liked ever since he was a kid, when he had daydreamed during long dull sermons that they came alive and flew around the church.
Vetch looked over. Their eyes met.
Rob went tense.
Let them fly, Vetch had said last night, in the cascade of bats. Now, in an instant of crystal clarity Rob knew that he—he, Rob—could do that, that he could make the birds come alive and rise from the saint’s shoulders if he wanted to, if he could gather up all the power that was in him. If he had faith the size of a mustard seed.
“Who’s he?” Mac was behind him, a warm bulk.
Rob blinked. Then he said, “The one I told you about. The druid.”
Father Mac was still a moment. Then he crossed to where Vetch was inserting a lighted candle into a holder. The poet’s fingers were thin and delicate; the flame guttered, shadowing his face.
“Good to see a stranger in church.”
Vetch’s calm eyes lifted. “I’ve been here before.”
“Really?”
“Many times. Over the centuries.”
Mac nodded. His big face was expressionless. Nothing ever threw him. “There must be something that attracts you here then.”
Vetch glanced at Rob. “Avebury is a hub of spiritual power, a landscape rayed with dreams and visions.” He looked back at Mac, and they were eye to eye, the poet thin and dark, the priest’s thick bulk. “But of course you know that, Father.”
Rob was surprised at Mac’s slow nod. Vetch said, “See you tomorrow, Rob,” smiled, crossed himself, and went out through the main wooden door.
“Thought you said he was a pagan,” Mac said thoughtfully.
“I don’t know what he is.”
“What’s this about tomorrow?” His godfather was always abrupt; this time it annoyed Rob.
“Nothing. I promised I’d take him somewhere.”
“A centuries-old wanderer should know all the places around here.” Mac turned. “Stay clear of him, Rob. He’s not the harmless nutcase I was expecting.” His voice sounded oddly somber, but just then Katie came over.
“Ready?”
“For food, anytime,” Mac growled.
It rained later, so after-lunch drinks were in the summerhouse, a decaying blue wooden pavilion under the cedar tree. Rob sat astride the bench and arranged the painting on the easel, then scraped dried paint off the palette.
Mac was supposed to be sitting for his portrait; Rob had been working on it for months, but his enthusiasm came and went. Today, though, he wanted to lose himself in color. He’d drawn the face easily enough, but the more he looked the more greens and reds and even blues there were deep in the mottled flesh. It fascinated him, filled him with despair.