She’s finished the cigarette by the time she reaches the glade and the Gallows Oak. Emee has beaten her to it, and is sniffing around the base of the tree with great concentration.
Something has happened to the ancient oak. There is a black mark on the trunk that wasn’t there yesterday. Thea moves closer. Emee has started scratching among the leaves at its roots.
The black patch begins right at the top and runs down the trunk like a jagged scar, splitting the Green Man’s face in two before it reaches the ground. This must have been where the lightning struck last night. The force and violence of the strike are both horrible and fascinating. She touches the scar. The edges are blackened, the rough bark has been burned away and in the centre she can see the paler wood inside the tree. The smell of charring lingers in the air.
Emee is still scratching, becoming more and more agitated.
‘What have you got there, sweetheart?’
Thea crouches down. The scar is broadest at the bottom, as if the power culminated when the electricity reached the ground. It has burned a hole in the trunk, and Emee is kicking up earth and fragments of wood, half-barking and half-whimpering with excitement.
‘What is it, Emee?’
Thea can see something shining. She gently moves Emee to one side and reaches within. Her fingers touch a smooth, cold object. She tries to pick it up, but the hole is too small. She breaks off some of the wood to make it bigger. Emee wants to help, but Thea moves so that her own body is in the way. The dog isn’t happy, but co-operates.
The object is partially buried in a brownish mixture of rotten wood and dried flowers. With a little persuasion, she manages to get it out and discovers that it’s an old paint tin with a lid, about twenty centimetres high and half as wide. The label is gone, the surface pitted with rust. Thea has also brought out an almost fresh wood anemone. It must have been one of the bunch she pushed into the Green Man’s mouth yesterday, which suggests that the tin once went in the same way. A very long time ago, judging by the state it’s in.
She shakes it gently; it rattles. Emee has sat down beside her with her tongue out and her head on one side. She seems to be as curious as Thea is.
The lid is stuck fast, as if it is determined to preserve its secret at all costs. Thea manages to insert one of her keys beneath the lip. The metal bends and creaks, then suddenly the lid flies off.
Thea tips the contents into her hand. A small figure comes out first, then a few dry leaves. The figure is no more than ten centimetres in height, and is made up of two twigs woven together. The longer twig has been bent in the middle to form a loop, giving the figure a head and a body. The ends provide the legs, and the shorter twig, twisted just below the loop, creates a waist and arms.
For a second she thinks of her father. The wooden doll he carved for her when she was little. She quickly pushes away the thought.
There’s something else inside the tin, a rolled-up piece of paper. Thea puts down the figure and fishes it out, only to discover that it is in fact an old, faded Polaroid photograph. She smoothes it out as best she can.
The photo shows a dark-haired young woman in a white dress. She is standing on a flat stone with her arms folded across her chest, her head inclined slightly. Her eyes are closed, and in her hands she is holding two antlers.
Strangely distorted trees can be seen behind her, and on either side of the young woman stand two figures – children, judging by their height. Their faces are concealed by animal masks that remind Thea of the artwork on the dining-room ceiling in the castle. Hare, fox, owl and deer.
Each child is holding the end of a length of ribbon tied around the woman’s wrists. It almost looks as if they are keeping her there on the stone. She is very beautiful, a kind of delicate, naïve beauty that exists only in the narrow gap between childhood and adulthood.
The photograph is taken in daylight, and yet there is something unpleasant about the whole thing: the children, the masks, the lovely young woman, the stone and the warped trees. It is somehow reminiscent of a horror film, an impression that is reinforced by the flat perspective and the faded colours.
Someone has written on the white border beneath the image:
Walpurgis Night 1986. Come to the stone circle at midnight.
Then three more words. Thea reads them aloud.
‘The spring sacrifice.’
7
Walpurgis Night 1986
I notice them staring at me. Not just the boys in school, but the teachers too, the fathers, the old men in the town square. All of them.
Most of them do it secretly when they believe no one is watching, but I can feel their eyes on me. I know what they think of Elita Svart. What they want to do to me.
School was over for the day, the bus shelter was empty. Arne checked behind the seating at the football pitch, drove past the kiosk. Then he headed down to the common, where the villagers had built a huge bonfire ready for the Walpurgis Night celebrations. Right on the top, leaning against a T-shaped structure, was a figure approximately the height of a man. It was made of interwoven twigs and branches, the head formed by a loop. Arne had seen it many times, in countless variations: a representation of the Green Man.
His big sister Ingrid used to tell terrifying stories of the Green Man and his ghostly horse, just as the residents of Tornaby had done for generations. Arne hated to admit it, but there was something about that faceless object that still made him shudder.
He spotted a few kids on the far side of the bonfire, and wound down the window. They looked at one another when they saw the police car, then picked up their backpacks and turned their bicycles around, ready to disappear.
‘David!’
‘Hi, Uncle Arne.’ The boy let go of the handlebars, looking relieved. ‘Cool car!’
Arne nodded with satisfaction. ‘What are you up to?’
‘Nothing.’ The answer came much too quickly.
‘So what are you doing tonight?’
David shuffled uncomfortably and looked at his friends. Arne was trying to remember their names; he knew they often hung around at Ingrid and Bertil’s place, but he’d never taken much notice of them. The girl was adopted, Chinese or Korean or whatever, and the boy with the cropped hair was a Pole whose parents were something important at the plastics factory. Behind them was another terrified face that presumably belonged to that crazy seamstress’s boy.
‘Nothing special. We’ll probably check out the bonfire,’ David replied.
‘You’re not going to do anything stupid?’
‘Of course not!’
David shook his head, and the other three joined in.
‘Good. By the way, I don’t suppose you’ve seen Elita Svart?’
For a second it was as if the little group froze in the middle of shaking their heads. Only their eyes moved, darting from side to side like frightened little sparrows. Arne fixed his eyes on his nephew. David opened his mouth a couple of times, but nothing came out.
‘No, we haven’t, have we, David?’
The little adopted princess had spoken. She gave David an encouraging nod.
‘No,’ he mumbled.
‘She’s older than us. We don’t hang out together,’ the girl added.
‘I see. Remind me of your name?’
‘Jeanette, but everybody calls me Nettan.’
‘Your father’s the headmaster at Tornaby school, isn’t he?’
‘Yes. And Mum’s on the council.’
The kid was glaring at him in a way that both irritated and amused Arne.
‘You don’t say.’
He sucked in air between his teeth. It was obvious that these kids were up to something; could he be bothered to find out what it was? He ran his thumb and forefinger over his moustache. What could a gang of spoilt twelve-year-olds come up with in Tornaby? The answer was simple: nothing that was of any interest to him.