'Yeah.' Sam stepped over a watery rut. 'Sorry about this.'
Somewhere behind them, a hound began to howl. Powys looked sternly at Arnold, hopping between their legs, before he remembered that Arnold rarely responded to other dogs.
'Where'd you see Pixhill?'
'Shut up,' Sam said.
'Don't worry. They rarely appear to more than one person. I think they're scared.'
'Ha ha.' Then Sam gasped.
Powys stopped. The Tor had arisen before them, a huge black wedding cake surrounded by candles.
'Lamps?'
The protesters,' Sam said. 'Woolly's eco-army on the march. Swelling the ranks of the locals opposing the Tame the Tor Bill. Got here in no time, didn't they? All those little idealists phoning each other, spreading the word. Taking a day off work, those who've still got jobs. Piling into their cars and vans and trucks. Makes you proud to be British, don't it?'
'They'll go to the Tor first, and then they'll start looking for the road.'
'Do you think we oughter make sure they find it?'
'That's not a bad idea, Sam.'
'Give me something to think about. Like the night I first came this way, I was figuring out how best to sab the hunt. Trying to work off my temper at Archer.'
Juanita said, 'You know what will happen if Diane does that. If she lets go of the elemental.'
'What d'you mean?'
'She won't be the Diane you know and… and love.'
'She'll always be the Diane I know and love,' Sam said. 'That girl don't change'
'Yes, she would, Sam.'
'You can't go bad, Juanita, not like that.'
'Absolutely like that. That's the only sure way to go completely bad. I'm not trying to scare you. I'm just trying to explain what this is about.'
Sam didn't like this. 'Where's the old cynicism, Juanita?'
'Cynicism is no defence. We're close to the reservoir. I feel close.'
'How can you know that? You're just… Jesus…'
Powys handed Sam his car keys and held out his hand for the torch. 'Do something practical, Sam. You'll feel better. There's a can of petrol in the boot, Juanita's matches in the glove compartment.'
He watched Sam moving away, hunched up against the unknown. Looked around for his dog. 'Arnold?'
Silence.
And then a sharp cry that he wasn't sure he'd heard at all. Wasn't sure if it was in his head. He looked at Juanita, wondering if she'd heard it.
'It said "fetch",' Juanita said.
There was a distant, muffled yip, an Arnold noise.
Then more silence.
It was coming light. Don Moulder, against all his best intentions, had moved closer, right to the edge of his top field, from where he could see the figures moving up the Tor quite clearly now.
He wondered what the Bishop was saying to Dame Wanda Carlisle. Discussing the terrible weather or Wanda's famous roles.
It was a joke. Even Don could see that. Where was that bloody Ceridwen? Why wasn't she up there?
Bloody joke. A stunt for Miss Tammy White.
Its fur was as harsh as a new hairbrush. It brushed her left arm, raising goosebumps.
It lay there quite still, but with a kind of coiled and eager tension about it. She could feel its back alongside her, its spine pressed against her. It was lean but it was heavy. It was beginning to breathe.
She put out her arm. Felt an almost liquid frigidity around her hand, over the wrist, almost to the elbow, like frogspawn in a half-frozen pond.
It turned its grey head, and the only white light in the room was in its long, predator's teeth and the only colour in the room was the still, cold yellow of its eyes.
I am yours.
'I can't,' Diane said.
'He killed your mother.' Ceridwen spoke softly. 'She stood at the top of the stairs. She was always very careful coming down them, afraid that the size of her belly would make her overbalance. She came down one stair at a time. One hand on the banister, the other holding the pink teddy she'd bought for her baby daughter. The teddy had a bow around its neck. Do you remember that teddy?'
'No.'
'Of course you don't. Because Archer burned it on the bonfire your father had Rankin build to destroy the blood-caked sheets. All the toys your mother had bought for you. Archer threw them on the bonfire, horrid yellow flames leaping into the night. He killed your mother and then he burned her dreams…'
Diane's head turned in anguish on the pillow. She saw the flames in the eyes of the beast.
'Let it go,' Ceridwen said, ever so softly.
'Yes.' Diane closed her eyes. 'Yes Nanny.'
SEVENTEEN
The sky over the Tor was, for a moment, as bright and shiny as the membrane over a cow's eye. And then it blistered, lost its focus; A fan of flickering colours sprayed up behind the tower before the ragged-edged clouds closed in, like the night coming back, and there was a low roaring like thunder deep underground, and Don Moulder got scared.
He was a superstitious man. Weren't all good farmers superstitious? Wasn't this what it was all about? Understanding nature. Getting a feeling for nature. 'Cause nature, whatever they said, nature wasn't scientific. And a dawn that wouldn't decide whether to break was not in Don Moulder's previous experience, not even living where he did.
So Don, as a superstitious man, thought straight off. They done wrong. The whole thing. Wrong. Christians and pagans. Conciliation, you can't have it. Isn't meant. There is but one God and He is sore offended. And not only at the trendy bishop and the crazy pagan actress, neither of whom was up to the job. Not only at them, but at the bloody ole mad farmer who'd brought back Satan's buzz. Why the hell had he ever done that?
Miss Diane. She'd brought that thing in. Miss bloody Lady Loony. What she'd got, it was catching.
The heavens over the Tor, still locked in debate, had gone into black and white. Like Dame Wanda's cloak. Another Lady Loony. All drawn to that abnormal hill. Maybe Griff Daniel was right when he said they oughter ram a JCB through Glastonbury Tor. No more Tor, no more loonies, no more bad dreams for honest God-fearing farmers.
All of a sudden, the sky above the tower went as black as Old Nick's arsehole and there was a great loud crack that had Don Moulder backing off in something like cold terror.
She saw the pale lightball again. It shimmered like a second chance, but she made the black mist cloud over it. Out of the foetid, feral-scented air, Ceridwen spoke and the voice came gutturally, like a burp, from out of Diane's own solar plexus.
There, that's better.
Ceridwen smiled and stood before her. Diane felt very weak, enormously relieved. But the relief enclosed an equally enormous sense of loss which she couldn't comprehend. It was like a nightmare where you'd done something frightfully wrong but awoke before you could put it right, and so the relief was relief only at having awakened.
There were more smiles. She saw little Rozzie, her monkey face split in two with glee; Mort, with his braided hair and his warrior's face and, inside his robe, the biggest dick you ever saw. She squirmed in the hospital bed. Visiting time? But it wasn't right. Was it?
'Welcome, sister.' Ceridwen stood in the misty candlelight between the great, grey concrete pillars, her serpentine hair alive with electricity. 'Welcome to the Inner Circle.'
'Where's it gone?'
'It? Why, it's gone about its business,' Ceridwen said.
Ceridwen had been with her forever. She must accept this.
Diane giggled. She did. She felt better. The truth was she'd never been so relieved. That was the truth, wasn't it?
She clutched the darkness to her body, wallowed in the dank, cloudy vapour, got high on the stench.
A man she didn't know said, 'I think there's someone outside.'
'So let them in. It's probably Gwyn. You remember Gwyn, don't you Diane?'