A spring evening in Yorkshire: a wind straight from the arctic whipped shaggy clouds across a cold blue sky. It cut through the gap in the moors, tore through the Dale and buffeted the crag on which James had paused to admire the view. �O latter day children of Merlin,� he murmured, �what wonders you contrived in the time of your glory.� Sally turned back, planted her hands on her hips and glared at him. �You what?� she asked incredulously. He pointed at the early warning station on the horizon. The crag was one of the many local vantages from where it could be seen to its mythic best. At the height of summer tourists would come from all over the country to stand, look and wonder. Some came to protest. Once they had protested at the station�s erection. Now they protested against the threatened demolition of the three giant golf balls that dominated the Dale. �Good riddance to them.� Sally said, always true to her original opinion. �And a thousand years from now another Sally will guard their ruins jealously?� She turned away. �Come on.� she scolded, �We don�t have all day.� �I do.� he thought, but a lifetime of being bossed about by the girl next door dragged him along in her wake. James and Sally, Sally and James: even yet some of the older villagers had not realised that it would never be a match. She should have been the one to go to college, he knew. She would not have come back. �Where the Hell are we going?� he asked when he realised that she was leading him round in a circle. �To the oak wood.� The oak wood lay to the west of the village. She had led him out of the east end then onto the moor. �Yet another obsolete military installation.� he murmured when, after skirting another crag the wood came into view. �Pardon?� �My latest bit of research.� he explained, �Our childhood fairy forest and every village couple�s courting place was planted after the Napoleonic War to provide wood for the next generation of battleships. Maeve will�� �Mavis.� Sally interrupted. He shrugged. �She�ll be heartbroken to learn that no mystic druid ever chanted bardic verse under its ancient boughs.� �No, she won�t.� she corrected, �That idiot, Mavis Longbottom, just won�t believe anything she doesn�t want to be true.� �So?� he asked, �Nor will half the village. They only asked me to do the research to prove that it was an ancient woodland that shouldn�t be managed.� �Bloody incomers.� she muttered, �You can tell at a glance that it�s a plantation.� �Just like you could tell at a glance that that oil rig could never contain however many million tons of toxic waste Greenpeace said it did?� She stopped, turned, and glared. �I�ve always hated you.� �That�s three times today.� �Why did you come back?� He turned to take in the view. It was just another Yorkshire Dale, etched from just another Yorkshire moor, slowly emerging from yet another Yorkshire winter. There were no dead sheep in this Dale, though. No foot-and-mouth funeral pyres. Cross fingers. Touch wood. He grinned at her. �Ask fey Maeve; she understands.� �What�s up with you, tonight?� �I�ve been dragged out of a nice warm house on yet another fool�s errand by Miss Bossy Breeches Next Door. I could have been on the Internet, chatting up my nice American ladies. They don�t hate me.� �Give them time.� She pointed at the wood. �Hurry up. The light won�t last much longer. I want you to have a good look at what your darling Mavis and her lunatic lover get up to in their mystic grove.� �That�s none of our business.� he called after her. �Like her black eye was none of your business?� �What do you know about that?� �Enough to know that She didn�t walk into a door, that Gareth didn�t fall down the stairs and that you didn�t graze your knuckles by accident. She had two black eyes, the next day. What did the little idiot do? Beg you not to hurt him again?� He ground his teeth. �She�s not going to come to her senses.� she sneered, �She never had any.� �It�s her life.� �Stupid cow. And you�re no better. You should have given Gareth another thrashing, and another, and another.� �Just count me out.� he said, turning away, �I�m going home.� �It�s not sex.� she snorted. �Whatever it is, I�m not interested.� �Defiling our heritage?� she asked, �Poisoning our wood?� He stopped. �Maeve would never do anything like that.� �He would, though. He knows that he just has to hurt something that you care about and he hurts you. This time he�s gone too far. That camp is my turf.� �Poison? He thinks that he�s a bloody Celtic Druid.� She shook her head. �The Hell he does. Come and see.� It was just an abandoned plantation, an oak wood planted on a spur of marginal land. Dreadnaughts and labour costs had made it uneconomical to tend or to fell. Only children and romantics could think it anything else. It would be bluebell time soon� Twit an owl shrieked, greeting the failing light. There was still no answering twoo, only the coughing of sheep in the winter folds. Bronchial sheep were usually ignored, they made farmers uneasy, now. Cross fingers. Touch wood. �Another fallen bough.� Sally complained, stopping to heave a thick branch from the path, �Ancient woodland, my arse. This should have been harvested almost a century ago. They�ll be screaming a different song when one lands on a bairn.� �The soil�s too acid, too thin and it�s not even the right mix of trees.� he agreed. Twit the owl shrieked. They both paused for a moment, just in case. There was a distant reply, but only another twit. �You and me, both.� Sally said, and then pointed ahead. �Go take a look at what the stupid bastard�s done to his mystic Celtic circle.� Then she took off her rucksack. �I�ve some stuff to get ready.� �What the Hell are you playing at?� he sighed. �I�m going to make an ass of him, and then laugh in his face. And you�re going to kick the shit out of him if he so much as lifts a finger to me. I won�t beg you off.� �So bloody childish.� he muttered, but went to see what Gareth had done to the circle to get Sally so riled. It wasn�t a mystic circle. It wasn�t even Celtic. It had been a Mercian encampment. In 655 King Penda decided that he should be the Bretwalda and that the Northumbrians needed cutting down to size. Pindersfield, some miles south, still bore testimony to the battle. The tributary king who had made his camp on the spur that would become the oak wood had taken one look at the size of the Northumbrian army and then taken his men home. �Now, he was great king,� James mused, �Whomever he was.� He drew breath through his teeth, though, when he was close enough to see what Gareth had done. A pentacle had been burnt into the circle. �The bloody idiot.� he swore when, after scrambling through the brambles that filled what was left of the dyke, he tasted the dead grass. �Chlorate. The bloody towny idiot.� �I took the tin home.� Sally told him, throwing him a container in which to put the chemical he had scraped up. �He�d left it hidden in the brambles, more than half empty but that�s more than enough to kill any bairns who�d found it.� She pointed at the tree in centre of the circle. �More than enough to kill his holy Tree of Life?� �It�s been a cold and wet winter.� he assured her, �Oaks are almost the last to come into growth. If the weather continues foul, it might survive.� She shook her head. �It�s been ringed. Enough roots will be dead for it to need to be felled. Some druid, eh?� �A pentagram.� he sighed, �A Hebrew symbol in a Saxon army camp parading as a Celtic circle in a Regency plantation next to a Viking settlement. I remember sitting here with Maeve�s uncle. He had me imagine the oak trees away and the Dale filled with birch scrub. The sight lines are perfect. He taught me how to read the history that crowds atop itself in our little island. I also remember sitting here with Maeve, though. She filled the wood with fairies and witches.� He pointed a finger at her. �You miss a lot, you know, by not giving the fairies some room in which to live.� �Poppycock.� she said. �Scruffy little Maeve always went to school in Wellies because she had no shoes to wear. The bad girls called her names but she didn�t care. She knew that she was a princess and a friend of the fairies.� �If you think you can make me feel guilty about things that happened thirty years ago, you can forget it. Your pupils are every bit the swine we were.� �Where have they all gone?� he wondered, �There was a host of us to the handful there is now. It comes to something when Sir has to tell them about pignuts and sour docks, to show them the conker tree and the sweet chestnut, and then get scolded by parents who think every wild berry a potential nightshade but fill their gardens with pretty poisons.� �Quit maundering. Just tell me what wonderful magic feat Mavis is planning.� �What else but bolster the local guardian spirits against the encroaching plague?� �Encroaching plague.� she muttered. �You still haven�t made up your mind?� he asked, �Is it a minor disease that should be allowed to run its course or a threat to the livelihood of the countryside?� �I�ll be damned if I know.� she admitted, turning and fading into the shadows. The light was failing or he would have scraped away as much of the contaminated soil as he could. It would be a pity if the tree needed to be felled. The thick layer of soil that the Saxons had dug from their defences had given it a richer and better drained bed than most. It was the most magnificent in the wood and its bramble filled circle made it the perfect place for children to play both soldiers and fairies. The one game had never precluded the other. �Until now.� he thought, telling the tree�s dryad, �I�ll have the children plant a new home for you come May Day. I promise.� After taking a last look at the pentacle he followed Sally into the deeper shade. Mavis Longbotham was no Celt. She was a fairy who had lost her way. A celt was a primitive axe. A Celt was a member of supernation that never existed: a Norman, Victorian and now American fairy tale people. Britons and Bretons, Gauls and Gaels the world over reinvent themselves in the stories of the twelfth century. That flaxen-haired child of Merlin was the daughter of Norse gods as were most Dalesfolk. Why Celts? What was so special about them? They were as bloody as any other people. Their gods were fed blood not flowers. Flesh burnt on their altars. Disembowelled people hung from their holy trees. Better a fairy than a Celt. Maeve walked through the dark forest with the surety of one who knew every stone, every root, and every tussock that might cause her to stumble. Her silk robed druid blundered in her wake, his city blood proclaimed with every step he took. �You were a princess in Wellies.� James whispered after Sally, rag dressed with fluorescent death�s head mask and some gaily painted toy balloons, had stolen silently to her chosen vantage, �And no Celtic priestess wore a silk gown.� Twit the owl shrieked. Gareth jumped. Maeve paused to listen for a mate. No twoo. She smiled. She had hers, fool that she was. Her ears were deaf to what she would not hear. Did she not know why he had never spoken Welsh where James could hear, except for that one time when he had first come to the Dale and James had welcomed him with what little Welsh he had picked up at college? Titania took an ass for a lover to spite the fairy king. A fox yelped. He flinched. She screwed her face her fairy and country natures at war. Foxes needed to be kept down but hunting was barbaric. The wild hunt of the Celtic gods had no place in her fey soul. There were no Celtic gods in Gareth�s soul, either. He opened his ceremony with some second rate Welsh poetry spoken in third rate Welsh. His priestess could not tell that he was a fraud; she was only a fairy. �It�s no worse than should I try to speak Viking.� James thought, settling deeper into his shadow. Sometimes the wood was wild and would shun visitors who took the trouble to pretend to believe. Stay out! It would cry. Sometimes it was welcoming. Tonight it was just a wood, as if to snub an intruder who did not know how to play �make believe� properly. �Now, that�s more to his liking.� James murmured when Gareth skipped cultures and fairy stories. �The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn�s Neophyte Ritual. Hardly fitting for a Celtic druid, but much more convincingly performed. Hekas, hekas, este Bebeloi. Hurry up, Sally. I�m cold, bored, and miserable.� One of Sally�s painted balloons escaped her, caught the wrong breeze and floated past James, causing him to start before he realised what he had seen: moonlight and lamplight on luminescent paint not a sprite. �Clever,� he thought, �but not clever enough. He doesn�t believe in ghosties and ghoulies. Just in himself.� Maeve believed, or played �make believe� properly. Sally�s next balloon was set free on a breeze that took it almost into the circle before another drove it deep into darkness. It caught Maeve�s eye. Such an eye! Such a look of wonder on her face. She tried to catch Gareth�s attention but he was in full flight, his Sword of Art aloft, Crowley�s make believe words spewing from his mouth. What did he care about forest spirit when he was calling upon the gods of Ancient Egypt to banish demons from his temple? James found that he had an oak branch tightly gripped in his hand when the fury faded from Gareth�s face. He made to drop the branch but decided against it. A stout oak cudgel would not go amiss should Sally succeed in making an ass of a man wielding Sheffield Steel. �Better to take no chances.� he told himself, getting to his feet and slowly making his way to where Sally was hiding. Play �Hide and Seek� in dark forests and learn to tread lightly. Learn to hear light treads, too. Maeve heard something, but she was contained in a circle of lights contained within her own imagination, too. Another spirit? Another barely glimpsed balloon with a splash of luminous colour distracted her. A little gift of wonder from someone who despised her. Celtic priestess? Fairy princess? �If I can only drag Sally away.� he thought, treading as softly as he could so not to snap the least twig. The next balloon caught Gareth�s attention. He did not believe in the power of the words he was spouting, except in the power they had over people who wanted to the world to be a special place. How special did it need to be? He was caught, though, a tarot card character facing another, his sword in one hand, his lantern in the other, his robes billowing in the erratic breezes, as Death emerged from the gloom. Maeve did not scream, but her intake of breath was close enough to one. �Fool!� Gareth snapped, raising a hand to hit her. Perhaps the lantern in it stopped him. Death laughed in his face. He laughed back. �Ha� ha� ha�� �and then he saw James coming up behind Sally �and holding his eye �thrust the sword �into Maeve. |
