Phil Rickman - The Chalice

'I never wanted children,' Juanita said hoarsely.

She found she was talking to the purple-spotlit pot goddesses in the window of the shop belonging to Domini Dorrell-Adams.

'It was always going to be, you know, a wonderful place to bring kids into. Not just Glastonbury – the new world we were going to make. Everybody loving one another. We didn't, of course. We still had our petty jealousies, prejudices, infidelities. But the fact that we felt it was possible for everyone to love each other. That we could aspire to it.'

The pot goddesses leered.

'And when it all started to go down the drain I didn't want to bring kids into it any more. That was why Danny left really. He wanted offspring. He wanted his own little Glastonbury family. But you can't be an ordinary guy in Glastonbury, it's not allowed.'

One of the purple spot bulbs in the Goddess Shop window went out, with a little phut she could hear even through the glass.

Phut. Gone.

Like golden-haired Domini's marriage. Like Jim Battle and his cottage and his paintings, like Headlice.

How swiftly lights were snuffed in this small town. How quickly they were forgotten. All that energy going bad, No place to raise a child. And too late now, anyway.

She heard laughter behind her. Laughter as light as a ball of windblown paper.

She turned slowly.

In the middle of the road stood Ceridwen in darkest robes.

Juanita went very still.

There was a hazy light around Ceridwen. Her hair, like grey snakes, sprayed out into this light, which was purple like the spotlit goddess.

Well, she'd dreamed of this moment, the big confrontation.

But on her terms. By daylight. In Ceridwen's tacky fortune teller's booth. Or Wanda's house, where there were things to smash, candles to knock over. When she wasn't feeling sick and feverish and broken and…

Ceridwen laughed.

… and disillusioned and decaying, constantly chilled by the draught of death.

She began to pant, looking down at the hands she hadn't been able to straighten out since they'd gripped the door handle. An old woman's curling claws -

The goddess comes in three aspects,' Ceridwen said, her voice echoing, as if the whole street, the town, the world was empty, apart from the two of them. She was looking past Juanita at the Goddess Shop.

'Virgin,' she said.

Juanita turned in time to see another purple bulb going pop, putting the smaller goddesses into darkness.

Now there was only one bulb remaining. It lit the largest of Domini's pot goddesses, purpling her pendulous breasts. The obese idol squatted smugly on her swag of white satin and simpered.

While, from the large black hole at the top of her roughglazed thighs, a dark fluid was dripping, making viscous rivulets on the white satin.

Juanita backed away. She could almost smell it. She tasted bile.

She looked up at the tower of St John's, but it looked coldly down, spurning her. And the dark, taunting, menstrual blood of the goddess soaked into the satin.

'Mother,' Ceridwen hissed.

As the last bulb went out.

Phut.

Just like the baby Juanita had had aborted. Secretly. Danny's baby. Danny becoming terrifyingly un-Danny when he heard. Danny throwing every book in the shop to the floor. Pushing over the shelf-units, smashing up the window display and walking out and never returning, never setting foot on the holy Isle of Avalon again.

Juanita turned to face the road and Ceridwen's white, hazy pointing finger.

There was a moment of stillness. A moment of knowing it was not as it seemed. A smell of fumes, souring the apple-scented woodsmoke from the chimneys, bad energy forming a grounded cloud.

And then, with a sensation of pins and needles in both feet, the flush began.

The big one. The flush of flushes. She felt fire in her limbs, a fire that dried her blood and her juices. She felt her skin slacken, her breasts shrivelling into pockets of old leather, her mouth stretching into a scream which she knew would crack her face into a spiderweb of deep, blackening fissures.

'Hag,' Ceridwen said.

Juanita raised her hands like the claws they so much resembled and rushed out at her, shrieking hatred and despair.

But Ceridwen's image went out like another lightbulb and there was nothing in the middle of the road but Juanita.

And the big black bus. Bellowing and farting smoke. With its radiator hanging off.

She felt the buildings tremble and wrapped her arms around her sagging body. As if that would hold her together.

Sam threw open the Bowermead gates, ran back and jumped back in the Mini.

'Wayne hangs out with Darryl Davey.' he said. 'Of the Provisional Glastonbury First Brigade. If that yellow-toothed twat…'

'Sam, he was lying. He was winding you up. I'm not even going to mention it to Juanita, the state she's in already. It could, however, be a police matter. Whatever they did.'

'You think the police got a better chance of finding her than we do?'

'They could pull this Davey in.'

'I could pull him in. Go round the pubs till I find him.'

'And get filled in by his mates.' Powys drove out of the Bowermead turning towards the lights of Glastonbury.

'Time is it?'

'Gone ten. What did you get out of Pennard?'

'Too much whisky.'

'Didn't do you much harm when it came to dealing with Rankin. If we both went round the pubs…'

'I'd rather you went to Meadwell, keep Woolly company. Because that's where they'll show up. Sooner rather than later.'

'You think?'

'I know. Sam, who else is in The Cauldron apart from Ceridwen?'

'Depends what you mean by 'in''.' Sam had Arnold on his knee, clutching the dog to his chest. 'A whole lot of women go to the meetings.'

'I mean the so-called Inner Circle.'

'There's a woman called Jenna thinks she's well in. I dunno.'

'You see, we need to find out where the Inner Circle meets. That's where she'll be. I mean Diane.'

'Wanda Carlisle's, surely?'

'It's a front. Just like her. Nothing happens there. It's somewhere else.'

'I don't get this, Powys. Surely they're all going up the Tor with the Bishop for this Solstice dawn crap. They'll be at Wanda's.'

'I think you'll find they aren't all going up. Wanda's going alone with the Bishop. That's a measure of how important they think it is. She's about as half-arsed as he is. Two lightweights representing the great traditions of paganism and Christianity- on the most powerful, hallowed site in Britain. It doesn't make sense. And yet it's got to. It's bloody got to.'

Sam said, 'Woolly's coming out with all this stuff about the biggest blow against spirituality since 1539. I mean, what kind of blow was that really? The Roman Church was pretty bloody corrupt by the Reformation. The Popes were just more bent politicians in tall hats. Something had to give.'

'It was a blow to Glastonbury. If you try not to get spirituality confused with organised religion, you find you can keep a better perspective. What about Archer Ffitch? Where might he be? He got any kind of apartment in Glastonbury? A girlfriend?'

'You're joking. Archer Ffitch… No, he's got a place in London. Or maybe he shares somewhere with Oliver Pixhill. But nowhere in Glastonbury. Anyway, Diane wouldn't be with Archer. Diane's not been having good feelings about Archer.'

Powys glanced sharply at him. 'What's that mean?'

'She said – and I was a bit cynical about this at the time – that she sometimes feels her hate for Archer has a life its own.'

'Say that again. Try and remember exactly what she said.'

Sam tried. Powys listened, transfixed, gripping the steering wheel hard, and tried not to crash the car.

He drove into Chilkwell Street, indicated left for the town centre. He needed to talk to Juanita. And he needed a copy of Dion Fortune's Psychic Self-Defence. Fast.