Андреа Хёст - The Pyramids of London

“We’ll have thruppence worth mixed,” Eluned said, equally firmly. “And…” She briefly scanned the selection of things that were not sweets, and listed enough to cover their needs at least for a couple of days, conscious of the weight of her aunt’s purse. The windstorms had done terrible things to prices.

Melly’s father came around and reached down one or two things from the highest shelves, although Melly was almost tall enough to manage. The pair moved with a dancer’s ease around each other, almost identical but for height, and Melly’s cloudy hair puffing out in three distinct triangles, while her father’s was so short it was barely visible against the rich dark brown of his scalp.

“Ned!” Griff said imperatively. “Get these as well!” He had found a collection of illustrated maps—four sections of London with miniatures of all the buildings beautifully drawn.

“You’ll have to ask Aunt Arianne,” Eluned said firmly. If he was given his way, Griff would buy a dozen atlases‘ worth of maps every day.

“Seen any of the folies yet?” Melly asked, as she knotted string around their freshly-wrapped purchases. “I only saw one the once, back when Dama Fulbright was still alive. At least, I’m sure that’s what it was.”

“Don’t know what that is,” Eleri replied, as Eluned asked: “Is it something green, and fast?”

“That’d be them,” Melly said. “It’s good luck to see them. Unless, of course, you’re in the Deep Grove without permission.”

“In which case, very bad luck indeed,” Dem Ktai said. As his daughter turned to make change, he handed Griff a gleaming toffee apple, one eyelid dropping. “A turn of fortune would be most welcome.”

Griff promptly hid the apple behind his back, but his clear elation won a puzzled glance when Melly handed over their coin. As Eluned led the way out, swinging parcels by their strings, she heard the girl’s voice lift in an exasperated “Da!”, but was distracted from more by Dama Chelwith, waiting at the bottom of the steps.

“Do let your aunt know I’ve mustered the Wings,” the woman said. “And that we’ll be down directly. After eight years without so much as an airing, I can imagine the state of Forest House. Knowing Dem Comfrey, he won’t have put an ounce of effort into preparing the place.”

“All dust and cobwebs,” Griff said agreeably, pausing in a stout effort to bite into the side of his apple. “What happens at this Moonfire Feast?”

“Why, the Queen and the princesses—Sulis in the form of the Suleviae—come to the Deep Grove,” Dama Chelwith said, whisking a smear of dust from his shoulder, and then ruffling his hair. “It’s very important there be a Keeper able to let them in.”

Beaming, she nodded at Eluned and Eleri, and then turned, waving a hand at someone on the far side of the crossroads. Off to organise the Wings—the county volunteer force—to clean the house of the Keeper of the Deep Grove.

“What happens if this Makepeace person really does only want to meet Aunt Arianne here?” Griff asked.

“Then he’ll have a clean house, for when he does appoint a new Keeper.” Eluned shrugged, ignoring the throb of skin beneath straps. “We can’t change any of that.”

She glanced toward Vine Street. Ahead the Daughter of Lakshmi marched, back straight, resolutely not looking in their direction. Only one of the many who seemed to consider their arrival an event. “I think the bigger question is what happens if we stay.”

Eleri clicked her tongue, impatient but resigned.

“Better get back, warn the Aunt. In case that urge to bite has come on.”

Forest House was large, but the dozens of people who flooded there in response to Dama Chelwith’s summons made a short afternoon’s work of the cleaning and minor repairs required. The grove itself needed the most attention, and Eluned helped pick up fallen branches and pull up the thistle thicket.

The stones they exposed were thin slabs, uneven in height and shape, and etched with symbols too faded to read. Once the bulk of the crowd had departed, Eluned returned to trace her fingers over the worn faces. She was puzzling out the shape of a triple luck spiral when a group of new arrivals approached with apologetic smiles.

Retreating through the trees, Eluned watched as a woman circled the newly-cleared stones, reaching up to touch the crown of each as she passed, then stepped reverently within. Stopping in the precise centre, she raised her face to the fading sky, tilting her body back, and letting her arms hang loose and relaxed. Eluned wondered what she prayed for. Most prayers to someone as vast as Sulis only reinforced personal or territorial allegiance, but in the stronger circles sometimes a small blessing might come your way, a tiny piece of luck.

The grass and dirt at that centre spot was already distinctly flattened, for the woman was far from the first to pray to the sun in a grove of the horned king.

“A place where Sulis and Cernunnos meet.”

Eluned blinked, then turned to her aunt, who was veiled once more, but had left her umbrella behind now that the sun had dropped below the shielding walls.

“The circle isn’t quite in the Deep Grove,” Aunt Arianne went on. “That’s the area beyond the gate, dedicated to Cernunnos. Every twenty-five years, the Suleviae come to renew the Treaty of the Oak. This is one of the most important groves in Prytennia.”

Looking back at the circle as the woman swayed and dropped to one knee, Eluned said: “Did anyone explain what the Keeper’s supposed to do, exactly?”

“Let people in. Keep people out. Strictly speaking, it appears that the Keeper’s only true duty is to open the gate to the Suleviae every twenty-five years, but some public access to the circle is usually permitted. Dama Fulbright inherited the position from her mother, and did not care for it. She allowed the public in to the circle once a year if the neighbourhood was lucky. According to Dama Chelwith, at any rate. Others have insisted it was every month, every week, every day.”

Aunt Arianne followed a narrow path between the trees and the kitchen windows, and stopped to survey the service passage leading to the street. The outer door to this had been concealed by more posters, and it opened only from the inside. A wholly practical space, it featured a freshly restrung clothes line, a collection of stone bottles, two bins, and, currently, many trodden fragments of thistle.

A shrunken, white-haired man was busily sweeping this last away, but stopped when he spotted them, and propped his broom against the passage wall so he could come to greet them.

“Dama Seaforth. You will keep the Grove open a little longer, won’t you? So those held up by their professions can visit?”

“While the light holds,” Aunt Arianne replied. “After that, it will be up to Dem Makepeace.”

As the man retreated, Aunt Arianne tilted her head back, her veil swaying. At first Eluned thought that she, too, was praying, but her stance was wrong, and following what seemed to be the direction of her gaze, Eluned spotted a curious patch on a branch near the top of the garden’s dividing wall. Not mistletoe, as she first guessed, but a finer, denser clump of leaves, tucked flat against the branch. Tiny spots of colour caught the eye: flowers or berries among the foliage.

“Why is it interesting?” Eluned asked.

“Because it has a heartbeat.”

Two startling revelations in the one serene comment. Eluned responded to the more immediate. “That’s a folie?”

“Most likely.”

“It’s so small! The way they’ve been talking about these things, I was expecting something more impressive.”

“The most dangerous thing I ever met didn’t exactly make a strong first impression.”