Catherine Fisher: Darkhenge

The girl stepped forward. “You’re the one, aren’t you?” She sounded awestruck.

The man smiled. Then he said quietly, “‘ I have been in many forms. A blue salmon, a stag, a roebuck on the mountain. The foam of the ninth wave. A moth in a lantern, a harp note on the wind. Before I was born I lived. After I die, I will be born. ’” He glanced around at them, their intent faces. “I’m a poet. Is that what you’re waiting for?”

They eyed one another. Uneasily, Rob thought. He edged a step away from the stranger.

“Tell us your name,” the girl said.

The man shivered, glanced down at the grass, the tiny plants growing at the foot of the stone. “I have many names,” he said. “Why not call me Vetch?”

“That isn’t the word we’re waiting for.”

“Word?” The stranger’s calm eyes considered her.

The girl was impatient now. “Don’t you know? Nine of us dreamed of a letter. Or it came in some way, in the ashes of the fire, in the whorls of wood. We put them together, rearranged them. They made a word. If you are the one we’re waiting for, you should know it.”

Vetch sighed. He was soaked and shivering uncontrollably, his arms wrapped around himself, the wind flapping his hair and coat. “I do know it. The word is the reason I’ve come, and that you’re all here. The word is the time and the place and the danger.” He looked around at them all, at Rob, at the darkness closing beyond the stones. Then he said wearily, “Couldn’t we go somewhere a little drier than this?”

“First we need to know,” the girl insisted. No one moved, or unlinked their fingers. Rain dripped relentlessly down Rob’s neck.

The stranger coughed. “Poets know that words can be deceptive.” He lifted his chin and, with an effort, drew himself upright. “But the word you want,” he said quietly, “is Darkhenge. ”

N. NION: ASH

He said my name. Chloe. I don’t know how he knows it. There are no days anymore but he keeps the clocks ticking, and the food on the long table is regularly changed. Sometimes it’s salmon, sometimes hazelnuts or apples. A bird sings somewhere in the building—I’ve thought I heard it, but I can never find it.

The walls are not so thick after all. The trees scrape at them. The trees seem alive, scrabbling up the stones, over the roofs, and two of the windows I’ve found are already overgrown, smothered with leaf.

I think the trees terrify him.

I’ve asked him about it. He won’t say.

But I’m sure he’s scared.

Don’t be sorry at your catch.

Though I’m weak

My words hold wonders.

THE BOOK OF TALIESIN

Rob came in quietly and closed the door. He wheeled the bike into the garage, then went into the kitchen and opened the fridge. His heart was thudding from the ride back against the wind; he was soaked and shivering. Pouring orange juice, he drank it thirstily, leaning against the sink.

It was 8:35 pm.

The kitchen was quiet. Rain pattered on the windows and the tabby, Oscar, came in through the cat flap, eyed his empty plate and then Rob with a green glare. Rob couldn’t take the guilt; he found a can and dumped cat food on the plate, then as he climbed the stairs, his father’s key turned in the lock.

“What happened to you?” John Drew came in and stared.

“I got wet. On the bike.”

“Just come in?”

He nodded. His father dropped into a chair and loosened his tie. “I don’t suppose there’s anything to eat?”

“Haven’t looked.”

“Mail?”

“On the table.”

Upstairs Rob washed and changed, tossing his soaked jeans onto the heap of dirty clothes in the basket. There were so many the lid wouldn’t go down. What was Maria doing all day? What had she left for dinner? Last week she’d taken huge offense at his father trying to be tactful. “I’m from Napoli!” she’d stormed. “I know about Italian cooking. What you know, eh?”

His father had had to admit he knew nothing, absolutely nothing, but it was too late. Since then she’d left them the blandest of British: soggy fish and chips, deadly steak and kidney. But her fits of pique rarely lasted more than a week, so there might be pizza. Her pizza was legendary.

He ran downstairs; his father said, “It’s lasagne. We’re forgiven.”

Rob shrugged; he’d had it for lunch at the pub, but he didn’t say anything.

The oven was lit; already the smell was making him realize how late it was. He set the table.

“Good day?” his father asked.

Rob hardly knew what to say. “So-so. Got some good studies at Avebury. Then it rained.”

“Dan?”

“Mad. Thinks he’s a seventies rock god.”

His father laughed, checking the oven.

“What about you?” Rob muttered.

“Oh, some tiresome technical hitches with the stage. There’s a touring opera production of Tosca due to open tomorrow and their battlements are too big for us.” He wrapped the tea towel around his hands and juggled the hot plates to the table. “Get stuck in.”

As they ate, Chloe’s unspoken name lay between them, like the flowers in the vase on the table. It lodged in Rob’s throat like an unchewed morsel. They lapsed into silence, and then dumped the dishes in the sink. While his father put the news on, Rob went upstairs. The door of Chloe’s room was ajar.

He stared at it.

It was always kept closed.

Perhaps Maria had been cleaning in there, though she wasn’t supposed to. It wasn’t to be touched. His mother insisted.

Rob pushed the door, very gently, and it opened, making that familiar little creak on the bottom hinge. He went in.

It smelled of her. That sickly scent she always used to splash on, which he used to complain about, make out it choked him. The row of cuddly toys sat on the pillow, and posters of boy bands, already going out of fashion, were neatly aligned on the walls. Her clothes were in the wardrobe, but he didn’t look in there. There were limits on how far his control could go, and he knew it, and never crossed them. Her school bag hung on the back of the door. There were books in there with her sums and essays in them. Her useless drawings.

It was far too neat for a thirteen-year-old girl. Before the accident the room had convulsed, clothes had come and gone in heaps on the chair, a pile that grew and shrank each week, each day; papers and diaries had opened and closed, books had had bookmarks travel through them; glitzy makeup and bath stuff in fancy bottles had been new, then spilled, half empty, gummy, thrown away; CDs had blared and strummed.

Now it was still.

As if a Pause button had been pressed, and the room held in flickering stasis, without sound or movement to disturb the faint dust on the sill. As if the room had become a chamber in that castle in the story Chloe had always liked when she was small, where the princess slept for a hundred years behind the briars and the tangled trees, just as she was sleeping now, while everyone else carried on, and got older.

He heard a car pull up, and went to the window, careful not to be seen. It was his mother, and there was someone with her—Father Mac, probably. Rob stepped back, and turned. Then he saw the photo of the horse. It was stuck on the side of the wardrobe, askew. A white horse, just like Callie. Like the horse at Falkner’s Circle.

All at once, hearing the door open below and the voices, the memory of what he had seen that afternoon swept over him with its terrible, first jagged shock. He had seen his sister riding. It had been Chloe.

He sat on the bed, as if his legs had weakened.