Darkhenge

The oaks shimmer, the stream runs cold.

Happy is he who sees the one that he loves.

THE BOOK OF TALIESIN

The tree branched like a brain.

It was the same as the diagram in his biology textbook, a tangle of neurons and dendrites and synapses. It was what was in him now, working his eyes and fingers. So ingenious. So fragile.

He bent over the page, noticing how his shadow was ultramarine blue on the white cartridge paper; with the side of the pencil he shaded in the edge of the bough, feeling the soft fibers of carbon darken the grain. He marked a few quick cracks, then cross-hatched the hole in the trunk, rubbed splotches of lichen, enjoying the skill in his hands, the way drawing it made him and the tree one creature.

A drop of rain spatted on the page.

Rob looked up. His concentration snapped like a thread.

Clouds were looming in from the north. They were black and heavy; already he could see the leading edge as a gray smudge drifted over the miles of open downland, masking the low hump of Windmill Hill and its barrows. “It’s raining,” he said.

From the high grass a tinselly whisper of music rose and fell.

“Dan! We’re going to get soaked.”

A hand played air guitar to inaudible riffs.

Rob glanced around. There were a few thorn bushes to shelter under, but not much else. The white chalk track of the Ridgeway ran away on each side along the exposed crest of the downs. Below in the fields, acres of barley waved.

He kicked the sprawling figure; Daniel sat up, annoyed. “What?”

He said it too loud, the earphones deafening him. Rob reached over and tweaked them off. “Come on. I’m hungry. We’re going.”

“Right in the middle of the best bit.” Dan turned the CD off and rubbed his numbed ears. “So where’s the masterpiece?”

“Show you later. Come on.”

“Home?”

“No. Avebury.”

These days he never wanted to go home. It was Tuesday and Maria would be there, and she irritated him, filling the gloomy rooms with her cheery Italian chatter. They couldn’t do without her, but he didn’t have to be there to put up with it. He slid the sketchbook into the backpack and snapped the pencil tin shut.

The bikes were tangled together in the long grass. Dan tugged his front wheel out. “Three more lessons, max. No more bikes then, Robbie boy.”

Rob grinned. “Sure.” Danny had already taken the driving test twice. If he failed again his mother had said she wouldn’t pay for any more lessons, and if he did pass she wouldn’t let him near her car. So either way he was an optimist.

Rain was spitting. “Green Street?” Rob asked.

“Too far. The track under the barrows. Down to the lane.”

Then he was gone, riding fast, the earphones jammed back in, speeding off to heavy metal. Rob stared after him, stricken. Dan had forgotten. In the three months since the accident, they had never gone down that track.

Or maybe he hadn’t forgotten; maybe it was deliberate. Rob had to face the place sometime, and it was best to do it now, without thinking too much. He climbed on the bike and cycled, head down.

There were poppies in the fields, like something from Monet, splashes of red. Those on the grass near the track were chalk-whitened, powdered from passing trail bikes and the heavy clump of hikers’ boots. Now big raindrops spatted beside them into the dust. All across the fields the golden crop bowed and shivered, as the approaching storm shredded its peace.

The Ridgeway was rutted, its dry hollows and tire tracks hardened into solid ledges; the bikes bumped and slewed through and over them. No one else was up here today; raising his head Rob could see the parking lot on Overton Hill was empty, and beyond it the trucks on the A4 roared down toward Silbury, their windshields glinting in the ominous light. All the wide downland seemed to cower under the gathering wind, and as the bikes turned into the barley and rattled down to the barrows, he breathed in the rapidly cooling air, its sweet mingled summer smells, the sourness of crusted horse dung, the spatter of insects.

Dan was well ahead. The track dropped beneath a trio of barrows, each darkly crowned with crowded copses of beech trees. As he rode under them, he saw the swell of the burial mounds, one side scraped raw where some kids had rigged a rope and dragged their feet in the white chalk. He was riding full into the wind now and the rain stung his face; he kept his head down, marveling how the weather on the downs could change so fast. Already the rain was pelting, each drop a hardness. The front of his T-shirt was soaked.

Dan was cycling recklessly. He hated getting wet and was careless about the rutted track, taking the bends with insolent speed. Rob was more careful. The backpack, jammed full of tins of pastels and a bulky sketch pad, bounced on his shoulders; he raced across the downs at a crazy angle, and there was no shelter from the horizontal storm until the overgrown hedgerow along the track down to Falkner’s Circle.

The turn was too sharp. He skidded, chalk stinging out under his back wheel. The bike heeled over, hit a stone. Suddenly he was off balance, knew that nightmarish moment of going too far ever to be upright again, got his foot down, but the bike’s weight shot from under him, and he went sprawling.

“Bloody hell!”

He picked himself up, kicked the bike, and looked at his hands. Chalk lumps rolled from indentations in his skin. One palm was grazed, its black smear filled with tiny beads of blood.

Rob blew out his cheeks and looked down the track. Dan was probably already at the road by now. He crouched quickly, picking up the scatter of pastels that had burst from their box. They were the fat soft ones, expensive and crumbly, and hidden in the wet long grass. He snatched them and jammed them back: yellow ocher, burnt sienna, sage green, all the landscape colors he spent his allowance on most Saturdays in Marlborough. Many were in small pieces, their paper tubes half hollow. The Vandyke brown was missing; he hunted for it, and swore when he found it crushed under his heel.

A horse brushed past him.

He turned in alarm. It had come up the track incredibly silently, a white horse, and as it strode away, its rider ducked low under the overhanging straggle of birch and hawthorn. From the back the horse seemed huge, its tail swishing against flies. The rider wore red, a girl, her hair cropped and fair and straight. Like Chloe’s.

He looked away instantly, flinching from the memory, scrabbled for the dusty fragments of Vandyke brown, thrust them in the box, tossed it in the backpack, and swung the whole thing on his back. Grabbing his bike, he hauled it up.

The horse was shimmering. Whether it was the hot afternoon or the glitter of the rain that was hammering down now, something was filling the air with light, a glinting, slashing brightness, and the horse was walking into it.

Rob stood still a moment. Then, wheeling the bike, he hurried after it.

It was too far ahead. The bike wheels jolted, but always the horse was just out of sight, behind bushes, round a slight bend. Anxious, nagged by an inexplicable fear, he shoved through the leaves after it, the black rubber handles of the bike sticky in his fingers. The afternoon hushed; noise ebbed away. His senses were suddenly acute, the smell of the grass pungent, a faint coconut aroma of gorse, sickly sweet. Every fragment of chalk his wheels crushed seemed crackingly loud.

In the shimmering heat he came to Falkner’s Circle.

It hardly existed. One great stone, taller than him, lay toppled, pierced and used as a gatepost, and another sprawled half-buried in the undergrowth. But the space was palpable, the emptiness tingled on his skin; he could see it though there was nothing there to see, the space the stones had once surrounded. And the horse was walking into it.

Rob stopped, breathless. “Chloe?” he whispered.

The girl looked back. Her face was shadowed by great trees, their branches so low she had to duck under them. The sun shafted through forest.

He wasn’t sure. Green flickers, motes of dust in golden light. Hooker’s green, sage green, a million greens. A narrow face, a smile like hers, not seen for three months, except in photographs. An impudent, spiteful smile. And a voice. It said, “Hi, Robbie.”

He was shivering.

He was icy with sweat, drenched with rain.

It couldn’t be her.

There was no circle. He knew it, and as he knew it the birdsong came back, and the spatter and crash of rain; there was no forest here or anywhere for miles, and the horse had gone too far down the track for him even to see.

He pulled the bike upright, pushed off, and pedaled. In the shelter of the hedge he pelted down, ducking leaves, skirting ruts, skidding out into the emptiness of the paved road, just missing a car that blared its horn angrily and swerved.

Dan was propped against the wooden fence opposite; nervously he straightened. “Be careful!” As if he’d just remembered this was the place the accident had been.

“Where is she?” Rob gasped.

“Who?”

“The girl on the horse.”

Dan looked at him in disbelief. Then he said, “What horse?”

There was no horse. It was quite obvious, and it terrified him. On each side the downs were wide open and empty, the rain raking the crop. The road ran visible for at least a mile. Even the tourists had scattered from the downpour.

He could see the whole world.

There was no horse.

Dan was looking at him unhappily. “You okay?” His voice was subdued. “We shouldn’t have come this way. I should have thought. Sorry.”

Rob didn’t know what to answer. So he got on his bike and pedaled toward Avebury, wobbling a little, then going fast so Dan wouldn’t catch up.

There was no real way to think about it. The shock of the horse not being there was like an electric jolt inside him; it seemed to fracture the world, was a black crack down the screen of his mind. It had been real, had brushed his side with its flank, had crushed the grass, had clinked, been heavy.

And the girl had said his name.

But it wasn’t Chloe. That would be an extra terror, because Chloe was in the nursing home, lying in the bed in the expensive room, with the tubes in her arm and the electronic monitors throbbing all around her. And his mother wiping the dribbles from her mouth.

Dan sped past him. “I’m an idiot, Rob,” he muttered.

For once, Avebury was fairly quiet. Usually on summer afternoons the grass between the ancient stones was a patchwork of picnicking tourists or Reiki practitioners or groups beating drums around the obelisk marker. But the rain had driven them in, to the tea rooms or the museum, or maybe into Avebury Manor for the guided tours. Splashing up the main street through the constant stream of traffic that ran through the village, Rob watched Dan ride into the pub parking lot, dodge some travelers and their dogs, and disappear around the back.

He rode after him, more slowly.

Propping the bike in the shed full of chopped logs, he went in.

Midafternoon, the Red Lion was busy. Dan’s mother worked here. She came over, took one look at Rob, and said, “Have you two had any dinner?”

“What, with Leonardo da Vinci drawing anything that moves?” Dan grabbed a packet of chips from a box. Efficiently, she took it from him.

“Then I’ll get you something decent. Go into the dining room and find a table.”

Dan’s mother was short and patchily blond, an unnatural yellow that jarred on Rob every time he saw her. Now he focused his distaste on her blowsiness, the way she said dinner instead of lunch, her red fingernails. It helped. It made him feel better, even though he liked her. It blotted out the girl and the horse.

They had lasagne and fries and it was hot and tasty. Dan dolloped tomato ketchup on his.

“Peasant,” Rob muttered.

“Afraid so. Not been to Italy, me. Not cultured.”

“You can say that again.”

Dracula-like, Dan leered through two fry-fangs. Rob made the effort and laughed, though they both knew he didn’t want to. Neither of them said anything about Falkner’s Circle.

The room was full, with a comforting, steamy heat. In the window seat Americans from a tour bus, their accents loud and strange, ate and argued over maps. At the next table were some archaeology students; Rob knew them by sight because they were staying at the B and B down the road from Dan’s house. One of the girls was very pretty; Dan leaned across. “Get an eyeful of her.”

“She’d make a great model.”

Dan grinned. Then he said, “Ask her.”

“Don’t be stupid.”

“I will then.” Before Rob could move, he’d turned. “Hello. Excuse me. My friend is an artist. He wonders if you’d model for him.”

They all stared at Rob. “Shut up, Dan,” he muttered, furiously red.

The girl said, “How much do you pay?” She was straight faced, but the others were grinning.

One man picked up their bill and went off with it; another snorted and said, “She’s too old for you, kid.”

“Forget it,” Rob muttered. “Honestly, it’s just him. He’s an idiot. He’s always like this.”

She smiled. “Well, I’m flattered. But sorry, I’m going on holiday tomorrow. Are you any good?”

She was just being nice. Dan seemed to think it was for him. “He’s the best. Doing art at university next year.”

“Which one?”

“I’m not sure.... I’m getting a portfolio together....” Rob was mumbling stupidly. He didn’t want to be talking to her about this, he didn’t even know her, but they were going now, all her smirking friends, and she was standing up. Then she turned, and her smile had gone.

“Look. Seriously. They need someone out on the new dig to do drawings, recording finds. With the holidays everyone’s away.”

“What dig?” Dan asked.

She frowned. “It’s a big secret. Something unusual. In a field over toward East Kennet. Ask for Dr. Kavanagh; you might be just what they need.”

She picked up her jacket and then turned back. “Don’t say I sent you, mind. No one’s supposed to talk. Though they won’t be able to keep it quiet for long.”

“Keep what quiet?” Dan was overacting; his eyes were wide.

She smiled and shrugged. As if she was already regretting saying anything about it.