The Burning Man

2

Night had fallen by the time they reached the hotel burning with light in the empty landscape. No other dwellings lay in sight, and even the road was lost beneath drifting snow. Stark black pines were the only contrast against the sweeping white plain.

The hotel was modern, glass and pine with roaring log fires for a traditional feel. It was clearly a venue for tourists exploring the high country, but it appeared to be almost deserted.

While Hunter ordered them food — reindeer steaks and rice and a vegetable stew for Laura — and bottles of beer, Shavi flirted briefly with the barman, a tall, muscular man in his early twenties with long brown hair and a shy demeanour. They made a connection that Shavi was determined to follow up later.

They consumed their meal at the comfy chairs in front of the fire, next to their unruly pile of parkas and boots.

‘Couldn’t we have stayed somewhere a bit more lively?’ Laura complained.

‘Depends if you want to still be alive in the morning,’ Tom snapped. ‘A ley line runs through here. It’ll buy you a little more time.’

Church turned to Shavi, who was eyeing the barman. ‘You got us here, but can you see the way forward?’

‘Flashes, here and there. I am attempting to make sense of what they mean, but so far it has been too confusing.’

‘What I don’t get,’ Ruth said to Church, ‘is why your friend the Puck doesn’t actually give you some help you can use. A hint here, half a clue there — it’s all game-playing. Are you sure he’s on our side?’

‘Robin Goodfellow is on no one’s side.’ Tom removed a tin from his haversack and began to construct a roll-up. ‘He moves things around to his own ends, whatever they may be. He cannot be trusted.’

‘I don’t trust him,’ Church said, ‘but I think at the moment his aims and ours coincide, and for now that’s good enough for me.’

Shavi sipped his beer thoughtfully as he watched the flames leap up the chimney. ‘It seems to me from what you have said that the Puck has been playing a long game, for millennia. There has always been purpose in his mischief.’

‘What’s that? Leading humanity off the edge of a cliff?’ Laura finished her beer and took Tom’s when he wasn’t looking.

‘A creature of wild magic like the Puck could not be content living in a universe ruled by the Void,’ Shavi mused. ‘Those other figures you saw, Church — the Caretaker, the man and woman with the cauldron — they appear to represent powers above and beyond gods like the Tuatha De Danann. An alliance, perhaps, against darkness and despair.’

‘But we’re just pawns to them,’ Ruth said. ‘They don’t care if we live or die as long as we serve their ends.’ The bitterness in her voice surprised them all.

‘If there is one thing we have learned,’ Shavi began soothingly, ‘it is that there are currents of meaning all around us, shifting forces that we cannot comprehend but which guide us in a subtle way. I do not know what those forces are, but I do know we are not alone in this battle.’

‘Listen to him,’ Tom grunted. ‘He’s the only one of you lot that talks any sense.’

‘None of it makes any sense to me!’ Ruth’s voice cracked and she stalked off in the direction of their rooms.

‘Looks like Miss Frosty’s got the painters and decorators in.’ Laura sniffed. ‘I’m going to have her beer.’