The Burning Man

3

Ruth staggered amongst the olive trees, trying to fight off the heady, mesmerising intoxication of the otherworldly wine. Every sense was heightened: the rough touch of the bark under her fingers, the aromas of the verdant grove, the crashing through the undergrowth that faded in and out and was impossible to pinpoint.

Fighting to control her thoughts had little effect for they moved like the tides under their own power, focusing on each new fascination before flashing to a distant memory or fleeting notion. The three mysterious beings that had come to her, neither human nor animal, but rather some hybrid representation of an ancient, eternal power — had that been real? Were they still around?

Further off amongst the trees, pale wraiths flitted. No, not ghosts, she realised, but the women who had accompanied her to that place. Dancing naked, filled with abandon and the joy of life. Ruth came to a halt, smiling, feeling an unusually affecting bond of sisterhood. Drifting dreamily.

A jolt, like a lightning flash.

Not dancing, running.

Ruth shook her head to clear the suffocating blanket. Sounds rose through the haze. In the distance, the CD was still playing its loop of trance beat; and surfacing through it, a scream, two, cries of fear and anger. Ruth ran towards the confusion.

The women tore through the undergrowth, searching for cover. They were not alone. Men, swarthy from labouring under the sun, bearded and heavy with muscle, pursued them, calling and barking and sneering. They carried shotguns and pickaxe handles. Some laughed at the exhilaration of the hunt.

The lights Ruth had seen making their way slowly up the road to the compound. The constant threat of violence from the men who had murdered Roslyn. Her death had been like a chunk of raw meat thrown to a voracious pack. They wanted more. They could no longer accept the terrible threat of twelve women who were determined to live the kind of life they wanted to live.

A thick-set man who smelled of beer caught Alicia by the arm and roughly threw her to the ground at his feet. She was completely defenceless, but he still decided to hit the softness of her face with the iron-hard, use-smooth handle of his axe. Horrified, Ruth heard bone break and saw a gout of blood spatter down Alicia’s naked chest. The man smiled at this, as though he had found something small and amusing. He hit her again. Alicia no longer moved.

Ruth threw herself at the attacker, clawing and punching and tearing at his hair. He was surprised at first, but then with one flick of the wrist he brought the axe-handle up into Ruth’s face. She saw stars, fell back.

The man barked something at her in Greek, but though the language was alien, his meaning would have been understood by any woman anywhere in the world. With a nicotine-stained grin, he raised the handle, ready to strike.

‘No!’ Demetra’s cry was like thunder.

The man stopped mid-blow and glanced towards her. In the trees, Ruth saw other women and their pursuers also come to a halt.

‘No!’ Demetra cried again, and this time frantic wings flapped in the branches above them, though no birds flew there.

Demetra’s face terrified Ruth. Little sign remained of the woman who had welcomed Ruth into the community. The wine had consumed her, but that was only part of the story. Within her features, or overlying them, or underneath them, was the essence of the god of the groves, madness and terror and sex and death all mingled into one.

She began to scream, then trill, the notes building and shaping into a hypnotic song, and as she sang she tore at her hair until it became a wild mane, and she threw her head this way and that, and writhed in an ecstatic dance.

Ruth’s attacker was mesmerised, as were all the men poised with their weapons. The women began to mimic Demetra, subtle jerks becoming a dance they all shared; a hive-mind, lost to passion.

As the song became a howl of fury, Demetra launched herself at the stunned man standing over Ruth. Clinging onto him with her arms and legs like a wild animal, she sank her teeth into the meat of his cheek and tore it away.

As the man screamed, desperately trying to tear Demetra off, Ruth saw the white of cheekbone and the dark inside his mouth. Demetra would not be deterred. She was lost to a whirlwind of teeth and nails, the man unable to lift his axe-handle in the face of it. His last expression was of faint surprise that a frail woman could have brought him to this, and then his features disintegrated before Demetra’s assault. Her nails rammed into his eye sockets, bursting the orbs. Her teeth ripped open his throat and she gulped back the crimson spray.

By the time Ruth attempted to restrain Demetra the man was dead. Even then Demetra did not stop. She tore off his shirt and ripped into his bulging belly, tearing out the pale intestines and whipping them into the air.

‘Stop!’ Ruth cried, but the wide, white eyes that peered out of the bloodstained face through a curtain of dripping hair were feral, barely human at all.

Her hallucinogenic intoxication made the scene and the sounds all the more horrific. Fighting to remain calm, Ruth lurched back into the depths of the grove, but there was no peace anywhere. The naked women hunted the men like a wolf pack, bringing them down as they ran, disembowelling them or ripping off limbs with ferocious strength.

Ruth slumped at the foot of a tree, covering her ears, but the hideous sounds continued as the pale figures flashed back and forth amongst the dark trunks like strobe images at a club.

After a while it was easy to believe that the sounds were not coming from humans at all, and that gave her some comfort, but the noises went on much longer than she would have expected. Finally, the pleading became faint whimpering, became silence.

When she was sure it was over, Ruth steeled herself and made her way past the piles of gore to where Demetra sat. Her breasts, belly and thighs were stained red, and in her lap was the head of the man who had murdered Alicia, torn off in the final moments of her frenzy. The madness had just started to fade from her eyes, but the presence of the god of the groves still hung over everything.

A flash of white and brown in the branches startled Ruth. It was her owl-familiar, but in the heightened atmosphere it appeared oddly changed. As it descended, it changed more, until a man with disturbing owl features stood before her.

For a moment, Ruth was struck mute, unable to tell if this was another hallucination. ‘I saw you like this before,’ she began hesitantly, ‘in a dream.’

‘No dream.’

‘This is how you really look?’

‘Nothing has a real look. Only what lies inside remains unchanged. All else is fluid.’

‘What are you?’

‘I come from the oldest things in the land, as does the Craft that gives you your strength. Of all the Brothers and Sisters of Dragons, you are closest to the true beginnings and the higher powers.’

His voice had a jarring edge that was always on the brink of becoming the screech of an owl. Ruth was unnerved by him, but comforted, too.

‘I have always served your line,’ he continued, ‘bringing power, and knowledge, and communication from the forces that shape you.’ He turned to Demetra. ‘Once, long ago, I aided one of her ancestors, another Sister of Dragons, cut down in the snow too soon, and then reborn, as all things are.’

‘What happened here tonight?’

‘You do not know?’ He stared at her with those wide owl eyes. ‘You are an anomaly in the world the Void has created, as are your Brothers and Sisters. Wherever you travel you break the Mundane Spell. You wake the magic. You bring back old forces, and wild ways, and exhilaration, and wonder, and terror, and all the things that cannot abide the way of the Void. And this day you have awakened the Liberator, one of the oldest things, but not the oldest, who was known by many names, amongst them-’

‘Dionysus,’ Ruth interjected.

‘He loves peace, and will not accept anything that prevents it. And he will not tolerate the injustices of men, for he loves women, as all the oldest things do, for they are givers of life, the source of all power in this world.’

‘I brought him back?’

‘And his brother Pan. Magic lives, here, now, in the groves and on the mountaintops and by the lakes. The Void’s power is weakening. It still seeks to maintain control, but it can only do so through the Mundane Spell.’

‘But the spell is shattering-’

‘And soon the illusion can no longer be maintained. And then it will be forced to confront you. I come now with a warning. Your days of being tolerated are long gone. Threats lie everywhere. You must be on your guard at all times.’

‘But you’ll be here to help me, won’t you?’

‘Of course. The oldest things in the land watch over you, Sister of Dragons. For these are the End-Times-’

Ruth was taken aback. ‘The End?’

‘All that has happened has been leading to this moment.’

‘You talk as if the “oldest things in the land” want the end to happen?’

The owl-man did not answer.

‘Tell me!’

‘Listen to the message of the Cult of Souls. Understand the Gnosis. In the rites carried out in the name of Dionysus, the truth lies.’

Demetra rose to her feet, holding the head by its hair. Comprehension slowly returned to her face. ‘Something is wrong,’ she said, puzzled. ‘I can hear him whispering to me … the god of the groves … and his brother … Pan-ic … Panic! Something is coming!’ Her words ended on a shrill note of anxiety.

In the pale, eerie eyes of the owl-man, a moment of puzzlement rose briefly. ‘I sense … an empty space,’ he said with troubled curiosity. ‘Where something should be, there is nothing.’

The blade burst from his chest with a liquid sucking sound. Trying to make sense of this further strange occurrence, he examined it even as life drained from him. The blade was twisted and then yanked brutally upwards through his sternum to break free from his collar bone. The owl-man’s eyes rose up, the pupils froze and he slid to the ground to reveal his murderer.

‘You know he ate mice?’ The Libertarian wiped the blade on the owl-man’s back. ‘Nasty habit.’

Ruth turned and ran. Careering down the slope towards the farmstead, she bounced off trees, skidded, tripped and fought to keep her balance. To her left, there was a sudden bright fluttering as scores of the small golden figures soared in frantic flight, up high and then away over the sunbaked landscape.

There was no sound of pursuit, and that unnerved her even more. If she could get to the kitchen she could pick up a knife, and she was sure she had seen an old shotgun somewhere. Perhaps Demetra had left the keys in the jeep and she could just drive hard and fast out of there.

She skidded out of the grove and sprinted towards the lights of the farmstead. Passing the well-tended herb garden, she had a clear view of the grounds. No surprises. She glanced back to find the Libertarian right behind her. His fist smashed into the back of her head and she hit the ground hard.

Dust filled her mouth. Blood splattered from her temple and her head rang. She kicked out at the Libertarian, but he caught her ankle and flipped her over, sitting astride her and pinning her arms back.

Ruth glared at him.

‘No cliches? No “do your worst”? Or are you hoping I won’t realise you’re working on one of your conjure-thoughts?’ The Libertarian punched Ruth in the face. Blood ran into her mouth. ‘Pain makes it very difficult to concentrate, doesn’t it? Best not to try.’

Ruth looked into his eyes and saw that she was going to die. A surprising calmness and clarity suffused her. There was no hatred or anger, no regret, just an acceptance that felt like a burden being lifted from her shoulders. She thought of Church and wished him well, of Shavi and Laura; even, surprisingly, of Veitch.

Surprised by her reaction, puzzlement crossed the Libertarian’s face, but only fleetingly. ‘Knowing you as I do, I should have guessed you wouldn’t give me any pleasure at the end,’ he muttered. He shrugged. ‘For so long it was impossible to harm you or your dragon-brethren, but here at the source we are equals.’

He moved his hands to Ruth’s throat and began to squeeze. ‘You can fight,’ he continued with irritation. ‘You can cry. You can scream.’

Ruth smiled. ‘We’ll win. You know that.’

The Libertarian’s face darkened. The grip on her throat tightened. Her breath faded and the pressure on her chest became unbearable. Stars flashed, trails of Blue Fire exploded, and then she was flooded by a dreamy warmth that signalled the end.