Kissed a Sad Goodbye

So why on earth had he just scribbled what seemed to be a garbled message from some long-dead monk? Was he losing his mind? A delayed reaction to grief, perhaps? He had read with mild curiosity about post traumatic-stress syndrome, never dreaming it could happen to him. And what had happened, after all? A lapse of consciousness, a daydream as harmless as those one had occasionally while driving, when you found you’d reached your destination without recalling the journey. For an instant, he saw again the small, precise script, a thing of beauty in itself, and felt a tug of familiarity in the cadence of the language.

He resumed his walk to the pub, then a thought stopped him midstride. What if … What if it were even remotely possible that he had made contact with the dead? Did that mean … could it mean he was capable of instigating contact at will? Emily—

No. He couldn’t even allow the idea of such a thing. That way lay madness.

A skateboarder whooshed past him, wheels clacking. “You taking root, mister?” the boy called out. Jack lurched unsteadily on, across the bottom of the High Street toward the George & Pilgrims. As he reached the pub, the heavy door swung open and a knot of revelers pushed past him. An escaping hint of laughter and smoke offered safe haven before the wind snatched sound and scent away; and then, he could have sworn he heard, faintly, the sound of bells.

•        •        •

The cats slept in the farmyard, taking advantage of the midday warmth of the pale spring sun. Each had its own spot—a flowerpot, the sagging step at the kitchen door, the bonnet of the old white van that Garnet Todd used to deliver her tiles—and only the occasional twitch of a feline ear or tail betrayed their awareness of the rustle of mice in the straw.

Garnet stood in the doorway of her workshop, wiping her hands on the leather apron she wore as a protection against the heat of the kiln. She had almost completed her latest commission, the restoration of the tile flooring in a twelfth-century church near the edge of Salisbury Plain. The manufacture of the tiles was painstaking work. The pattern suggested by the few intact bits of floor must be matched, using only the materials and techniques available to the original artisans. Then came the installation, a delicate process requiring hours spent on hands and knees, breathing the dank and musty atmosphere of the ancient church.

But Garnet never minded that. She was most comfortable with old things. Even her work as a midwife—although it had honored the Goddess—had not given her enough visceral connection with the past.

Her farm, a ramshackle place she’d bought more than twenty-five years ago, was proof of how little use she had for the present. The house stood high on the western flank of the Tor, its pitted stone façade in the path of a wind that had scoured down from the hilltop for years beyond memory. The sheep that grazed the grassy slope were her nearest neighbors, and for the most part she preferred their company.

At first she’d meant to put in electricity and running water, but the years had passed and she’d got used to doing without. Lantern light brought ochre warmth and comforting shadows, and why should she drink the chemically poisoned water the town pumped out of its tanks when the spring on her property bubbled right up from the heart of the sacred hill? Enough had been done in this town to dishonor the old and holy things without her adding to the damage.

A cloud shadow raced down the hillside and for a moment the yard darkened. Garnet shivered. Dion, the old calico cat who ruled the rest of the brood with regal disdain, uncurled herself from the flowerpot and came to rub against Garnet’s ankles. “You sense it, too, don’t you, old girl?” Garnet said softly, bending to stroke her. “Something’s brewing.”

Once before she had caught that scent in the air, once before she had felt that prickle of foreboding, and the memory filled her with dread.

Glastonbury had always been a place of power, a pivot point in the ancient battle between the light and the dark. If that delicate balance were disturbed, Garnet knew, not even the Goddess could foresee the consequences.

   Glastonbury did strange things to people—as Nick Carlisle well knew. He’d come here for the Festival, part of his plan to take a few months off, see a bit of the world, after leaving Durham with a First in Philosophy and Theology. On a mild evening in late June he had rounded a bend in the Shepton Mallet road and seen the great conical hump of the Tor rising above the plain, St. Michael’s Tower on its summit standing squarely against the blood red western sky.

That had been more than a year ago, and he was still here, working in a New-Age bookshop across from the Abbey for little more than minimum wage, living in a caravan in a farmer’s field in Compton Dundon.