The Buried Circle - Jenni Mills [117]
‘There she is,’ he whispers.
‘Who?’ I peer through the tree-trunks for an animal: a deer, perhaps.
‘The Goddess.’
There’s a flash of blue, something winking in the sunlight. As we step out of the trees I see her, sitting under a willow by the sparkling water, legs tucked to one side, head slightly bent. She’s the river-daughter, the naiad, the water nymph, iridescent as a dragonfly’s wings, silver-haired, scaly-skinned. A shiver goes through me: she’s beautiful and terrible, and watching me out of the corner of her eye.
A step further and she resolves into humbler parts: a shop dummy, with huge painted eyes, mosaic pieces of china and coloured glass glued all over her like fish scales, a tinsel wig stuck to her bald head. Something so urban ought to be grotesque, here in the middle of a wood with tiny green leaves unfurling overhead, and dog’s mercury and celandines pushing through the leaf-mould at her feet, but instead the effect is graceful, magical. The tree above her is threaded with coloured ribbons.
‘She’s lovely,’ I say. ‘You didn’t make her, did you?’
He shakes his head. ‘Wish I had. It’s a healing place, this.’ Beyond the Goddess, a shallow brown pool trickles away in two streams, sunbeams striking dancing lights on the surface.
I’m still holding his hand. Embarrassed, I slip my fingers out of his grasp, sensing his reluctance to let go. ‘Thank you,’ I say.
‘What for?’
‘Bringing me here.’
‘Are you going to make an offering?’ Bryn digs in his pocket and brings out a scrap of silky blue material, perhaps part of a woman’s scarf, and ties it round a willow branch. It’s the kind of thing my mother would have done. When the fabric rots and falls away from the bough, so will sickness and hurt fall away too…
How Ed would scoff.
‘For you,’ Bryn says. ‘Blue’s your colour. Like hers.’ He nods towards the Goddess.
‘And for your boy?’
The smile lights up his whole face.
I stand on the stepping-stones that jut out into the pool, watching strands of weed ripple in the current. Coins glint in the water, half buried in silt. ‘What’s he called?’
‘Fergus. Means “best warrior”.’
‘How old?’
‘Five.’ He bends to pick a celandine from the bank, and drops it onto the stream before joining me on the stepping-stones. It swirls lazily away in the direction of Silbury. ‘I’m going to bring him here in the summer. We’ll hitch down together, come for Solstice.’
‘Won’t he still be in school?’
‘I’ll bring him out. Educational, I reckon, to come to a place like this.’
‘My mother brought me to Avebury when I was small,’ I say. There are tiny fish in the water, hardly visible against the muddy bottom. Cynon is nosing around the edge of the wood, hoping for rabbits. I hunt for a twig to play Pooh sticks.
‘Will you come for Solstice?’ Bryn asks, unaware that I live here.
I shrug my shoulders and throw my twig into the stream before walking back across the stones to the bank. There are empty tea-light cases scattered around the Goddess’s feet, and I automatically begin to pick them up, my hair as usual coming loose from its pins as I stoop to reach them.
‘Hey, you shouldn’t do that.’ Bryn, from behind me.
‘I was only tidying…’
‘They’re offerings. Leave them.’
‘But they’re finished.’
‘Doesn’t matter.’ Not angry, but determined to get his way. He takes them out of my hand, and places them carefully back on the ground. Straightening up, he turns to face me. His eyes are clear blue, long-lashed. He brushes the hair off my face with careful fingers, and a thrill goes through me. ‘You have lovely hair. Like chocolate.’
The Goddess is watching us, with calm, indifferent eyes. We’re inches apart. What would that soft, sulky mouth taste like? But no, it would be like kissing a damaged flower.
‘Thank you,’ I say again, turning to the path that leads through the wood.
We part on the track to the Long Barrow.
‘Have to get my stuff,’ he says, jerking