The Buried Circle - Jenni Mills [157]
I pull on my jeans, quickly, not wanting to give myself a chance to change my mind.
There are two police cars at the junction where the Trusloe lane meets the main road, making sure no pagans park where they shouldn’t. I walk down the road towards Avebury, but cut off across the field opposite the public car park. Two more patrol cars at the entrance, and the barrier’s closed, a man leaning out of the window of a people-carrier, shouting at the coppers who won’t let him in. A short queue of cars waits hopefully behind. Nobody, apart from residents, is allowed to stop anywhere near the village this morning. There are cones across every lay-by and farm gateway, the narrow country lanes patrolled by more police vehicles. If the idea was to keep people out of Avebury, it hasn’t worked. Several woebegone pilgrims are behind me on the main road, in walking boots and cagoules beaded with rain, hiking from cars parked miles away, too late for sunrise. As I clamber over the stile onto the field path, a flaming paper lantern rises high into the sky above the circle.
The water ripples quietly over the long weeds on the streambed. I was afraid there might be people here. But no one is at the spring except the Goddess, with her winking mosaic skin of broken mirror tiles and china. She averts her eyes, staring into the brown water, while I tie the offering to the branch above her head.
This time I came prepared. A scrap of an old blue cotton shirt–one of Frannie’s dusting rags. Blue’s your colour…I’ve stapled an envelope to it: BRYN, in bold letters. It took three attempts to settle on words that might finish the matter, with reasonable grace:
Thank you for a lovely moment. The Goddess smiled on us, once and once only. Goodbye.
There didn’t seem much point in signing it, since we’ve never exchanged names. All the same, I scrawled India at the bottom, out of habit.
When I came here before, in May, this place seemed beautiful, magic. Now it makes me want to cringe. The rags hanging from the tree seem tawdry and pathetic. The Goddess–only a bald shop dummy, after all–is spattered with mud, and her plastic foot cracked. The note I’m leaving seems embarrassingly twee…
Something–bird or rat–stirs in the hedge. Spooked, I lose my balance, fumble the knot and tear the staple from the material. The note drifts down like a dead leaf into the mud at the Goddess’s feet. A twig cracks behind me as I’m bending to pick it up.
‘Hello.’ Soft northern voice that’s almost a whisper.
I hadn’t heard him coming. The note’s in my hand, the envelope smeared with mud. Straightening up, my eyes meet Bryn’s wild blue ones. If he says, ‘I knew you’d be here,’ I’ll scream.
‘Thought you’d be at the stone circle,’ I say. His eyes are bloodshot and scratchy-looking, the lids red and puffy.
‘Nah.’ He glances round like priest-in-residence of the grove. ‘Spent the night in a vigil at Adam’s Grave, lookin’ out over Alton Barnes. Walked back to make my offerings here.’
‘That’s miles!
‘Doesn’t worry me.’ He seems exalted from lack of sleep. ‘A crop circle appeared in the East Field, overnight. Flashing lights. Whole landscape lit up.’
‘Sheet lightning?’
‘Nah. Pulses of energy. That’s what makes the crop circle. Not everyone can see it. There were some guys watching with night-vision scopes along the ridge, said they never saw a thing till the sky started to brighten, and there was the circle, out of nowhere.’ His lips part in the small, superior smile of one the gods favour. ‘The military were there already, before dawn. Great black helicopter hovering over the field. And men in black combats in an unmarked van. I went down, and there was grey dust around the circle. Guy with the night-vision scope came with me, said it was radioactive because his Geiger counter was kicking off. The men in combats told us to keep