The Buried Circle - Jenni Mills [94]
A shiver ran through me. He made it sound so logical, like anybody might do it.
‘Have you heard of the Ordo Templi Orientalis?’ he went on. ‘Never mind. There’ve been some remarkable experiments…the results not so far removed from what physicists themselves have begun to consider. At Magdalen College in 1933, I met a remarkable man, Erwin Schrdinger, with an interest in Vedanta, a Hindu philosophy. He didn’t last long there. The university couldn’t swallow him living with two women at once. His theories, though–extraordinary. He believes scientists influence the results of their experiments simply by acting as observers. What you will shall be.’
‘Show me,’ I said. ‘I won’t believe it else.’
‘Are you sure you want me to?’ His cool grey eyes looked into mine to dig out the truth.
‘Yes.’ My arms were rippling with goose-bumps and there was electricity at the root of every hair on my head.
He led me through the field behind the cottages, to the edge of the circle, where a single stone lay fallen among the bushes under the shade of deep-skirted trees. It was full dark under there, and the screaming moon peeked at us through the branches.
‘Lie on the stone.’ Mr Cromley took off his green Morven Institute blazer, and spread it carefully across the sarsen. I climbed onto the stone, afraid to make myself so vulnerable, so instead of lying I sat with my knees drawn up again, like I had on the tomb in Yatesbury churchyard. Mr Cromley sat cross-legged opposite me at the lower end of the fallen stone. His white shirt glowed faintly in the darkness. ‘You thirsty, Heartbreaker?’ He pulled a hip flask out of his back pocket and unscrewed the top. ‘Only a mouthful, it’ll warm you up.’
He leaned towards me, and I saw the light of the moon reflected in his eyes. I took a deep swallow, for courage, anticipating the fire of whisky or brandy to run down my gullet, but whatever Mr Cromley kept in his flask was sweet and cold, a sword of ice through my warm core. It matched the white moon in his eyes. I took off my cardigan and folded it for a pillow, feeling in its pocket the comforting shape of the rosewood watercolour set. The thought of who had given it to me made me warm. I lay back, feeling unexpectedly dreamy under the rustling trees.
Mr Cromley had slipped off the stone without me noticing.
‘What are you doing?’ I asked. His movements seemed slowed. He was circling the stone, sprinkling droplets from the flask at each quarter rotation, saying something so quiet I couldn’t catch it, a rhythmic kind of mutter that was like soft fingernails scratching gently inside my head.
‘I’ve opened a circle,’ he said, coming back to sit on the stone by my feet, and leaning over me, ‘and called elemental energies into it. Air, Fire, Water, Earth. Can you feel them? Wind, heat, tides and gravity.’ Seemed to me I felt a breeze rippling the leaves and running over my skin, a warmth spreading through my body again, the flow of my blood, the weight of my body holding me down on the stone.
‘This is not a trick,’ he said again. ‘This is how it feels to enter the vortex, at its shallowest rim. I love this time for working magic: neither full day nor dark night. We’re between worlds, Heartbreaker.’ His fingers moved over my face. ‘Can you feel it? It’s like dipping your toes into the edge of the sea, letting the shallowest of waves break over them, feeling the suck of the water as it recedes again, while your feet sink into wet, sliding sand…’
His voice was like slow, soft piano music, the fingers of one hand stroking my cheeks and lips, the other cradling the back of my head and kneading the bones of my skull. He was leaning right over me now, and I couldn’t see the moon in his eyes any longer, but I could feel his lips brushing gently over my skin, the lightest of pressures.