Candlenight

Groundmist was waist-high and looked as thick as candle-grease. The trees were in a silent semi-circle within the mist. He tried to count them and could not.

Not because there were too many of them, but because his brain was working too slowly for counting, like a clockwork mechanism winding down. Also the trees were somehow indistinct, embedded in the groundmist. They were one. An old entity. A fusion of consciousness, of now and of then.

More than trees. They had strong, vibrant thoughts and the thoughts had sounds which came from far way, as if windborne. One was as high as a flute or a lamb's bleat. Another sombre and quivering like the lower octaves of a harmonium. They could have been male or female. And they were orchestrated together, one voice, which could have been speaking in no other language but Welsh.

The mist cleared a little, although it did not evaporate as much as soak into the ground, leaving solid patches like mould, like fungus.

Around an altar.

Which was not an altar of stone, as artists imagine, but of wood, the trunk of an immensely thick oak tree, split in half as if by lightning, hewn out down its centre to form a shallow cradle, almost a coffin. sice, he heard.

Wind in the trees, air-brakes of an articulated-lorry, bellows, a freezer door opening and closing. siiiiiiiiiiiice.

There formed in the hollow of the altar, in the cradle, in the coffin, a satin-white woman with flowing red hair through which tendrils of mist drifted and curled.

The trees encircled her, their knobbled branches bowed. Stood there in the moonlight — so much light from such a slender moon — and watched her dying like an October butterfly.

Hunched on a stool in the dark beside the kitchen stove, his head in his hands, Aled wept savage tears, while the crazy-drunk reporter banged his fist on the bartop and screamed abuse at the Welsh nation.

Aled was not weeping for the Welsh nation.

He was weeping because it was the end of everything.

'… on to the line at Aber station. Some sort of dizzy spell, perhaps… no, nothing anyone could do… So sorry, we are, Aled, sorry I have to tell you like this, too, but the weather…'

'Come out, you little twat! No sodding guts, any of you. Come out. I want a bleeding drink!'

A shattering. Glasses, newly-rinsed.

The most beautiful pub in the most beautiful village in…

Aled howled aloud at the night, at the village, at the heat, at the snow, at the Gorsedd.

'What time?'

'Not long after seven. Apparently, she just disappeared, went out alone… must have been confused, see, they said…'

Seven o'clock.

'Bethan, why do you have to do this to me…?'

He came slowly to his feet.

'I'm helping myself, Alec, all right?'

'Don't be a pillock, Charlie.' Another English voice.

'Yeah, well, this way I know I'm not being bleeding poisoned. All right. Alec? That make sense to you?'

More glasses smashing.

But Aled's fingers were no longer shaking as he lit a candle, set it on a saucer and, holding the candle before him, went out of the kitchen the back way, through the scullery and into a stone-walled storeroom with no windows.

The storeroom had a long, narrow, metal cupboard, which was padlocked.

Aled put the candle on an old worktable, his hands flat on the cool metal cupboard door. Hesitated there a moment. And then felt about on the ledge above the storeroom door, where the key lay in grease and dust.

He undid the padlock, left it hanging from the lock as he felt inside the cupboard and found what he'd come for.

Guto and Alun lifted Miranda, all legs, into the back seat of the Range Rover.

'This is folly. Guto. Isn't there supposed to be a doctor here in the village?'

'Are you going to drive, or shall I?'

'Let me at least knock on a few doors first, get word to Emlyn to come and pick up the other reporters. Will take me no more than two minutes. We brought them here, after all.'

'Stuff the party image,' Guto shouted, loud enough to have awoken Miranda from any normal slumber. 'For God's sake, look at the place! You'll knock and knock and no bugger will answer!'

Few of the cottages even showed the glow of candlelight or an oil-lamp now, and yet there was somehow a sense of silent, listening people behind every door.

'I mean, is this flaming normal? Atmosphere is as if there's been a nuclear alert.'

'Yes. It's strange.'

'So get moving, man. We have to get her to the hospital in Pont. And anyway—' Guto got in the back, lifting Miranda's head onto his knees, ' — I wouldn't trust the bastard doctor here, and don't ask me why.'

Alun climbed into the driver's seat. Guto saying, 'In fact I wouldn't trust any bastard in Y Groes. Don't worry, Emlyn'll go back for them when he's ready.'

The elderly Range Rover clattered into life, was rapidly reversed by Alun into the alleyway by the useless electricity sub-station, wheels spinning in the thin skim of snow. Guto, looking over at the hills, made majestic by the snow, thinking. Oh God, don't let us get stuck up there.

'Jesus,' he said, a hand on Miranda's check. 'She's not even warm. Heat. Put the heat on.'

'You're joking, it's—'

'Put the bugger on full blast, man!' He smoothed Miranda's icy brow. 'She can't — I mean, people can't just die, just like that, can they?'

'So who is she really?' Alun steered the Range Rover across the bridge. 'Not a journalist, then '

Guto's hand moved over Miranda's throat, searching for a pulse, not knowing where it was supposed to be.

'Does it matter?' He felt his voice beginning to crack. Oh, Jesus, how abruptly, and with what brutality, life was coming at him these days. Despair to euphoria to an even deeper despair.

Alun braked hard.

'Strewth man, you'll have her on the floor.'

'What is it?' Alun said.

'Whatever it is, sod it.'

'No, something odd here. Guto. A jacket over the wall. And — trousers. No, a skirt. It's a skirt.'

'Bloody hell, Alun, were you never young? Step on it!'

'In the middle of the road, Guto? A skirt discarded in the middle of the road?'

Following a scuffle of footprints, he swung the Range Rover off the road and into the entrance to the track that led into the woods, drove up it until it became too narrow for a vehicle.

Where he braked hard again and the engine stalled. And the headlights illuminated a wondrously ghastly tableau.

'God,' Alun whispered in horror, and in awe.

He seemed uncertain, at first, about what to do. Then, efficient as ever, he calmly opened the driver's door, leaned out and was copiously sick in the snow.

Grabbing up a handful of unsoiled snow, he washed around his mouth, rubbed some into his eyes and sat back and closed them, reaching out with his right hand to pull the door shut.

Al the very instant it slammed into place, Guto thought he was aware of a distant blast, someone shooting at a rabbit in the winter hills.

Hesitantly, he lifted up Miranda's head, leaned across the back of Alun's seat, looked out through the windscreen and sat down very quickly.

'Jesus,' he said.