shit that hovers around the camp at night. We're not stupid.'
'I am not suggesting you are,' Shavi said. 'But if you believe in the reality of the things you talk about, then you should not be surprised when I tell you I have certain abilities which may be of use to you.' He explained the gradual development of his shamanic skills over the weeks since the world had changed. It was a difficult task-he knew most people were still mired in the old way of thinking-but after all he had seen of the travellers' nonconformist lifestyle, he guessed they would not be so blinkered.
'So what do you suggest?' Carolina suggested. 'A shamanic ritual?'
'That might be effective. It is a matter of trying to peel back the layers to achieve contact with the invisible world, where all knowledge lies.'
'And you think you've got what it takes?' Carolina gave a wry smile.
'Bloody hell, Carolina! Give the bloke a chance!' Breaker berated loudly. 'He's right-we've done bugger-all so far. It wouldn't hurt to take a shot at this.'
Meg nodded. 'I'm in agreement. We can do it tonight, if you like. What do you need?'
'A quiet place among the trees, a handful of us to provide the focus of energies, some mushrooms or hash preferably, natural highs to alter consciousness. If not, we will have to make do with alcohol.'
The others looked from one to the other and laughed. 'Yeah, I think that's doable,' Carolina said with a smirk.
Penny broke down in a sobbing fit once Meg told her what was planned. She pushed her way past the others to clutch at Shavi's clothes, her tearful face contorted by all the emotions she had not been able to vent. 'Please God, help me find jack!' she wailed.
Meg led her away to calm her down with a cup of tea while Breaker rounded up a few people to help with the ritual. By the end there were eight of them: Shavi, Breaker, Meg and Carolina, a woman in her sixties with long white hair tied in a ponytail, the mud-covered eighteen-year-old, who was known as Spink, a ratty-faced man with curly ginger hair and his partner, a heavyset woman who smiled a lot.
They found a clearing in the woods where they couldn't see the camp or hear any voices. Breaker had been wary of straying so far from the safety of the fire, but Shavi had convinced him the ritual would protect them as much as any physical defence.
The evening was warm. They sat in a circle, breathing in the woody, verdant aroma of the trees, listening to the soothing rustle of the leaves in the cooling breeze. It wasn't as dark as they had feared under the trees. The night was clear and the near-full moon provided beams of silver luminescence that broke through spaces in the canopy like spotlights picking out circles on the wood floor. The patterns of light and shade it created provided an attractive, stimulating backdrop to what they were about to do.
Breaker had rustled up a plastic bag of dried mushrooms and a block of hash, which they shared out equally. They didn't have to wait long for it to take effect. Shavi had primed them to begin a regular, low chant. He knew, instinctively, that the insistent vibrations coupled with the psychoactive drugs stimulated the particular region of his brain he needed to achieve the higher level. He didn't know how he knew that, but it was there in the same way that he knew it was the technique employed by their ancestors in the stone circles and chambered tombs millennia ago.
The chant moved among the trees until it became a solid, living thing, circling back and forth, then inserting probing fingers deep into his mind. He closed his eyes and raised his face so the breeze caressed his skin. The blood was singing in his veins as a tremendous sense of well-being consumed him; he felt roots going down from his body into the soil, moving underground until they joined with the trees and the shrubs. He felt a part of it all.
The next step was the hardest. There was a deep anxiety locked inside him from the time his mind had been almost lost to the sea serpent just off Skye, and he had to fight to ensure the drugs didn't amplify it to the point where it overwhelmed him. He regulated his breathing and focused, riding the waves with mastery. And then it was just a matter of falling back into his head, and back and back, as if he were plummeting into a deep well. Paradoxically, that journey deep within saw him suddenly out of his body. He was in the air over the clearing, looking down at himself and the others, still chanting. The view was strange, fractured; colours seemed oddly out of sorts and the dark was almost a living, breathing thing. He had only the warped perspective for an instant before his mind was jumping like lightning through the woods. There was a sensation like pinpricks all over his body, and then he was blinking, seeing the world at ground level; a wrinkle of his nose and a bound; he was a rabbit investigating the strange scene. Another lightning leap and suddenly he was up in the treetops, seeing with astonishing precision. There was the rabbit, white cotton-tail twitching. He was consumed by raptor-lust; his big owl eyes blinked twice and then he was on the wing. The lightning leap plucked him away again, to a badger snuffling in the undergrowth further afield, to a fox probing the outer reaches of the campsite for any food to steal, to a moth battering against the windscreen of a bus, trying to reach the light inside.
And then, suddenly, he was jolted back into his own body, only this time he was seeing with different eyes, feeling and hearing and smelling with completely new senses. The invisible world was opening to him.
'Come to us,' he said loudly. There was a ripple in the chanting, but he felt Breaker glance round the others to maintain the rhythm.
Above him, in the centre of the clearing, the air seemed to be folding back on itself. What looked like liquid metal bubbled out and lapped around the edges of the disturbance. There was an odour like burned iron. Shavi could feel the nascent fear of those sitting near him, but to their credit they all held firm in their trust in him. A hand thrust out of the seething rift with the white colour and texture of blind fish that spent their lives in lightless caverns. Then another hand, followed by arms, elbows wedged, heaving itself out into the night. A head and shoulders protruded between them, featureless, apart from slight indentations where the eyes, nose and mouth should have been. Shavi knew from experience it was one of the human-form constructs shaped out of the aether that the residents of the Invisible World often used to communicate.
'Who calls?' It was suspended half out of the rift, as if it were hanging from a window.
'I call.' Shavi knew better than to give his true name. 'I seek knowledge. The whereabouts of a mortal child.'
The white head moved from side to side in a strange pastiche of thinking. 'Know you there is a price to pay for information.'
Shavi held up his hand and slit the fleshy pad of his thumb with a hunting knife he had brought from the camp. Several droplets of blood splashed on to the ground.
'Good,' the construct said. 'A tasty morsel of soul. How is Lee?'
Shavi winced at the mention of his dead boyfriend's name. 'No games. Now, information. The mortal child was stolen from this group several weeks ago. A twig doll was left in its place.'
'The child is in the Far Lands.'
'Alive and well?'
'As well as can be expected.'
'Who took him?'
'The Golden Ones enjoy the company of mortals.' There was a faint hint of irony in its voice. 'They pretend they like to play with their pets, which they do, but that is not the true reason.'
This sounded like it could be dissembling, but he pressed on anyhow. 'What is the true reason?'
'That answer is too large and important for one such as I to give.' This gave Shavi pause; he made a mental note to consider it at a later date. 'Rather you should ask me if there is hope the child will be returned,' the construct continued.
'Is there?'
'No hope.'
'None?'
'Unless the Golden Ones can be made to bow to your will. Or you can provide them with something they need in exchange.' There was none of the mockery Shavi had expected in these comments. What was the construct really saying?
'Where is the child?'
'In the Court of the Final Word.'
Where Church and Tom had encountered Dian Cecht. Where the Tuatha De Danann carried out their hideous experiments on humans.
'I thank you for your aid. I wish you well on your return to the Invisible World.'
