Instinctively, he knew how to talk to the visitor and what to say. 'We're looking for help. Guidance.' He was surprised to hear his own voice sounded disembodied too. 'We've got this big job to do. A big heroes' job. Saving the world and all that. But things have gone pear shaped. We don't know what to do next.'
The figure stood up gracefully and walked slowly widdershins around the precarious lip of what remained of the roof. Veitch watched his progress until he grew dizzy. Then, after what felt like an age, the figure spoke. 'Every story is like a wave crashing against a beach, and there are as many stories as there are waves. There is the height when the sun sparkles on the white crest and the dark trough when shadow turns the water to slate. Each appears the end of something, but it is only when the surf runs over the sand that the equal importance of both can be seen in the journey to the shore.' He turned on his heel and began his circular journey in the opposite direction. 'In your story, times are unduly dark, but you maintain hope; I feel it shining from within you, and that is good for the heroes' work. I feel, too, your pain at the loss of one close to you.'
A deep silence fell over the scene; waiting.
'We need five of us to continue,' Veitch began. 'There have to be five Brothers and Sisters of Dragons. You know, the Pendragon Spirit. One's dead now. What are we going to do?'
'There are no boundaries.' The words echoed amongst the stones. 'The emerald silence of the green wood stretches on to infinity. You pass through wooded acres and appear to move on, to a new place and new sights, but it is the same wood.'
Veitch was struggling to understand, but he knew perfectly why the archetype was continually speaking in metaphors, the root of the true language.
The figure squatted down once more to look at them, as if invisible cycles had come into alignment, focusing its intent. 'The shaman is gone, but he can be returned.'
'Shavi?'
'You may fetch him back from the Grim Lands, the Grey Lands.'
'How?' Tom interjected. 'There is no return for our kind.'
'Special circumstances have seen fit to forge a pathway. The link still remains between the shaman's corporeal form and his essence.'
Witch looked to Tom, puzzled but hopeful. The Rhymer pondered on this information briefly, then asked, 'What special circumstances-'
'Your patron has chosen to preserve his form-'
'Cernunnos,' Tom said.
'It resides in a bower, ready to be wakened.' The archetype rose and looked towards the dark horizon as if something were calling it.
'Where?' Tom asked.
'On the Hill of Giants, where the Night Rider awaits his challenges. But time is short. The protection is diminishing and soon the link will be broken.'
'How long have we got?' Veitch was afraid the information had come too late for them to act on it.
'Not long.'
It was a vague answer, but it was obvious the archetype would not or could not elucidate. It began to ease back down the slope of the cairn. 'Now-'
'Wait,' Veitch said humbly. 'Can I walk with you? Just for a while?'
The archetype paused, then held out a shadowy hand. It felt like velvet in Witch's fingers. The archetype hauled him out effortlessly and they both slipped down to the ground. Veitch felt uplifted, sensing on some deep level the heroic essence. It felt more like energy crackling in the air than a person at his side, but when he cast a surreptitious glance, it was unmistakably Robin Hood. They moved across the road to the nature reserve beyond, keeping low like animals. Veitch was sure some of whatever constituted the archetype was rubbing off on him. His senses were sharpened, his spirit was soaring, as if he had consumed a quantity of drugs or was in the grip of some spiritual fervour.
When they had crossed a barbed wire fence into a field on the valley slopes, Veitch couldn't contain himself any longer. 'Show me,' he whispered like a child.
The archetype seemed to smile. In one fluid movement it took the bow from its back, fitted an oddly fashioned arrow and loosed it. Veitch heard the twang as the arrow neatly severed the top strand of barbed wire on the fence about thirty yards further down the field.
''mazing.' He did feel like a child again; a wizened memory of playing one of Robin Hood's Mettle Men in a Greenwich backstreet was given new flesh. It was the kind of feeling adults spent all their life searching for, but which he had convinced himself didn't exist anywhere in society. And perhaps it hadn't before; but now things were different.
The archetype appeared to read his thoughts. With an expansive gesture, it said, 'This night is magic, alive with potential. Here you are connected to the infinite.'
His feeling of exaltation grew stronger until every part of his body was tingling. He felt heady from the potency of the experience; it was truly religious, like he was about to turn towards the face of God. 'What does this all mean?' he sighed.
'This is how existence should be.' The archetype knelt on one knee to touch the grass gently. 'Dreams start within, then grow bigger until one can live within them. There are no boundaries; anything can happen. Fluidity, hope, expression.' He fixed a gaze on Veitch that was almost electric. 'Mythologies were never intended to be only stories. Dream hard enough and you can exist within them: neither reality, nor fantasy: just one realm of infinite possibilities.' He made another wide gesture. 'Look. The stories live. All of this exists within the age of heroes, as it was intended.'
When Veitch looked around, he noticed for the first time shadowy figures standing away on the field boundaries or amongst the nearby trees: old heroes, some he recognised, with shining swords and armour, crowns and shields, but many he did not; yet he felt he knew them all. The wonder washed over him in such force he was driven to his knees.
It was at least an hour later when Veitch made his way back to the cairn. A shooting star cut an arc across the sky. Tom was still inside, smoking the remnants of a joint while humming gently to himself.
'Weren't you worried about me?' Veitch said as he emerged from the tunnel, his face beatific.
'I knew you were in good hands. Did he give you an education?'
Veitch was unable to restrain his smile.
'Good,' Tom said. 'Make the most of your contact with the great beyond for tomorrow we have a life to save and choices to make which could wipe the smile from your face.'
Veitch didn't hear him; he was looking up to the stars, for the first time in his life feeling he was a part of something enormous; feeling that there really was hope for him.
Chapter Five
Tom and Veitch stayed in the cool confines of the cairn until the sky turned gold and purple, and then a powder blue. It was going to be a fine day. Witch's mood had remained ecstatic as he babbled through the final hours of darkness about what he had experienced with the archetype. Tom could see some long-neglected part of him had been touched by the encounter. He was loath to bring Veitch down with discussion of what lay ahead, but it had to be done; the archetype had stressed time was short.
After a brief, unappetising breakfast of roots, herbs and edible flowers Tom had foraged from the surrounding hedgerows and fields, the conversation turned to Shavi. Veitch was surprisingly confident, his usual strategic caution stifled by his joy that there was still hope he would see his friend again.
'You know where Shavi is?' Tom chose his words carefully as he gently prodded the small campfire that had taken the chill off the early morning air. 'Not where his body is, but where he is.'
'The Grim Lands. Or the Grey Lands.'
'Two names to describe the same place. It's the Land of the Dead, Ryan.'
