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Chapter Three
At the Ash Well
By the light of a crisp, bright morning, the road looked quite different. Emmi found it hard to believe that the same place had seemed so terrifying just a few hours ago.
She pulled up as near as she could guess to the place where she'd stopped before. In the end, George had got the front seat, simply because Janie took up less room in the back.
"I still think we should've taken the Porsche," said Rick as they all got out.
Emmi slammed the door. Well, tough. I wanted to drive.
“What was wrong with the car anyway, Ems?” said Janie.
“I’m not sure—maybe a loose connection in the electrics? The mechanic said that when he disconnected the battery and then reconnected it again, she started up just like normal. My phone’s still dead though. It won’t charge or anything.”
“Sounds like an EMP,” said George.
“Ooh, I know this one!” said Janie. “Like in the Matrix.”
“That’s right. Only they got it wrong, because it wouldn’t just—”
“But who would use an EMP on Emmi? That man on the horse?”
“Nobody would use one on her,” said George. “In the real world, they’re caused by either lightning or nuclear bombs.”
“Well, neither of those happened last night,” said Emmi. “I’m certain I would have noticed. Especially the second one.”
"So where did it all happen, anyway?" Rick sounded irritable. Probably didn’t like not being the centre of attention at the moment.
Emmi peered up the road.
"Somewhere up this way." She led them back up the road, looking over her shoulder from time to time to judge their distance from the car. Yes, this looked about right. She turned towards the copse.
"I think it was about here that I ran into the woods," she said. She scanned the ground for signs of the chase, but the frozen earth gave little away.
"Well, let's get on with it," said Janie. "I'm freezing."
The five of them stood in an awkward huddle, hands in coat pockets, shoulders hunched against the cold.
"Hey, it was your idea to come, Titch."
"Yeah, I know," said Janie. "It was supposed to be an adventure."
A large, black bird fluttered to a nearby branch and eyed them curiously. Under its gaze, Emmi felt vaguely unsettled. Last night must have made her more jumpy than she'd realised. But she was reassured by the presence of her friends.
"Ok," she said, "Let's have an adventure." She stepped forward amongst the trees.
Once they were on the move again, everyone's spirits seemed to lift. Emmi could hear the others chattering behind her; a much more welcome sound than the ones that had pursued her last time she’d passed this way.
She risked a quick look at Rick. His hair looked even blonder in the early light, slanting pale gold between the trees. He strode cheerfully along, his slim, athletic frame seeming to have almost more energy than it could hold. He looked taller than she remembered. And just as handsome. Damn.
He seemed to her the most changed of them all; more grown up than the rest of them. Certainly he'd had more professional success; she'd heard from time to time how his art dealing business was getting on. He had his own gallery now. Even in casual clothes, he looked quite the urban professional. Casual, but expensive. He'd always liked "expensive". She still blamed his mother for that.
"Are we lost?" asked George after a minute or two.
"No, I think—yes, here. This is the little ridge I climbed." Together they mounted the slope, their breath hanging white in the frosty air. At the top, Emmi cast about her, then— "Look, that's where I fell."
A few yards to their right, a long scratch in the mud stood out clearly, like a scar in the earth. Emmi found that she was relieved to see it; she'd begun to doubt herself that the events of last night could have been quite real. They made their way over to the place.
"That ruddy great crow's following us," said Janie. They looked up. Emmi shivered in spite of herself. It must be the cold. Just the cold.
"Actually, it's a raven," said Edwin. "You can tell by the tuft of feathers under its beak. And the tail—see, it comes to a point. A crow's tail just fans out." And there was another relief: hearing Edwin's voice. He'd been oddly silent since they set out. For longer than that, if fact; since Rick had arrived.
"You would know that," said Rick. "Edwin, you've got to get out more, mate."
Emmi frowned and turned away. Why did he always have to do this? Why was it always Edwin he homed in on? She kicked a stone viciously. How had he managed to inveigle them into bringing him on this expedition anyway?
Yes, in some ways he was just the same. He'd always had that confidence, that over abundance of personality that seemed to overwhelm you and carry you along with it. Her mouth twisted grimly. He'd always been a hard person to say no to.
"I wonder what happened to the trees?" said George. "Someone had a bonfire here, do you think?"
The nearby skeletal bushes and tree trunks did look rather charred; when Emmi touched the bark, soot came away on her fingers, so presumably whatever had caused it, it hadn't been long ago. But the ground showed no obvious remains of a fire. One more mystery to add to the collection.
She remembered the blue flash that had come from behind her as she ran. Could that have caused the burning? And even if it had, what had caused the flash? She looked around at the bare tree trunks. And where the hell had that woman disappeared to? It wasn't as if there were a lot of undergrowth that could have hidden her. And the light hadn't been that bad. She ought to have been visible amongst the trees, even if she'd been running away. Though it was hard to imagine that woman running away from anything.
Emmi turned away from the burnt trees. The copse thinned into an area of waste ground, surrounding a fairly large pool. That must have been the water she'd seen out of the corner of her eye last night. Well, there was certainly nowhere to hide in that direction.
One great gnarled and twisted tree stood on the banks of the pool, it's ancient roots drawing deep of the water. Edwin was standing beside it with his back to them. Emmi's heart twisted painfully. Damn Rick. Why couldn't he keep his mouth shut? She started picking her way over the frozen ground towards Edwin.
As she approached he spun towards her, his face suddenly alive with interest.
"I think this is it."
"What is what?" said Janie. The rest of the group began to wander in their direction.
"The Ash Well. The actual Ash Well!"
Emmi hadn't seen him this animated in years.
"Yes, Edwin." Rick spoke as though he were patronising a very small child. "Ashwell is just up the road."
"No, I mean the actual Ash Well that the town is named after. I didn't know it still existed." He looked about him at the dull, bleak landscape, his eyes shining with wonder. "It's thought to be a copy of the great site at Uppsala in Sweden. See, here's the ash tree that represents Yggdrasil.”
"Iggy what?"
“Yggdrasil: the World Tree of Norse mythology. It contained the Nine Worlds—”
“Because that makes sense,” said Rick.
“—And the hall of the Norns stood under it. Or Nornir, as they are more properly called.”
“And Norns are?” George glanced around him dutifully, but looked profoundly unimpressed. If it didn't have buttons or a screen, George usually didn't want to know.
“They’re sort of magical women in Norse mythology. The three Great Norns are Urd, Verdandi and Skuld. Parallels have been drawn between them and the Fates of the Greek myths. Their names are usually taken to mean past, present and future, but I’ve always thought that was imposing Greek mythological ideas onto Norse myth. A better translation of their names would be fate, becoming and debt. So it runs deeper than simply past, present and future — more like destiny, choice and consequences.”
When Edwin spoke of his beloved mythology, he was oblivious to everything else; the jibes of Rick, the bewildered looks of the others, the cold—nothing could touch him now. Emmi smiled.
"So what do they do?" she asked.
“They spin their golden threads and weave the Web of Fate,” said Edwin. “At least, according to one of the Old Norse poems. They also invented the Runes, which were then stolen by Odin. And they’re generally attributed with deciding the destiny of people’s lives — hence the comparison to the Greek Fates. Along with the spinning, of course. There are also four harts that eat the Tree’s branches, a dragon under the Tree that gnaws at its roots—”
“Dragons are good,” said George.
“—An eagle in the topmost branches, and a squirrel that runs up and down the Tree between the eagle and the dragon, conveying their insults to one another. And a great many serpents, too.”
“So it’s a wildlife haven,” said Rick, kicking at a tuft of grass.
“And at the foot of the Tree is Urd’s Well. This pool is thought to be a representation of it.” Edwin looked around with shining eyes. “It had a ritual use, of course—they found evidence when the site was last investigated in 1932. Sacrifices were hung on the tree or put into the pool, and there's a written record of people being 'immersed alive' in the pool. It was believed that if the bodies were 'not found', the gods would answer the people's request."
Janie shuddered. "Human sacrifice? That's icky."
"Certainly that's a popular theory." Edwin was in academic mode, and remained unmoved. "But there's another possibility that I find far more intriguing. You have to remember that Yggdrasil was the great connecter of Nine Worlds. It was the centre of their reality—the Axis Mundi. The place where all the dimensions of the universe came together." Edwin walked around the enormous, wizened tree, patting it. "One of the poems in the Elder Edda suggests that—wait a moment." He reached into one of the huge pockets of his coat and pulled out a dog-eared paperback.
"You still have that thing?" Rick laughed aloud. "You have it with you? Edwin, you are truly the King of all the Geeks."
Edwin flicked through the pages. "Yes. See, here in 'Hovamol' - someone called Loddfafnir is supposed to have got into that domain somehow. But how? That's the question." He paused, looking up at the tree. "I have a theory that these sites—these models of their Axis Mundi concept—were believed to connect to the real thing, in the same way that the Greeks associated Mount Parnassus with the home of their gods. I think the Nordic peoples believed that a person put into the ritual pool could be transported into the realm of Yggdrasil, if the gods favoured them—" The flow of words stopped abruptly, and the light went out of his eyes. "I was going to write my doctorate on it."
Edwin's shoulders drooped and he seemed suddenly diminished; tired and sad. He was back in reality now.
The silence was torn by Rick's laughter.
"It's no wonder you've had to study birds with feathers, Edwin – you'll never get near the other kind."
Janie rounded on Rick. "While you can't seem to keep away from them."
A longer and more charged silence followed. Janie shot an anxious glance at Emmi. In fact, they were all looking at her. She tried to smile, but it wouldn't come. So she turned and walked away.
Bloody Rick. Why the hell did he have to come back? He'd been out of their lives for so long. And things had been fine. She'd been fine. Ok, so her life wasn't perfect. She knew that. Things needed to change. But she was working on it.
Emmi scowled, expending her fury on another defenceless stone. She'd been wrong when she'd thought he’d changed. Nothing had changed.
That performance when he first arrived was typical. She felt the colour rising in her face again at the recollection. Damn. He'd made sure he stroked her hand as he took it, his fingertips brushing against her palm. Nothing that would be noticed by the others. He was too clever for that. But he'd known what he was doing. He'd wanted to cause that shock of sensation as he touched her skin, and to see her react to it. She could kick herself for having given him the satisfaction. She snorted. Or better still, him.
As Emmi came to the trees again, the raven fluttered over to her and sat on a nearby branch. She scarcely noticed it now.
Yes, "performance" was the right word. He always had to make an entrance, an impression. There was always some reaction he wanted to raise. Always an audience. An audience…
Emmi began to feel odd. What had she been saying? She sought back for her train of thought, but her brain seemed suddenly sluggish. Something about… no…
She shook her head sharply, trying to dispel the mist that appeared to have filled it. This turned out to be a mistake. Her skull seemed to fizz, and she felt as though the earth beneath her tilted on its axis and then snapped back. She stumbled, then dropped to her knees.
She had no clear thought now. All the world was made up of the blank white mist that enveloped her mind. All except… except…
There was a dark spot in the mist; a point of blackness. A cold malevolence flowed from it, and everything else flowed into it, sucked away from her into that vacuum of blackness…
With an effort that seemed to take all her strength, she focused on this one fixed point. A point of blackness; a dark spot in the mist… She felt her mind slipping away again.
No. This would not happen.
She exerted herself once more, straining to identify that one fixed point. Black. Blackness. Black… feathers!
It was a bird. It was a black bird. It was a raven.
She could see it now, its eye glinting at her; hostile, implacable. Her own will rose in fierce defiance of the one that tried to drain it. With all that was left in her, she wished it – willed it away. The bird cried loudly and took to the air.
Footsteps, running, growing closer. Emmi raised her head. Trees. She felt cold. Someone took her arm and began to lift her.
Other figures were approaching. They looked worried, especially Edwin... Edwin. She smiled vaguely and began to look about her.
As she struggled to her feet, she looked up into the face of the handsome, blond man who was helping her up. Damn she wanted a cigarette.
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