Page 2 of The Dragon Ring
“A stranger?” my mother asks, rising panic in her voice, her sunken eyes darting over the empty hilltop but finding nothing.
“Haven’t we always told you never to talk to strangers?” Every father would say the same.
My mother goes to the brow of the hill and looks down the path to the town. She shakes her head. Artie tries to free himself from our father’s iron grasp and can’t. He whines his hand is hurting.
My mother comes back, and my father holds out his hand for the bracelet.
I hesitate. I don’t want to let it go. It’s mine. The Fancy-Dress-Man gave it to me. I’ve seen the kindness in his dark eyes, telling me the gift is meant for me alone. My jaw juts in rebellion. I’m angry that my parents think differently.
“Let me see it,” my father says.
With great reluctance I hand it over. Immediately, I feel naked without it, my hand where it nestled warm against my palm, cold and lost. A tear sneaks its way out of the corner of my eye and runs down my cheek.
“Look at the work on the dragon head terminals. This is exquisite craftsmanship. It’s old, very old.”
“It’s mine,” I say tearfully. “The Fancy-Dress-Man gave it me.”
My mother’s gloved hand, tight around mine, reassures rather than admonishes. “Of course it’s yours.” There’s strain in her voice and an unhealthy flush to her thin cheeks. “You shall have it as soon as Daddy has taken a good look at it.”
And so I do eventually, after my father has completed his research and shown it to his fellow Dark Age scholars. He never tells me what he’s concluded, and I never ask. It’s enough that it’s mine again, my present from the Fancy-Dress-Man.
Too big for my wrist for years, I keep it in the little wooden jewelry chest my mother gives me before she dies. I have her to thank for it. She insists my father let me keep it, so it’s a present from her as well as the Fancy-Dress-Man.
That isn’t to be the only time I see him, though.
*
Roused from myreverie, I stroked the warm gold of the bracelet and it chased away the cold.
“Well, I can’t stand here all day reminiscing,” I said to Dad’s urn, “or someone’s likely to come up the hill, and then I won’t be able to scatter you.”
I bent and picked him up, the feeling strong that he was here, in this urn, still with me.
I unscrewed the top. This was something I’d vowed to do– something I’d promised Artie. I swallowed the lump that threatened to rise in my throat and walked the few steps to the brow of the hill.
I cleared my throat. “Dad.” My voice cracked with emotion, “I’ve brought you here, like you wanted. You’ll always be a part of Glastonbury now. You’ll be here for all eternity…” My voice trailed off. Shimmering through the cold air came a musical note, high and pure and lovely. It felt like a salutation to my father. More tears trickled down my cheeks.
No way would I let it interrupt me. “I’ll never forget you. You were the best dad ever. I know you’re with Mum now, and one day Artie and I will see you again. I love you, Dad.” I upended the urn. A sudden breeze took the ashes, spreading them across the hillside like fine snow.
The musical note swelled. Was I just overcome with the emotion of the moment and imagining it? Or was the Fancy-Dress-Man up here too, stalking me when I most wanted to be alone? Indignation welled up in me at the thought.
Because that’s what I half-believed he was. A stalker.
*
The summer afterour thirteenth birthday, Artie and I miss the last two weeks of school to go on a dig with Dad at Glastonbury Abbey. Piled into our Land Rover amidst all the paraphernalia of archaeology, we travel from our Berkshire home and set up camp in a couple of ridge pole tents on site.
Like dutiful little budding archaeologists, Artie and I set to with the mix of students and volunteers to scrape away, millimeter by millimeter, the layers of soil in the trenches that have been opened.
The end of the summer holidays arrives, and we only have a few days left on the dig. It’s evening. Everyone else has gone home or to the pub. I sit outside my tent twirling my gold bracelet in my fingers. Under my touch, the warm metal throbs with heat and for the first time in years I think about the Fancy-Dress-Man.
From where I’m sitting, the taped off area of the dig lies between me and the deserted abbey ruins. A slight movement, glimpsed from the corner of my eye, draws my gaze, and I turn my head. A faint ringing starts. Just beyond the far tape barrier stands a lone figure. A man, in tunic, trousers and a long cloak– fancy dress.
It’s him.
Memories come flooding back to me as clear as though they happened yesterday, memories I didn’t know I still had.
The bracelet burns hot against my skin as though it, too, recognizes him. I remember the earthy shades of his clothing, the russet cloak, the soft brown boots splattered with dried mud. For a long minute his dark eyes hold mine across an acre of open ground, and then he turns toward the path up to the Tor.
