Page 5 of The Dragon Ring
“This is ridiculous,” I said out loud, then wished I hadn’t. The mist swirling between the forlorn trees deadened my voice to nothing. The silence had been making me feel very alone, but breaking it was worse. I took my phone out of my pocket again. Thank goodness it hadn’t got wet in the swampy pool, but it still said zero bars. I must be in the back end of beyond for phone service. I shoved it back into my pocket.
All around me the mist swirled and eddied.
Twigs crackled.
Footsteps on dead leaves.
Coming toward me through the mist.
I swung round, heart pounding. Who was it?Whatwas it?
A sheep emerged from the gloom and bleated at me. A small, brown sheep, nothing like the round, white woolly creatures most farmers keep. In fact, it looked more like a goat than a sheep. A second, similar sheep materialized out of the mist, then a third. They stood in a row looking at me out of their narrow-pupiled eyes. Nothing to be afraid of in sheep. My heart steadied.
Then I saw the boy. The mist thinned to reveal his small, sturdy figure standing behind the sheep. He couldn’t have been more than eight. Thick, dark hair hung in a tangle to his shoulders and his urchin face was as grubby as mine must have been. But the strangest thing about him was his clothing. A dirty, checked tunic hung to his bare, muddy knees, and a sheepskin, slung over his shoulders like a cloak, fastened on his chest with a bronze clasp. On his feet were boots of a sort, but more like bits of animal skin tied on with strips of leather. A wooden shepherd’s crook hung over his right arm, and in the other hand he held a slingshot. A loaded slingshot. Aimed at me. We stared at one another.
“Who’re ye?” His voice was wary and strongly accented, but I couldn’t place its origin. With large, dark eyes he surveyed me from head to toe and obviously found what he was looking at to be wanting.
I smiled as I might smile at any child to put them at their ease with an adult stranger. He needed humoring. In all my time coming to Glastonbury with my father, I’d come to understand that nothing here could ever surprise me. This child’s eccentric appearance must have been something to do with the many hippies who congregated here.
“My name’s Gwen,” I said. “I’m lost, and I’m trying to get back to the town. I think I’ve come down the wrong side of the hill in the mist. Can you show me the way back, please?”
“Don’t ye come any closerer t’me.” He held the slingshot out in front of him as though he thought I might hurt him, his lips curling back in a snarl. “How’d ye get ’ere?”
That slingshot looked dangerous. “I walked, of course. And now I want to get back to my hotel and get a nice hot shower and some clean clothes. I’ve got no phone signal so I can’t ring anyone for help. Can you show me the way, please?”
From the blank look on his face he didn’t seem to have understood what I’d said. I’d have to spell it out. I held out one of my wet, jeans-clad legs. “Look. I’m all muddy and wet. I need to get home. Which way is the town?”
He stared back at me as though I were an idiot, and for a moment we stood at an impasse. Then he gave a jerk of his shaggy head and turned away. I took that as an indication to follow. The sheep did too, and all four of us trailed behind him through the thinning mist, me hurrying to make sure he didn’t get out of sight.
Scrubby trees and bushes opened out in front of me, more sheep droppings, a muddy track and even more sheep. Not a very promising aspect. The three who were accompanying us broke away and went off to graze with their fellows. Ignoring them, the boy kept on walking, glancing back from time to time as if to make sure I was following him. Or maybe to make sure I didn’t get too close.
I didn’t recognize any of this. I should have crossed the main road and been almost at the hotel in the middle of the town by now, but instead, all I saw was soggy grassland and stunted trees. Until the first hut loomed up out of the mist.
It was rectangular with a low, thatched roof sloping steeply up to where smoke was escaping through the apex to mingle with the mist. The wall beneath the thatch’s overhang appeared to be made of wattle and daub.
Aha. A historical re-enactment site. Of course. Hence the hut and the oddly dressed boy. Surely someone here would be able to tell me how to get back to the town. Maybe even give me a lift in their car. Especially if I told them who my father was. He’d been well known in re-enactment circles.
It wasn’t the only hut. A dozen similar buildings made a rough circle, the smoke from their fires hanging over them in a pall. Between lay wooden pens where pigs rooted in the mud, their stench mingling with the acrid wood-smoke. Bedraggled chickens scratched in the dirt, stacks of firewood stood near each house, and several heaped middens steamed in the cold air. A very authentic re-enactment both to look at and to smell.
This piqued my scholarly instinct. My father would have liked this place.
A woman emerged from the low door of the first hut. She straightened and stared at the boy and me, and I gazed back at her hopefully. She was about my age with greasy dark hair tied back in a thick, waist-length plait and a rather plain face that creased into a frown as soon as she saw me.
“Hello,” I said in my best librarian friendly-to-the-public voice. “Your little boy found me on the side of the hill, and I asked him to show me the way back to town. But he brought me here instead.” Maybe the little boy was backward. “I’m sorry to bother you, but is there someone here who could tell me how to get back? Or even better, give me a lift back themselves? Has anyone here got a car?”
The woman’s hand rose to her chest and her fingers sketched a shape in the air, fear etched onto her face. I realized with a start that she was warding off evil. In fact, she thought Iwasevil.
The boy went to her side, the slingshot aimed at me afresh. “She do talk funny,” he said in a low voice. “I thought I’d best bring ’er ’ere. I think she be fairy folk.”
Fairy folk?
The woman’s frown deepened, making her look older than I’d thought at first. “Or a Yeller ’air spy. You done right.” She looked me up and down with open suspicion. “She’s not from round ’ere, thass for sure. Look at ’er clothes. ’Ow’d she get through the marshes by ’erself? Someone must’ve showed ’er.” Her voice grated with the same fear I’d felt in the boy. Why would she be frightened of me, and what was she talking about? Was this some sort of secret project I’d stumbled on?
“I’m not a fairy,” I said, grasping onto the boy’s words. This conversation was taking a very strange direction. “And I’m not a spy. I don’t know what marshes you’re talking about unless you count the stinking pond I just fell into, which is why I’m so dirty.” I encompassed my muddy apparel with a gesture of my hands that made both of them take a step back as though they thought I might be about to attack them. “I was up on the Tor scattering my father’s ashes. I just need to get back to my hotel so I can get a hot shower and some clean clothes. If you can’t help me, can you get someone who can?”
“See?” said the boy, “I don’t unnerstand most of what she sez.”
The woman nodded. “Got that last bit though, din’t we? Go fetch Geraint. ’E’ll know what to do with ’er. And gimme your crook. If she do anything odd, I’ll fetch ’er one wi’it.” She glared at me. “Ye stand there and don’t budge. Ye’re our prisoner now.” The boy thrust the crook into her waiting hands and ran off toward the biggest of the huts shouting Geraint’s name.
