The Name of Seven

By Peter Ashby

Something is moving at the back of the Universe. The older races of Earth know it, but the one who must follow it to its source is oblivious. Until, the trauma of a hit-and-run accident flings Sara Parkinson into a maelstrom of drama and intrigue. An impossible rescue at the dead of night, encounters with bizarre allies in the oddest of places - Sara fails to link these disparate events. But destiny brings Karmel, a troubled genius whose coming will test her to the far limits. Pursued by the implacable Mawdrik who covet what she can lead them to, her journey takes her from the rains of the English Lakes to the heat and passion of Spanish Granada, to exotic new worlds and a realm beyond reason where she must unlock a secret that must never be shared. From cigar-smoking trolls to fine cuisine on alien worlds, from flamenco to the depths of space and the horrors of parallel realities, The Name of Seven is an unforgettable adventure of cosmic implications.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Sep 10, 2014
• ISBN: 9781326014421

Book preview

The Name of Seven

THE NAME OF

SEVEN

PETER ASHBY

To find out more about The Name Of Seven, visit:

http://www.thenameofseven.com

Copyright © 2014, Peter Ashby

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted by any means—whether auditory, graphic, mechanical, or electronic—without written permission of both publisher and author. Unauthorized reproduction of any part of this work is illegal and is punishable by law.

ISBN: 978-1-326-01442-1

Searching For A Name.

The ways into destiny are legion.

Some who are chosen to walk them fall into their fate like pieces of broken sky, bearing with them a fragment of the cosmos with which to illuminate the path.

Some are sought after and followed and nurtured with tenderness from the shadows, unaware of their calling until, like a careful hand uncovering a precious flame, they are made known to themselves and to those who are meant to walk with them.

Yet others are forged by fire and pain and must be stripped bare of all their fears and aspirations before they can be remade.

And some... some must travel all of these roads if they are to be what the unknowable universe requires of them. Theirs is the ultimate joy, and the greatest curse. For only they will glimpse something akin to the true nature of things, not as men and mortals would have it be, but as it really is.

Part One:

The Door In The Deep

Chapter One

Cumbria, North West England: February

When the impact of the speeding car threw her across the road, Sara Parkinson had mere seconds to process the images of her last conscious moments before she fell into darkness.

The high street angled away from her, engulfed in a rolling red haze as passers-by dropped their shopping bags and ran to help. So slow! It seemed that they were running against the tide, and Sara was being dragged out into an angry ocean that roared at her back. An old woman screamed and fainted, staggering off the pavement that had been made slippery by rain, the shopping she carried spilling from the bag. Eggs splattered across the tarmac, golden ribbons of yolk smattering on Sara´s face.

A searing assault of pain, and her head was lolling away from the sidewalk. She saw it through the cage of her clawed fingers, frozen into uselessness by the dislocation of her shoulder.  It was the car. It was the same green car that had been following her for the last three days. Now it had ground and spun to a halt across the gulf of haze that was the dimming road, the drivers´ door smashing into a lamp post as the occupant hurled it wide open, sprang from the seat and sprinted towards her. Another spasm of lightning and terror; she felt a cold hand cradling her cheek, saw the wasted, blade-sharp, agonised face of a man with a piercing through his left eyebrow, and heard a voice: I´m sorry, I´m so sorry, but this had to happen… You´ll know soon...

Then the bloody haze swamped her, and Sara did not remember anything for a time.  She briefly came round in the ambulance, where she was drenched by a shuddering wave of nausea. The paramedics held her as she vomited burning acid, and then she mercifully passed out.

Sara fell again. To begin with, all she knew were ice and cold lights that spun around her in a dark sky. She had the ephemeral sensation that she was thousands of feet above the ground, borne up and tossed around by an unimaginably powerful wind. Then, as she descended and felt the frost penetrating her bones,  the darkness retreated and domed far overhead and through the ensuing  grey came the shadowy images of things, monstrously thin and lurching just beyond sight like emaciated giants striding through fog.

Then she heard a sound in the remote distance, and her feet made contact with something - an angled plane, unseen and unknown but against which she gained enough purchase to be able to run. The sound was felt rather than heard, a dull resounding beat of such low frequency that it vibrated inside her with a visceral, liquid resonance.   Over and over again, and then a pause, and each time it was closer. And she knew that it had only one purpose for it was coming for her.

She ran on through the grey limbo, straight up and then veering off at mad tangents in the hope of throwing the coming horror off her scent. But now the angular giant shadows were closing in on her, coalescing, joining into a net of ragged dark in which the gaps rapidly filled until she was completely enclosed.

Screaming was futile. She had no breath nor sense of limbs or body. Above, the facsimile of sky was reducing to a tiny pinprick and below, the ground shrank away, a dwindling circle of betrayal as the dark throat pulsed and then constricted.

Then, at the last moment, words came: Before you know who you are, we will eat you.

Sara kicked and swore as she lurched into consciousness. Rectangles of garish light swept by overhead and her whole body trembled with the jarring of the gurney. She heaved up towards the lights but was jerked back by the bands secured across her body, then she heard more voices:

... had to restrain her... that car following us...  gave the police the slip... more sedative...

Sedative! They´ve drugged me! But even as the fear took hold, the frigid terror of not being able to escape, Sara dropped out of consciousness once again.

When she came round, it was with her left arm flailing and a raw and raging lust to escape. A nurse on the other side of the room dropped the clipboard she was looking at and was by the bedside in a moment, gripping her wrist and pushing her battering fist hard into the mattress, but there was kindness and concern in her voice.

‘Hey now, it’s okay, pet. Just calm yourself down. Everything’s going to be all right.’

Sara threw her body up in an attempt to push her off, but the woman turned her face to one side in self-protection, and held on. Again, Sara tried to gather her strength and arched her back weakly but this time she could barely raise herself an inch from the mattress. All the time, the nurse kept talking, quietly, steadily, telling her there was no need to be afraid, telling her that the nightmare was over now.

Sara let go, gulping huge breaths, and sagged weakly against the nurses´ chest, feeling the strong warm arms around her shaking body.

‘There was a throat. It was swallowing me.’ The woman held her and soon, her trembling subsided and instead of the black nightmare, there was brilliant artificial light, bare cream-coloured walls and a door that was half open on to a busy hospital ward. She also realised that her right arm was secured in a sling.

As she became fully awake and began to process these details, the sickness and pain flooded back with a vengeance. The nurse eased her into the bed and propped a couple of pillows behind her before whipping a cardboard tray from the top drawer of the bedside cabinet. She held it to Sara’s mouth while she spat blood and spittle, then wiped the residue from the young woman´s mouth with a tissue.

‘I´m bleeding,’ wheezed Sara. ‘What’s wrong with me?’

‘Don’t worry, pet. You bit the inside of your cheek when you had the accident. Apart from that, you have a dislocated shoulder and some concussion and a few bruises - no broken bones but we’re keeping you in overnight for observation, just in case. You´ll be canny sore for a day or two.’

‘I feel... my head feels funny.’

The face of the nurse drifted in and out of focus, a fuzzy pink disk with smudges for eyes. ‘They had to give you something to settle you on the way here. You almost knocked one of the paramedics out. That´s a canny good left hook you´ve got! It must have been the shock of the accident. Now, let´s get you comfy-’ 

‘What accident?’ Sara lay back on the pillows, exhausted and drenched with cold sweat, and tried to focus on the nurse’s face, this time with more success. It was round and almost as red as her curly hair, and she had brilliant blue eyes - the face of a woman in her fifties, and a smile that Sara began to hope was genuine and not simply the requirement of her trade.

‘Don’t you remember anything? A car hit you, pet. In the high street .’

‘Where...  am I?’

‘You’re in the Regional General, pet. They had to bring you over here. There’s a bed shortage out west, you see.’

‘An accident. Is that what you said?’ Sara tried to concentrate, and remembered something. A green car.      

‘I was - somebody was following me.’ She caught the nurse’s eye, then looked at her name badge, seeking the comfort of an identity. The nurse was called Audrey McCann.

‘I know, pet,’ said Audrey. Her smile had gone. ‘You kept shouting about it in the ambulance. The Ward Sister’s called the police.’

Sara was quiet. The police were coming?  She didn’t want this. Things like this did not happen to her, not in her kind of existence. All she wanted was to drive the shadows of the nightmare from her mind. Home. She needed home and bed. But as soon as she tried to move the pain in her right shoulder had her crying out.

‘Try not to move it, pet. The doctors have put it back in place but you won´t be able to use it for a while.

‘Can I have some water?’ Audrey poured her a glassful and held it for her while she drank.

‘Thanks… Audrey.’ Audrey smiled in a motherly way, then busied herself around the bed, straightening the sheets and fluffing up the pillows again before checking Sara’s blood pressure.

‘There you go now.’ Audrey stroked Sara´s clammy cheek with the freckled back of her hand. ‘Feeling a bit better now?´

Sara nodded, exhaustion taking her voice.

‘I’ve got to go now. You know what it´s like. Saturday night and we’re run off our feet. I’ll check in on you later, though. Don’t worry, pet. You’re going to be a hundred per cent in no time.’

Only minutes later, or so it seemed, Sara was startled out of a troubled half-sleep by the murmur of male voices outside the door.

‘She’s just through here,’ said one with a genial lowland Scottish accent. ‘Go on in. She’s quite a looker. I wouldn’t say no to - oh!’

The door opened. ‘Thanks, doctor - I can see Miss Parkinson is awake.’ The other voice was tinged with vague disapproval. The young constable who walked in was tall, dark haired and appeared to be completely exhausted but after he had pulled up a chair and sat down, he gave her a sympathetic if weary smile

‘Are you okay to answer a few questions, Miss? I’ll try not to keep you long - you must be feeling terrible.’

They went through the usual formalities, and he jotted her biographical details down. Sara wondered how many times he’d had to take note of similar information, and if this time was really going to be any different from the rest.

‘Sara... um, can I call you Sara?’ She nodded. ‘You were shouting in the ambulance - you know, before they put you under - that you thought the car that hit you had been following you for some time? I just want to confirm if that´s right?’

‘I can’t remember what I said.’ She stopped studying his oddly shadowed features and turned her face away, disconcerted by some trace of unconformity that was making her throat tingle as if she were breathing in the searing fumes of  strong bleach. Seldom had she seen anybody who looked so utterly tired, but that was all. But... if it was all, then why did she feel so uneasy in his presence?

‘ I think so... No, I´m positive. It was the same car that I’ve been seeing for days.’ Hearing herself say it out loud for the first time, she experienced a sudden jolt of shock.

‘Don’t suppose you can give me the make or the registration, anything like that?’

‘I´m sorry.’

‘What about the driver?  What did he look like?’

Sara turned her mouth down and shook her head. ‘I think he had a pierced eyebrow, but that´s about it. There´s nothing else. Didn´t you find anything there? At the scene?´

There was a pause before he answered.

‘No’, he said, very quietly. ‘Nothing. But how about you tell me everything you can?´ he added  quickly, appearing to throw off a little of his tiredness.

She could picture the car, parked on the corner opposite her flat and half concealed by a wheelie bin and the rain-streaked trunk of a cherry tree. Then again, in the supermarket car park, as she was running to catch the bus. That time, she’d slowed down and turned around in order to catch his eye and warn him off with a glare but the driver had suddenly put his foot on the accelerator and was speeding out of the entrance before she’d been able to get a good look at him. The third and last time before the accident, she had noticed the vehicle cruising slowly after her on the dark side of the street as she walked home the previous night from a local wine bar. That had been the worst, the most unnerving. That was when she’d started to be afraid.

She told the constable everything she could, but she knew that her words lacked conviction, even to herself. He said that she should contact him if she remembered anything more, but without something more concrete to go on there was little they could do except to wait and see if the mystery hit-and-run driver re-offended.

‘This is stupid,’ she breathed, settling back against the pillows after he’d left. I´m fine. I just want to get home and stop wasting everyone’s time.

But as Sara Parkinson fell asleep, everything began to change.

It was near the end of a long hard shift, and Audrey McCann was bone tired. She longed for a breath of fresh air and to get away from the smells and sounds of the ward, however much an integral part of her life they were.  Jim would already be waiting for her, standing in the rain with an umbrella, smoking a sly cigarette even though he was supposed to have given up at New Year. They’d be home in ten minutes, and she’d give the dogs and the cat a good fuss before letting them out in the back garden to do their business. Then they’d all of them settle down with a bottle of wine, some fish and chips from the takeaway two doors down, and a trashy film from the video rental store. Tomorrow, they’d drive over to see Becky and the kids…

But she’d promised to look in on that young lady one more time. There was something forlorn about Sara Parkinson that touched Audrey right in her soft centre, as it still did even now after all these years. She’d been sworn at by drunks today (water off an old duck’s back), ranted at by irate and impatient doctors down the phone - she’d borne that stoically, as always - but she still had a minute to look in on Sara Parkinson. What little information they had gleaned suggested that her mother lived in Paris, but they’d had no direct contact since Miss Parkinson was a child. The father had remarried and his whereabouts were unknown, and there was somebody named Carl whom the police said was possibly an ex-boyfriend but who hadn’t answered the mobile number they had found in an address book among her possessions . A hit-and-run accident was always bad news, and took time to come to terms with. There was always that nagging doubt, after all, as to whether or not it had been intentional.

Audrey collected her bag from the cloakroom, said goodnight to the graveyard shift, and headed off down the corridor. Miss Parkinson’s door was three-quarters closed, just as the young policeman had left it, and she pushed it open cautiously, not wishing to disturb Sara if she was asleep.

In all her thirty-two years of nursing, Audrey McCann had experienced almost everything that her difficult profession could throw at her. She had sat with dying patients and counted their final breaths, the last human contact that they were ever to know before they moved on into the unknown. She’d given both wonderful and devastating news to more joyful and despairing souls than she could ever hope to recall; consoled mothers on the loss of their children, and once she’d helped a precious new life into the world in the foyer of the old hospital. Audrey was pragmatic, stoical, sceptical about anything that she had not seen with her own eyes, yet at the end of the day she believed fervently in human dignity and the goodness that surely resided in everybody, however deeply hidden it sometimes was.

Afterwards, Audrey doubted her own sanity before wondering just how low her blood sugar levels had dropped that night to play such tricks on her. Tiredness and hunger could have strange effects on people and in the surreal and frenetic environment of a hospital the customers were not the only ones to experience hallucinations.  She saw the empty bed and decided that the young woman must be on the toilet, even though no tell-tale strip of light shone beneath the closed door of the cubicle. Perhaps she was in trouble? Audrey walked inside.

As she did so, Audrey´s legs involuntarily went into reverse as if her waking mind was not able to process what she was witnessing. Above the empty bed, the air rippled and folded like quicksilver and a figure began to coalesce, first the feet and then the rest of it. A moment of translucency, and she was back. It was Sara, sprawled on the bedclothes in a flimsy cotton hospital gown, her bare feet damp as if with rain.

And, fleeting but enticing on the air was the fragrance of violets and woody spices and the distant echo of a man´s desperate voice.

Dream girl...

.          .          .          .          .          .          .          .          .          .          .          .          .          .          .

The severe weather that was punishing much of England that night barely reached as far south as the coast of Brittany, yet it was enough to make a drama of surge and swell out of the incoming waves and toss fragments of cloud across the disk of the full moon. Undeterred by this turmoil, the three siblings sported in the air a thousand feet above the cliffs and inlets of Finisterre, spiralling and darting in play as the stark light glanced off their wings; Claudette, her dark mane of hair glinting green like a cormorants back and streaming in the gale like seaweed; tawny haired Lionel; and golden François. As always during their moonlit contests, François was the fastest, outpacing them time and again as he turned extravagant somersaults in the face of the gale as if to shout at the elements, because I can in joyful defiance.

Over the jutting spine of the Point du Raz he led them, now banking and rising steeply, now dipping or veering recklessly close to the surging ocean and laughing so much that they could hear him above the storm sounds as he slipped out of their grasp again.

Then, without warning, everything changed, for François had braked so abruptly in mid air that the others overshot him by some hundreds of yards and when they banked and circled back it was to see him descending purposefully and on a direct trajectory towards the cliffs. Claudette and Lionel shared a perplexed glance but said nothing as they headed after him. The game was over - that, they could sense without the need for questions. It was palpable, so much so that even the two of them, always less sensitive to such emanations than their brother, could feel it raging out of the north and crying beware.

They found him crouched on a steep incline of thrift and turf that was caught in a fold of the rocks and cut off from access by land and sea. Strangely, he had already removed his wings and they were lying on the grass where he had tossed them, instead of hanging from his shoulders by their cords. Lionel, the quieter and more thoughtful of the three, stood off at a short distance as Claudette squatted down next to François, pushing the unruly hair away from her face with one hand and laying the other on his shoulder.

´What is it, mon chou? Tell me.’ His body quivered under her touch. Fey, beautiful François, her little brother, her petit puce who feared nothing at all and always put the light and the joy into her life...

He turned his sea green eyes on her and flashed her a quick smile.

‘She is here, Claudette,’ he whispered, the subdued thrill making his light voice tremble. ‘They have woken her up. You understand?’ He was laughing softly, but Claudette snatched her hand away as though his skin burned to the touch.

‘Then the undermen were right,’ she said, and there was a thread of quiet alarm that ran through her words. ‘They knew it, months ago. They warned me... to take care of you.’ And not just the undermen. Conclaves from many clans and many races all across the country and beyond had been plotting the signs for much longer than months, and not only the convergences that indicated the drawing together of portents but, more disturbingly, the inexorable gathering of the opposition.

‘But I have known it for always,’ he countered rapidly, affectionately grazing her cheek with his knuckle as he searched her face for a sign of acquiescence. Claudette knew the truth in this; he had always been able to sense more than any of them, to see further between the ripples and convolutions of time but to her this ability was more bane than blessing. And knowing this, as she always had, did not make this moment any easier to bear.

´If you go south you know that you will-‘

‘Yes!’ His sudden ire silenced her. ‘I know,’ he said more gently, then he put his arms tightly around her and stifled her little sobs against his warm body. ‘This is what I have yearned for, don´t you see? Oh, merde, of course you do - how stupid of me.’

‘And we all have our part to play, yes, yes, yes,’ she said urgently, pressing her face hard into the golden hair of his chest with something close to vehemence as though she could drive away the truth with her futile anger, ‘but I´m so afraid. Too much is changing, for worse and for better, and I dread what else is waking up.’

‘It´s time we left,’ called Lionel with enough urgency in his voice that they knew, without questioning, the nature of that which was now approaching rapidly over the sea from the direction of the English coast.  François kissed his sister´s teary cheek and squeezed her hand, then the three of them lifted into the restless sky to flee inland and to spread the warning.

Chapter Two

Endymion

Within moments of her arrival, Sara knew exactly where she had come to. It was a shallow bow shaped valley, only a mile or so inland from the coast and twenty minutes drive from her home town . A country lane meandered down one side of the valley and crossed over a little stream at the bottom via a small humpbacked bridge, then ambled between tall hedges and past an old stone farmhouse. In the middle distance, there was a glimpse of the sea where the valley sloped down to a sandy bay, while inland the purple profile of the Cumbrian mountains rose over a rolling landscape of fields and copses.

She had come here more than a dozen times with Carl. They had usually parked the car on the wide verge just short of the farm before walking the public footpath between tall hedges and down the valley to the beach. There, they would run barefoot on the sand and throw seaweed at each other or sit on the rocks and share a can of beer, and twice they’d come here at night and made love under the moonlight in a summer meadow of silver grass and sleeping poppies.

But it was not the same place. It was profoundly and magically transformed.

Sara was standing in the middle of the lane, just a few yards above the bridge. Immediately, she was immersed in a myriad sensations but it was the smell of the place that was first to overwhelm her senses, because at the first sharp intake of breath her nostrils were filled with a subtle and shifting blend of floral and spicy aromas, mint and violets and cloves - only they weren’t. They were startling, unknown, quite unlike anything she had ever experienced before and somehow piercingly fresh and new as though it was the first time that she had ever truly been able to smell anything.

The setting sun had cast a trail of jade and violet shimmers on the sea, and the dimming sky was so rich and velvety that Sara almost felt that she could reach out and run her fingers through its satiny substance. Already, even so close to sundown, a multitude of emerald and sapphire stars glimmered in sinuous, unknown constellations and a fingernail sliver of moon hung low in the sky above the opalescent mists that filled the high reaches of the valley.

As for the countryside that wrapped around her like a magic carpet, everything - the fields, the hedges, even the road - was alive with a subtle and luminous aura of interweaving colours. Especially vibrant was the stream, which trilled and babbled over a bed of flattened pebbles under a swirling liquid rainbow aurora.

Where am I? ‘It´s called Endymion.’ She said the words out loud without realizing what she had done and as soon as she did so, it was as though a brilliant torch beam of understanding had found her in the twilight.

This is Endymion. There is no pollution here. The word doesn´t even mean anything! There´s no global warming, no violence. There’s no place or need for them. How utterly, astonishingly remarkable. This world has chosen not to have such things! And as Sara realised this, she knew beyond doubt that Endymion was not Earth, nor had it ever been.

In something akin to a state of bewitchment, Sara began walking slowly up the lane. She had nothing on her feet, not even a pair of socks, but the road was warm and yielded slightly underfoot. When she looked down at her toes she saw that the surface was composed of thousands of tiny, iridescent units like a mosaic, every one threaded through with a hairs breadth netting of light. The road was alive! She looked towards the verge and saw that wherever the vegetation brimmed up, a filigree of luminous and curling threads branched away from the base of the plants, each one twining under the translucent surface and rising in one of the mosaic pieces, as if - as if nature itself had decided where this road should be.

Ahead of her, the fading sunset cherished the farmhouse and its outbuildings with a brief embrace of tawny light. It was covered with creepers and looked like a rustic thatched cottage from an idealised postcard, with deeply recessed windows and a strangely organic appearance that reminded her of the buildings designed by Gaudí that she had once seen on a weekend visit to Barcelona. A dim, orange-gold lamp shone in one of the lower windows.

‘I know that none of this is real,’ she said, and heard her voice reflected back at her by the extraordinary surroundings in benevolent mockery. Who says it isn´t real?

In the hedgerows, little creatures were moving, tiny luminous animals like furry glow-worms that uncurled from beneath leaves and peered at her with curious blinking eyes as she headed up the lane. The hedges were a riot of strange bushes and herbs with ferny leaves, blue entwining climbers with pendulous fruits that pulsed in unison as they changed colour, and snowy flowers like small water lilies that gaped open and twisted towards her as she approached.

Where the lane wound to the right, a gate opened into a sloping meadow. Sara crossed the road and approached cautiously, because she could see movement within. A flock of animals was moving through the knee-high grass in the direction of a wooden trough and towards the figure that was emptying something into it from what looked like a rough hessian sack. The animals had a slight resemblance to sheep, with dense woolly coats and a lustrous sheen that matched the smoky, satin grass through which they moved. They were high in the forequarters and had only one iridescent eye, and long feathered antennae that flicked back and forth as they gathered round the trough, making soft muttering sounds of pleasure as they buried their curved anteater noses in the fragrant mixture of meal and vegetable trimmings.

They don’t eat these creatures. They only use their milk and their wool.

Then the figure straightened up and Sara rapidly shrank back among the hedge plants, which helpfully moved aside then swished back again to conceal her. She’d never seen such a beautiful man in her life. He was tall, sturdy, with an unruly mop of black hair and dark gold skin, and he was dressed in trousers that looked like faded jeans and a pale brown shirt with the sleeves rolled up above his elbows. There was some quality about him that Sara couldn’t entirely define, except that he felt right, as though he was exactly where and when he was meant to be. There was no other way to make sense of it and she could not take her eyes off him.

The young farmer hummed tunelessly as he rolled the empty feed sack up and flipped it over his shoulder, then he stood aside and watched the contentedly feeding animals with his hands thrust into his pockets. Sara was so absorbed in studying every aspect of him that she only noticed the car when it had already crossed the bridge. She swiftly crouched down and found herself at eye level with a family of the glow-worm creatures that crawled from under a frond and gently reached out with their soft tendrils to explore her face with brief, ticklish caresses.

The car drew up outside the gate with an unobtrusive feline purr. It had a picturesque, art nouveau look about it and was all flowing curves and an intricate medley of patterning around the doors and wheel arches. The tyres appeared to be made of exactly the same material as the road and its headlamps emitted silvery beams of light.

Bioluminescence. Again, Sara had no idea of where her insight was coming from, simply that she knew. There’s no exhaust, either. It´s completely self-sustaining. This is organic technology...  It´s more than that. The car is alive. It´s sentient!

The man who got out was shorter than the farmer, with fair hair and paler features and - she could see through the leaves as he walked to the gate and called to his friend - bright blue eyes. The two men laughed and chatted over the field gate a scant yard or so from where Sara was hiding. She could tell that they were speaking in English but it was with an accent that she did not recognize, and in such relaxed tones that she could not follow the thread of their conversation.

After five minutes or thereabouts, the motorist slapped his friend on the shoulder and said his goodbyes. The car helpfully unrolled a door for him and purred away up the lane, leaving a glowing trail on the road that slowly dimmed and vanished. A blue night bird with rounded owl-like wings dipped in flight across the road and a swirl of opalescent mist floated across the field, while the man remained where he was, leaning on the top bar of the gate, the fingers of one hand idly twirling a blade of grass. He was so close that even in the dusk, Sara could see the dark stubble on his face, and his hazel eyes, and hear him breathing.

It was then that she made an embarrassing discovery, by way of her newfound intuition.  The little furry glow-worm creatures were emotionally empathic and were able to mirror her feelings, because one of them opened its tiny round mouth and sighed luxuriously. Sara froze as the man turned towards her hiding place in surprise, then parted the vegetation with his big strong hands and looked down at her, wide mouthed with astonishment.

‘Wow…’ He put out a hand to help her up, keeping hold of her once she was standing. She did not move to pull away. Evidently, neither of them was inclined to let go.

‘Where did you come from?’

‘It´s a dream,’ whispered Sara. ‘It´s not real. It´s just a dream.’

He had not taken his eyes from her for an instant. ‘Well, maybe it is. For me, at least, it´s a lovely one. So, you’re the girl of my dreams, then.’ His voice and the corners of his mouth lifted. ‘You’re gorgeous!’

Sara parted her lips but she was unable to connect her thoughts to her voice. The warmth of his hand and his baffled expression of surprise mingled with pleasure, the heat rising in response inside her… oh and oh, but she could really, truly lose herself in a man like this, if only he existed. She stepped out of the hedge bottom, needing to be closer to him and to believe that he was more than a wishful invention of her traumatised mind.

But it was not to be. Without warning, she knew that something profound and