The Watchers (21 page)

Alice Burton moved the red fil
e
closer to her. Highly confidential was stamped on the top and a combination lock, like the dial on a safe, protected the contents from being viewed, should curious eyes happen to glance upon them. The files had been started by the Prime Minister in December 2012 and they contained such explosive and damaging material, that they were placed, along with arms and bonds, in the PM’s private safe, in the office at number ten.

Alice remembered the first day she had opened them. She was with her trusted assistant Cynthia Rowles. Cynth’ had been with her from the moment she had stepped onto the platform of politics and Alice always said that to run the country without her “would be like running a relay without a second runner.”

It was Cynthia who had taken the file's much-guarded combination number from the previous PM's PA. And it was she who had aligned the numbers so that Alice, wearing the same suit she had worn with her audience with the queen, could open it and delve into the papers stored inside. They were current; an ongoing political strategy shared with other heads of state, namely the American president. The files contained everything their predecessors had discussed and planned over the previous three years. It was their baby. In fact, Alice recalled she had opposed the talks when she sat alongside the Prime Minister in closed, highly classified meetings.

Now, as the file sat on her desk waiting to be opened, Alice wondered how the whole thing was going to turn out. She was the Prime Minster. She was supposed to take the high-road. She was expected to lead the country, to make it more powerful and wealthy than it has ever been before. It was her chance to make a complete turn-around in the nation’s economy…the world’s economy for that matter. It was an opportunity all the powers have been waiting for. And the decision on behalf of the British people rested with her.

She pressed the intercom on her phone. “Cynthia?”

“I’m here.”

“Make a note. I want Keri Rains on board when the time comes.”

When she closed the call, Alice Burton ran the tips of her painted fingernails across the red file. Only she, the previous prime minister and Cynthia knew the code. And now, as she turned the dial, the top sprung open after she inputted the numbers; the date at the start of it all; 11-11-21-12-12.

Tom was shaken by the event
s
. Not only was the world they were now in a feast for the eyes, a mother and her daughter had been reunited, and there they were, all of them, riding white horses and charging through wondrous landscape with the wind lashing their hair.

When he'd mounted the steed, he'd been unsure about touching the delicate maiden sitting in front of him holding the reins, but with nothing else to secure himself with, he wrapped his arms around her waist as if he would have to be pried off. Her waist was tiny, as was the rest of her compared to him, but her back was tight and strong. He could see her bare shoulders as her hands clutched the horse's mane, and as she raced along, he leaned forward onto her back as her hair flew behind on the other side of her, fanning out like a trail of yellow silk.

They'd begun the journey by riding gently. They'd gone into the forest from where the maidens had emerged and as they'd ridden through the trees, they looked up and watched children in the treetops, dropping leaves and twigs down upon them and hiding again behind bunches of leafy branches. The maidens looked up and laughed and they whistled as if the sound of their shrill played with the breeze and tickled the ears of the children, making them laugh and play.

They’d cut across the corner of the forest out to the other side to fields of yellow corn and lavender of the brightest lilacs and purples. Then, as the maidens dug their heels into the horse’s bellies, they’d galloped forth into the wind that fired back at them.

Now, after a mile, they veered back into the forest where more dwellings nestled in the trees. It was quieter there as if the children had been kept away from a place so sacred. Within a clearing of the forest, another spiralled castle towered above like the one on the other side, except it was made from a formation of several gigantic trees, merging as one.

The castle was a place of great beauty and wealth. Jewels decorated the walls within the twisting branches; emeralds, turquoise and white crystals, deflecting the carbon blackness so that the beauty of it glittered in the light. Rubies surrounded the doorways, and yellow crystals, like diamonds gave light to the walkways running within the spiral, between the walls and threading upwards to points and turrets at the top.

The horses came to a stop at the bottom of the tree castle and their riders dismounted. Seven more maidens came out of the forest on the other side and steered the horses away, soothing them with whispers as they walked alongside them. “Come,” Rhiannon said. “Come and see.” They followed the path through the castle, upwards as before, except this was a direct path, not like the labyrinth on the Watcher’s side.

The group peered into doorways as they ascended, and unlike the first, they could see cosy shelters of cushions scattered on the floors and beds made of wood draped with cloths of many colours, spun with threads of gold. Finally, as they reached a level just below another at the highest peak, they came to a landing with a wooden balustrade protecting them from falling to the ground below. The group gathered there, leaning on the railing, looking out to a view of unfaltering beauty, like a picture of heaven itself.

Peering down on the forests of greens and yellows and orange, a sea of the deepest blue drifted off to the horizon where mountains stabbed at the ceiling of the vast underground cavern. They could see maidens playing and swimming in the water and some were fishing in boats that resembled tubs made from barrels, lined with giant papyrus leaves.

Tom was itching to pull out his camera, but as he moved his hand to stroke the bag that held it, he met another hand; the hand of the old man, Jesus. No words were spoken, but Tom understood his meaning. Not there, not now.

As the maidens went from the landing into a room inside the castle, the group followed them into a circular chamber, looking like an elaborate wooden bandstand, open to the elements and filled with natural light from the world outside. It was beautifully feminine, a space of calm and gaiety and yet it was solid and powerful as if its inhabitants were a force of their own, not reliant on anything masculine to give them fortitude.

The floor held a wide white spiral, weaved into brown fibres like an enormous rug that looked as if it had been made from the beards of coconuts. Around the half-walls of smooth polished oak, were pictures made from squares of mother-of-pearl. They were formed to make 3D images; pictures of gardens and flowers and mountain ranges. It was as if their whole world outside was pictured inside, like a collage of family photographs, depicting life itself with fine skill.

The furniture was plentiful as if it had been designed to hold discussions, like a meeting room. Sofas and chairs of exquisite carpentry and inlaid with pearls were placed within the circle of the room. Scattered upon them were cushions of fine silk in natural earth colours of greens and oranges and browns. On the far side, two thrones sat next to each other, carved with the most detailed parquetry interwoven with gold leaf and encrusted with precious stones. The backs of the thrones took the Mandorla shape, like the doorframe of a church. And around it, carved and inlaid with gold, were words unrecognisable to mortal man.

Tom watched Rhiannon walk to the left throne and sit upon it. The handmaidens followed her and sat at her feet, worshiping her, like the leader…no, the goddess, she clearly was.

"Sit," she said. Her voice sounded sultry and sweet, like royal blue velvet rolling off the tongue. She proffered her hand towards the seats in the centre of the room and the group went towards them, slowly, unsure where they should place themselves as if they were entering a church for the first time and wondering which pew to take. "You have been brought to our world so that we may prepare you for the tasks you are about to face. You will leave here later, except for one who will remain."

Tom looked around the group, as they, in turn, looked at each other "Who?" he asked, hoping it wouldn't be Mia.

Rhiannon held out her hand and pointed one elegant, creamy-white finger. “The man Jesus shall stay.”

Tom saw the old man smile. It was what he had always wanted and now he was content.

“But what about us?” Mia asked. “I want to stay here with the Watchers. I don’t want to go back to our world.” Everyone turned to look at her, especially Tom who noticed her reddened cheeks. “Well, I don’t,” she added stubbornly.

“You must leave. We have use for you, Lakey.”

“My name’s…”

“Wait,” Keri shouted. She was on her feet, protesting her case to the judge of the court. “What about my daughter? I’m taking her with me when I go.”

“That is not possible,” Rhiannon said. Her voice was an example of high authority that Tom had never heard before. It was unsettling.

Keri shouted, “If you think…”

“Sit down.” Rhiannon spoke quietly but her voice was firm. No one could challenge it, not even a mother frightened for the safety of her daughter.

“Who are you?” Mia asked. It was the most sensible question Tom had heard all day.
Who the hell are they?

Rhiannon smiled. “We are the maidens of Avalon.”

The maidens of Avalon?
Tom had read about the legend of King Arthur and he had seen the movies. The legend said it was the Maidens of Avalon who took King Arthur's body away when he was mortally wounded in his final battle. It was told, he was still alive when he was taken back to Avalon to a place they called the otherworld.

Rhiannon spoke. “We are all descendants of the Maidens of Avalon. All those who carry their blood reign here. My daughters will carry on the line when I live no more.”

Mia was shaking her head. “But the Arthurian legend isn’t real. It’s just a story.” Mia turned to gaze at Tom. “Isn’t it?” she said slowly.

No one answered.

Rhiannon addressed her audience
.
"It is difficult for you to understand our life and our habits. You belong to a race, which has lost its own purpose and its reason for living. Prosperity has destroyed you when it should have offered you hope. Your leaders are corrupt and your people abide by their rules. Your spirituality is divided and your tongues are foreign and misunderstood. Your relationships are broken with hatred, and your minds are closed. You have survivors, but they are not plentiful. Your academics and your scientists have worked towards greater levels of existence, but their findings have been misdirected to satisfy the greed of the ones who seek great wealth. Your medicine is weak and your lives are short because you have not explored the possibility of prolonging them." She glanced at the women in front of her. "Immortality is a state of mind. It does not concern the lines on your face or the strength of your skin. But as usual, you do not listen. You do not see."

“Some of us see,” Jesus said. “Not all of us are blind to faith or life.” He looked for assurance from the group.

Rhiannon smiled. "Yes, and that is why we named you Kudos. We have great plans for our race. In another two millennia, changes will happen you could never imagine. You are too blind, now." She moved forward as if to illustrate the weight of her message. "Understand this," she said. "You will see in time, but first, we must preserve you and our great planet if any of us are to survive."

“Okay,” said Maggie as Ja
y
sat on the floor with his legs stretched out in front of him, crossed at the ankles. “Here’s what I’m thinking…I’m thinking that the circles are messages…”

“From the Angels!”

Maggie shook her head “I think they are made by the earth itself or even, you know…God. There are many myths and folklore about gods and spirits of nature. The green man is one, otherwise known as the God of the Greenwood. And then there is Pan or Herne. They are all the male entities of nature…” Maggie combed her fingers through her long shaggy hair, as if she was intent on tidying herself up for the purpose of the story. “They are the resurgent life, the force of the forest or the field, retreating in winter to burst forth again in the spring.”

She became animated again with a spark of life in her eyes. "I think the time has come when the earth is telling us enough is enough, and that the messages are for the ones who care; the ones who can help make it breathe once more."

“So what are the messages?”

“It’s hard to say. We can only speculate, but I think some people know what the circles are telling us. People in the government!”

Another conspiracy theory!
Jay ran his hands over his eyes, using his forefingers to smooth away the weariness of them.

Maggie carried on as if he wasn't in the room. "You can't tell me that all this activity is being ignored by these people higher up. My bet is they've got people working night and day trying to decipher them if they haven't already done so. If they have found a message, they won't tell the public."

“Yeah, I get that. Your people are as corrupt as ours.”

“Look at this map.” Maggie pulled an ordinance survey map off the wall and threw it over his lap like it was a blanket. She ran her hand in a wide circle as if she wanted to elaborate how vast the area was. “This is Wiltshire. What do you see?”

Jay peered at the map, seeing stick-on coloured dots and stars, placed there by Maggie.

“The red stars depict circles; Stonehenge, Avebury, Old Sarum, and so on, the yellow ones are hills; Silbury, Windmill hill, etcetera, and these…” she pointed to a cluster of green stars. “These are white horses cut into the hills.”

“I know about the white horse of Salisbury plain, but I didn’t know there were others.”

"Oh, certainly there are. There are about thirteen white horses over Wiltshire. The oldest one is Uffington…that's in Oxfordshire. It has been dated back some 3,000 years, to the
Bronze Age.
These ones…” she pointed to the green stars again, “These are more recent, a couple of hundred years or so, but they were created by ordinary men. Look here…”

Jay looked at a picture of a white horse etched into a hill.

“The white is the chalk of Salisbury plain. The horses are all different but no one really knows why they are there…what connection there is in the scheme of things, if you know what I mean. Local groups within the parishes maintain them for the tourists, so they are quite prominent on our landscape.”

“Okay?”

Maggie smiled. “So I found a pattern; a pattern within a sacred mathematical shape. I’m very excited about it.”

Jay ran his hand under his collar. It was hot up there in the eaves.

“By connecting the horses and using the principle of reflection,
assuming everything has an opposite,
I can make a Star of David inside two perfect circles. See?”

Jay looked at the map at the Star of David spanning a whole county. “Uh, huh. What’s that place in the middle?”

“Pewsey.”

“What’s in Pewsey?”

“A collection of ancient randomly placed Sarcen stones,” she said without a pause. “Pewsey Vale is where it is said stones were taken for the construction of Stonehenge itself.” She made that face of hers, the same look of endearment she used whenever she talked about the monoliths around the UK.

“Uhm, hang on. Why did they make the white horses and why did they place them in those exact locations? I mean they didn’t have Google Earth then, nor the Internet for that matter.”

“No, but they had the Masonic lodge. The people who built the horses were rich landowners, so it’s likely they were all members of the Masons. What if the Masons knew something ordinary people didn’t know? Look at Washington and the layout of its streets, and how about the Masonic influence on the dollar bill? It all leads to something.”

“So the white horses were placed in these locations so that hundreds of years later, a little lady called Maggie could come along and find the true meaning.”

She shrugged. "I'm nothing in the scheme of things. I am simply following a route that no else has taken, as far as I know. If it wasn't me, it would have been someone else." She pointed to a Google Earth image of a place that resembled a cross-section of a brain. "That's Avebury."

Jay recalled some information he’d seen in one of Fran’s touring leaflets. “Where the stone circle is! It’s not far from Stonehenge.”

“That’s right! Avebury is highly significant in our quest. It is ancient and it’s shrouded in mystery and legend. I believe it could possibly be an entrance to the otherworld…to Caer Sidi.”

“Hang on a minute. That’s a bit speculative. I get it up to the bit where the Challis Well is connected to the tor…and I suppose I could excuse you for the white horse’s bit…but I don’t see any connection to Avebury.”

“So I’ll tell you,” she gloated. “Ever heard of Ley lines? They are electromagnetic lines of energy. You even have them in your country. In the South-West region of England, there begins two infamous Ley lines called Micheal and Mary. Michael is the positive energy and Mary is the negative…don’t ask me why.” She raised her eyebrows as she scrutinised Jay’s expression on his forever doubtful face. “They are like Yin and Yang. They run alongside each other from St Michael’s mount in Cornwall to St Michael’s tower on Glastonbury Tor and at Avebury, they kiss. It is where they meet before they take off again going north.”

Jay thought about Maggie loving every minute of the opportunity to explain her research to someone else. “When two lines of energy meet as they do in Avebury, you can bet your bottom dollar it is a place steeped in mystery. I’m telling you, American boy, there is a strong likelihood that Stonehenge and Avebury are also entrances to the otherworld and we’ve got until 4.45 tomorrow morning, on the dawn of the summer solstice, to find one of them.”

"Hold on a minute, Maggie. One minute you're telling me, the entrance to the otherworld as you call it, is at the Glastonbury Tor. Now you're telling me its Avebury, or Stonehenge." He shook his head as she looked hurt by his doubt. "Honey, you've got to slow down. I came here to England to find my girl. I didn't sign up for all this sh.."

“Stop!” Maggie yelled.

Jay stopped talking. He was worried she’d have a stroke or something.

"Haven't you heard anything I've told you, stupid boy? If it was easy, we'd all be getting in, wouldn't we? We'd all - anyone with an interest," she said snidely, “would be knocking on some fabled door and dropping by to borrow a cup of sugar from the Watchers, wouldn’t we? Well, things don’t work like that.” She paused for breath. “Look. There are many entrances to the otherworld. They’re all over the planet. The important thing is, is the time, see? It has to be at a certain time. That’s what the circles are for, I think. To tell us the time and how to get in. But no one’s looking at that…not normal folk…everyone’s too blind, see?”

He nodded in sympathy to her passion. How many years had Maggie been waiting for the opportunity to go with someone to these sacred places, given a reason for going? Jay guessed she had realised her numbers had come up when Jay arrived on her doorstep, and she wouldn’t let go until she found what she was looking for. And, despite himself, Jay found himself praying she knew what she was doing and that soon, he would find Fran and he could go back home. And that was the craziest thing ever!

Maggie began to unpin maps and pictures from the walls and as she went she stuffed them into Jay’s hands, creating a pile of unruly papers. When she was satisfied she had everything she needed, she said, “Come on. Pick up your car keys.” With the sound of her heavy artificial leg thudding across the floorboards, she moved towards the stairs. “Come on.” She stopped and looked at him as she put her weight onto her walking stick. “You’ve got SatNav, haven’t you?” she asked.