The Best British Fantasy 2013

by Steve Haynes

  She thought again of the way her mother had said goodbye, walking down the platform after the train as if she hadn’t wanted Steph to go. Then she’d turned before she was quite out of sight, taken her new husband’s arm and walked away, a spring to her step, off to live in some cheap bar on an unfashionable stretch of Italian coastline. Steph scowled. She had asked if she could go too – just once – and she didn’t really remember the words her mother had used, but she remembered the look in her eyes. Steph knew, when she saw that look, that it wasn’t any use. The flat in London was already sold – the one that lay on a street, a proper street – and now she was here in the Cotswolds with her dad, nowhere to go and nothing to do, in the far reaches of the back of beyond.

  But it’s beautiful, a voice said in the back of her mind, and Steph shook the thought away. She didn’t want it to be beautiful, didn’t want the sun to be pressing down insistently on the top of her head, shining on the mellow stone of the church. It was late summer, nearly time for school, and that meant everything starting, her life here; everything beginning again.

  A bell rang behind her, tinny and shrill, and Steph jumped. A bicycle flew past, its tyres whizzing against hot tarmac. ‘Watch it,’ a voice said, and there was a flash of yellow hair. The girl braked, set down her feet, wheeled the bike around. ‘You moved into Willow Cottage,’ she said to Steph. She made it sound like an accusation.

  Steph nodded.

  ‘We’re off to the Rollrights,’ the girl said. Her hair was pale, her skin tanned to honey, a tone darker than the buildings behind her. ‘You want to see the Rollrights?’

  Steph shrugged. She didn’t know what the Rollrights were, whether they were things or people, and didn’t much care either way.

  ‘You got a bike?’

  Steph shook her head. She hadn’t needed a bike, had always used the bus or the tube.

  ‘You should have borrowed one, like me.’ The girl grinned. ‘Well, get on then.’

  Steph got onto the back, found herself reluctant to hold on but didn’t have much choice; she put her hands around the girl’s waist as they headed away, strangely intimate, the shadow of their wheels churning on the pavement, and realised that she didn’t even know her name.

  The girl was called Holly, and the other part of the ‘we’ was Anne. They were Steph’s age – fourteen – and would be in her class in school. The three of them walked up a path from the warden’s hut, where an information sign informed Steph that the Rollright Stones were a thing, not a family; but the place was green and empty and she wondered why they had come here, where there was nothing. They passed a few walkers on their way, and all of them were Steph’s father’s age, and they didn’t seem particularly excited about anything much.

  ‘Race you,’ said Holly, and they charged up the rest of the slope under the late summer sun until they doubled over, laughing, and Steph looked up to see a stone circle at the top of the hillside.

  She pulled a face. It was smaller than she’d imagined when she’d seen the sign at the bottom. The circle was wide, but the stones were nothing but a jumble of worn-down teeth. She had imagined something like Stonehenge, towering, formed into rough arches.

  ‘The King’s Men,’ said Anne, and she ran to the nearest stone and slapped it before weaving in and out of the next.

  ‘They’re supposed to be soldiers, turned to stone by a witch,’ Holly said. ‘Stupid, really. But it’s pretty cool up here. You can see for miles.’

  Steph looked out over the landscape. It was green and rolling and went on and on. A few small villages nestled into it, calm and cosy and safe. She couldn’t see her old home at all. She wondered if her mother was out there somewhere, looking back towards her, and felt a pang of homesickness.

  ‘Witches come here,’ said Holly.

  ‘They’re not witches, idiot,’ said Anne. ‘They’re druids, or pagans or something. They have rites.’

  Steph thought she’d said rights, frowned as Anne mimed pulling a knife from her jeans and cut her own throat. Then she got it.

  ‘They don’t do that,’ laughed Holly. ‘They just – I don’t know, greet the dawn or something.’

  ‘Freaks.’

  ‘Weirdos.’

  Steph grinned at the pair as they joined hands and spun each other around, moving towards the centre of the circle. Then they stopped.

  ‘You can’t count the stones,’ said Anne. ‘If you count them three times and get the same number, you get a wish.’

  Holly snorted. ‘I thought it was ‘the man will never live’ who can do that,’ she said. ‘I always thought that meant, if someone managed it, it means they’ll die.’

  Steph laughed, but she wasn’t really looking at the girls any more. She was looking around at the circle, the whole empty place, nothing to do, nothing to see, but it didn’t feel like that, not really; she had a sudden sense of people coming here, century upon century, because there was something here after all: something important. She wondered for a moment if maybe they had killed people here, put them to death while they sang and the stars wheeled overhead, but then she shook the thought away. It was a pile of rocks and empty fields and nothing more. If she was in Italy, there’d be the sea. She could swim. There would be shops and things to do and people, lots of people. She looked back at Holly and Anne and found they were staring at her.

  Holly shrugged, as if Steph had asked her a question she couldn’t answer. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Let’s go and see the Knights.’

  u

  The Whispering Knights were a collection of tall stones, four or five of them together a distance away from the main circle, and they didn’t look like knights to Steph. There was a fence around them, each black strut ending in a blunted arrow.

  Holly and Anne walked together, talking about what their friends had been doing, Janey and Finch and Tom, names Steph didn’t know. She cut away and went towards the stones. They were taller than she had thought, broad and powerful but rough, their skin pocked and pitted.

  Their skin, she thought, and smiled at herself. They weren’t knights; the name was more exciting than the place.

  ‘They can tell your fortune,’ Holly said close to her ear, and Steph jumped. ‘They see the future. If you sit and listen, they’ll tell you who you’re going to marry.’

  Anne, behind her, laughed. ‘Jason Dereham,’ she said. ‘That’s who Holly’s going to marry.’

  Holly hit out at her friend, and judging by the face she pulled Steph gathered that Jason Dereham would have been her last choice on the planet.

  ‘I wonder who you’ll get?’ Holly said. ‘Hmm, Cal Parker might do.’

  ‘Get real,’ said Anne. ‘Maybe Ben Hodson.’

  ‘Or Marcus.’

  The two joined hands, laughing, and Steph pulled an uncertain smile, unsure if they were mocking her or if the boys they named might actually be someone she could like. Then she shook her head. She wasn’t going to fall for some local kid, marry some local kid; she wasn’t going to stay here at all.

  ‘You should try it,’ said Holly.

  Steph shook her head. ‘I’m not getting married.’

  Holly shrugged. ‘Maybe you will, maybe you won’t. It’s fate. It’s up to the stones to decide.’

  Steph snorted.

  ‘Let the stones decide!’ chanted Anne. ‘Let – the – stones – ’

  ‘Fate,’ said Holly. ‘Come on, we’ll all do it, won’t we, Anne.’

  ‘I don’t believe in fate,’ said Steph, ‘or any of that. I don’t believe there’s one person we’re supposed to be with. It’s all bullshit.’

  Holly pulled a face, half-shocked, half-amused. ‘Don’t insult the stones,’ she said, ‘or you’ll have to marry Jason Dereham. And you don’t know how bad that is, but take my word for it, it’s pretty bad.’

  ‘I don’t believe my mum was supposed to marry my da
d. Look how that turned out.’

  ‘But then you’d never have been born. Everything was supposed to happen,’ said Anne. ‘Come on. It’s only a laugh, anyway.’

  Steph tried to smile. Anne was right, it was only a bit of fun, and she wanted to be friends, didn’t want to be labelled the boring one or the miserable one before school even begun. The three of them sat with their backs to the railing, sinking into the long grass that grew around its base.

  ‘Close your eyes,’ Holly said. ‘Close your eyes and be quiet and wait until you hear a name.’

  Steph’s nose itched, and she scratched it. She heard a soft titter at her side: Anne. She wondered if the others still had their eyes closed or if it was all some stupid trick, whether they were making fun of her. Then she heard a voice: Holly’s voice but deeper, full of barely suppressed laughter. ‘Jason Dereham . . .’

  Anne giggled. ‘Stop it.’ And they fell quiet again. Steph felt the sun warm on her face, the soft breeze a cooler note. She could smell green things, sap rising through the grass, a sourer tang from the fields. It was different, here. There was no sense of presence, of layers of things past just beneath the surface. There was nothing at all, and it wasn’t home, and she didn’t know any boys and didn’t have to and it was all right because she didn’t have to stay.

  The sunlight stopped shining on her skin. She opened her eyes and there was a figure standing over her, someone tall, silhouetted by the sun. She felt Holly’s hand on her arm.

  ‘So,’ said the voice. It was a boy’s voice, full of amusement. ‘Who’s it going to be?’

  The boy gave his name as Kix, short-for-something-boring, and he sat next to Anne and pulled a packet of cigarettes from his pocket. He was good looking in a thin, bony kind of way, and had pale hair that hung over his eyes. From the way Holly and Anne hung on his every word, Steph gathered that he was the popular kid in school, the cool kid. Then he flicked his hair and held out a cigarette. She didn’t take it; didn’t like the smell, never had. He shrugged and passed it to Holly and she took it, breathed in deep, and from the way she tensed, Steph could tell she was trying not to cough.

  ‘So, you were asking the stones a question. Don’t let me stop you.’ Kix smiled a sardonic smile.

  ‘She’s going to marry Jason Dereham,’ Holly said and laughed, the forcefulness in her voice almost trying to make it true.

  The boy breathed a plume of faint smoke that vanished into the air. ‘No,’ he said after a while, drawing the word out slow; ‘no, I don’t think so. I don’t think Jason Dereham would do at all.’

  Steph found her cheeks colouring. ‘I’m not getting married,’ she said. ‘Marriage is a joke. It’s all a joke. I’m going to travel; I’m going to see the world.’

  ‘The world, eh?’ he leaned forward, peering at her from under his hair, so that she wondered why he didn’t brush it aside; that way, she could have seen his eyes. ‘Maybe. Maybe not. It depends what fate has in store for you, doesn’t it.’

  Steph pushed herself up from the grass. ‘This is crap,’ she said, knowing as she said it that she was burning her bridges, marking herself out as no fun and no use before she’d even started her new school, but she couldn’t help herself. ‘It’s all crap. If you think it’s fate – why did my mum leave my dad? Why did he even let her go?’ And she was walking away, fast as she could, knowing she’d have to walk all the way back into town on her own, and she didn’t care about that either; she had nowhere else to go, nowhere else to be. Only the quiet, sleeping village, where nothing seemed to happen and she knew no one.

  She looked at the King’s Men as she left the site, still in the places they had been for centuries, but looking more like people now that the sun was lower; motionless people looking back at her, their expressions nothing she could read.

  Holly caught her as she walked along the lane, chinging her bicycle bell as she stopped. Anne was nowhere to be seen.

  ‘Wait up,’ she said. ‘What’d you go chasing off for?’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Steph. ‘It’s just – ’

  ‘I got what it was. I gather things aren’t all contentment in Willow Cottage.’

  ‘Not exactly.’ Steph thought of the quiet house her father had bought after the divorce, its small rooms, the quaint thatched roof. It was the image of contentment; her father, indeed, seemed more than resigned to it. It was Steph who was angry, who had brought a note of discord into the house. But it’s their fault.

  ‘Kix really likes you,’ Holly’s voice took on a more teasing note, and something else – jealousy? Steph wasn’t sure.

  She shook her head. She remembered the way he’d looked at her through his hair, his eyes nothing but two bright points. She didn’t think he’d looked as though he liked her, wasn’t really sure if she liked him.

  ‘He said so,’ said Holly. She moved aside on the bike, making room for Steph. ‘He’s gorgeous, isn’t he. Maybe it’s him you’re going to marry.’ She looked mock-startled at Steph’s expression. ‘Just kidding.’

  Steph slipped onto the bike. ‘What’s his name anyway?’ she asked as she took hold of Holly’s waist. ‘Kix isn’t a name.’

  ‘No idea,’ Holly said, giving a quick chirr-chirr of her bicycle bell. ‘I never met him before in my life.’

  The tallest of the King’s Men was bony against Steph’s back as she closed her eyes and listened to the tour guide. She wasn’t with the tour guide, wasn’t really with anyone – she’d walked to the Rollrights this time, just for somewhere to go. She didn’t have any money but the warden hadn’t been there so she’d come in anyway, was now sitting out of sight of the guided tour while they went on about megalithic structures and burial chambers and thousands and thousands of years.

  Then she heard familiar words, and opened her eyes, startled. ‘The man will never live who can count the stones three times and arrive at the same number,’ the voice said. ‘Either that, or they’ll get their heart’s desire. Do you want to try it?’

  Steph heard murmurs of assent and footsteps edging around the stones, and caught her breath. Would they know she hadn’t paid? And then someone was close, really close, and so she stood and pointed to the nearest stone and the next, counting them herself, just another one of the group.

  She glanced around and started. It was Kix standing there, watching her with an amused expression. ‘Three, four, five,’ he prompted, and grinned.

  ‘What are you doing here? I thought you were – ’

  ‘Not me.’

  ‘How’d you know what I was going to say?’

  He tilted his head, and she got the distinct impression that he’d winked at her, though couldn’t really see his eyes.

  ‘So let’s do it,’ he said. ‘Let’s count them. You go that way, I’ll go the other.’

  Steph let out a splutter of a laugh, and nodded. She turned her back on Kix, continued around the circle, counting each pillar and boulder and stub, stepping out of the way as she crossed paths with various tourists. When she was halfway round she glanced up and looked for Kix; saw only the tour guide looking at her with narrowed eyes. She put her head down, kept going. Thirty-three, thirty-four. On around the circle, focusing on the ground so that she began to feel dizzy. When she looked up she was almost back at the tallest stone and she found that Kix was waiting for her, grinning that broad grin.

  ‘Seventy-four,’ she said, triumphantly.

  ‘If you say so,’ he said. ‘Now, the other way. Come on!’

  Steph doubled back, already growing tired of this. It was getting boring, counting the stones. But still – twenty-six, twenty-seven. It wasn’t difficult, wouldn’t take long.

  She finished the circle and once more Kix was there ahead of her. Steph smiled at him, ready to count the last few stones before the tallest – she’d counted that already, hadn’t she? And she drew alongside, and looked puzzled.

  ‘P
roblem?’

  ‘Seventy-six,’ she said. ‘No, that can’t be right. I must have missed – when – ’

  ‘Never mind. Once more, back the other way.’

  And so she did, she made her way around the circle, making sure to count each stone. And she’d counted the tallest already: definitely. This time there could be no mistake. When she reached the starting point, she wasn’t surprised to see that Kix had beaten her to it; she had taken her time. She counted the last couple of stones and her smile faded.

  ‘Seventy – but – ’

  He grinned again, that knowing grin she wasn’t sure she liked.

  ‘So it’s true,’ he said. ‘And no heart’s desire for you, young lady.’

  ‘Or you.’

  ‘What makes you say that?’

  ‘You got the same number? Three times?’

  He tapped his finger on the side of his nose. ‘That’d be telling.’

  ‘So what did you wish for?’

  ‘I have no need for wishes, Stephanie. I have everything I need. And the things I want, I can take.’

  She looked at him uncertainly. ‘What do you mean?’

  He tilted his head on one side, as though he was listening. ‘I have to go. See you later, Stephanie who wants to see the world.’

  ‘It’s Steph. What did you mean?’

  But he just did that quick gesture again over his shoulder, the slight bob of his head that could have been a wink, could have been anything at all. And his words floated back, so faint she could hardly tell what he said: ‘Which world did you want to see?’

  Steph stared after him. She’d meant to ask who he was, whether he lived here or was just holidaying, whether he would be in school come the autumn. Instead she’d let him walk away, having discovered nothing at all.

  ‘He was weird,’ Steph said, her voice rising. ‘He said if he wanted something he’d just take it. What do you think he meant? I don’t know what he meant.’ She had found Holly and Anna sitting by the church, drinking cans of coke and tapping their feet against the wall.