The Dream Weavers

by Barbara Erskine

  ‘I will confess all to him when I return, and I will gladly do penance if he requires it.’

  The young man led the way confidently, following an almost invisible path, seeming to know which way to go even without the help of the sun, which was still lost in the morning haze.

  She followed him blindly, sometimes lagging behind, sometimes catching him up to walk at his side, Ava always at her heels, Theo a little way behind, her thoughts fixed on Elisedd and the fact that before the sun went down she was going to see him again. This man had been a part of her life since she had first set eyes on him all those years ago at her father’s court in Sutton, when the great dyke was under construction with its ditches and ramparts and high wooden palisade, already breached in many places. Now here she was deep in the kingdom of Powys, in the land of dragons and magical hares, coming closer to him every moment as they walked along the river valley, ever deeper into the wild hills. She was going more slowly now on the steep stony tracks. Every now and then the young men ahead of her were pausing to wait for her as she plodded on, her shoes worn into holes, her feet dusty and sore even before they had started their journey. Above them the sky slowly cleared and the sun beat down. Two ravens were circling high above the wooded hills, their croaking calls echoing from the cliffs above the valley.

  ‘Dad, I’ve had a ping from Emma’s phone.’

  Simon was dozing in the car outside the little church of St Melangell, at the end of the long single-tracked road that led from Llangynog when he answered his phone.

  ‘Felix?’ He sat up and groaned. He was cold and stiff. There was a house nearby, he could make out the outline of it in the dark, but when he had knocked a couple of hours before there had been no one there. It was some kind of religious retreat house, as far as he could make out, and he had hoped against hope that Emma would be there, but the house was in darkness, the church was locked, the car park empty and the valley was silent. ‘Where is she?’

  ‘Not far from you. Up on the hillside. I just spoke to her. She’s cold and lost, but she’s OK. Phone her now. She knows you’re quite close.’ He clicked off and Simon was left staring at his blank screen.

  ‘God bless you, Felix,’ he murmured.

  ‘Dad?’ Emma sounded tearful. ‘I’m lost. My battery is low.’

  ‘I’m not far away, sweetheart. Don’t worry. I’m beside the church, down in the valley.’

  ‘There are wolves here.’ Her voice was very faint. ‘I’m scared.’

  ‘Listen, Em. Save your battery. I’m going to hang up. Leave your phone on so Felix can track you. I’m coming to find you.’

  Felix answered at once. ‘I’ll give you her coordinates, Dad. It’s wild moorland as far as I can make out. You might need to alert mountain rescue or the police or someone.’

  Simon was outside the car now, gazing up where the high sides of the valley rose above him, black against the stars. ‘Which direction?’

  He heard a muttering and distant click of a keyboard as Felix consulted his laptop and he pictured the boy at home in his London bedroom. ‘Can you contact the police and tell them where she is, Felix? I can’t hang around. I have to try to find her. I’m not sure I’ll be much use in the dark, but she’s so scared up there alone.’

  She had said there were wolves. He felt a rush of panic in his throat. There were no lights anywhere. Were there wolves in these mountains? He had heard they were thinking of reintroducing them back into parts of Scotland, but not in Wales, surely? Or was she back in the past in one of her dream states? He went round to the back of the car and pulled out his walking boots, first aid kit and his waterproof jacket. He was about to close the boot when his phone rang. ‘Mr Armstrong? This is the police. We have your daughter’s location from your son. Please, stay where you are. If you get lost as well, it won’t help anyone. The mountain rescue team are on their way. If you’re in touch with Emma, please tell her to stay exactly where she is and then cut the call so she doesn’t waste her battery, but tell her to leave the phone switched on so we can track her. That will help us find her more quickly.’

  Simon stood there, staring up at the sky. A swathe of stars was visible above his head, but the mountainous sides of the narrow valley were impenetrably black around him He kept hoping to hear a car or better still a helicopter, but the night was totally silent. He found his torch in the glove pocket of the car and with its powerful beam he found a signboard at the edge of the car park with a map of the valley. He scanned it with an ever-increasing sense of panic at the size of the vast mountain range around them. Eventually he switched off the torch and made his way under the lychgate into the churchyard. He could see the church in the starlight. It was a long low building with a small square tower. All round him were gravestones, old and shining in the damp. He found himself wondering if they were slate. According to the maps he’d studied there were old slate quarries all round these mountains. Cliffs, quarries, mineshafts. Disused mines up on the moors. Don’t think about it. Emma was safe. She had promised she would stay put.

  He was standing under an ancient yew tree. Somewhere an owl called, a sharp, unexpectedly loud sound in the silence. Its mate hooted in the distance and he realised he could feel the hairs on the back of his neck stirring. He could smell the resinous tang of the yew, and the fresh cold sweetness of the mountain air. Why was no one coming? Surely the police would be on their way by now? He checked his phone. The battery was still 60 per cent. Resolutely he pushed it into his pocket. If there was news, someone would call him. He wandered further up the narrow path towards the church porch. Perhaps he should pray. Say a prayer to St Melangell herself. He found he had closed his eyes, squeezing them tight shut as he used to when he was a little boy. His mother used to tell him to say his prayers at night when he was frightened of the dark. He gave an inward groan. He had had no concept then, in his cosy little bedroom with red and blue zoo animals on the curtains, of just how empty and lonely and scary the real dark could be. He surveyed the silent churchyard. ‘Please, please, look after my little girl. Keep her safe. She was coming to find you, to pray at your shrine. Tomorrow we’ll come together and bring flowers, offerings. We’ll give thanks if you keep her safe tonight.’ He took a deep breath, trying to contain his despair. Here he was, trying to bribe a saint. But surely she would understand. She had been a compassionate woman, keeping the hare safe, away from a king and his hunting dogs. She was brave and kind and obviously beautiful as the king had wanted to marry her on the spot. It was when he had failed to lure her away from God that he had given her this whole valley. He pulled out his phone and stared at the screen. It was still dark. There had been no missed calls.

  Sandra sat staring at the table in front of her. An ambulance had come in the end and the two women had sat with her on her own sofa for ten minutes, making her breathe slowly. ‘You’re all right, Sandy,’ they kept saying. ‘It’s a panic attack. Relax. Breathe. You’re not hurt.’

  Not hurt! When she had been knocked across the room by the force of the psychic blast. She could still feel the bruises. But they had found nothing. No bruises. No injuries. One of them had made her a cup of tea in her own kitchen and they had treated her as if she was senile, holding her hand and talking to her as if she was demented. Then they had had a call out to a real case, someone who was genuinely hurt, and they left, telling her to remember to breathe and to go and see her doctor if it happened again.

  She groaned. The parting shot from one of them had been, ‘It must have been a bad dream, love.’ She wasn’t supposed to hear the next comment, made to the other paramedic as they crossed the pavement back to their ambulance, ‘Either that or her imagination. What an imagination! As if!’

  Imagination. As if! Was that it? She pulled up her jumper and stared down at her own front. They were right. Their delicate probing had found no damaged ribs, no bruising, no scars, and there weren’t any. She was completely unhurt. She realised there were tears running down her cheeks. They were right. She hadn’t
interacted with Beatrice or with Emma at all. Everything was a sham, a make-believe. A dream. This whole Tarot thing and the psychic powers she had assumed she had, the curses, were a load of hooey, a pretence to make her feel good and in control of her life. None of it was real. In the past she had enjoyed having power over people, frightening them, glorying in their gratitude when she pretended to do things for them in the psychic realms, and she loved it when they paid her without question for her services.

  She had believed it. She had genuinely believed it was real.

  And those two calm confident women in their green uniforms had told her it was all a dream.

  She looked down at her spread of cards, still lying neatly arranged on the table and with a howl of anger she swept them onto the floor. Her life had been no more than a scene from a film. Alice in Wonderland. When the Queen of Hearts and all the other characters at the tea party changed and dissolved and fluttered around Alice’s head, nothing but playing cards.

  48

  Dad had spoken to her. And Felix. They knew where she was. Rescuers were on their way. All she had to do was wait. Emma stared round in the dark, her eyes wide, trying to make out the details of her surroundings. There were gorse bushes up here, their flowers blazing gold, even in the dark, smelling of warm coconut and sugar. Again she heard a wolf howling in the distance. Further away now. She bit her lip, trying to hold back her tears. She wanted to run away, hide in some cranny in the rocks but there was nowhere. The moor seemed to spread out before her eternally, rising gently towards the summit of the mountain, a clear silhouette against the stars and she didn’t dare move. Her phone battery was down to 12 per cent and she didn’t want to turn on the torch. Without it, she couldn’t make out the path and any moment the phone was going to die. Overhead the stars blazed down over the high moors and she could hear a curlew in the distance, its eerie call echoing across the heather in the dark. She heard a movement behind her and she spun round, her heart thudding, poised to run. There was a man standing only feet from her. She stared at him, frozen with fear, trying to make out his shape, but he didn’t move, he didn’t make a sound and she realised at last it was an old thorn tree, twisted and tortured by the wind into the shape of a human torso.

  ‘Elisedd,’ she whispered. ‘Where are you? Please, help me.’

  Her tears were scalding on her cheeks, her hands freezing cold as she brushed them away. ‘Please, Elisedd. You said we would come here together.’ She drew in a deep breath, trembling. ‘Please.’ There were demons in these hills, giants and trolls, spirits flitting across the moorland towards her. She could feel her panic building.

  A few minutes later she saw another figure near her. Not a tree this time, a woman, moving towards her, drifting across the ground in the starlight. She felt a stab of visceral fear. She had expected her rescuers to have torches but the woman was coming straight towards her without hesitation, surefooted in the darkness.

  ‘Emma?’ The wind was rising now and Emma could hardly hear what the woman was saying. ‘Don’t be afraid. I’m here to help you. Rescuers are on their way. You must stay still. Nothing can harm you. There are no wolves here. No demons. Here take this.’ The woman had long, silver-streaked hair and a dark scarf over her head and round her shoulders. She held out her hand and pressed something into Emma’s cold fist. ‘Your angels are watching over you, child.’

  ‘And Elisedd?’ Emma stammered. ‘Where’s Elisedd!’ But the woman had gone and now she could hear shouting in the distance and the excited barking of a dog and see the light of several powerful torch beams far away below her down to her left, emerging from the trees.

  When Simon’s phone rang he was leaning against the stone wall of the church, staring out into the darkness while listening to the dawn chorus, the sound pouring from the trees around the church, from the blackbird in the yew tree and the robin in the thorn and a thousand other birds from the depths of the woods on the slopes of the hills.

  ‘Mr Armstrong? This is the police. Your daughter has been found. She is safe and well. They will be taking her down the hill to Llangynog if you would like to meet them in the car park there.’

  She didn’t want to go to hospital.

  ‘Take me to the church, Dad. Please. After all that, I have to go there.’

  ‘Emma!’

  ‘No. I mean it.’ Her voice was hoarse and she was still shaking with cold, wrapped in a space blanket in the back of the car. One of the mountain rescue team had been a doctor and had given her a quick check-up, squatting by the car door with her stethoscope, listening to her chest, taking her pulse. ‘We can’t make her go to hospital,’ she said as she stood up again. She looked at Simon with a weary smile. ‘She’s been very lucky. She’s uninjured and she’s not hypothermic. All she needs is to get warm and have some hot food and rest with her dad there to look after her.’ The doctor herself looked worn out. Simon felt a pang of guilt. ‘I am so sorry you were all dragged out like this.’ He glanced back at Emma, whose eyes had closed as she leaned back in the seat, shivering.

  ‘It’s our job.’ The doctor was packing her gear back into her bag. ‘We’re very happy to help. Things could have been an awful lot worse. Your daughter didn’t do it deliberately. She seems confused and distressed, but she was sensible. She stayed where we could find her. She’s told us, she didn’t realise how long it would take to walk to the church or how quickly the darkness can fall in the mountains. But she’s safe now, that’s the main thing.’

  Early in the morning though it was, they were taken in by the lady who ran the B & B where Dai had dropped Emma off all those hours before. ‘I was too worried about the girl to sleep much and I saw the mountain rescue people heading into the car park so I had to come and see she was all right. Come you in and welcome. Emma can have a warm bath and I will make you both a nice cooked breakfast, then she can have a sleep upstairs. You can go up to the church later.’ The woman, whose name was Helen Jones, directed Simon where to park his car and then ushered them up the steps to her house.

  She sat Simon down by the fire in her dining room then took Emma upstairs, ran a bath for her and provided her with a pile of fluffy towels. ‘Now shout if you want anything.’ Simon heard her strict instructions floating down the stairs as he huddled close to the fire. He could smell the scented bath oil and he smiled.

  ‘The police came yesterday looking for her,’ she explained when she came back downstairs. ‘Poor old Dai was distraught about what happened. I’ll give him a ring now and let him know Emma is safe. He’ll be so thankful.’ She gave Simon a searching look. ‘You look as though you could do with a hot bath as well.’

  He smiled. ‘That’s a kind thought, but I’ll be fine. All I needed was to find her safe.’

  She nodded. ‘Well, I’ll leave you to ring your wife while I cook breakfast. I’ll run up and check Emma is all right. We don’t want her falling asleep in the bath. I’ve a bedroom made up upstairs, so once she’s eaten something she can go up to bed for a couple of hours.’

  Simon was swept away on the tide of her kindness.

  With a smile he picked up his phone. Val was so relieved at the news she forgot to be furious. He could hear her voice trembling. He cut short her stammered demand to speak to Emma. ‘She’s still in the bath. No, it’s not too hot. The doctor told us what to do. She’s fine. Tell Felix he saved his sister’s life,’ he added before he ended the call. He was fending off waves of exhaustion himself and he hoped he could stay awake long enough to eat breakfast.

  It was not until after lunch, rested and revived, that Simon drove Emma towards the little church. In daylight he stared up at the precipitous sides of the valley rising above them with increasing horror as they drove slowly down the winding single-tracked road. The mountains were utterly beautiful but deadly, he could see that now. Outcrops of slate, high cliffs, old quarries, at least one still operational as far as he could see, thick forestry and wild woodland on the sides of the valley and behind, the high peaks of the
moorland, with disused mineshafts lost in the heather, rising in austere beauty under a clear blue sky.

  There were no other cars parked outside the church and Simon stood back as they climbed out. ‘Do you want to go in alone?’

  Emma nodded. ‘Thanks, Dad. But before I do,’ she groped in her pocket, ‘I want to show you something.’

  He looked down at the little cross in her hand. It was obviously gold, intricately engraved and set with garnets and it was bent, damaged, engrained with dirt. ‘That lady I told you about? She gave it to me.’ Emma looked at him and bit her lip. ‘It’s very old, isn’t it?’

  Simon caught his breath. He picked it up off her palm and held it up to the sunlight. ‘Yes,’ he murmured. ‘I would say so.’

  He put the cross back in her hand and she slipped it into her jeans pocket. Then she grinned at him. ‘If it’s Anglo-Saxon, it’s probably worth millions.’

  He smiled back. ‘Well thousands, perhaps. What makes you think it’s Anglo-Saxon?’

  ‘Duh!’ It was the reply her brother would have made. She had bounced back as though nothing untoward had happened, revived, Simon thought to himself, like a drooping flower put into fresh water.

  He watched as she walked away from him, through the lychgate under the yew tree that had sheltered him the night before, up the path and into the church.

  Sandra crept into the cathedral, holding her breath, peering round her apprehensively as though she expected to be zapped from on high. Tiptoeing, she made her way to the back of the nave and sat down. She still loved this place, she realised. And it was still here for her, whatever she had done. She leant back, staring fixedly in front of her up towards the great gilt crown hanging above the crossing beneath the tower. Her mind was a blank; she had no idea what to do next. Everything had fallen apart. She had had complete and utter faith in herself and her own judgement. Certainty. It had stayed with her unwaveringly ever since she had walked away from the church. But she had upset and perhaps nearly killed people she respected and looked up to and in trying to do the right thing she had exposed them all deliberately and intentionally to the most terrible danger. Weird, unbelievable danger.