FICTION - Old Gods by James Targett

Due to a printing error on page 23 of issue 1 a small portion of James' story was missing. The story is reproduced in full, below.

If Ox owned a motorcycle jacket then it had been hung-up somewhere to gather dust and fond memories. Now he was just another bloke with a receding hairline and a paunch hanging over his thick leather belt.

Andy the bartender didn’t know the bloke’s real name, but Ox seemed like the right kind of name for a retired Hell’s Angel. There was nothing else to speculate on, it was another Wednesday afternoon, and, as usual, The Drover’s Arms was dead.

Ox kept himself to himself; he was busy reading a copy of The Mirror and nursing a pint of the darkest, strongest beer on tap: Theakston’s Old Peculiar. Andy was quite happy with this arrangement. The deserted bar allowed him to catch up on a physics assignment for his undergraduate course.

The bartender was mulling over a set of equations, when he heard the door to the bar open. With a slightly aggrieved look on his face, Andy glanced up.

The Drover’s latest patron was slim, wearing a beige overcoat belted at the waist, in his fifties or maybe older: it was hard to tell his exact age. His face was lined but his hair had been dyed a nasty shade that veered between golden blond and burnt orange. But what really got Andy’s attention were the scars around the man’s lips: it looked as though the man had once spent a miserable evening French-kissing a bale of barbed wire.

Andy tried not to stare at the disfigurement, but found instead that he was staring into a pair of burning sharp blue eyes. The man had obviously seen Andy notice his injured lips; but was he staring back with hurt, or bitter acceptance, or cold anger? Andy couldn’t tell.

Andy straightened up from his textbook, feeling awkwardly guilty, cleared his throat.

“What can I get you?”

“Pint of cider.”

Andy watched the distillation of fermented apples fill the pint glass, conscious of those blue eyes watching him. Andy didn’t make eye contact again until the glass was full. He handed it to the man.

“One eighty,” he said.

Scar-lips smiled as he handed Andy a twenty-pound note. The smile did nothing to improve things. There still seemed to be a malicious glint burning behind the man’s eyes.

He watched Andy’s hands as Andy rang the purchase through the till. Once the man had his change, he carefully counted the money, making sure it was all there. Finally Scar-lips looked up, the smile gone.

“You got a problem with me?” he said.” Do you think that you’re someone special?”

“I’m sorry,” Andy said, feeling embarrassed: he hated confrontation. He tried to be polite, hoping that civility would diffuse the situation. “Have I offended you?”

“Everyone thinks they are so special, and then they find out that they ain’t.”

“Look, I’m sorry –“

“You’re one of those. It’ll be a surprise when you find out the truth.”

Scar-lips sniffed, then looked at Andy suspiciously. He shuffled towards a table by the pub’s large bar window. To Andy’s surprise, Ox rolled his paper up, picked up his pint, and then walked over to join the other man.

The Drover’s Arms is a long, thin, pub, sat on The Micklegate. If you have ever been to York, and have ever been out on a serious night’s drinking than you know of – or even have experienced – The Micklegate Run. It climbs out of the city centre, on the west side of the city, heading towards the medieval walls (or descends from the walls to the heart of the town, depending on how you are pub-crawling). By nine-thirty every night it is filled with drunks and would be drunks; groups of lads in expensive shirts, young girls in short skirts looking to meet one of the aforesaid lads so that they have a jacket to warm them on the journey home and something more to warm their beds at their journey’s end. It’s a street where everyone comes out looking for a good time; and they are so busy looking that they forget about taste or style or human decency.

Most of the pubs and clubs are cheap but flashy: alcopops and neon signs, jukeboxes and quiz machines and one-armed bandits, bottles of branded lager. At least they get a lick of paint once in a while. The Drover’s, however, is an unreconstructed type of place. There’s no carpet: the floor is plain wood, badly scratched, scarred with small black burn marks where cigarettes have been dropped by careless hands. The ash-trays are cheap, made of metal, with the name of a brand of beer that only working class men in their sixtieth decade drink anymore. The air smells of beer, stale sweat and cigarette smoke. It is ingrained into the pub’s wooden panelling, along with an underlying scent of vomit and wet dog.

“You made it then,” said Ox.

There was nobody else in The Drover’s. Andy couldn’t help overhearing the two men’s conversation.

“Wouldn’t miss it for the world. It’s not like I’ve been able to get out much for the last few thousand years.”

“Well, whose fault was that?”

“Yours I recall.”

The big man’s hand clenched around his pint glass; Ox took a moment to count to ten. His grip relaxed.

“Look, we only let you out because you remember what it was like when we were young. It’s not as if you’ve been forgiven.”

“’Life means life’, eh?”

“And it’s not like we like you or anything. You’re just someone to talk too.”

Scar-lips smirked.

“No, no, no; what you mean to say is that you don’t like me. He likes me well enough.”

Ox scowled. The other man carried on grinning and raised his glass to his lips. Andy ducked his head and stared at his equations before either of them could realise that he’d been listening in to their conversation. Had he been noticed?

Who on Earth were these people? But then maybe everybody’s conversation sounded odd, full of nuances and in-jokes, references and slang that only a particular group of friends understood.

Andy was just returning to his equations when the side door opened for a second time. This time he was quicker in looking up at his next customer.

He didn’t see the man’s face straight away, as the customer was busy sweeping a battered hat off his head. The hat looked as old and as worn as the man’s oily-shade-of-blue overcoat.

“Greetings.”

A trim white beard, one eye that shone with wit and knowledge, reminding Andy of an old Geography teacher, and another that was cold and dead – only later did Andy realise that it was made of dull glass; a leathery face, with lines across the forehead and around the eyes and the mouth; grey hair pulled back into a plait. It was clear that this customer was older than the man currently sat with Ox.

“Afternoon. What can I get you?”

“Do you have any mead?”

Mead? Who expected a pub like this to sell mead?

“Nope. I’m sorry. All out.”

“Than a whisky. One of the single malts. That one.”

The man pointed at a dusty bottle behind Andy.

Andy served the old man as efficiently as he could, and was grateful when the man did not complain about the price of the whisky. Once the man had his drink, he walked, his stride still strong and firm despite his age, towards the table where the other two men were sat.

“Son,”

The big guy stood up, bear-hugged the old man.

“You should have let me get that.”

The other man watched the family reunion with an odd grimace on his face, something twisted up inside him so that envy mixed with both joy and anger. Only Andy got a good look at the barbed emotion, it was gone from the second man’s face, the mask back in place, when the old man turned to greet him.

“Luka.”

“I’m not going to call you Dad, or hug you like the big dolt.”

“Just call me Grim.”

They sat down. There was an uncomfortable pause.

“So?” asked Luka (formerly known as Scar-lips), the smirk playing across his face again. “Just like old times? The three of us, journeying out in the world.”

“Does that surprise you, Luka?” asked Grim. “We’re old now. Nobody else remembers the way it was. It’s good to talk about old times with someone else who was there.”

“And? You just wanted to get together and reminisce on the old days?”

“Don’t you ever want to talk to the others who knew what the world was like when we were young?”

“Oh yeah,” said Luka. “That’s what I’ve been doing these last thousand years. Just dying to have a little chat with someone. Been the only thing on my mind.”

”I’ll ignore that, Luka. You have good reason to be bitter,” replied Grim. “But the world has changed. It has moved on without us.”

“We’ve got older. Big deal.”

“It is a big deal. It means that all our dreams - all my dreams - are nothing. Even the ones that I had about war and World’s Ending are nothing. They are not going to happen.”

“Bah! The future’s not yet writ. It’s what I tried to tell you at the time, but you wouldn’t listen”

“Luka,” Grim said. “You don’t get it: we don’t have a future.”

“No final battle,” interjected Ox. “Just us. Getting old together.”

There was an awkward silence. Luka’s mouth writhed as he tried to think of something to say. Ox turned in his seat, so that his back marginally faced Luka.

Feeling ever more perplexed, Andy left them to their war stories.

The majority of the drinkers in the Drover’s are underage; here to make use of the fact that nobody ever asks to see ID (Andy gave up after his first evening, when he realised that nobody else was checking and that Steve, the landlord, was only reluctantly supporting him in turning away clientele). The other patrons are a mixed bag of serious drinkers: the core all work for a local firm of painters and decorators, but they are often joined by a variety of hangers-on: wives, ex-girlfriends, mates, former colleagues, other friendly drinkers on disability benefit, the dealer, with the battered briefcase, who wanders between the city’s pubs selling marijuana. They come in night after night, get drunk, go home steaming; and then come back at lunchtime the next day for a quick half. They turn up at weekends and flirt with the girls in the short dresses, trade jokes with the lads in the expensive shirts.

Andy chats with them, laughs at their jokes, flirts a little with the one or two motley women who occasionally join them. He serves them all with a rictus of a smile across his face. He despises them all. He knows that he is smarter than them, that he will be going places. They will still be here, drinking their way to liver failure when he is long gone.

The patrons, drunks though they are, see that and because of it they make Andy the butt of their jokes. Andy hates that. Just once, just once, he wants to have a reasonable chat, with reasonable people, to be respected and taken seriously. Andy hasn’t yet worked out that one of the hardest things in the universe, as impossible as making ribbon from the breath of fish or from the sound of a cat’s footfall, is to have a reasonable chat with a drunk when you are sober.

Andy was distracted from his physics assignment by a knocking at the bar. It was Luka, rolling two coins on the wooden surface.

“Pint of cider”

Andy poured the man a second drink, took Luka’s money, carefully counted the change. He leant forward, resting an arm on the beer pumps, as Luka took a sip of his cider. A mixture of curiosity, a need to think about something else than the laws of thermodynamics, and maybe a desire to rectify the last, sour exchange with Luka, drove Andy to ask his question.

“Are you all some kind of war heroes? I heard you talking about wars and final battles. But you’re too old to have fought in the Falklands, and too young for World War Two, so what was it? Some kind of campaign in Burma or somewhere, one of those forgotten wars?”

Luka grimaced, as if he had tasted something bitter.

“I bet you think you are so clever. Book smart. With all your equations and education.” He spat out the last word, slurring the words.

“I was just asking.”

“What are you up to Luka?” asked Ox. “This is supposed to be a peaceful visit.”

“This … boy … thinks we are war heroes. That we might have fought in the Falklands.”

Ox laughed. Andy felt his face flush red.

“Look, I only wanted to know …”

“Leave him alone Luka,” said Grim. “Can’t you see he is a student, a man of knowledge? He is trying to better himself through learning, and asking questions.”

“It doesn’t make him better than us.”

Andy, feeling brave with Grim on his side, said, “And just because you’ve fought in some battles and I haven’t, doesn’t make you better than me. I’ve lived.”

The bar went quiet. Andy felt the air thicken. He wished he’d never opened his mouth. That’d he just served Luka and left him, and the other two, to their strange conversation.

“Are you sure you know what you are doing, boy?” asked Grim. “That sounded like a challenge.”

“You know how that goes,” said Luka. “It’s traditional.”

“Three challenges,” said Ox, joining Luka at the bar and waving his empty pint glass in Andy’s direction. “One against each of us.”

“But there’s only one of me.”

“I think that he doth protest too much.”

Ox shrugged.

“Either play. Or accept that we are your betters.”

“This is crazy.”

Luka sniggered.

Andy felt his temper flare. He was sick of these kinds of arguments and jokes; of the pointless backchat he had to put up with, just because he worked behind a bar. This once he would show them, rise to the challenge.

“Oh all right,” he said. “I’ll play. What are the challenges?”

Darts. Andy, not understanding why, had thought that Ox was going to strangle Luka when the thinner man had suggested a game of darts as the first challenge. Grim had laid one hand on Ox’s, still quite large, bicep. The son had restrained himself.

Andy took a sip from his beer and watched Luka throw. Luka had divested himself of his beige overcoat, as well as the black suit jacket that he wore under it. He played in rolled up sleeves, his shirt crumpled, with a black tie worn loosely around the throat.

The game was going badly. Ox and Grim, father and son war heroes, or ageing Hell’s Angels, or whatever they were, both clearly amused at Andy’s expense. He knew that he wasn’t bad at darts; he’d been quite happy when Luka named the first challenge. When it was quiet in the Drover’s, Andy had got into a habit of throwing darts at the board. He thought that his aim had become quite practiced.

But everything he threw tonight missed. Just by a fraction. Of course, everything that Luka threw struck the board right on target.

“Your go.”

Luka was a thirty-two points from winning. A good position for a good dart player, and Luka was obviously a better than average player.

“What do I need?”

“Forty three points.”

Andy lined up in front of the board. He took carefully aim, weighing the slim metal projectile in his hand. He wanted thirteen, followed by double-fifteen. If he got that, he would take the game.

He aimed, and let loose. The dart embedded itself in the cork, just by the three.

Andy turned and looked at the others. They watched impassively.

“Unlucky,” said Luka.

It was still possible though. All Andy needed was double-twenty.

“Watch this.”

His last dart flew from his fingertips, hard and fast and true. For a moment Andy thought that it was going to land squarely where he wanted it, then it struck the metal wiring on the edge of the board. It rebounded backwards, spinning wildly.

“Holy – “

Andy jerked his head to the side, put his left hand up to guard his face.

“Fuck!”

Pain exploded along the palm and edge of his left hand. He looked down to see the dart embedded in it, blood already leaking out of the torn flesh. Andy tried not to scream or burst into tears.

“Too bad,” said Luka. “When I get the dart back I think I might be about to win this game.”

“What’s the next challenge?” asked Andy, trying to sound brave. He thought he almost managed it, but then he heard the quaver in his voice at the end of his sentence. He sat at the same table as the other three men, the bar’s first aid kit open beside him, bandaging his left hand. It throbbed hotly, but the pain was bearable.

Grim glanced at Ox.

“Drinking!” said the big man.

He shrugged, nonchalantly.

“I was going to challenge you to an arm wrestle, but you seem to have hurt your hand.”

“What?” said Andy. “I’m the only one here and I’m not supposed to drink when I’m working.”

“It’s a bar isn’t it?” said Luka. “People drink here all the time. Nobody will notice.”

“You accepted the challenge,” said Grim. “Or are you crying off?”

Andy looked at him, feeling slightly woozy and out-of-his-depth. It took a moment to realise that Ox was already heading towards the bar.

“Hey, what are you doing?”

Andy couldn’t get up as he was still trying to tie the bandage off with one hand.

The big man walked behind the bar, pulled two empty glasses down off the shelf above the bar and started to pull two pints of Old Peculiar.

“What’s it going to be?” asked Andy weakly. “Fastest drinker? First one to down their pint?”

“Nope,” said Luka. “If I know our friend, and I do, then last man standing is what it’ll be.”

He smiled, all teeth and cold eyes.

“Stronger doesn’t mean better,” said Andy, trying to focus on his point. “Like being clever doesn’t make you right.”

Old Peculiar is a fine drink, but a strong one. Andy was on his fourth pint. The world had become a good-humoured place, and he was holding forth to his newfound companions and friends.

“The challenge was that you were better than us. That means sharper of eye, quicker of wit, stronger of arm, faster of hand. It means better all round,” replied Grim from the sidelines.

“Right,” said Ox. “I’m stronger than you, and can drink more than you, so I am better than you.”

“No!” said Andy, wagging his finger. “It’s like I was saying about people who are really intelligent, it doesn’t mean I’d put them in charge. I mean, haven’t you met anyone who as really clever but who had no common sense? Was a danger to themselves and others?”

Luka hissed something unintelligible.

“Besides this drinking contest isn’t over yet. I might drink you under the table.”

“Your round.”

Ox waved his glass in Andy’s direction.

“On the house.” Andy started to hurriedly drink the last quarter of his pint. “Help yourself.”

Andy paused in his drinking. Belched, feeling relieved to have got rid of some of the gas that was building up in his stomach.

“You know, “ he said, while they were waiting for Ox to return with the drinks. “You are some of the weirdest people I have ever met. But I like you. I like you a lot.”

After eleven pints of Old Peculiar, Andy was an incoherent mess. He spent some time throwing up in the toilet, before stumbling back into the bar.

Steve, returned from his own adventures, started shouting at him at that point. Andy quickly got the impression that he was fired, that his new found friends had left without paying for any of their drinks, that he wasn’t going to see anymore wages, and lastly, and most importantly, that he was having problems staying upright.

He dashed outside, weaving dangerously between other obstacles like the bar, stools, the wood-panelled walls, and other drinkers. There he was sick, collapsing to his knees. The cool night air – how had it become so late? – struck him like a welcome home slap in the face.

Something, with a flapping sound like leathery wings, hit him in the back of his head. It was his coat. Above him a raven cawed loudly. It sounded like laughter.

At first, Andy thought he had been abandoned. He imagined the three strangers running away, laughing at his expense. Angry and irritated, he stumbled to his feet, picked his coat up from the floor and brushed off the worst of the dirt and gravel that had stuck to it.

He had exited via the side door to the pub. He staggered out of the car park, through the archway that connected with the dishevelled nightclub next door, and out onto the Micklegate.

“Wondering where you’d got to?” said Ox.

Ox, Luka and Grim were loitering in the shadows of the archway, Luka casually smoking. Andy felt a small rush of joy; he hadn’t been discarded after all. He was still angry at Grim and his friends for costing him his job and embarrassing him in front of his (former) boss. (Though perhaps, it occurred to Andy, that he had embarrassed himself; and besides, did he really care what Steve thought).

“Where to?” he asked.

Andy wobbled on his feet. The archway seemed darker than usual. The brickwork older, more like the stones of York Minster or the city walls, than the whitewashed walls he remembered.

“Sorry,” he said. “I think I’ve had a bit too much to drink.”

“Drink this,” said Luka, removing a silver hipflask from inside his jacket. “It’ll clear your head.”

Andy looked at it suspiciously. Luka shook the flask, pushed it at him. Andy glanced up, studying Luka’s malicious blue eyes. Ox guffawed.

“He might not be a heavyweight drinker, but you can’t say he isn’t a fine judge of character.”

Grim tsked. He took the hipflask, unscrewed the silver lid, and took a short swig. He smacked his lips with satisfaction and then wiped them with the back of his hand.

“Here.”

Andy had no choice but to take the flask. He glanced at Luka and then at Grim, who nodded. Then he raised the flask to his lips. It smelt of cinnamon and honey. Whatever was in the flask was hot and fierce. Andy coughed as it hit the back of his throat and then made sure he swallowed before he spat it out across the pavement.

Choking and coughing, he handed the flask onto Ox, who capped the lid and passed it back to Luka. When Andy straightened up, he found that, although he was far from sober, the world seemed to be clearer again. It had stopped swaying and the heavy, bloated sensation, in his gut had vanished.

“Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it.”

“Shall we take a walk,” said Grim.

Andy nodded, hoping that the next stop would be at a kebab van, or pizza takeaway, or maybe at a late night Indian restaurant.

They started walking. Andy was unusually comfortable, considering that he was staggering through the city with three strangers. They stayed on the Micklegate for less than a hundred yards, before turning down an alley beside a church. Luka spat through the railing, leaving a glob of spit in the churchyard as they passed it.

“Didn’t Mithras have a place there?” asked Ox.

“Yes,” replied Grim. “It’s underneath the crypt. Mostly forgotten.”

Ox grunted.

York is an old city, full of shortcuts and alleys, known as snickleways by the residents. Andy had only been in the city, studying at the University, for eighteen months. It was no surprise then, that drunk, following someone who seemed to know the city far better than he did, that he got turned around. They passed some other pubs, then through a housing estate, then down another snickleway. At one point Andy thought they were near the city walls, or the River Ouse.

There was no sign of a kebab van.

“We getting something to eat?” Andy asked. “Or going on a night hike?”

“Food after we’ve finished the game,” said Grim.

“But you’ve won. Luka beat me at darts. Ox beat me at drinking. Two out of three. Game over.”

“The game isn’t over until the third challenge is complete,” said Luka.

“Here will do.”

They stepped over a low stone wall. They were in some kind of park; there was grass and trees. They stopped walking as they reached the foot of a giant ash tree; to the left of its roots was the circular shape of an old well, half-a-foot high and made of broken stones. Andy guessed that they must be on the other side of the city from the University, one of the parts he hadn’t visited. He was going to have to call a taxi to take him home.

“There’s no need,” he said. “You win. I’m calling a cab and going home.”

“We play,” said Grim. Starlight glinted of his glass-eye, making it appear white and milky. “Hold him.”

Ox grabbed Andy’s elbows from behind.

“Stay still,” he whispered into Andy’s ear, in a friendly tone. “Struggle and I break something.”

“What’s the price for wisdom?” asked Luka.

He’d produced a knife from somewhere, of the sort where the hilt had a guard that doubled as a knuckle-duster. The blade was an inch wide and four to five inches long, with a wicked hook just behind the point.

“An eye?”

The knife circled lazily an inch below Andy’s right eye, moonlight and shadows sliding off the blade like water.

Andy tensed, expecting to wet himself at any instant. The night had ceases to be any kind of fun. The three were no longer people he wanted to be anywhere near. He felt sick with stupidity. They told schoolchildren not to talk to strangers for good reason.

“No,” said Grim. “An eye is the price for knowledge. Wisdom comes with time, if at all.”

A raven landed with a flap of wings, settled on the lower branches of the tree, and cawed.

“Really,” said Andy, pulling his head as far back as he could and staring at the point of Luka’s knife. “You don’t have to do this. You win. Sorry. I didn’t mean to offend. You are obviously SAS types.”

By ‘types’, Andy meant psychopathic nutcases.

“I shouldn’t have asked if you were war veterans. It must have some kind of blacks ops thing. Plausible deniability. No-one supposed to know about it all.”

Grim placed his finger on Andy’s lips. Andy stopped talking.

“I challenge you,” Grim said. “To a riddle game.”

It took Andy a moment to stop panicking and process what the old man had said.

“Like The Hobbit?” Andy asked.

”Yes, just like the bloody Hobbit.”

Andy swallowed heavily. He thought about struggling, but, even if he could break Ox’s grip, all he would do was drive himself onto Luka’s blade.

“Um .. er ..” he said, and then asked: “What’s in my pocket?”

Grim rolled his eyes. Andy wondered if Ox’s father was just going to let Luka stab him. It obviously wasn’t the best question to ask, but it was the only one that Andy could think of, given the state of his Old Peculiar-addled brain.

“A ten pound note, a mobile-phone, your door keys, half-a-packet of Extra Strong Mints, and thirty pence in loose change.”

Luka reached into Andy’s pockets, slowly turned them out one by one, dropping the contents on the grass. Andy was rather surprised to see a ten-pound note, which he hadn’t known he was carrying. Grim was absolutely correct.

“How did you …?”

“I was expecting rather better of you, given that you are a student of knowledge, You could at least have asked me the solution to the Navier-Stokes fluid dynamics equations, or the Reimann hypothesis about prime numbers. That would have been appropriately cunning” Grim replied. “Now, my turn. I think we’ll go for the classics. They are always best.”

“This thing all things devours: “ he continued. “Birds, beasts, trees, flowers; Gnaws iron, bites steel; Grinds hard stones to meal; Slays king, ruins town, And beats high mountain down. What is it?”

Andy looked at him blankly. He briefly wished that he could ask Grim to repeat the question, but he didn’t want to try the man’s patience anymore than he had already.

He was distracted. The moonlight glistened along the edge of Luka’s blade. He felt sick, his bowels loose and watery. There was the pain in his hand, from the wound from the dart. Then there was Grim’s talk of devouring and slaying.

“Well?”

This … thing … what could beat a mountain down? What was the thing about mountains? Well there was Everest, and volcanoes; and that thing about a sparrow flying back and forth across the universe, sharpening its beak on a mountain until the mountain wore down. It was supposed to be a metaphor for the vastness of infinity.

His hand throbbed. Pulsing with the beat of his heart’s blood. Andy glanced down at his hand. The bandage he had wrapped around it was stained crimson. The blood had started to dribble down his wrist, towards the strap of his wristwatch.

“Time,” Andy said, raising his head, suddenly certain that he was right. “Time devours all things. All men.”

For a moment, he started directly into Grim’s one good eye. Then a raven exploded into flight, cawing angrily. Luka’s blade shimmered, reflecting moonlight straight into Andy’s eyes. It was so bright that it blinded Andy. Ox threw him away.

He landed on the ground, the long grass wet with dew. The air seemed to be full of the beat of wings; of harsh bird voices and Teutonic swear words. But there had only been one raven hadn’t there?

Andy was sick, nosily and messily. When he had finished, the ravens seemed to have gone. He rolled away from his vomit, breathed in the cold night air. He shut his eyes, waiting for the kick in the ribs or for Luka to stab him. Hot tears trickled down his face. Andy expected each breath to be his last.

When he opened his eyes, Andy was alone.

He was cold, chilled to the bone, but that will happen if you spend an early spring night asleep in a field in North Yorkshire. His jeans were sodden.

Andy stood up slowly. There was no tree, no well, no stone wall. There was just mist, wreathing the Vale of York, and short stalks of corn, only just sprouting from the ground.

There were no footprints near him. No broken stalks or trampled mud. There was a small pool of congealing sick, but no sign that anyone other than Andy had been here. No sign of how Andy had come to be in this place.

He checked his left hand. It was bandaged, caked with dried blood. It still throbbed. His head ached.

The sun was a faint disc, hidden by a thin cloud-layer. For a moment, Andy stood, shading his eyes from the sunlight as a breeze blew open a hole in the grey sky. The sunlight reflected off the water droplets in the fine clouds, and Andy saw a rainbow bridge, reaching up towards the heavens.