Chapter 01: Exit, Pursued By A Bee - Page 3

“And the worms,” said Blake, “millipedes, beetles and earwigs – they’re all coming out. Ugh, there’s a load of flying gnats. Let’s get out of here.”

A golden Labrador that, apart from when it rushed over to sniff Derek’s crotch, had been quietly collecting a Frisbee for a family a hundred yards away, added his voice. Not playful-excitedly but panic-barking, as Kal recognised from her farmyard youth.

Defeated by wildlife and Blake’s need to have his ears pounded by the world’s largest speakers, they gathered their luncheon remains and headed downhill. But she skidded to a halt, as an urge forced her to grab one last lingering look at the tower. They’d fallen in love here - with each other and, by association, the place, but with additional mystique. The pragmatist within her had tried to analyse the hair-tingling feeling she experienced last time. She laughed remembering the tarot-wielding hippies, and alternative-reality culture that ‘knew’ Glastonbury was the magical centre of the world. If the locale harboured extraordinary and sacred evanescence, it might have to do with the extraordinary people traipsing through the Field of Avalon, the Tipi Field, and the riotous craziness at The Lost Vagueness, culminating in exuberance at the Avalon stone circle. But for all that, she derived more inexplicable emotion from this tower on the extraordinary tor.

Several odd things happened at once. Either her vision blurred, or the top of the tower developed fuzziness. Maybe it had become bored with its sharp lines after eight hundred years. Her legs became blurry too, as if the footpath couldn’t wait for her and decided to slither downhill and make its own way home. Staggering, Kallandra put her hand on a large boulder to prevent herself collapsing to the ground, a temporary respite as the rock vibrated. The tiny pink flowers of a miniature thyme plant clung to the top of the boulder. The dark green petite leaves trembled, exposing a timorous millipede that scuttled across the top.

“Go for it, beastie. Escape while you can.”

In spite of a deep rumbling she heard Derek call from lower down the hill.

“Look out, Kal! The tower.”

Fighting the hill’s attempt to send her sprawling, she watched in horror as the old stone tower demolished itself from the top down. Eight hundred years after proud masons on wooden scaffolds shared broad smiles and raised mugs of celebratory cider, the tower was disintegrating in front of her. But the stones didn’t rest where they fell. Kallandra’s chest tightened with fear as the shaking hill encouraged the dismantling tower to hurtle down towards her.