Ravensborough (12 page)

I tried not to think of what I was missing back in Dublin. Right now, Lindsay, Doyle, Molly, Ally, Danny, Brian and Sam would be at the battle of the bands gig. It was hardly fair to think it, but the thought that Sam was having fun without me didn’t make me feel good. All the people I cared about seemed so far away.

‘Actually Scarlett, your music collection isn’t half bad,’ said Ben, breaking me away from my thoughts..

I rolled my eyes, glad to return to a subject that didn’t make me so emotional. ‘Praise indeed!’ I said sarcastically.

Ben ignored my sarcasm. ‘I didn’t know you liked Underdriven.’

‘Well I didn’t know you liked them either!’

‘Is Crystalline their new album?’

‘Nope, it was their first album. Nobody really liked it though. It was only when their second album hit the charts in a big way that this one took off.’

‘I like a woman who knows her music,’ said Ben, raising an eyebrow at me.

‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ I snorted. ‘You’re too moody to like anyone!’

Ben grabbed at his chest. ‘You wound me!’

Cat looked decidedly put out.

I tried to push my feelings of abandonment aside. Unfortunately the only things to take their place were thoughts about Gethan, and whether or not he was part of the gang I’d run into last night. I tried to chat with the others about different subjects, but my mind felt like it was on a continuous loop. Eventually, unable to keep it in any longer, I burst out.

‘Sorry if this is a stupid question, but if Pagans don’t practice magic, why do Rationalists dislike them so much?’

There was a confused pause at the rapid change of subject. My friends shot strange looks at each other, and for a second I didn’t think anyone was going to answer me. Then Mei began to speak.

‘There are some Pagans who believe in energy magic. Who cast spells for luck, love, happiness and all the rest of it. They’re known as spiritualists, and they’re basically fine. But there are also occultists. It’s believed by many that they practice actual real magic. It’s energy based, but much more visible. It can have dangerous consequences.’

‘How can you tell the difference between a spiritualist Pagan and an occultist Pagan?’ I asked.

‘They should
all
be avoided’, Cat said dismissively. ‘They’re all dangerous in their own way, with their beliefs in filters.’

Mei sighed. ‘If you meet an ordinary Pagan, you won’t notice anything particularly different about them. The world occult means ‘knowledge of the hidden’. In order to see these worlds, their eyes are said change colour.’

‘Like your cousin’, Cat said with disgust.

‘They make you believe,’ Ben supplied. ‘Because once you believe in the hidden world, once you think you
know
about the hidden world, you can’t turn back. It’s a cult.’

My mind struggled to understand what everyone was saying. ‘But
why
do they want you to believe in their magic?’

Cat tucked her hair behind her ear and sat up straighter. ‘It’s all about control, Scarlett. They want to control Avalonia. The more people that they convert to their wacky cause, the better chance they have of achieving that. That’s why there are terrorist groups, like the one that attacked you last night. They want to use violence to take control of the country.’

‘So the FPL are a... political group?’ I asked.

Will nodded. ‘A very dangerous one.’

‘Are there Rationalist terrorist groups?’

There was a silence. Everyone seemed much less willing to talk. Finally Cat burst out. ‘Well, yes
obviously
. It’s only natural that some Rationalists are so afraid of Pagans that they take matters into their own hands.’

‘And they’re violent too?’ I asked.

‘Yes, but...’ Cat seemed flustered. ‘If Pagans would just leave us alone then there’d be no issue. So yeah, Rationalists have some violent gangs but only because
they started it
.’

I was silent. I didn’t know much about politics, granted, but there was something slightly chilling about mass violence being justified in the same way as kids fighting in the schoolyard.

The rest of the night passed easily enough. We watched DVDs, made popcorn and generally had a nice night. Occasionally my phone beeped to say I’d gotten a text, but I decided not to check it.

Later when they’d gone I checked the phone. A mixture of texts from Aradia and Gethan asking me to call them back. I just deleted the messages. I just needed some space to think.

On Saturday I got a phone call from Nick confirming that I had a place on the dig the week after next. Part of me was tempted to turn it down – a week with a mixture of dangerous Pagans didn’t sound like the best idea in the world. But he had gone to a lot of trouble to get me on the dig, and I wouldn’t be able to explain my change of mind to my mother. Plus there was the undeniable fact that it would look good on my college application if I decided to stay in Avalonia. So, with trepidation, I accepted.

Somehow I managed to avoid contact with Aradia and Gethan over the next week. After a frenzy of texts and calls they’d gradually fallen silent. I got a private message sent to me through Aradia’s Facebook account asking for me to call her, wondering why I’d run away. But I still couldn’t bring myself to talk to her.

Then there were the dreams. I kept having nightmares about the stabbing, waking up in a cold sweat with my heart pounding in my chest. How could that kind of violence be justified? It shouldn’t be, and I didn’t want to have anything to do with anyone who believed it could.

Midterm came around all too quickly. And midterm meant the practice dig, an entire week in the same field as Gethan and Aradia. It wouldn’t be easy to avoid them there. This should have been a really big deal for me. I’d been fascinated by archaeology since I was a little girl, and, under normal circumstances, going on a dig would be really exciting. ‘Normal circumstances’, meaning of course, that I wouldn’t be digging around a load of criminals armed with heavy shovels.

The first morning of the dig in the Wolfgang Mountains arrived. The day didn’t start out well; I wasn’t a morning person and Nick collected me at six am. I had to peel myself out of bed, and every fibre of my being wanted nothing more than to snuggle down into the warm blankets and sleep. Nevertheless, I forced myself up and out into the ice cold pre-dawn world. The stars were still out, fighting the orange hue that was beginning to make an appearance on the horizon.

‘It’s still dark out!’ I said to Nick grumpily as I clambered into the back of his truck. Aradia was in the backseat too, slumped against the side of the door with tiredness. She obviously wasn’t a morning person either. She looked at me with a hurt expression on her face. Her eyes flickered from green to blue to indigo in the car’s interior light. For a moment it looked like she was going to say something, but then she bit her lip and looked out the window instead. Then Nick slammed his door and plunged us all back into darkness. Nevertheless, I could feel the waves of anger radiating from her direction. It looked like I’d really hurt her feelings. Despite my uneasiness about Pagan factions, and my belief that she was involved with them, I felt bad for hurting her. It was a lot easier to remember that she was dangerous to hang around with when I wasn’t sitting beside her. I mean, she didn’t
look
dangerous. She was all angular limbs and tragic face. If I hadn’t been responsible for making her look like that, I would have found it comical.

We were silent for around twenty minutes. Though the atmosphere between Aradia and I was making me feel awkward, in reality there was nothing strange about it. It wasn’t like conversation usually flowed easily before dawn.

After a while Nick pulled into a service station.

‘I need to get some petrol. Do you guys want anything?’ he asked.

‘A cup of coffee would be nice’, said Aradia. ‘It might help wake me up.’

‘What about you, Scarlett?’

‘A black coffee would be great, thanks’.

‘Coming up.’ Nick swung himself out of the truck and slammed the door. There was an awkward silence.’

Aradia turned to me, her eyes a dark violet. ‘So why have you been ignoring me?’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘You’re
sorry
? We meet up, become friends, and then one day you decide to run away from Gethan in a rainstorm and cut us both out from your life? Why would you do that?’

‘I saw a stabbing the night before.’

‘Geth mentioned that. Said you got hurt too. Did the knock to the head make you realise that you no longer wanted to talk to dangerous Pagans?’

The sarcastic, flippant attitude was a side of her that I’d never seen before.

I tried to explain. ‘The gang that stabbed the man, they were part of a group called the FPL.’

Aradia looked at me expectantly.

‘When I was in Gethan’s car, I saw the same gang mark on the inside of his arm. I got scared and ran.’

Aradia didn’t say anything, but I could sense some of the fight going out of her.

‘Why didn’t you talk to me?’ she asked quietly. ‘Because I knew you’d take his side,’ I answered simply. ‘You’re his best friend.’

She nodded grudgingly, acknowledging the truth in what I said. Nick was walking across the forecourt, balancing three cups of coffee in his hands.

‘It’s not a gang mark. There’s a straight-forward explanation, really. It’s not what you think,’ she said in a small voice, before Nick got into the car, ending our conversation.

He passed us both a cardboard takeaway cup. ‘Here, that should wake you girls up. It’s dark now but it’ll be getting light soon. When you’re digging in winter you need to make the most of the daylight hours.’

The drive up to the excavation site took the best part of an hour. It was beautiful seeing the rugged mountain landscape gradually come into view as the light of dawn softened the night time shadows. We passed the stone circle where Aradia and Gethan had taken me and continued to wind higher still.

‘Is there anything of interest at this site, or is it just a field where you have training excavations?’ I asked Nick.

‘It’s a real archaeological site. It holds the remains of a sixteenth century Pagan temple. Because it isn’t listed as a priority site, the government won’t give money to excavate it. So the University decided to excavate it with students under strict supervision. There are still costs involved but we get sponsorship from some local businesses. That pays for the digger, safety gear, that kind of thing. It’s unlikely that you’ll find anything of interest this week, but you’ll get a decent crash course in the basics at least.’

When we finally pulled into the excavation site, the field was already a hive of activity. Everyone was dressed in the same outdoor uniform of heavy boots, jeans, jumpers and waterproof coats. I saw a group of young people standing at the edge of an existing trench and comparing it to a photograph that they held in their hand. They looked a couple of years older than me, so I presumed that they were the college students who were going to teach the rest of us how to dig. The majority of the kids in the field looked like they were still in school though. I scanned the field and saw Gethan standing in the corner of the field talking to a girl who looked around my age. Aradia took a few steps towards them. She looked back at where I stood, frozen to the spot.

‘Come on, he’s not going to hurt you’, she said mockingly, raising an eyebrow at me. ‘Not right here, anyway. There are far too many people around.’

She obviously meant the comment as a joke, but I didn’t find it funny. I still had no real reason to believe that what Mei had said was untrue. Nevertheless, Aradia was right. I wasn’t in danger with this amount of people milling around. I followed her over reluctantly, and could see Gethan staring at me from across the field. I avoided eye contact with him, stumbling slightly as I made my way across the rough terrain of the field. Though I wasn’t looking at him I could feel his eyes still on me as I walked towards him.

He was standing with a girl around my age. Her skin was creamy and smooth and a cloud of wild golden curls tumbled way past her shoulders. She had a variety of lockets around her neck, each with a different talisman on it. She was dressed in the same protective clothing as the rest of us, but she managed to make them look stylish instead of merely practical. Her heavy outdoor jacket and boots seemed to enhance her femininity and small frame, instead of bulking her up like it did the rest of us. Her eyes were a chocolate brown colour, and the cold air had left her cheeks with a rosy glow. She was wholesome and absolutely beautiful.

‘Hi, Scarlett,’ Gethan said in a low, guarded voice. He was testing me with the tone of his voice. I just gave him a small nod. I wanted him to know that while I wouldn’t make a scene in front of a stranger, everything wasn’t ok between us. I mustn’t have been as discrete as I thought, because the girl picked up on the connection between the two of us, looking from one to the other of us with a curious look on her face.

Aradia decided to give the introductions. ‘Scarlett, this is Liv. She goes to school with me. Liv, meet Scarlett.’

Liv’s eyes were piercing and cold as she turned to look at me. She acknowledged my presence with a curt nod.

‘Did you have to come far today?’ I asked, trying to make conversation.

‘No.’ The one word answer came out cold and unfriendly. I was stung, surprised that she was being so rude towards me. I’d only been trying to make conversation.

Gethan struggled to fill in the awkward silence. ‘Liv lives near here, at the bottom of the mountain.’

‘That must be handy for you,’ I smiled. This time she was even ruder; she turned her back and walked away. I was stunned.

‘What was that all about?’ I asked Gethan.

He looked as bewildered as I did. ‘I have no idea...But then, I never really know why women run off on me,’ he added pointedly.

I was saved from answering by the sound of a digger roaring to life. It carefully pulled off about a foot or so of soil away from a patch of ground that looked about ten feet squared. I felt a hand on my shoulder. I turned around and saw that it was Nick. He gestured over to a trench that was already established. There was a little bit of exposed masonry on view, but little else.