Solstice

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1940 

Samina knew she was dreaming. She knew without any doubt that her physical body was still lying safely beneath a light cotton sheet in a stuffy little bedroom in London. She knew that elsewhere in the house, lamps burned, water pipes clanked quietly, and her father pottered around, keeping busy. A night owl, Marcus Hart always wrote his best work in the hours just before dawn. She knew all this, yet still, she was afraid.  

  Beneath her bare feet, the grass was damp and chilled, while above her head the sky was a great swathe of crisp deep blue, cloudless, with pale, sleepy stars. Her ears echoed with the roar of the sea, unseen waves crashing onto rocks and cliffs. She could smell the summer night; humid and alive, with a faint but sinister fragrance of fire seasoning the benign scent of nature. Her mouth hummed with the metallic taste of fear, and her tongue and throat were rasping and dry. All of her senses were alert and functioning, her body and brain insisting that this was no dream.  

As if tugged by a gentle tether, Samina made her way up a sharp incline, a narrow path weaving through bracken, gorse, and heather, and past a twisted, tortured tree, stunted by the constant battering of the wind. This wasn’t London, and neither was it Kent, where she used to spend her summers before the war. This was a place she had never seen before, where she had never walked, and yet somehow she knew it well. The landscape was alien, but familiar; terrifying, but so compelling.

  The rough path took her around a curving corner, and she had to push back her hair as a brisk wind blew it into her face. She could taste the tang of salt on the wind, the air so clean in her nose and lungs. There was no London smog here, no smoky chimneys and pollution, only salt and grass. Now, over the rhythmic peal of the sea, she could hear the steady beat of drums. She hesitated; were there people present too? Suddenly, she wanted to linger here, as with fierce certainty she knew that nearby something bad was waiting. Something terrible. But she had no freedom in this dream, and so she moved forward.  

  A distant cry of pain sent fresh fear shivering down her spine. Her hands trembled in the faint light as she gathered the last of her faltering courage to step out past a shoulder of rock and gorse.  Shock, terror, and awe shuddered through her as she saw what lay ahead, but what was worse was the feeling of recognition.  She knew this place, and with absolute certainty, she understood she was exactly where she was meant to be this night.

A henge loomed on the clifftop, a dozen standing stones towering into the lightening, pre-dawn sky.  Near the cliff’s edge stood a rough, square arch; two taller, more slender stones, capped with an almost level lintel stone.  Ten further stones created the circle, roughly equidistant apart, some leaning into each other while others stood as straight as palace guards.  Slightly offset to the centre of the circle was a much larger but squat stone, maybe six feet tall, jagged like a rotten tooth rearing out of the dark grass.  

  Gathered in the circle were many people. White-robed and hooded, they terrified her, and Samina felt herself shrink back towards the shelter of the rocks, but it was soon obvious they were utterly unaware of her. Instead, they appeared to concentrate on both the jagged stone and the horizon beyond the arch.  She crept forward again, drawn by instinct stronger than fear, but her heart hammered in her throat as she questioned her good sense, even her sanity.  

  “Oh no, no, no,” she murmured as her movement brought the subject of their intense concentration into her field of vision, and it was every bit as horrifying as she knew it would be.

A boy, naked and blood-streaked, hung limply from the stone. He faced the gateway, the sea, and the sky beyond, so still, Samina wondered if he might already be dead, but she sensed life in him rather than death.  She could see his feet on the damp grass, pulled apart and fettered to chains screwed into the base of the stone.  His arms were also chained, pulled tautly behind him, and fighting nausea, she realised that the chains pierced his hands and feet, larger final links passing through his pallid flesh, black blood clotted into the vicious wounds.  

  The boy’s shaven head hung down so his chin rested on his collarbone, and she could see his eyes were closed, his mouth slightly open.  His only garment, if you could call it such, was a twisted circle of thorns clinging to his hairless scalp, a woven bramble crown piercing and tearing his delicate flesh. Vivid bruises and dark blood stained the vulnerable, pale skin of his naked head and lent gruesome colour to his face.  

  “Oh Mina, Mina,” she muttered, “why?”  

  This dream, this horrific nightmare, must have been dredged up from a long-forgotten gothic story, buried somewhere in her sleeping memory. Samina wanted to wake up so badly, to shrug this away and for it to become a vague, half-forgotten memory. Maybe one day it would drift back to her in the middle of a maths test, or while guarding the goal in a netball match as play continued at the far end of the court. But forcing herself to awaken wasn’t working, and she found herself shuffling forward, moving closer to the stones. Despite her horror at the boy’s plight and her terror of being seen by the robed figures, she could not help herself. Some force - the boy? - was drawing her, as if there were tentacles wrapped around her ankles, dragging her feet across the cold grass.

  Closer to the central stone, Samina could see dull metal armlets banding the boy’s upper arms, but she couldn’t tell if they were decoration or shackles. His naked body and limbs were smeared with blood, black in the grey light, and dark bruises mapped past brutality on his flesh. At his bleeding feet, the remains of a small fire smoked on scorched black ground as loose ash swirled in the dawn breeze.  

  Samina had never seen such brutality, but what was happening to the boy frightened her because she understood that there was significance to it. A terrible, monstrous purpose. She didn’t know how or why, but intuition told her there was something special about this new day, this particular dawn.

The stars were fading, the night dying.  The drums suddenly seemed louder, and she could see two robed figures beating them, their hands flying in perfect rhythm.  One chanted with the beat, his voice haunting, and more shudders passed down her spine.

  “Wake up, Mina,” she begged. “Please, wake up.”  

  Pale light, coral pink and teal blue, streaked above the tranquil sea as one tall, lean figure stepped away from the group and towards the boy. He - surely he was too tall to be a woman - leaned down, lifted the boy’s chin and kissed his bloody mouth.  The boy smiled weakly, his eyes opening into narrow slits before closing again. As the sky continued to lighten, Samina could see his vicious bruises, swollen features, and raw, scraped flesh.  

  The boy must have been in immense pain. Unimaginable pain, and somehow, Samina knew that the figure standing over him was the one responsible. Yet she also sensed great tenderness, compassion, and even love surrounding the robed figure. But how could that be?  How could he love this boy and yet torture him in such a dreadful way?  She closed her eyes against the soft light, bewildered by both what she witnessed and how much she seemed to understand. 

Her eyes snapped open as the drums and chanting abruptly stopped, the sudden silence shocking. As the sky continued to brighten with the new dawn, the robed figure tenderly touched the boy’s cheek before kissing his brow and stepping away to tip his face to the marbled sky. 

  Samina heard herself gasp as his hood fell back, and sensible practicality reared suddenly in her mind, leaving her to wonder if she had fallen sick overnight, as only a fever dream now made any sense.  In front of her was the most beautiful and frightening man she had ever seen. Lit by the rosy light, his skin was bone-white and flawless.  He had high, sharp cheekbones below long, almost slanted, dark eyes, a strong nose, and a narrow mouth, unsmiling above a firm, angular, clean-shaven chin. Unusually long pale blond hair fell down his back to the base of his spine without wave or curl, and he was taller than any man she had seen in either London or Kent.  

  And in the space of a single heartbeat, Samina understood, as much as she understood any of this madness, that it was to this man she was connected. It was he who drew her to this place, not the boy; he who tethered her so firmly she could not leave.

  He must be an angel, she thought randomly, trying to make sense of what she saw.  Not a pretty, Nativity angel from a child’s story, but a serpent-eyed angel who could call upon the wrath of God and destroy worlds with a sweep of his hand.  

Instinctively stepping back, Samina felt the cold, immovable rock at her spine and wished with all her heart that she was safely home in Highgate, but still, the dream refused to end and release her.  

  From the people in the circle rose a faint murmur evolving into song as the drums sounded again, louder and faster.  Samina could see a sliver of blood-red on the horizon, rays of crimson on the undulating waves, and she gasped as a glowing ruby orb rapidly climbed up out of the sea, becoming orange, turning to gold, brightening with every second to bleach the sky and disperse the night.  Long rays of perfect light broke onto the grass at her feet, the sun rising swiftly until it appeared to pause, hanging in the gateway, perfectly spaced between the left and the right stone.  A moment of such beauty and awe, she forgot to be afraid.

  The chanting and drums faded again, and in the exquisite silence that followed, the angel threw back his head and arms to speak words in a strange language Samina had never heard before.  He appeared to call out to the north, the south, the west, and finally to the climbing sun in the east, but how she knew this, she didn't understand.  After addressing the dawn in alien, guttural words, he drew a long-bladed knife from his robe, returning to face the boy, and her fear came crashing back.  

  The sun rose above the stone lintel, and, with perfect timing, the angel allowed his weapon to drop.  The knife, a newborn sun shimmering holy fire on its silver blade, danced before falling to the boy’s chest, opening his flesh.  Crimson blood flowed with terrifying suddenness, streaking his white skin to pool on the scorched earth at his feet as he slumped in his fetters.

Samina cried out, unable to help herself, but realised with heart-stopping panic that now the angel was turning towards her. Could he see her?  Could he possibly hear her?  

  But this was only a dream.  Wasn’t it?  

  He was facing her, his dark eyes meeting hers across the stone circle. She froze, paralysed by his gaze. His face was supernaturally clear, despite the distance between them, and he frowned at her, puzzlement clear in his expression. Then his frown lifted, the lines fading as his mouth tipped into a faint smile. She saw his lips form a word, confusion mophing into wonder; joy softening his eyes.

  Panic finally released her, and she fled, terrified of what the angel would do to her if he caught her.  Samina stumbled away from the circle and along the rough cliff-top path, down a slope towards a distant white building, running and running. Panting, crying, sobbing...

“Mina? Samina? Come on, lass. Don’t cry. You’re okay, I promise.”

  Her father? Was he here? On the cliff-top?  

  She struggled out of sleep, saw her familiar bedroom walls, and burst into grateful tears. “Oh, Daddy. I was so scared.”

  “Hush, lass, there’s nothing to be afraid of.” Marcus Hart patted her hair, soothing her with his solid, undreamlike presence. “Only a nightmare.”

  “But it was so real,” she sobbed on his shoulder, breathing in the reassuring smell of tobacco, leather, and the scent that was his alone. Security.

  “They always are.”  

“But, but, but-” she stammered, unable to explain her fear. The sinister stone circle. The bleeding, dying boy. The angel who looked at her with black eyes and mouthed her name. Sa-mee-na. She heard it echo in her head as his lips formed the syllables.  The final horror was that he could both see her and somehow knew who she was.

  Marcus drew aside her blackout curtains. “Look, Mina, the night’s gone now. The sun is up and smiling down on us. It’s the longest day today, the Summer Solstice. Mina? Sweetheart, what is it?”

  “Oh, Daddy,” she whispered, and vomited, tasting only blood and seawater.