Great sheets of rain filled the streets, flowing through the gutters and raising the height of the canal that ran through the heart of Oxford. Alice Harkness made her way along the footpath that divided the two canals, her body hunched over and the hood of her raincoat drawn up tight around her head. She held a shopping bag close against her stomach, in a futile effort to preserve its contents from the endless downpour. The bag was holding, the cheap plastic barely managing to keep the rain out. In the centre of the canal, with the rain blocking off all sight beyond a few dozen metres, it was easy to forget that she was in one of England’s most famous cities.
Oxford was not the behemoth that London was, nor was it comparable to the lesser sprawls of Manchester and Newcastle, formed and maintained by endless industry. Oxford had always been a quiet town, content to spend its time in contemplative study. It was a romantic city, with sweeping architecture interspersed with broad avenues, and defined by the quiet parks and quadrangles of its many colleges. It was the ideal English city, the utopia often dreamed of but never reached, and its halls had inspired grand masterpieces, or epic tomes. Its size was not comparable to many major towns, but its architecture and status were what earned it the right to be called a City.
Of course, none of that was particularly relevant to Alice. She was just a maths teacher in the suburbs of Oxford, bringing home some food for the next week. All she could think of was the driving rain, and the lesser politics that fill all schools. She shuddered as the rain fell faster and faster, great droplets pounding against her worn coat as she began to look around for any sort of shelter. But she couldn’t see, the rain was falling so fast and so hard that she had become surrounded by a wall of water. She twisted and turned as the narrow path that ran between the canals became lost to her. To go forward might mean stepping straight into the waters, but she couldn’t stay in this storm forever. Tentatively, she reached out with her foot and stepped.
The rain disappeared. It did not stop, or slow or cease. There was no moment of transition when the last few drops hit the earth, it simply vanished. One moment she had been standing at the centre of a maelstrom of water, with the twin canals on either side, the next she stood at the centre of a forest glade, with the sun beating down on her head and no memory of any intervening period. Her clothes and shoes were sodden through from the storm, but they slowly began to dry under the bright sunlight, and the ceaseless pounding of the rain was replaced by gentle birdsong and the sound of distant music.
Alice was surrounded on all sides by deep, dark forests whose foliage was so dense as to be impenetrable. Before her stretched a narrow woodland path, that parted the forest before twisting and turning so that she could not see its end. Somehow, she felt drawn to this path and set off, her bag of groceries falling unnoticed from her arms. The winding path was not easy, and she regularly had to clamber over tree roots or great bushels of ivy, but she moved through the forest at a steady pace, barely aware of the passage of time.
It could have taken her minutes or millennia, but eventually Alice emerged into another clearing, this time covered from above by the distant treetops. Great wooden structures dotted this glade, seemingly grown into the trees themselves, and music and riotous laughter could be heard. The path ended here at a massive archway grown under the branches of a sycamore tree. Two men in green uniforms stood on either side of the arch, standing at attention with rifles gripped in their arms. They stamped their feet as Alice passed and the air was filled with the sound of a shrill flute. A girl stepped out from one of the wooden structures, before making her way over to Alice. She looked to be in her mid-teens, and something about her brought up memories of Alice’s better students. She couldn’t make out the girl’s features, her vision had blurred, but she accepted the child’s offered hand as she led Alice through the glade.
The girl led her towards the music, which began to take shape and form as she approached. It was a beautiful melody, made with voice and flute and harp, and it filled Alice’s mind with thoughts of comfort and contentment. She was brought into a small courtyard, set around an enormous sycamore tree. Three people stood before the trunk, two men playing the instruments and a woman singing, while a group of beautiful creatures lazed on benches or on the grass, enjoying the melody. The seats ringed the great tree, interspersed by incredible statues formed from wood into perfect imitations of the human form. Their skin was grey, and their hair the same green as the forest canopy, but their beauty was greater than any human Alice had known. Her guide led her before this crowd, who looked her up and down with kind eyes.
“A new friend has come to Tír na nÓg, brothers and sisters,” one spoke to the assembled crowd, “what shall we name it?”.
Alice did not know why, but she felt compelled to bow before these ethereal figures. She spoke, though her voice emerged a muted thing, a far cry from the authoritative tone she used in the classroom.
“My… My name is Alice.”
One of the creatures giggled to himself, but Alice did not feel that she had been slighted.
“Now then, my dear, that simply won’t do. Alice is a boring name. We shall give you a new one.”
Alice inwardly agreed, her name was dull and uninteresting. Surely these wonderful people could give her a better one. The faeries raised their voices, as they shouted out dozens of names.
“Soldier!” “Dancer!” “Cook!” “Singer!” “Whore!”
Their leader held up a hand for silence, and his court obeyed. The nameless woman’s eyes began to clear and she saw the figure clearly. He was dressed in armour seemingly formed from tree bark, and wore a crown made of antlers. He was the very embodiment of regal grace, and the nameless woman could think of no finer person to decide her future.
“Art.”
He did not shout, but his voice cut clear through the noise of the forest, and the sonorous music. It was immediately followed by whoops and cheers from the court, as Art’s mind finally cleared. She saw the girl who had led her here, roots and wooden tendrils weaving through her human skin in constricting shapes. A chain of knotted vines suddenly appeared around her throat and she was hauled to the earth by one of the inhuman creatures, who pulled the girl in close and began caressing her hair like a pet as tears fell down her face.
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One of the faeries rose, gripping her arm in a vice-like grip and walking her over to the edge of the courtyard. The creature’s face, that had seemed so beautiful, now evoked fear and horror with features twisted inhumanly. As she was dragged backwards, she saw the musicians playing on. Their music was discordant and harsh, and the players were fused into the tree. The singer choked slightly on one of the notes, and one of the faeries rose in a storm of rage, slamming the woman’s free hand against the tree and fusing it in place with rapid growths of bark.
Art looked at the statues, set in concentric rings around the tree, and noticed that they were slightly too realistic, and each was positioned in a fearful grimace. Some were on their knees, arms raised begging to the sky. Others were stood in paralysed horror, clutching their arms to their chest. Each was entirely made of bark, save for human eyes that darted furtively around. Her captor placed her on the next free plinth, before letting go as her feet merged with the tree stump. Art screamed and screamed, her screams merging with the music until they became part of the melody. The bark crept up her body and into her lungs, silencing her. Within moments, Art was frozen with only her eyes left free to show her piteous state to the Unseelie Court, who surrounded her wooden form like connoisseurs, critiquing the final moments of her free existence.
On a blasted heath in the North of England, a gathering of hooded figures stood in darkness around an ancient ruin. The small rectangle of stone was all that remained of a Roman structure, built in the shadow of an ancient fort. To the East and West stretched Hadrian’s Wall, an ancient bulwark that had protected the old Roman Empire from the horrors that lurked beyond the world’s edge. This was a shrine to Mithras, the soldier’s god, and its empty grounds had been secretly reconsecrated. The hooded figures, rain-slicked ponchos concealing their features from view, did not stand inside the ruin itself, for it was to small to contain their number.
Anyone foolish enough to get a closer look at these figures would not disconcerting similarities. Each was in the prime of physical fitness, and each wore ponchos of the same olive-green colour. Their legs, visible beneath the slick cloak, were clad in camouflaged trousers, and ended in black boots. Mithras had been brought to Britain from his native Anatolia by the Legions of Rome, and he was still a Soldier’s god.
The assembled soldiers parted as a great cow was led into the old ruin by another man, made indistinguishable by his hooded poncho. As one, the soldiers began to chant. It was a throaty sound, that failed to carry past the driving rain, but it was worship in the old way. They did not pray quietly, but sung their praises to the heavens so that Mithras might hear them. The priest took up a bowl from atop the ancient altar, filled with rainwater, and poured it on the cow’s head. The beast’s head bowed, an indication of consent, and before its head could be raised again the beast’s throat had been slit by a sharpened knife. As the cow breathed its last, the bloody knife was raised to the heavens and the assembled soldiers let out a wordless shout of praise.
Mithras had defended the realm from horrors beyond the world’s edge, and now he was called upon to protect these sons of Troy from the horrors of the modern world.
The sun shone bright upon the quiet town of Dorchester-on-Thames, nestled amidst the foothills of Oxfordshire. It was a quiet town, with no industry to speak of and an ageing population, but it was beautiful all the same. Arthur Maxwell ran through the centre of the small town, dressed in shorts and a florescent t-shirt. He liked running, enjoyed the sense of openness it gave him, and every morning he would rise bright and early to run along the same route. At this early hour, the streets of Dorchester were almost entirely empty and only the occasional passing car gave any indication of life.
His run brought him through the town and out into the surrounding fields. Two great earthworks rose on either side of him as he ran along the track, forming a great trench covered by grass. These were but one of the many Saxon earthworks that dotted the countryside of Oxfordshire, marking the boundaries of the old Kingdoms that predated England itself. The Kingdoms of Wessex and Mercia once vied for control of these lands, before the two kingdoms were unified in the face of the Norse threat by King Alfred the Great, who was the first to dream of a united England. He died before that dream could be realised, but he laid the groundwork for all the Kings and Queens that followed him.
His realm was defined by these earthworks, serving as borders and defensive barriers that gave his people free passage through his realm. The trenches lead right to the rivers edge, where they gave way to a small footbridge. As Arthur crossed this bridge, two hills entered his field of view. These were the Wittenham Clumps, named for the small copses of trees that topped each hill. The twin hills stood isolated, surrounded by empty fields all the way to the distant Ridgeway that ringed the Oxfordshire basin. The hills were empty now, but they been occupied since the Bronze age, providing shelter to the ancient tribes of Britain and their Roman successors.
Arthur made his way to the second hill, Castle Hill, so named because it was ringed by a great earthwork that made it easy to defend, and harder to climb. This early in the morning, the hill was entirely empty and Arthur was able to clamber up to the top without breaking stride. At the top, he paused and looked out at the magnificent vista. All of Oxfordshire and Berkshire was laid bare before him, from the proud steeple of nearby Dorchester Abbey to the imposing smokestacks of Didcot Power Station. It was a view he would never tire of, and he always paused at this point in his run to simply enjoy the magnificent vista.
Arthur began to feel something tugging at the back of his collar but, when he turned, no-one was to be seen. The pull began again, a seemingly invisible force that drew Arthur towards the copse at the height of Castle Hill. He began to walk into the small cluster of trees, then paused as they seemed to stretch on for a far greater distance than the hill allowed. He turned again, only to be confronted by yet more forest. Strangely, he did not feel disconcerted by the change in scenery, and set off at a gentle walk in the direction of the pull.
After a few more steps, he emerged into a clearing that contained a vast lake. The water was perfectly flat, and the light had shifted to the glow of dawn. Arthur waited beside this lake, unsure of what to do next, when he began to make out a form beneath the lake. A woman, naked and beautiful, darted around within the clear waters, moving with a dolphin’s grace as she swam. She sank down to the bottom of the lake, and Arthur leapt up out of fear she had drowned only t stop as he saw the glint of metal as the lady brushed aside the sediment.
She swam closer to the surface, holding a long sword of gleaming metal inlaid with runes and with a magnificent ruby set into the pommel. She waited beneath the surface of the lake for a few tantalising moments before reversing the sword, gripping it by the blade, and lifting it out of the water. When her hand left the water, it lost its radiant colour and became a dull grey. Still beautiful, but somehow lesser. Arthur was filled with an immense sense of conviction and waded into the lake, not caring as his feet became sodden through. He took the sword by the hilt and raised it in both hands to the sky. It gleamed in the sunlight, and its light seemed to fill Arthur’s senses until all he could see was the pure light of day. He heard a voice, carried on the breeze and almost imperceptibly faint.
“The once and future King.”
A King stood atop Castle Hill, looking over his realm. His feet were sodden through, but he no longer cared. He looked at the blade held bare in his hand, taking in the immense sense of power it gave him. He turned east, and raised the blade to a point in an unspoken gesture of challenge. None answered him, and so he began to descend from the heights to walk the earth once more.