Druid's Moon

Chapter 2

Chapter 2Lyne drew her head down as far as she could into the collar of her raincoat and shifted her grocery bag to hang on her wrist, leaving both hands free to wrestle with her umbrella. A gust of wind pushed at her shoulders. Swirling upwards, it ripped out one of the prongs of the umbrella, and the whole thing turned inside out. She clutched at the wet and slippery handle with both hands, even as the wind tugged her down to the street corner.

She tossed the broken umbrella in the nearest bin and shoved her hands deep into the pockets of her raincoat, looking ahead to home and a hot bath.

The grey skies had lowered on her the minute she’d stepped out her door that morning. They’d reached the last week of the wettest April England had seen in over a century; it had been even wetter here in the town of Trewissick-on-Sea in Cornwall.

All day she and the latest intern, Peter, a master’s student, had huddled with the professor in the cave, cleaning and labelling potsherds until their hands grew numb. No one else had even shown up for work. Despite the solid rock surrounding them, and even with the newly erected doors in place, the damp still fingered its way in. The rock walls had been as slippery as if the sea itself seeped upwards through the cliffs.

All around Cornwall, flood warnings had been issued, and every morning the papers reported the same story: all the rain in the last month still hadn’t filled the reservoirs emptied by a long drought. The ground was too hard and the water simply washed away, swelling the rivers and leading to—

Floods.

She’d stepped into one directly outside her flat, where the road curved sharply along the harbour wall. She made a face as she edged forward, careful not to slosh the dirty water that rose right up to the rim of her wellies. The puddle covered the lower half of the street, as grey and forbidding as the Moria lake in The Lord of the Rings.

She made it to the front door and jammed her key in the lock, scrambling over the threshold as if a hungry creature waited to snatch her in its tentacles and drag her down into the depths of the dark waters.

She shrugged off her wet coat in the dim hallway and unlocked the door of her ground-floor flat, only to be greeted by an inch of water all around.

So much for a hot bath. She slumped against the doorjamb with a groan. Her hair lay plastered to her cheeks in cold clumps. She’d be lucky if she could find even one sweater in her closet that wasn’t damp right through.

“The whole street’s hilla-ridden,” Mrs. Glick said from behind in her thick Cornish accent. She peered over Lyne’s shoulder and clucked her tongue. “We’ll have to move ’ee to th’ upstairs room.”

Left a childless widow some years before, Mrs. Glick had taken the eminently sensible step of converting her rambling old house into flats. She lived in the other downstairs apartment and came out to investigate every time the front door opened and closed.

Lyne made a vague sound of agreement. Wading across the room, she dumped her groceries on the coffee table, flexing her wrist and fingers at the relief of finally letting go of the soggy plastic.

Her landlady surveyed the damage from the doorway, one hand twisting and untwisting the string of beads around her neck. “If ’tidn’ one thing, ’tis another.” She shook her head ruefully at the damage to her furniture. “I dessay ’n will cost a pretty penny to put ’n right.”

“I’m sorry,” Lyne said, and Mrs. Glick’s wrinkles creased in laughter.

“Not ’ee’s fault, midear. Now come along.” Suddenly brisk, she let go of her beads and headed up the stairs. “I’ll show you ’ee’s new room, and then ’ee might pop into mine for a bit. Time enough to deal with the insurance men once the waters’ve gone down. I’ll make some good strong tea.” She chuckled again. “Fancy taking the blame for the weather!”

* * *

Mrs. Glick had insisted on cooking for her, so Lyne offered to do the washing up afterwards, but her landlady waved her off. “I’ve a girl comes in for that. No need to wear ourselves out.” With another laugh, she added, “’Ee’s too learnt and I’m too old.”

Mrs. Glick’s accent became easier to understand, Lyne discovered, once you’d spent a couple of hours in her company.

“Mrs. Glick, do you know any local legends?” she asked, accepting a mug of dark, sweet tea, and following her landlady out into the floral-patterned sitting room. This side of the house was set further back from the road and had escaped the floodwaters that lapped across the floor of her own erstwhile flat.

Mrs. Glick took the question as an excuse to launch into a winding folktale, complete with twists and turns and a slew of characters all with the same name. The story became harder to follow than ever, but Lyne put on an awe-filled expression and laughed in what she hoped were the right places.

As the tale wound down, Lyne ventured to ask what was really on her mind. “Are there any tales about an octopus?”

“A what?” Mrs. Glick looked like she was about to let off another cackle of laughter, then stopped short. The change that came over her features was frighteningly quick. “Why does ’ee ask?” she whispered, brows lowering over her eyes as her gaze darted to the window. Through a crack in the dark drapes, Lyne could see the light of the streetlamp, flickering as if reflecting off the puddle outside. A wooden carriage clock on the mantelpiece bonged an off-key count of seven.

Mrs. Glick obviously knew an intriguing story, but something kept her from telling it.

She’d have to tread carefully, start with the manuscript; no one could be concerned about something that ancient. “A couple of weeks ago, I found—”

“You’m meddling far too much.” Mrs. Glick grabbed Lyne’s arms so quickly, tea sloshed over the rim of the cup. “The Council will have to hear about this.”

“But we’ve already got the permits—”

“Not that Council.”

A drop of tea rolled down towards her charm bracelet, and Lyne itched with the urge to wipe it away, but Mrs. Glick tightened her grip and pushed her face up close.

“Listen,” she hissed. “Keep on with the old coins and the bits of pottery.” She’d lost her accent entirely. Her pupils were wide in her milky green eyes, like a cat’s in darkness. “Forget about legends—and don’t disturb any old bones. The waters are rising.”

“Do you mean the flood outside?” The old woman’s bony hands were warm, hot even, on Lyne’s skin. She thought of the third line of the manuscript: “Three prongs bear proof of Beauty, three signs of anger at her coming: the tide that rises across her feet...”

“Do I—” Mrs. Glick’s voice resumed its normal pitch and she sat back. “Yes, I reckon so. ’Ee’s goin’ to think me daft. All this tale-telling.” She gave Lyne a wobbly smile and patted her hand without seeming to notice it was wet. “Finished, ’ave ’ee?” She took the cup from Lyne and hoisted herself off the sofa with a groan.

As Mrs. Glick bustled off to the kitchen, Lyne stepped quietly over to the window and peered out through the gap in the curtains. The lamp outside cast a yellow gleam on the pool of water.

She pressed her nose to the pane, looking down the garden path to where the water still lapped at the foot of the front steps. In the dark, the house seemed marooned on an island in the middle of a lake, though she knew the other side of the street was dry. It was only a shallow puddle that barely covered half the road. Nothing moved in the darkness outside, not even a breeze to ripple across the surface of the water.

What was Mrs. Glick frightened of?