A Long Day in Lychford (Lychford #3)(16)

Ahead, on the surface, she saw something.

A set of footprints was materialising. There was someone else in here.

Judith gave a little groan and made to follow.

*

Autumn had stumbled down into the hollow, and had immediately realised what the lights were. At the end of a trail of destruction, where it had carved a road for itself across the wooded hill, a huge articulated lorry lay on its side. She’d run to the cab, managed to put a foot on one of the wheels, and had climbed up onto the side of it. She’d looked inside, and tried the door. When it had clicked open, she’d managed to haul it upwards and look down into the interior.

There sat a battered man, in his thirties, stubbled chin, donkey jacket, cropped hair. He had a kind, frightened, bemused face. He was out of his seat belt, having managed to heave himself into an upright position. He looked up at her in relief. “Thank you. Where? What happened?”

Was that a Polish accent? Autumn decided she couldn’t answer his questions very well in any language. And even then, the undercutting voice in her head added, she’d have hesitated to get to the point where his plight was her fault. “Are you hurt?”

“My leg, maybe broken. Hurts like . . . hell.”

Autumn was moved that he’d felt the need to spare her delicate sensibilities from a swear word even in a situation like this. She swore in reply, and he managed a smile. In the movies, lorries in these circumstances would always explode, but she was pretty sure that didn’t really happen, and there was no petrol smell, and if he’d been here an hour already it would probably have happened by now. If they’d been back in Lychford, she was pretty sure the best thing would have been to leave him where he was and keep him company until the emergency services got here. Pity she didn’t have that option. “Have you seen anyone else?”

“I thought . . . someone moving. About ten minutes. I have been shouting.”

Autumn raised her head out of the cab and looked carefully around. Everything was silent, apart from the wind moving the trees. The wind and the moon . . . she realised that this pocket she’d created couldn’t be cut off in space, or the area cut off must stretch to the moon, and she was pretty sure it would have been missed. So that must mean it was . . . cut off in time? Or something? The moon didn’t seem to have moved since she’d got here. What would walking through this place be like for someone outside the knot, who hadn’t carefully got lost to find it? Would those unaware hikers suddenly hop to a moment later, a moment that was missing from the world? Would they even notice?

These were the sort of questions Judith never liked her asking. Mainly because the old . . . witch didn’t know the answers. Magic let you jump over the “why” and make use of what was hidden, all from the comfort of your kitchen sink.

She didn’t think she’d ever stop needing to know why. Maybe that, too, didn’t make her a very good apprentice. Just as well she wasn’t going to be one for much longer. That thought gave her an ache she knew she deserved. She dismissed it.

She ducked back down into the cab. “Does your radio work?”

It took a bit of miming and explaining to translate the word “radio,” but when he got it, he switched it on, and Autumn listened to a single sustained note of early hours music on Radio 1. It took her a few moments to realise it wasn’t the more experimental end of the dance spectrum, but that it was going to go on like that forever. She switched it off again.

She looked back out of the cab. She couldn’t put this off any longer. That “first aid for small businesses” course she’d taken was finally going to pay off.

“Okay,” she said, “it’s going to hurt, but we have to get you out and mobile.”

*

It had turned out the rave was in an abandoned building that looked like it had once been a cattle barn, a building that Lizzie had walked around a couple of times in the last few weeks when she’d been trying to get her steps in. A large generator on wheels was chugging away outside, and a crowd of young people were milling around, while more had been visible through the barn entrances, still dancing. Lizzie had heard a DJ shouting encouragement. It had seemed like the party was still in full swing.

Most of the crowd outside had been smoking or snogging or sobbing, doing what the people outside clubs always did, but a few of them had seemed to be talking urgently, looking worried. Those were the ones who’d looked up, surprised, as Lizzie had approached. As if they’d been hoping someone would arrive.

One of them, a young man with a big grin and a bigger beard, had stumbled over to her, his arms outstretched. His friends had followed. “It’s a vicar!” he’d cried, and, to Lizzie’s surprise, he’d moved in for a surprisingly sincere hug. Sincere, but, err, he’d obviously been dancing all night. There was a certain moistness. She’d gently disengaged herself. “I’m not religious,” he’d assured her, loudly and immediately, “but I love that you are, like these woods are, like those birds are. Those starlings. They’re religious.”

Lizzie had never previously encountered someone who, prior to asking her name, had ventured theories concerning ornithological theology. “I suspect,” she’d shouted over the music, “that you may have been on more than the cider.”

“Oh no! You got me! Will I go to hell?”

“I tell you what,” Lizzie had said, “you tell me about a few things, and then take me to whoever’s in charge, and I’ll do my best to make sure we avoid that.”