A Finer End

use that force, control it, but cruel experience had taught her otherwise. The Old Ones had never been gentle gods, and they had never been concerned with human welfare.
    The path was set, the signs unmistakable; Faith could no more turn from it than she could will herself to stop breathing.
    Garnet knew that only she had the knowledge necessary to halt the gathering storm. And if last night she had failed in the task she had set herself, she must bear that burden as well.
    But she would not fail again.
     

Chapter Nine
     
Glastonbury is the gateway to the unseen... The long road from London spans the breadth of England and leads from one world to another.
Dion Fortune, from
Glastonbury: Avalon of the Heart
     
    ‘Jack!’ Fiona Allen opened her door wide. ‘Is Winnie all right?’
    ‘She’s still unconscious. But they let me see her for a bit, and the nurse says she’s doing well.’
    Motioning him inside, she said, ‘Sit down, please, and let me get you something to drink.’
    Jack sank into a chair and rubbed at the stubble on his jaw. ‘No, I’m fine, really.’ He found himself grateful for a few moments’ respite, and Fiona Allen’s very ordinariness was a comfort.
    The house, too, was welcoming, its interior a contrast from the unassuming stone façade and the proper cottage garden. Spare and open, the sitting room had polished oak floorboards and clean-lined furniture covered with batiked prints. There were books, and a few strategically placed wooden carvings and masks, but not a painting anywhere in sight.
    Perching on a rattan ottoman, Fiona said, ‘I’ve rung the hospital a dozen times, but they won’t tell me much. Resting comfortably is a terrible euphemism.’
    ‘Head injuries are very unpredictable, apparently.’ He tried to banish the image of Winnie, motionless in her hospital bed. ‘I wanted to see you, Fiona — see if there was anything you could tell me about last night. Do you have any idea what Winnie was doing in your lane?’
    ‘It does seem odd, doesn’t it? She must have been coming to see me. There’s no one else along here.’
    ‘If you hadn’t found her—’ Jack stopped, embarrassed by the sudden sting of tears.
    ‘But that’s odd too,’ Fiona said thoughtfully. ‘I don’t usually go for walks at that time of night. But I’d been painting and I needed the air.’
    ‘Coincidence?’
    ‘Probably. But—’ Fiona gazed at him, then seemed to change the subject. ‘I want to show you something.’ She stood and led the way towards the back of the house.
    Baffled, Jack followed her through the open sitting area and into a corridor, where she opened a door and entered a glass-walled studio.
    Beyond the glass the ground dropped away, so that the room seemed to hang in space, suspended over the Coombe with its white puffs of sheep in the green grass, like a child’s drawing of clouds in an emerald sky. Canvases were stacked neatly against the walls, but face-inwards, as was the canvas on the easel. ‘You don’t display your paintings?’
    ‘I don’t need to see them,’ Fiona said baldly. ‘But this one... this one was different.’ She turned the canvas on the easel round.
    Jack felt his mouth go dry. He’d seen the paintings in magazines, and occasionally in a gallery window in Glastonbury, but he hadn’t been prepared for the power and immediacy of such an intimate exposure. ‘They’re ..
    ‘Don’t you dare use the F word,’ said Fiona, when he hesitated.
    ‘F word?’
    ‘Fairies.’ She scowled. ‘Like Tinkerbell. Victorian. Silly, fluffy things.’
    Jack shook his head. ‘No. They... I was going to say they frighten me. They remind me of Blake’s visions. Beautiful. And terrible.’
    ‘Exactly.’ Fiona met his eyes. ‘But this one— Oddly enough, in the twenty-some-odd years I’ve lived here in Glastonbury, I’ve never painted the Abbey before. So why paint it now, on this particular night?’
    The creatures, some winged, some not, with their severe asexual faces, thronged round the familiar silhouette of the ruined Great Church, hands extended in supplication. Behind them, the sky was a mottled bruise reflecting the setting sun, pierced by the dark shape of the Tor.
    Fiona turned back to the canvas. ‘And there was something else. They sang to me. I can’t describe it. It was’ — she shrugged — ‘it was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard, and yet the saddest. I’d give anything if I could recreate it, even in my