Dying Fall

Kate.
    ‘How tall is this thing?’ asks Tim.
    ‘Over two hundred feet,’ says the attendant. ‘They had to put lights on it to warn passing aeroplanes.’
    As he says this, the air is filled with the sound of rotors. A helicopter moves steadily across the horizon. The woman in the carriage stands up. It seems as if she is shouting, gesticulating. Ruth screams and, at that moment, Cathbad falls.

CHAPTER 33
    Ruth carries on screaming even as the police converge on Cathbad. She can hear Sandy yelling for an ambulance and Nelson just yelling. Tim seems to be in contact with the helicopter because she hears him asking, ‘Is there anyone else there? In the carriage?’ And, above it all, she hears something very small and soft, which, all the same, soars above the mayhem around her.
    ‘Mum?’
    She whirls round. A motherly attendant is standing a few feet away, holding Kate by the hand.
    ‘Found her in Dora’s World. Fast asleep, poor little mite.’
    ‘Kate!’ Ruth scoops her daughter into her arms, oblivious of anything but the sight, smell and sound of her. She buries her face in Kate’s dark hair.
    ‘Mum,’ says Kate sleepily.
    ‘Oh, my baby.’
    She hasn’t called him but Nelson is beside her. She thinks he’s crying but she can’t be sure. She hears Tim telling the attendant to start the ride moving again. ‘Asquick as you can, don’t go through the whole circuit.’ Screams as the carriages start to move backwards. An ambulance is driving past them through the goggling crowds, but Ruth, holding Kate, can think of nothing else. She is aware that Elaine, too, is crying. The ride screeches to a halt in front of them. Sandy rushes forward and pulls the woman out of her seat. The mask and the wig come off together.
    Leaving Ruth staring at the open, friendly face of Sam Elliot.
    *
    And, in Norfolk, Judy cries out, loudly enough to wake the baby.

CHAPTER 34
    It is the perfect day for a druid’s funeral. The sun has just risen over Pendle Hill and the four robed figures stand, arms raised, as if to lift it higher into the pale blue sky. The main celebrant, a woman named Olga, calls out in a thin but carrying voice:
    ‘Oh great spirit, Mother and Father of us all, we ask for your blessings on this our ceremony of thanksgiving, and honouring and blessing. We stand at a gateway now. A gateway that each of us must step through at some time in our lives.’
    Ruth, standing shivering with Kate in her arms, thinks of the people she knows who have passed through the gateway. Erik, Dan, little Scarlett – the girl whose death really started everything. Are they really just out there, beyond the sunrise, waiting? Cathbad once said something like this to her, that he had travelled to the land between life and death to save Nelson and had seen Erik, guarding the portal to the afterlife. Nelson had dismissed it, of course, but Ruth had thought at the time that helooked rather uncomfortable. She suspects Nelson of having had a near-death experience when he was ill last year. Not that he would ever admit it.
    The four druids, Olga explained earlier, represent the four elements: earth, fire, water and air. The ceremony relieves the elements of the responsibility of supporting the dead soul. The druids now chant:
    ‘Earth my body,
    Water my blood,
    Air my breath,
    Fire my spirit.’
    The sun rises higher and a flock of geese flies westwards, towards the sea. Sacred birds, Cathbad had called them, sacred to the Romans and maybe also to the ancient Britons who had worshipped the Raven God.
    Olga turns and raises the clay urn. ‘May his soul be immersed in the shining light of the unity that is the Mother and Father of us all.’
    She takes a handful of dust and flings it into the air where an obliging gust of wind takes it and sends it spiralling upwards, a second’s transitory glitter before dispersing to the four corners of the earth. One by one, the other druids place their hands into the urn.
    ‘Earth my body,
    Water my blood,
    Air my breath,
    Fire my spirit.’
    Olga offers Ruth the receptacle, but she shakes her head. ‘Want,’ says Kate, but quietly. Ruth is surprised to see notonly Nelson, but Tim take a handful of ashes and throw them into the air. She is surprised how much there is but, eventually, Olga turns the urn upside down to show there is nothing left. The four druids come together and bow.
    ‘Go in peace, our beloved,’ says Olga. ‘From his spirit a pure flame shall rise. Hail and