The Bride Wore Black Leather

A light so intense, I could feel it tingling on my bare face and hands.
    We seemed to walk for ages, through one Circle of Stones to another, but eventually we reached the centre, and stopped. A single long Stone lay on its side, on the ground, in the exact centre of all the Circles. No greenery touched it, its dull grey surface pitted and pock-marked. Half-buried in the dark earth by its own weight. My first thought was
Sacrificial Stone
, but there were none of the dark blood-stains on it that I’d seen on the outer wall. Julien smiled broadly, his face full of a simple awe.
    “Can you
feel
that, John?”
    Of course I could. There was the maze, and there was Green Henge, and then . . . there was something else. Something equally as powerful, perhaps even more so, but very young, as opposed to the ancient presence around us. Suddenly the glowing moonlight was gone, blasted aside by a burst of brilliant sunshine, as the Sun King came striding out of the Stones to join us. The whole of Green Henge was bathed in golden sunlight, rich and glorious, perhaps for the first time in centuries. The greenery surrounding the Standing Stones seemed to writhe and twist in ecstasy, expanding under the pressure of the sun’s warmth. A great choir of voices rang out, filling the evening air, surrounding the Sun King as he walked towards us, an angelic choir singing Hallelujahs. And the Sun King came to a halt, to stand before Julien and me, his presence beating on the air like an endless roll of thunder . . . prophesying the storm to come.
    “Too loud, man!” said Julien. “Turn it down! I can hardly hear myself think!”
    At once, the angelic chorus shut off, and the slow silence of the evening returned to Green Henge.
    “Hello, Julien,” said the Sun King in a warm, pleasant voice. “It’s been a while. Miss me?”
    “You know I did,” said Julien. “What’s with the new music? When did you go religious? What happened to the rock and roll?”
    “That was then, this is now,” said the Sun King. He smiled easily on Julien, and on me; and even I was impressed by the sheer grace and spirituality blazing off this man. Whatever else he was, whatever else he might have become during his long absence, I had no doubt at all that the Sun King was the real deal.
    He was dressed in his Coat of Vivid Colours, a long, linen coat blazing with psychedelic colours and patterns. It reminded me irresistibly of the interior of the Hawk’s Wind Bar & Grille. Underneath that he wore only a pair of faded blue jeans. His chest was bare, and so were his feet. He had a great mane of jet-black hair, falling half-way down his back, and a broad, square face with a prominent nose and a wide, smiling mouth. He wore tinted John Lennon granny glasses, pushed well down on his nose so he could peer over them with gleaming dark eyes. He opened his arms suddenly to Julien, and the two men stepped forward and embraced each other fiercely, with much back-slapping and loud, happy cries. I stayed back, feeling a bit left out. This was two legends meeting, after too long apart. I felt like a footnote. The two old friends rocked back and forth together, saying each other’s name over and over, and finally they stepped back, looked each other over at arm’s length, and gazed into each other’s face.
    “You haven’t changed a bit, Julien,” said the Sun King. “All these years, and you still look exactly the same as I remembered you.”
    “I could say the same of you,” said Julien, grinning broadly. “I waited for you, you know.”
    “Of course you did,” said the Sun King. “I wouldn’t have expected anything else.”
    Julien slowly stopped smiling. He let go of the Sun King and stepped back. “You look the same; but you’ve changed. The man I remember never once gave me any cause to fear what he might do.”
    The Sun King shrugged easily. “I never meant to be away so long. I never meant . . . that you should all have to wait so long. For my return. Time passed differently inside the Tower, while I communed with the Entities. They had so much to teach me . . . But Julien, I have to ask. What the hell happened? To the Dream, to everything we believed in? Why did it all fall apart without me? I was only ever the messenger, not the message! I was expecting all of you to take up where I left off and carry on. To make the new and glorious world we promised ourselves.”
    “You were the Miracle Man,” Julien said steadily. “When