The Bride Wore Black Leather

filling the Garden of Green Henge; and the Stones remembered. One by one, the Stones reasserted their ancient presence, and the greenery surrounding the menhirs fell still again. The maze grew still again as the hedge walls resumed their shape and significance. The flowers slowly wasted away, thick pulpy petals shrivelling up, then dropping like multi-coloured confetti to the walkways of the maze. Moss and fungi growths ceased to pulsate and sank back into the ground. The Sisters’ song rose triumphantly, as sunshine and heat vanished, replaced by cool evening air. The sky was dark, and the oversized moon was back. The Garden of Green Henge was back, as though it had never been away.
    The song broke off, and a familiar quiet filling the evening again. The Very Righteous Sisters of the Holy Druids stood still and silent among the Circles of Standing Stones. And the Sun King looked slowly about him, his face cold.
    “Do you really think you can stand against me?”
    “We serve the Stones,” said the Sisters, in their great voice. “It is the Stones who oppose you.”
    “Shall I tell the Walker and the Adventurer exactly what it is that lives in the Maze and weeds out the unworthy?”
    There was a pause . . . and then the Sisters said, “Shall we let it loose upon you?”
    “Give it your best shot,” said the Sun King.
    There was a familiar rustling movement in the hedgerows, and Julien and I looked back at the Maze. The sounds grew closer, and from out of the Maze stalked a dark grey thing, seven or eight feet tall, made of grey-green vegetation and bone-white thorns. Shaped like a man, it walked like a man though there was nothing of Humanity in it. The murders in the maze were carried out by a manifestation of the maze, given shape and purpose, and a warrant to kill anyone the maze judged unworthy. The hedge thing stood still, the wrath of a green world, the protector of the Garden of Green Henge.
    “That . . . is what was following us?” said Julien.
    “That is what would have killed you if you’d failed the Sisters’ entirely arbitrary sense of what is right and proper,” said the Sun King. “It would have sucked the life out of you, then impaled what was left on the thorns of the hedge walls. The Very Righteous Sisters may like to think of themselves as a new kind of Druid; but the fruit never falls far from the tree. What you’re looking at is the hedge walking. It still wants to kill you. Because you don’t venerate the Stones. Can’t you feel it? Your basic goodness is all that’s kept it at bay, Julien. But the Sisters could still let that thing run loose, to kill anyone they disapprove of.”
    The hedge thing was looking at Julien and me, and I could tell it didn’t like us. But it liked the Sun King even less. It swayed slightly on its thorny feet, as though readying itself for an order to attack. And I was pretty sure if it did, it wouldn’t stop with the Sun King.
    “Plants should know their place,” the Sun King said firmly. He snapped his fingers, and a great blast of sunlight stabbed down out of nowhere, pinning the hedge thing to the spot. The light and heat were so intense that Julien and I had to throw up our arms to shields our eyes, even as we staggered backwards. The sunlight engulfed the hedge thing in a moment, and it burst into vicious flames that consumed it from the inside out. Fire and smoke rose into the evening air. The hedge thing waved its green arms, and the flames danced hungrily. I thought I heard the thing scream, and some cold place in my heart approved. The beam of sunlight snapped off. And when I was finally able to see clearly again, there was nothing left of the hedge thing but a blackened, smoking mess on the ground and a heavy scent, like burning leaves.
    And the Sun King was gone.
    “He hasn’t changed,” said Julien. “He still has to have the last word.”
    “So,” I said, trying to keep my voice light. “That . . . was the Sun King. I thought he’d be taller.”
    “You weren’t seeing him at his best,” said Julien. “There was something . . . off, about him.”
    “Yes,” I said. “I felt that. What did the Entities from Beyond do to him, during those long years they had him all to themselves, in the White Tower?”
    “And why wouldn’t he tell us their real name?” said Julien. “Perhaps because . . . we might recognise it?”
    “This is what you wouldn’t tell me,” I said sternly. “That the Sun King had been