Dark Ages. John Pritchard

      ‘Well, serves you right for being a naughty girl. But thanks,’ he added quickly, both hands raised to fend her off. ‘Seriously … I’d like to have a look.’

      ‘Come on, you,’ she grinned, and turned away. ‘We’re just in time. Let’s see what’s on the menu.’

      He hadn’t given it much thought, until a few weeks later. Autumn was advancing, and the nights were drawing in. He’d failed his driving test again, so couldn’t use the car: it felt like being stranded in the sticks. The cottage was still home to him – still big enough to lose himself inside. But relations with his parents were beginning to grow strained.

      Mum was patient, like she’d always been: soaking up his selfishness, his adolescent moods. She knew that he was raring for the off – to follow Lyn. Not long now, she’d told him once, it’s just around the corner. So long as he kept studying. He had to get his grades.

      His father was more distanced, as if unsure what to say. He rarely ventured up to Martin’s room. And that was just as well, from Martin’s viewpoint. He’d probably feel bound to pass some comment on the pin-ups. At least Mum turned a blind eye to those.

      Now and again, there’d be a spark between them. Dad listened to the radio in the evening as he worked: Radio 3, on quietly in the background. But sometimes, like the other night, he’d switch to Radio 4. And Martin had stood listening on the landing – hearing the twangy, ethereal opening bars of The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy come drifting through the open study doorway. He could have gone in then, and shared his interest. But their talk might have turned to other things – like study and exams.

      To some extent, he’d grown up in Lyn’s shadow. She’d won all the prizes – and got the marks that he would have to match. The challenge was unspoken, and it didn’t come from her. His parents hadn’t pushed it, not overtly. And yet he seemed to feel it every day.

      He’d countered it by digging in his heels. Lyn had gone to private school, but he’d refused point-blank. Dad had nudged him on towards an Oxbridge application, but Martin was content to go for London. And yes, he thought, I’ll sit down and revise. But not tonight.

      At least the unlit fields round here gave clear sight of the stars. He’d got the timer working on the telescope, and was planning to take some photos of the sky. His parents were away tonight, and Lyn was back at Oxford. As he ate his supper, he recalled what she had said.

      An antique star-map. Interesting. Worth looking at, before Orion rise.

      He loaded the dishwasher, then went up to the study. No prohibition now, of course; though Lyn was the one who’d always been attracted. He tracked his gaze along the shelves, and found the likely volume soon enough. Myth and Magic in Medieval Europe. He took it to the desk, sat down and started flicking through. Finding the chart, he unfolded it with care. Something about it made him catch his breath.

      The map showed all the seasons of the stars. He sat there, poring over them, as if this were some kind of mythic realm. That was how they would have seemed, six hundred years ago. Part of him still felt that he could lose himself amongst them.

      Yet each star was a thermonuclear furnace, breaking down the fabric of the Cosmos to keep running. That was more miraculous, to him, than any myth.

      Nonetheless, intrigued, he kept on looking. Clustered in the centre were the signs that never set – the Little Bear, the Dragon and the Plough or Greater Bear. Each one bore an unfamiliar name.

       branpen. fluar. aeelgar.

      He didn’t recognize those words – nor many of the others. Some were too obscure to be deciphered. The outer ring was full of weird scribbling, with gothic crosses used like punctuation. He made out the word Agla, which he’d noticed in the text. Leafing back, he found it was a Hebrew acronym, often used in medieval magic.

      Ata Gibor Leolam Adonai. Thou art mighty for ever, O Lord.

      Returning to the chart, he started checking constellations – tracking down his favourite ones like close friends in a crowd. The detailing was exquisite. Most of the stars bore their Arabic names, evocative and strange. Sheratan and Sadalsud; Aldèbaran; Al Nath. Antares, at the Scorpion’s heart, was inked with murky red.

      The stars of the Plough had their own peculiar rhythm: from Dubhe and Merak, pointers to the Pole, to Benetnasch, the last star in the tail. He knew those well, and mouthed them one by one.

      His finger traced the patterns: following the lines from star to star. Boötes, the great Herdsmen, had been dubbed leofric here; the crooked kite of Auriga was ealdred. The Great Dog – Canis Major – had dominicain beside it. He guessed that these were magic words – the constellations being used as symbols. Or sigils, or whatever they were called.

       Dubhe. Merak. Phecda …

      Suddenly he realized it was getting hard to see. The desk lamp was beginning to go out. He looked up quickly – startled by a sense of someone with him in the room. Nobody was there, of course; but the lamp continued dying. Its yellow light turned reddish as the power was sucked out, to disappear like blood into the dark. The filament remained, a burning thread – then that faded, too. Darkness swallowed up the desk.

      He saw the stars were glowing.

      The first thing that he felt was awe: they had a spectral beauty. Charted with luminous paint, he thought … then realized this was just a photograph. And the pinpoints were too bright for that – bright enough to shed a cold light of their own. Then the stars went out: became black holes. He felt the sight being sucked out of his eyes. The last faint tinge of bluish light was swallowed by the book.

      Martin sat there, stupefied – and suddenly the universe burst open all around him. It felt as if his thinking mind had risen from his body, straight up through the ceiling and the roof. The rectory just vanished, and the stars were everywhere: ones that hadn’t risen yet, and some he wouldn’t see until next spring. His nostrils were filled with the night’s distinctive smell – a fresh aroma, strangely sweet, and dark inside his head.

      Then he tumbled back to earth. The starlight followed, piercing the study – as if the house was riddled full of worm-holes. Something brighter than the sun came blazing through each one. The sight lasted a fraction of a second. Then darkness; and he realized he was blind. Panicking, he clawed his face, his eyes. He couldn’t see.

      He could still feel empty countryside; the vaulted sky above. The night was somehow with him in the room.

      Reaching out, he found and grasped the book. Visions came unbidden to his disbelieving mind. Far horizons opened in his head.

      He saw a landscape torn apart by war: trampled roads, and gutted towns, and fields of mud and bodies. It made him think of Bosnia, in all its eastern bleakness. But then he noticed medieval details; the corpses lashed to wheels on top of poles. They stood in silhouette against a strangely glowing sky. The night was lit, as if by fires just over the horizon. The colours were stupendous; majestic clouds reflected in the pools of stagnant mud.

      With a sudden plunge of vertigo, he realized what they were. Nebulae in deepest space: the wombs of dust and gas that formed the stars. Towering above the earth, and drifting on the wind.

      Voices rose around him in a babble: snatches of speech from many mouths, like samplings on a record. The language was unearthly and corrupted – but then he caught a snatch of words he recognized.

      ‘He hath made me dwell in darkness like those long dead …’

      A different smell engulfed him, and he gagged and almost retched. Like mushroom-mouldy earth and shit, stuffed deep into his nose. The dreadful stench had other flavours too: of mildewed cloth, and rotting wood, and reams of musty paper. The smell of age, and all it had corrupted.

      ‘My soul waits for the Lord,’ said a sonorous voice, ‘more than watchmen wait for morning …’

      The landscape was