The Firehills Read online

  Charly, Megan, and Amergin stayed on at the

  Aphrodite for several weeks, wrapping up Mrs. P.’s affairs, arranging for her funeral. A special ceremony was held, a Wiccan celebration of her life. Megan and Charly cried a great deal, even though they knew Mrs. P. would have been disappointed in them. Charly was welcomed into the Hastings Wiccan community, taking part in their rites and learning the discipline that, as a new initiate, she had lacked.

  But most often she liked to wander on her own, much as she had done back home in Dorset, after her father had left. Megan worried but recognized it as her daughter’s way of working things through.

  Charly’s favorite place was the Firehills.

  And it was there, one evening toward the end of her stay, that Sam came to her. He rose out of the ground beside her, wild and wary, his hair a tangle of leaves and a fierce, amber light in his eyes. He shied away as she moved toward him, his shape flickering through a series of halfglimpsed animal forms.

  “It’s OK,” she said softly, standing very still. And then,

  “I’ve missed you.”

  Sam paced back and forth like a caged animal, his eyes darting to Charly’s face, then flickering away. Then he stopped, shoulders hunched, eyes closed, and whispered,

  “Help me.”

  She went to him and held him close, waiting until the sobs subsided. When she thought that he might be ready to speak, she asked, “Where have you been? We’ve been worried sick.”

  “Everywhere,” replied Sam. “I’ve been everywhere. I’ve traveled the length and breadth of the land, I’ve been everything—birds, fish, insects . . .” His voice trailed off.

  “I don’t know what to do,” he finished in a whisper.

  “Sam, what’s happened to you? I can’t help you if I don’t know.”

  Sam sank to the ground, and Charly sat by his side. After a while, he began. “It’s him—the Green Man again. Do you understand how the festival works?”

  Charly shook her head.

  “Jack-in-the-Green’s just a bloke in a costume, right?

  Just somebody inside a framework, covered in leaves. So why were the Sidhe so keen to destroy him?”

  Charly remained silent, letting Sam work through what he had to say.

  “Because, when enough people believe in something, that thing has a power. And for a moment, at the end of the ritual, when everybody is waiting for the summer to be released, that framework of leaves becomes something else. It becomes Jack, Attis, the Green Man.” He paused. “And I was there, at that moment. I plucked the first leaf, and something happened to me. Probably because of what happened before, because there was a bit of the Green Man inside me already, I don’t know. Charly”—he turned to her, amber eyes raw with hurt—“I’m him. The Green Man. I’m him now, completely. Not just a part of him tucked away somewhere at the back of my mind. I’m him, and he’s me.”

  He turned away once more, gazing out over the golden hillside.

  “I saw the way they looked at me when the Sidhe had gone. I’m not their god. I’m just a kid. And I don’t know what to do.”

  Charly threw back her head and chuckled. “Poor old Sam,” she said with a sigh and clambered to her feet.

  “What’s the matter?” she demanded. “Afraid to be different?”

  She called up the spirit of the Goddess, feeling the power of her other mother, Epona the Huntress, flow into her. She grew taller, darker, and the light of a moon that had not yet risen shone from her. “We’re all different, kid. Deal with it.”

  Sam stared at Charly, barely recognizing her. He was torn between wonder and hurt—wonder at what she had become, hurt that she wouldn’t take him seriously. Charly continued. “The thing is, we don’t have to deal with it alone.”

  Sam scowled, but he knew how futile it was to argue with Charly.

  “We were never meant to be like everyone else,” Charly continued. “You must see that? Everything changed when you woke Amergin and set us on this path. Neither of us can go back to how things were. And it will be hard. Of course, it will. It’s always difficult to be different. But we’ll get through it, because that’s what we do. Don’t we?”

  Sam stared at the ground, lost in thought. Was it really as simple as Charly said? It was all right for her. She had always been the strong one, through all their adventures. Whereas he was blown along by fate, desperately trying to keep his feet as the tide of events swirled around him. And now he was lost. That was it—lost to himself. His face, when he had glimpsed it in still pools, was familiar, but inside, the landscape of his life had changed. He was neither boy nor man nor god but a little of each. And to survive, he would have to find a balance. He would have help. Amergin and Megan were wise, and Charly—something had happened to Charly too. She would understand what he was going through. He looked up at her then and nodded, smiling despite himself. She held out her hand and hauled him to his feet.

  “Now, come on. We’ve got a lot to talk about,” said Charly, and hand in hand, Horse Goddess and Horned God, they walked down through the Firehills toward the sea.

  To find out how it all began read

  The Malifex

  by Steve Alton

  Sam just wants to be left alone to play his video games as another boring vacation with his parents looms ahead. But within days of arriving in southern England, he mistakenly awakes the ancient wizard Amergin from a two-thousand-year sleep. With Amergin, and his new friend Charly, Sam finds himself involved in a timeless battle against the evil Malifex, and his life changes forever.

  About the Author

  Steve Alton lives in southern England, where he writes in his spare time. He is also a botanical illustrator, a computer graphics artist, and a photographer. He is also the author of The Malifex, an earlier book about Sam, Charly, and Amergin.

  Table of Contents

  prologue

  chapter 1

  chapter 2

  chapter 3

  chapter 4

  chapter 5

  chapter 6

  chapter 7

  chapter 8