Recap: Ol and Bro are in Thailand where they are on holiday. Ol is a brilliant, almost Godlike musician, and his music is transcendant. They are staying in a villa near the sea.

This week the story jumps forward to England, some time later.

Back in England: Building the Fire

Ol began to build a fire. He collected sticks and branches from the wood and built a huge fire. He worked on it for days. He began on his 41^st birthday. They were staying in a cottage on the edge of the wood, deep in the countryside and away from road and aircraft noise. A quiet place. We need a quiet place, he had said. Bro had found the place, as always. Bro set up the recording devices and watched and waited.

“I think it’s my birthday,” Ol said one morning. Bro looked at the calendar. September 1^st.

“It is. Would you like a cake?”

“I think we’ll stay here till bonfire night.”

That was all Ol said, but from then on he went out every day and collected wood, and built a fire that got bigger and bigger. The cottage was on the side of a hill facing east. It was more of a house than a cottage, and the lawn rolled gently away and opened into a vast open space. Ol built the fire at the end of the lawn, where the sky was tall. In the far distance there were wooded hills and beyond them the sea. On either side of the house, to the north and to the south, there were more woods, and it was from these places that Ol collected firewood.

People started to arrive, and pitch their tents or park their vans. Nobody invited them, they just arrived.

“Lindy is here,” Bro said one morning. “Do you remember Lindy?” They had left her in Thailand when they embarked on their secret journey home.

 “Not easy to forget Lindy.” Ol smiled. He did remember. He remembered them all. “Not tonight. Maybe nearer the night.”

He’d begun to refer to it as ‘the night’ giving it some sort of significance that Bro did not understand, and did not, somehow, wish to understand.

“I’ll tell her.”

As the people continued to arrive, Ol continued to build. He did not engage with anyone, and they did not engage with him. They were arriving because of him, but they did not realise that the man building the fire was the man they were here to see. There was no chatter about what they were expecting. They simply arrived and settled. Bro ordered extra sanitation and had taps put in, and food trucks arrived and cooked delicious meals. Fire spinners arrived and practiced every night around camp fires, and musicians played their guitars and ukuleles and sang ballads and folk songs. Story tellers arrived and told tall tales.

At the end of September a sharp frost turned all the trees red and golden overnight, autumn arrived in glory. There was no rain. The days had clear blue skies and sunshine. There was an expectation of something in the air, and Ol continued to build.

Ol was sleeping in a four poster bed in a room that had windows facing down the valley, so he could see the fire pile getting larger and larger each day. The bed was built into the house, built with the house. One of the posts was a tree that leaned in through the window to serve as the fourth post, before continuing on through the ceiling and poking out through the roof, where it carried some foliage. It was a very old tree.

Ol slept in furs. There was something sacred about furs – animal lives that had been lived, and had some essence preserved in their skin. Furs held warmth, and Ol liked that.

Ol had been sleeping alone for some weeks after they arrived at the cottage, but one evening in the middle of October he noticed a girl eating beside one of the camp fires. He stopped and was offered food, which he accepted. It was a rabbit stew, with roots and fungi from the woods, cooked in water from the stream. The man who cooked the food was quite old, and he had brought with him salt from the sea and an iron cooking pot that he had always owned. The girl, Isobel, was his daughter. Her daughter, also Isobel, ran around naked. She was about twelve.

Isobel, the mother, had long blonde dreadlocks, and a ring in her nose. Her skin was tanned and clear from a lifetime spent under an open sky. Her clothes hung on her body like alien drapes, not at all at home, resting on her for some reason neither the clothes nor she understood.

She passed him a bowl of stew and a spoon. The spoon and the bowl were wooden, and something in the passing of these things told him that she had made them. He nodded his head slightly, but did not speak. On her face there was the trace of a smile, there for a moment, then gone.

Somewhere behind the house the sun set and overhead the stars came out. First one then another. Ol sought to remember a word from another time, in another language, a word that meant first star.

In his ear the word.

And then the girl began to sing. Her voice was like glass, like crystal. It glittered and caught starlight. It was clear, so clear that in a way it did not exist at all, and yet as well as not existing it filled the entire universe. Afterwards no one would remember the words of her song, and no one who was there would ever forget how they felt. They were all connected, yet more than that. They were all one. It seems melodramatic to say this, but in those moments around the fire, all those people joined together and became one, and it was that oneness that would carry them through what was so very soon to happen, the thing they would despair of and not understand at all, the thing that would hold them together for the rest of their lives.

Isobel’s voice would always exist, and hearing it bestowed immortality.

High above the Milky Way glistened. Even Hera smiled.

At some moment during the song, Ol had walked back to the house. No one had seen him leave, except Isobel. Her eyes and her rolling song followed him, and she saw him climb into the tree outside the house. Her eyes followed him as he moved through the open window, swinging lightly, and disappeared.

“Will you stay with me until the Night?” Ol asked. Isobel had followed him, found him. She was with him, buried in the furs of his bed. He felt the glow and roll of her body beside him. He felt doubt. He felt fear. This woman could help him.

“Yes, I will stay.”

“Do you know what I am asking?” He was strangely reticent, uneasy. He was asking too much, but he knew she would give what he needed. He was frightened, and he did not think it was fair to ask without clarity. He could sacrifice himself, but could he ask her to do the same?

Her whole body found him and answered him. They curled together in union, then slept. When he awoke later she was not there. He got up and left the room by the door and went downstairs to find Bro. He was in the kitchen eating breakfast with Lindy.

“Ol, Good Morning! There’s porridge on the range, and fruit and cream.”

“You’re very bright this morning, Bro. Anything to do with Lindy?”

“Maybe.” Bro smiled.

“I noticed you were busy,” said Lindy. “And I always preferred Bro, anyway.” She laughed. They all laughed. Ol collected a bowl and filled it with porridge and cream and honey, and added bits of fruit that were cut up in a bowl on the table. He poured a glass of water and sat down.

“The water’s good here, isn’t it?”

“What are we doing here?” Bro asked. It felt like a question he had been waiting to ask. “Who are all the people?

“The usual, you know. Stop, make a bit of music, move on. The usual.”

“But it’s not, is it? Something is different.”

Ol looked out of the window, down across the lawn to the huge pile of wood. All the windows from the house faced out to the east. Ol knew it was time, and he was frightened, but he knew it was time. This way would ensure immortality for them all. But the suffering would be unimaginable. For him and for all those he left behind. He could not tell them. He knew that Bro knew, in some way that even Bro could not read, and he knew, again in his deepest part, that it was right. Ol was happy about Lindy. She would help Bro. Like Isobel would help him, and stay with him until the final moment.

Three children came running into the room, giggling, and looking the other way. They stopped when they saw the Ol and the others sitting round the table. One of them was the child Isobel, this morning wearing some clothes. The three were quiet now, waiting. Isobel spoke.

“We’re looking for the shower,” she said, in a clear voice that told who her mother was. The other two, boys, giggled.

“I’ll show you,” Lindy said. “Come on.”

Isobel followed as if this was exactly what she had expected to happen. The two boys followed, sniggering and giggling. Lindy led them to a tiled bathroom, a wet room, with three or four large showerheads which poured huge quantities of hot water onto the heads of anyone there. Lindy undressed and went in. Isobel followed, and the boys, about ten years old, scampered out of their clothes and ran in after the women, still giggling, but in some awe.