Swan on the Moor

Chapter Six

The train journey had been as interminable as Jessie had expected, but the countryside on entering Devon was so beautiful, at least she had been able to anticipate what waited for her on the moor. She was staying in the seaside town of Teignmouth, in a bed and breakfast that could only be described as 'charming'. It sat on top of a hill which made for a difficult five minutes of pulling her luggage from the station to the entrance, but the view over the bay and the river Teign from the top was worth it. Jessie dropped her case to the pavement for a moment to relish breathing in the sweet sea air, listening to the crying seagulls, and just staring down over the closely knit rows of houses, over the river and onto the patchwork of farmers' fields. It was a clear day and at this height, she could just see Haytor rising like a behemoth on the distant plains of Dartmoor. She knew getting a taxi to drive her there was going to be difficult, but for once she had no budget. Her superiors knew only too well how remote the moors were.

The friendly landlady issued her with a key for room 8, instructions about breakfast ("Best to be early, we start at 8.15") and wished her a pleasant study. Jessie hauled her case up the velvety red carpet and found her little room, manhandling key and case until she could finally dump the awkward thing on the floor and drop down onto her bed.

The room was everything she had expected from a Devonian bed and breakfast; lace and quilts, high white ceiling, heavy floral curtains tugged back with a sash, and timelessly elegant furnishings and lamps. The soft bedding seemed almost to fit around her as she lay back, startlingly tired from the train journey. The kettle looked invitingly at her from the other side of the room, but for the moment, maybe a little nap...she allowed herself a moment of fantasy dozing, before shaking herself properly awake. She was here to work, and most of her couldn't wait to begin, no matter how tempting it was to consider this a holiday. She sighed, rose, and flicked on the kettle before beginning the tedious process of unpacking notebooks and clothes.

By the time she was satisfied with her home for the next two weeks, the sun was already beginning to lower. She could only imagine how glorious the moors were in the autumn, but the lack of daylight would hamper her studies somewhat. She was glad she had packed her night binoculars, at least. In the meantime, dinner probably wouldn't be a bad idea. She took one, last satisfied look around her lovely little room before heading downstairs to the dining room.

-

Dinner was, not entirely to her surprise, fresh-caught fish. The dining room was as beautiful as her room, if more eclectic; to add to the Victoriana lace and china was a wealth of African parrot paintings, votive candles, and a tank of elegantly impassive fish. Anywhere else, Jessie would have expected the combination not to work, but here it somehow felt right at home, as if the dining room was really someone's front room and she was an old friend, coming for dinner. For someone who had moved around so much in a short time, the feeling of welcoming friendliness was a real and unexpected pleasure.

Staring out at the potted fuchsias as she lingered over the last of the fish, Jessie thought about her upcoming work. There had been a magazine entitled 'Devon Life' sitting on the coffee table by the dining room door, which she had borrowed to glance over through dinner, and it had contained a section on, of all things, 'haunted Dartmoor'. Her dinner had been accompanied by luridly outlandish tales of sacrifice on menhirs – standing stones – to old gods, ghostly flowers on the crossroads grave of a suicide and Buckfast monks who still rang the abbey bells hundreds of years after their deaths. She had been amused if sceptical – whatever else the Oxford science departments had taught her, it was the sheer unlikelihood of supernatural phenomena. There was always a reason – lack of oxygen to the brain, hallucination, fantasy, sleepiness. Humans were mythopoeic by nature; making up stories and fantasies was second nature to mankind, and a remote moor was just the place for such fantasising, with its wilderness and mystery. She had smiled, reading the fantastical tales, and looked forward to seeing the menhirs herself. Long ago, they had indeed been places of sacrifice for ancient religions, and – the magazine had informed her – it was believed that they were gates to the world of Faerie, where by night the Wild Hunt and the Pookas would rise from the Otherworld at night to hunt game and unwary humans. The story had been well-written, she would admit that – she could almost envisage the beautiful monsters who stole away musicians and young girls and boys to live in their eternal woodlands. She had learned how the little fae could be hired to help a home, but the moment they were neglected, they would turn upon it. In return for proper reverence, however, they would defend their adopted home to the death. She smothered a little laugh to herself. She was still human herself, after all, and loved to mythologise as much as anyone. It was fine, as long as it didn't interfere with her work. Birds were beauties of the natural world, not spirits from some other realm. They made them no less full of wonder and magic, however; perhaps even more so, that these colours and sweet faces were products of unpredictable nature. Tomorrow was going to be just amazing.