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1

BIRTH

It was a hushed, still night and a million stars and a rising moon shone down upon White Horse Hill in Berkshire, England. Their light picked out the sinewy lines of the prehistoric horse carved into the chalk beneath the grass.

It was so clearly visible from the Vale below that two people had stopped awhile in the hushed and magical dark beneath the hill, on the pilgrim road that ended there.

‘It looks as if it’s about to gallop off across the Universe,’ said one of them softly, ‘or maybe it’s just showing us the way home. ’

The one who spoke was eighteen, more man than boy. His name was Jack and he was stocky and strong, with a forward thrust to his head that suggested purpose and intent.

The other was his partner Katherine, who was the same age, as tall as he but fair-haired. She was tired and in pain, her head bowed. She held one of her hands to her belly, the other rested on Jack’s arm. She stood with difficulty.

Katherine was pregnant and very near her time.

‘We’re nearly home,’ he said.

She raised her head wearily and nodded, too tired to speak or even smile.

The trees and bushes that lined the old way were silver and shimmery in the night.

‘April’s over,’ said Jack. ‘Summer’s begun. ’

The White Horse looked down on them and the stars and moon lit their path as they continued on their way.

‘Home’ was Woolstone House in the village of the same name. It was no more than a few hundred yards on, off the ancient way and to their right, over a stile, across a stream, and up the sloping pasture to the great garden where Katherine played as a child.

Less than two years before they had begun their journey here, going out into the Hyddenworld, a place as real as the human one. Jack’s coming had been long prophesied and Katherine was thought to be the Shield Maiden, a fierce warrior woman who rode the White Horse in service of Earth and Universe at times of great danger and sacrifice.

But the Hyddenworld was wrong about Katherine. She was just a girl who somewhere along her journey with Jack became a woman. It was not she who was the Shield Maiden, but the child she was carrying.

Now they had returned along the pilgrim road, passed through one of the henges which are the portals from the Hyddenworld to the human one and had come home to have her child.