Ombay fala, inkuthin . . .
They had not long left the cottage for the second time, passing through Norwich again and heading southwest toward Cambridge, when Alice's sense of collapsing reality made her wonder if her mind had come unhinged completely. Or was the wine wearing off? She huddled in the back of the car with Euphemia McKay, while Miss Pimm drove like a maniac through the night. Rain streamed on the windscreen, mocking the wipers' efforts to clear it; the fancy electric headlights showed nothing ahead but silvery torrents.
Indu maka, sasa du.
Teeth chattering, slapping her hands on her knees to beat time, Euphemia was attempting to teach Alice the words of the key, the age-old chant that would open the portal at St. Gall's and lead them through to another world. Alice could recall a similar drive, a year and a half ago, when it had been Miss Pimm instructing Edward and Julian in the same gibberish. Words from before the dawn of history, a complex, troubling rhythm. But that had been a sun-baked summer afternoon and the driver had been the solid, sane Mr. Stringer. He did not overtake on blind hills in pitch darkness or cut corners on the wrong side of the road.
"Hosagil!" Euphemia cried triumphantly. "That's the first verse. You want to try it now?"
No, Alice did not want to try it. Alice wanted to go home to her lonely hermitage and jump into bed and pull the blankets over her head. She wanted this insanity to stop. Now! Instantly. The wine had scrambled her brains or she would never have agreed to this madness. Vacation on another world? They had no luggage, either of them. They weren't going anywhere. They couldn't be. It was all just a gigantic hoax; it must be. Now the wine was wearing off, she could see that.
"Let me try it one line at a time first, please."
"Right-oh!" Euphemia chirped. "Ombay fala, inkuthin."
"Ombay fala, inkuthin."
In Cambridge they were going to pick up Bill and Betsy Pepper, the couple who had come Home from Nextdoor on leave and then succumbed to the flu that still lurked around England. Euphemia had explained at great length how the poor Peppers' failure to return on time had made them very unpopular back at Olympus.
Bugger the poor Peppers! Why, oh why, had Alice ever consented to this?
"Aiba aiba nopa du, Aiba reeba mona kin.
Hosagil!"
"Now the second verse—"
"Just a minute. Shouldn't I learn this beat you're doing, too?"
"Oh, you'll pick that up. Miss Pimm will drum for us. Won't you, Miss Pimm?"
The car tilted into a corner and slewed sideways before accelerating again into the rushing, silver-streaked darkness. Alice's half-formed scream failed as she realized she was still alive.
"Do you have to go so fast?"
"Yes, I do!" Miss Pimm said loudly. "We have a long way to go. We must complete our mission, and I must be gone, before the locals wake up and notice odd things going on."
Odd things? Neolithic shamanism in this day and age? In a church?
"The vicar will be celebrating matins," Miss Pimm added, as if that excused everything.
"St. Gall's is still in use," Euphemia said cheerfully. "The center of the node is right in front of the altar, but there are some standing stones in the churchyard. It's been a holy place for thousands of—"
"I know. I've been there."
"Oh, yes. You said."
Alice had witnessed Edward and Julian go into that church. To the best of her knowledge, they had never come out. It was in the Cotswolds, somewhere. That was right across England: Cambridge, then probably through Northampton, and Oxford. Wiltshire? It was going to take hours.
"Let me get this straight. We dance and chant, and then the magic comes and we find ourselves on Nextdoor? Just like that?"
"Just like that. One second you're in St. Gall's, and the next you're on the node at Olympus. On a lawn with a hedge round it."
In Colney Hatch with a straitjacket on, more likely.
"There will be four of us," Euphemia continued blithely. "It's much easier with a group. Coming over I was all alone and it was frightfully hard. It took me at least twenty minutes before I could catch the mood. I was absolutely fagged out, all that dancing. . . . Now the second verse—"
"Just a minute! If Miss Pimm's doing the drumming, what's to stop her passing over with the rest of us?"
"It's happened," Miss Pimm bellowed from the front. "The wrong person going through, I mean." She swerved to avoid a suicidal lone cyclist fighting his way against the wind and rain with no light on his bicycle. "But I shall stay well back from the center of the node, and I shan't be singing or dancing."
Pagan orgies in a respectable rural Anglican church?
"Besides," Euphemia added, and the tremor of amusement in her voice should have been a warning of what was coming, "Miss Pimm will have her clothes on."
"What? You mean we have to . . . in this weather?"
"Oh, yes. So let's learn our chant, shall we, so that everything goes off smoothly and quickly and we don't have to hang around too long."
"No clothes at all?"
"Not a stitch. But it will be almost dark. Don't worry about Bill. He's done this lots of times and seen everything there is to see. First verse again. . . ."