He threw a glance over his left shoulder toward the stubby green mound that was the Newgrange
burial chamber, the largest Neolithic structure in all Ireland. Milligan had lived here all his life,
farming dairy cattle in this fertile bend of the River Boyne, yet he'd never set foot inside the vast
grave.
At least, he reflected, some think it's a grave. Others claim it's the place where the living could
speak to the dead, and the future was revealed to the witches. When I was a child, they whispered it
was where the demons had gone to live when men stole their world.
Milligan had seen it from the outside, huge white stones laid along its perimeter, their surfaces
scrolled with ancient, mystifying symbols.
Once each year, at the winter solstice, a single beam of light entered a receptacle above the doorway.
It streamed down the long, narrow passage to the center of the mound and lit it up like summer. For
three hundred sixty-five days of the year, the interior lay dark and silent, guarding its secrets well. But
for a few brief minutes the sun illumined the intricately carved lining stones, before they returned to
darkness for another year.
Milligan was past the turf-covered mound now, onto a long, straight road hedged with hawthorn,
elder, and the odd rowan tree. He heard a sound behind him, like the engine of a car impatient to
overtake. He risked a glance back, and his jaw dropped at what he saw.
A thin fountain of viscous red liquid was jetting from the center of the mound into the overcast sky.
Lava, Milligan thought. Only it can't be lava—not here!
Where it fell to the ground, flames sparked up as vegetation caught fire and blazed fiercely.