Solstice - The Goddess Awakens

Lola woke the next morning to the sound of her mother’s voice echoing off the large entrance hall at Brook Mill Manor. Eileen Paige was stressed, Lola could tell from her high-pitched tone. It sounded as though she was directing the delivery men to the various rooms with the countless boxes from their old house. It had been emotional leaving 33 Cottage Park, she and her brothers had never known anywhere else. Her parents had debated whether to move into Brook Mill Manor at all, but Lola couldn’t bear to see it go to someone else. Arthur had left it to them, and although it had initially been difficult for her to be there without him, it was much better than the thought of some stranger living in it. So eventually the Paige family officially moved into the Estate.

It took Lola and her siblings some time to get used to having so much space. They had to acclimatise themselves to running from one end of the house to the other in order to find each other. Her brothers all had their own rooms now, whereas previously they had to share, four of them in two sets of bunk beds. Being an only girl, Lola had been used to having her own room, and she decided to keep the large spacious room next to Arthur’s library and observatory for her own use.

There was a large king-sized bed in it and the several rectangular windows brought in the morning light. She had a wonderful view of the sprawling green lawns, which were flanked by beds of lavender and roses. The room was painted a pale grey, which added to the airy feel of the place. Most of her stuff still lay in boxes, as she hadn’t got around to unpacking it yet. Just off her room lay a large dressing room with built-in wardrobes and a long antique mirror, next to that was her en-suite. Apart from the fireplace, this was Lola’s favourite part of her new bedroom. The bathroom had an antique bath which sat in the centre of the large room, perched on four golden paws. Directly above the bath the ceiling was painted a beautiful midnight blue spotted with tiny golden stars. At night, when lying in the bath, Lola would extinguish all the lights, and lie gazing at the starry firmament embedded into the ceiling, it was enchanting.

Lola’s mum hadn’t stopped since moving in, working day and night to make new curtains and quilt covers for the boys’ rooms, and she finally was beginning to put her own touch into the house. Her father and Liam, her youngest brother, helped in the gardens. To Liam, Brook Mill Manor was wonderland, so many rooms and cellars to explore, and with Cuchulain at his side, he was never short of an adventure.

By now Aibgrene had settled into Brook Mill Manor like one of the family, and Lola noticed that Liam was not the only brother who seemed fascinated by her – Christopher also seemed to be hanging around a lot lately.

Arthur’s library soon became headquarters, where the pair of them went to mull things over. Lola had managed to find a white board, and they had the library set out like an investigation room, with all the information they had to date on the board and on random pieces of paper. This would have taken a lot of explaining, had anyone walked in on them, but they were never disturbed. Her brothers and parents seemed to accept that this was Lola’s private place, where she could be closest to Arthur, and they respected that. Liam would often try to get a sneak peak at what they were doing, and for weeks he had been trying to figure out how the door unlocked, but much to his exasperation he hadn’t managed it yet and Lola was confident that he wouldn’t.

Work was going to be busy for Lola; she would now be making up news and sports pages as well as having to find enough copy to fill them. She was beginning to feel a little stretched, working as hard on their investigations as she did in the office. Aibgrene had been working on her own during the day, but together, they seemed to be getting nowhere in their investigations, which was frustrating.

Stretching in bed, just awake, Lola thought briefly about her encounter with Alex the night before, but she was quickly reminded how every part of her body ached after the gruelling football match. She could easily have gone back to sleep, but checking her watch, she couldn’t believe that she had slept until noon, half the day was gone already. Pulling her dressing gown on over her flannel pyjamas, she headed to the kitchen for a cup of tea.

She could hear her father scolding Liam, who’d been messing about with the service bells again. The bells had been installed when the house was built over two hundred years ago. Liam thought this was fantastic, no matter what room you were in you could call for service. Lola had been similarly impressed when she had first discovered them, and knew that the novelty would soon wear off.

Passing the library on her way downstairs, Lola heard Aibgrene talking to herself. Popping her head around the door, all she could see were Aibgrene’s feet on the top step of the staircase, the rest of her body having disappeared through the ceiling level to the highest shelves.

‘Talking to yourself? That’s a sign of madness, you know?’ shouted Lola, before taking a seat on Arthur’s rocking chair.

‘You didn’t decide to get up did you, sleepy head?’ said Aibgrene looking exhausted as she descended the spiral staircase. There were dark rings underneath her eyes and her hair was even more unruly than normal.

‘By the look of you, you didn’t get any sleep,’ remarked Lola concerned.

‘I didn’t,’ said Aibgrene. ‘What time is it?’ Her face was serious now, the tiredness showing.

‘Just after 12, what kept you up all night, Aibgrene?’

‘A few things. I had to make the most of the full moon, and then, like I told you, I had been looking at Arthur’s log books, which led me to other things.’

‘Why didn’t you waken me? I could have helped you,’ replied Lola.

Walking over towards Lola, Aibgrene closed the door, and then took a seat in front of her.

‘I discovered a few things last night, Lola, but I wanted to be sure before I said anything. To be honest,’ said Aibgrene, yawning and rubbing her eyes, ‘it has given me more questions than answers.’

Lola was excited to hear what she had to say, but her friend looked like she needed some rest.

‘Aibgrene, you look dead on your feet. Why don’t you go and get some sleep and then we can talk about it. We’ve waited this long, I’m sure a few more hours won’t make much difference.’

Aibgrene didn’t protest, instead she handed Lola a dusty book in a red casing. It looked and smelt old.

‘Have a look at that, it might make things a bit clearer for you later,’ said Aibgrene, as she got up and left the room, heading for bed.

Tucking the book into the pocket of her dressing gown, Lola headed towards the noisy kitchen to get some breakfast. There were boxes everywhere, some with labels and some without. Lola still felt a little groggy as she took a seat at the large oak table in the kitchen. She was just in time as her mum was filling the kettle.

‘Morning, love, or should I say afternoon,’ shouted Eileen from across the spacious kitchen. ‘Did you have a good night last night?’

‘Yeah, I didn’t stay long, Mum. I was home early. I was tired.’

‘Unlike your brothers, they’re still in their beds. They didn’t come in until eight this morning. They’ll have right sore heads today!’ fussed Eileen as she filled the teapot, getting some cups ready.

Lola sat and chatted to her mum for a while before heading back up to the book room. She always felt closer to Arthur in there, and despite having spent most of her time in the study, she hadn’t yet ventured up the spiral stairs to his observatory.

She stood at the bottom of the oak steps, and decided now was the time. Slowly she climbed up the spiral staircase, finally passing into the upper observatory. Nothing had changed since the last time she was up there – the circular room, with its large iron dome and the moderate telescope that sat in the middle. The few books that lay on the shelves beside Arthur’s writing bureau had been disturbed, and Aibgrene had left the light on. About ten dusty logbooks sat opened on the walnut desk along with a very old copy of Johannes Kepler’s Mysterium Cosmographicum written in 1596. Very heavy reading indeed.

Over the years Lola had picked up the history of astronomy and its main exponents, but it was a very complicated area of study, and once maths and equations were thrown in, she was lost. Yet one thing had stuck with her and that was the majesty and the perfect order that existed in the universe and in every living thing. Despite her distaste for maths, she could see that it provided the script to the universe’s divine order and majesty.

As Lola looked around the sparse room, she felt as if Arthur was still present, his memory lingered in every crevice and corner of her memory and this large house. She remembered being a ten-year-old child gazing into the large telescope for the first time, how Arthur had introduced her to the heavens and all its wonders. Constellations, galaxies, nebula. That feeling of awe and wonder had never left her. Lola always had an insatiable desire for knowledge, even if the topics, as she thought, were well beyond her intellect.

She took a seat at the bureau, running her eyes over the page that Aibgrene had been reading. It was Kepler’s model of measuring space between the orbits of the planets. The language was very complex, but Lola remembered Arthur explaining how groundbreaking the model was at the time. Kepler had thought that he had discovered God’s Blueprint, like Euclid, Pythagoras and Plato before him, he used what was known as the Polyhedra or the so-called ‘perfect solids’ to explain the order and shape of our universe.

According to the sixteenth-century German astronomer, the perfect solids consisted of five three-dimensional shapes, each different, but whose faces were all identical. Kepler even made a diagram to illustrate this, a replica of which sat in the corner of the observatory. Lola walked over to the large copper spherical object that sat on four legs; the instrument had always fascinated her.

It was like gazing into time itself with its layers upon layers. It seemed infinite to her. Inside the first circle was a six-sided cube, inside the glass cube lay another smaller circle, which housed a pyramid with four sides, then inside the pyramid was another circle and inside a dodecagon, with twelve sides, then as Lola gazed deeper, she could see another circle. This time the shape inside it was an icosahedron which had twenty sides and finally inside yet another circle lay a three-dimensional octagon. Lola’s head was dizzy.

Her concentration was broken by a movement downstairs. Thinking it was Aibgrene, she made her way down, and was surprised to find DCI Campbell standing examining the painting on the roof.

‘Excuse me, but how did you get in here, Detective?’ she asked, thinly veiling her annoyance. Unperturbed, the young detective met Lola with a warm smile.

‘Lola, just the person I’m after. You’re brother Liam said I’d probably find you up here.’

Lola’s temper began to flare, as the detective scanned his eyes across the room. ‘I see you found the key then?’ The remark caught Lola unaware. ‘The key to the room, we couldn’t get in here, when we first came to the manor. A pity really, this is really worth seeing.’

‘I take it you didn’t come here to admire the view, Detective. How can I help you?’

Lola had never felt so uncomfortable, she felt like she was under scrutiny. Walking towards the door, Lola expected DCI Campbell to follow, but when she turned he had seated himself in Arthur’s chair.

‘You don’t mind if we have a chat in here? It’s such a lovely room.’

But Lola did mind, and she knew that the detective sensed this.

‘No not at all, sir,’ she lied, as she took a seat opposite him on the sofa. ‘So what was it you wanted to see me about?’ asked Lola impatiently.

‘Was it not you who wanted to see me? I’m sorry I never got back to you sooner, but you know how it is.’

‘That was a work matter, Detective,’ said Lola coldly.

‘We’ll that’s not why I’m here, Lola. I really just wanted to know if you had thought of anything else that may have come to mind about Arthur, maybe some new developments?’ Lola’s palms began to sweat as she shifted in her seat. She was the worst liar, and she feared that DCI Campbell sensed this.