Made to Pay: Part Two

Sian Rule looked at the mysterious figure in silence for a very long time. She hardly knew what to say. While the unioversity had given very good lessons in how to deal with potential kidnappers and/or rapists, legendary defenders of the weak and smiters of the guilty were quite another thing altogether. So she looked up at the night sky, through the crisp clarity of an autumn night, when the rains have not yet come to Aberystwyth

And the Green Man looked too. He sighed and shook his head.

"The night is beautiful," he told her, "and no-one should ever fear the night. Yet we do. We fear the night because evil has made the night its hiding-place. If you are to find evil in its true colours, night reveals them, and evil becomes known in darkness. Do you fear the night, Miss Rule?"

"I suppose so," she replied. "I was worried when I took this shortcut, but I still took it. Why do you ask?"

"Whenever I ask someone to step into the darkness," the Green Man told her, "I have to know that they respect it, understand it. And fear it. Because what is not feared can too easily destroy."

"Why are you here?" Sian Rule asked, "and what does it have to do with me?"

"I am here," the Green Man told her, "because of a very brave young woman, one who gave her life for others. She was here, a very long time ago. When the world was young."