Screaming Yellow. Rachel Green

      “Watch the cat!” Meinwen yelled as her best friend barely avoided the tabby.

      Dafydd Thomas almost dropped the box on the way to the truck, his dreadlocks swinging wildly as he recovered from almost treading on the cat. “Meinwen Bronwyn Jones! What have you got here?” He steadied the box with a knee as he sought a better purchase. “I think I’ve put my back out with this one.”

      “Stop your yammering, Dave.” The box’s owner trotted out of the house carrying an aspidistra as tall as her and a transistor radio by means of hooking one finger through the carry strap. “That’s my computer and all the discs I need to get it running again after its journey in there. You drop that box and I’ll make you sorry I was ever born.”

      “I already am.” Dafydd put the box onto the back of the truck and slid it forward. “I must have been bonkers to offer to help you move.” He stood at the back of the truck surveying the boxes, his hands on the small of his back and grunting. “Where did you keep all these bits of…collectables?”

      “I heard that unspoken thought, Dafydd Thomas.” She tucked the plant under one arm and tucked the radio into the computer box. “And don’t call me by my full name. Only my mam called me that and I was tired of it before I was six. I was surprised by the amount of stuff I was keeping in my wardrobe and under the bed as well. I just haven’t had time to go through it all and decide on what to chuck.”

      “I wish you had. It would have made this job easier. Less weight means less fuel too, you know.”

      “Sorry. I had to close the shop in a hurry. Half of these boxes are stock from Reincarnations and worth too much to ditch. Look, can you take Mildred off me?”

      “Yeah, well. Sorry about the shop an’ all.” Dafydd took the plant out of her hands and wedged it into the truck, using Meinwen’s duvet to protect it from damage. “Even sorrier you’re going to Leighton.”

      “Laverstone,” Meinwen corrected. “I told you. There’s nothing left for me in Dovey now the shop’s closed. I’ve been itching to leave ever since Mam died and that was five years ago.”

      “Why Laverstone though? Why not Aberystwyth or Cardiff, even? There’s plenty of tourist trade in Cardiff ever since they started filming Torchwood and Doctor Who there.”

      “I’m not going into the Dr. Who market.” Meinwen sat on the tailgate. “It’s too competitive. Besides, there are other areas of interest in Laverstone.”

      “Such as?” Dafydd sat next to her and began rolling a cigarette. “My gran says there’s nowhere quite like home.”

      “And thank any god listening for that.” Meinwen glanced up at the second floor window she’d spent the last five years looking out of. “If I never see this place again it’ll be too soon.” She went to the passenger seat of the truck and pulled out a slim volume called Folklore of Laverstone. She waved it at Dafydd who stared at it while he lit his cigarette.

      “You wrote a book, did you?” He nodded toward the author’s name.

      “No. Another M Jones did. I can’t claim to be the only one.” She sat again and opened the book at the introduction. “I’d have had to be in my sixties to have written this. It was published in nineteen sixty-four.”

      “Laverstone is a quiet backwater surrounded by the fields of Wiltshire and the arteries of London avoided, by accident or design, by the twentieth century. The fever to build roads and motorways never seemed anxious to include this historic market town.

      “The hamlet of Laverstone was founded in fifteen forty-eight as a traveling inn for coaches on their journey between the metropolis and Oxford, and provided the basic needs of food, shelter and stabling. Within a year it had grown a smithy and several rude houses that took advantage of the river Laver and the pastureland surrounding it for several acres on each side.

      “A village grew around the hamlet. Landowners carved up slices of the countryside and settled. The village became recognized as a town when the first of the three churches, that of Our Lady of Pity, was erected in eighteen sixteen. The inn grew into a manor, which flourished up to the late nineteenth century then fell upon hard times. The current owner, Frederick Waterman, became a reclusive poet after tragedy struck the family in the late nineteen fifties.

      “The town, like Avebury, is surrounded by a ring of standing stones, reputedly either fifteen or seventeen of them, depending upon the proclivities of the counter. There are several legends warning of straying too near the stones at certain times of the year, the vernal and autumnal equinoxes, for example. It is reputed that Laverstone is where William Shakespeare found the inspiration for A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

      “See?” Meinwen punched him on the shoulder. “The whole town is magical. I’d be daft not to go there.”

      “There’re other towns not so far away.” Dafydd pulled on his cigarette. “Tintagel. Boscastle. Glastonbury. They’re places steeped in magic. You could open a shop there.”

      “And be one among dozens?” Meinwen snorted. “I looked Laverstone up. There isn’t a single witchcraft shop in the whole town.”

      “Aye. They probably burn them down.” Dafydd dropped his cigarette and ground it out with his foot. Without a filter, it would vanish into the soil within a day or two. He looked at her through his dreads. “Look, I don’t want you to go, okay?”

      She nodded, flicking through the pages of the tour guide as if there was a script inside. “I know,” she said eventually, “but I have to go. I’m so sick of this town I could cry.”

      “Why there, though? You might as well be moving to the moon. Or France.”

      “It’s as good a place as any.” Meinwen closed the book and looked directly at him. “I’ll be honest with you, Dave. I met a bloke and he lives in Laverstone. Okay?”

      “What sort of bloke? A boyfriend sort of bloke?” Dafydd frowned and stood, putting his hands on Meinwen’s shoulders. “I thought you and me had something special?”

      “We did.” Meinwen winced