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hastily, clutching at this companionship against the lonely dark, “What are they doing with those branches?”
    â€œHazel for the framework,” the woman said. “Rowan for the head. Then the body is of hawthorn boughs, and hawthorn blossoms. With the stones within, for the sinking. And thosewho are crossed, or barren, or who would make any wish, must touch the Greenwitch then before she be put to cliff.”
    â€œOh;’ Jane said.
    â€œWatch for the Greenwitch,” said the woman pleasantly again, and moved away. Over her shoulder she said, “You may make a wish too, if you like. I will call you, at the right time.”
    Jane was left wondering and nervous. The women were busier now, working steadily, singing in a strange kind of wordless humming; the cylinder shape grew more distinct, closer-woven, and they carried the stones and put them inside. The head began to take shape: a huge head, long, squarish, without features. When the framework was done, they began weaving into it green branches starred with white blossoms. Jane could smell the heavy sweetness of the hawthorn. Somehow it reminded her of the sea.
    *   *   *
    Hours went by. Sometimes Jane dozed, curled beside her rock; whenever she woke, the framework seemed to look exactly as it had before. The work of weaving seemed endless. Mrs Penhallow came twice with hot tea from a flask. She said anxiously, “Now if you do feel you’ve had enough, m’dear, you just say. Easy to take you along home.”
    â€œNo,” Jane said, staring at the great leafy image with its court of steady workers. She did not like the Greenwitch; it frightened her. There was something menacing in its broad squat shape. Yet it was hypnotic too; she could scarcely take her eyes off it.
It.
She had always thought of witches as being female, but she could feel no
she
quality in the Greenwitch. It was unclassifiable, like a rock or a tree.
    The bonfire still burned, fed carefully with wood, its warmth was very welcome in the chill night. Jane moved away to stretchher stiff legs, and saw inland a faint greyness beginning to lighten the sky. Morning would be coming soon. A misty morning: fine drops of moisture were flicking at her face already. Against the lightening sky she could see Trewissick’s standing stones, five of them, ancient skyward-pointing fingers halfway along Kemare Head. She thought: that’s what Greenwitch is like. It reminds me of the standing stones.
    When she turned back again towards the sea, the Greenwitch was finished. The women had drawn away from the great figure; they sat by the fire, eating sandwiches, and laughing, and drinking tea. As Jane looked at the huge image that they had made, out of leaves and branches, she could not understand their lightness. For she knew suddenly, out there in the cold dawn, that this silent image somehow held within it more power than she had ever sensed before in any creature or thing. Thunder and storms and earthquakes were there, and all the force of the earth and sea. It was outside Time, boundless, ageless, beyond any line drawn between good and evil. Jane stared at it, horrified, and from its sightless head the Greenwitch stared back. It would not move, or seem to come alive, she knew that. Her horror came not from fear, but from the awareness she suddenly felt from the image of an appalling, endless loneliness. Great power was held only in great isolation. Looking at the Greenwitch, she felt a terrible awe, and a kind of pity as well.
    But the awe, from her amazement at so inconceivable a force, was stronger than anything else.
    â€œYou feel it, then.” The leader of the women was beside her again; the hard, flat words were not a question. “A few women do. Or girls. Very few. None of those there, not one.” She gestured contemptuously at the cheerful group beyond. “But one who has held the grail in her hands may feel many things. . . .Come. Make your