The Naze turned out to be a grassy peninsula on the coast, about eight miles east of Clacton. This would have been a few hours' walk, but we were able to hitch a ride with Wilson and the other Flower Children in their camper van.
The van was the end-product of nearly 70 years research and development into griffinless carriages, and I was quite impressed with its design. I could feel that Azrael too would have been just as eager to strip the machine down to its component parts for analysis, save for the slightly inconvenient fact that this would have proved somewhat distressing to our only allies on the planet.
"Never mind," I whispered, "I'm sure we can find a scrapyard or something before we leave."
The Happening turned out to be rather different from what I'd expected. Not that I was too sure what to expect in the first place, mind you. I had been half-anticipating some bizarre rituals and sacrifices to nameless dark gods, something which the librarian had suspected the Flower-Children of doing, but I saw now that this was simply a case of her fearing what she did not understand.
Far from being a religious ceremony, it was a half-organised gathering of like-minded individuals to partake in a festival of music, poetry and similar arts. Many of these individuals, I discovered, came from the local academy known as the University of Essex. I resolved to learn more about this place, since if we were going to be here for an extended amount of time, getting enrolled would be a fine way to learn more about this place, to say nothing of its technology.
As it drew towards early evening, the haze of Mary increased and eventually the performances ceased. No-one showed any signs of leaving and besides, we didn't really have a place to go to anyway, so we just went with the flow, lying in the grass on a warm summer evening.
I was watching someone with one of the portable magnetic recorders, listening to the recording, a very strange song about someone called 'Alice' who apparently consumed some rather dangerous substances and had a series of extremely bad experiences. It only occurred to me afterwards that dormice were unable to speak in this realm.
As the song ended, I turned back to see Azrael talking to a newcomer. She was drawing a curious diagram on a piece of paper.
"What's this?" I asked.
"It's a horror-scope," Azrael replied. "It is supposed to predict key events in my life."
"Horoscope," the woman corrected irritably. I nodded respectfully, wondering how its predictions compared to the phoenix oracles back home. It was quite an irritating experience talking to them, since although they invariably knew the true answer to any question you put to them, they were oath-bound not to tell you in any straightforward manner.
Some of the more enterprising 'cubi would accompany you to the temple for a considerable fee and ask the question on your behalf. Using their mental powers and a large amount of cunning they could phrase the question in such a way that they could trap the oracles into providing enough truth that they could recover the rest in hints from the oracles' emotions and stray thoughts.
In earlier times, a 'cubi could simply have read the answer straight out of the oracles' mind, but they had grown wise to that and embarked on an extensive program of training in mental shielding. In some of my less-charitable moments I occasionally wondered if their confused thoughts really were shielding or simply the product of a deranged mind.
Meanwhile, the woman was looking at her diagram with a furrowed brow. I could see that she had already erased some of the diagram and redrawn parts of it. Eventually she stood up. "I have never come across one like it," she announced. "But from what I can see, you should be very wary of capricorns. I fear that one shall bring you great tragedy, although I cannot interpret what I am seeing, so I cannot tell you when this will be."
For comparison, she cast one for me as well. Reading Azrael's mind I saw that he had given his age as a percentage since humans, like Beings, generally had a maximum lifespan of around 100 years. I did the same, and a few minutes later the woman had cast my horoscope also.
Birthdays are an interesting topic among Creatures, on account of the fact that they have so many. As 'cubi grow past the usual span of their Being brethren, many of them - like me - gradually become tired of celebrating their birthday annually. At this point in time, I was celebrating decades of my life - nowadays I tend to ignore anything less than centuries.
The woman was pondering her horoscope again and muttering to herself. I could see in her mind that she was itching to know where we both came from to give such peculiar results in her casting. Suddenly she gave a gasp, and after a few moments to collect herself, began to give her prophecy.
"I see that your life will be forever changed by a terrible event. It will happen on the same day as your tragedy.." she added, looking at Azrael. Taking back his horoscope, she compared them.
"I think I see now. I fear that this event may well bring about the end of your life, Mr. Page. Mr. Cross will outlive you, but the manner of your passing will change him considerably, and not for the good."
"Do you suppose there's any truth in that?" I asked Azrael afterwards. "She made it sound like I'm going to murder you. I mean, it can't be a true prophecy, right? Humans don't even have magic."
"You never know," he replied. "she might have the Gift. She could even have been leaching our magic in order to see the future."
"Come now," I said, feeling slightly hurt. "what could I possibly want to kill you over? I already have a free hand in the rule of your kingdom."
"Jakob, my trust in you thus far as been well-founded. I have no fear whatsoever that you would turn on me for no reason. Besides which, the seer claimed that it would be a capricorn who does me over - you're a virgo."
Feeling slightly cheered by that remark, I followed Azrael to the car-park where some enterprising soul had set up a mobile kitchen inside their van, evidently modified to that particular purpose.
From this vehicle he was selling cooked sausages to hungry Flower-Children, those who still ate meat at any rate. He reacted rather badly when Azrael asked for six raw hotdogs each, but eventually consented to sell them, albeit cooked.
I wasn't actually feeling very hungry at the time, having gorged myself on the emotions felt by the horde of Flower Children during the Happening, but the food did smell nice, so I ate a couple of mine, and offered the rest of mine to Wilson, as a token of appreciation for his generosity.
"What are your plans, man?" he asked.
"Well, we were intending to sail abroad," I said - it was half-right anyway - "..but we missed our one chance to make the boat. So right now, we're open to suggestions. We have a bit of bread and we should be get enough to live by, but right now we're just going to chill out, and go search for ourselves," I finished, pulling the lingo from his mind.
"Well, we're planning to split in a few days, man." he said. "It's gonna be the equinox soon, and Stonehenge is where it's at."
Page sat bolt upright, an almost palpable look of excitement filling his eyes. The wave of anticipation was so intense that it distracted me for a moment, but I recovered and chose my words carefully.
"Page and I would be very interested in seeing this monument," I said slowly. "In fact it is the one place we would like to visit most since we missed our boat. We were actually trying to figure out how to get there by rail, man. But that would have been a real heavy journey."
"That's cool," he said. "We got room to spare in the van."
At first I had wondered what it was that Wilson and his friends were getting in return. As the journey unfolded, it turned out that they were interested in our company, and any interesting tales we could tell them. There were a good many which I was happy to share, although I had to be careful to relate them in terms of men and women, constantly having to remember not to say 'dog' or 'vixen' by mistake.
The van broke down in a country lane, which left us in something of a predicament since we had no way of signalling for help. Fortunately, despite having never seen a four-stroke engine before I was able to deduce the principles through examination and reading the minds of all present.
The problem was actually quite minor - moisture had broken contact within the power distributor. By dismantling and cleaning it we had the van working once more, but it was dark before we had the system operating again.
Page was a little tired, and suggested that we call it a night. Wilson became frantic at this suggestion. "We have to be there before dawn, man!" he protested, and so we drove on through the night.
I used my power to help prevent him becoming too tired to drive properly, and we made it mere minutes before dawn.
Azrael, Wilson and I stood among an exultant crowd of Flower Children, freaks and people who claimed to be druids, standing in awe as the sun rose through the stones. Azrael in particular was so tense his fur was standing on end, although the humans could not see this, fortunately.
Finally, as the moment reached its climax, he reached out and touched one of the stones. Suddenly he let out an absolutely unbelievable cry and then curled up into a little ball on the ground. Everyone was looking at us, Wilson included.
"Be cool people, he's just had a bad trip," I said, and they all looked away again.
Page was crying as I approached him. "It's not a gate," he said, tearfully.