The Language of Stones. Robert Goldthwaite Carter
‘Your dad’ll be putting in your braids soon enough now, eh?’
Will shrugged. ‘It’s a hard week to turn thirteen, the week after May Day.’
Leoftan put down his armful of wooden tent-pegs. ‘Aye, you’ll have to wait near another year before you can run in the men’s race.’
Will scrubbed his fingers through his fair hair and stole another glance at the Tops. ‘Have you ever wondered what it’s like up there, Luffy?’
The smith stood up, gave him a distracted look. ‘What’s that you say?’
‘I was just thinking.’ He nodded towards the Tops. ‘One day I’d like to go up and see what’s there. Haven’t you ever thought what Nether Norton would look like with the whole Vale laid out down below?’
‘Huh?’
The moment stretched out awkwardly, but Will could not let it go. Once he had seen a small figure riding on a white horse far away where the earth met the sky. In the spring there were sheep – thousands of them – driven along by black dogs, and sometimes by men too. He had seen them many times, but whenever he had spoken of it to the others they had fallen quiet, and Gunwold the Swineherd had smirked, as if he had said something that ought not to have been said.
‘Well, Luffy? Haven’t you ever wanted to go up onto the Tops?’
Leoftan’s face lost its good humour. ‘What do you want to go talking like that for? They say there’s an ill wind up there.’
‘Is that what they say? An ill wind? And who are they who say that, Luffy? And how do they know? I wish – I wish—’
Just then Baldulf came up. He was fourteen, a fleshy, self-assured youth, and there was Wybda the Gossip and two or three others with him. ‘You want to be careful what you go a-wishing for, Willand,’ Wybda said. ‘They say that what fools and kings wishes for most often comes true.’
Will gazed back, undaunted. ‘I’m not a king or a fool. I just want to go up there and see for myself. What’s wrong with that?’
Wybda carried her embroidery with her. She plied her needle all the time, but still her pigs turned out too round and her flowers too squat. ‘Don’t you know the fae folk’ll eat you up?’
‘What do you know about the fae folk?’
Baldulf swished a willow wand at the grass near him. ‘She’s right. Nobody’s got any business up on the Tops.’
Gunwold grinned his lop-sided grin. ‘Yah, everybody knows that, Willand.’
They all began to move off and Leoftan said, ‘Aren’t you going over to watch the men’s race?’
‘Maybe later.’
He let them go. He did not know why, but just lately their company made him feel uncomfortable. He wondered if it was something to do with becoming a man. Maybe that was what made him feel so strange.
‘There’s a trackway up over the Tops,’ a gritty voice said in his ear.
He started, and when he looked round he saw Tilwin. ‘You made me jump.’
Tilwin gave a knowing grin. ‘I’ve made a lot of people jump in my time, Willand, but what I say is the truth. They’ve sent flocks along that trackway every summer for five thousand years and more. Now what do you think about that?’
Tilwin never said too much, but he knew plenty. He was not yet of middling age, and for some reason he wore his dark hair unbraided. He came once in a blue moon to fetch necessaries up from Middle Norton and beyond. Twice yearly he took the carts down to hand over the tithe, the village tax, to the Sightless Ones. Tilwin could put a sharper edge on a blade than anyone, and he was the only person Will knew who had ever been out of the Vale.
‘Who are the men who send the flocks through?’
‘Shepherds. They come this way because of the ring.’
‘What ring?’ Will’s eyes moved to the smooth emerald on Tilwin’s finger, but the knife-grinder laughed.
‘Ah, not that sort of a ring. Don’t you know there were giants in the land in the days of yore? There’s a Giant’s Ring away up on those Tops. A circle of standing stones. It’s a place of great magic.’
A shiver passed down Will’s spine. He could feel the tightness forming inside him again. Maybe it was the Giant’s Ring that was calling to him.
‘Magic…you say?’
‘Earth magic. Close by the Giant’s Ring stands Liarix Finglas, called the King’s Stone. Every shepherd who’s passed this way for fifty generations has chipped a piece off that King’s Stone until it’s now crooked as a giant’s thumb.’
‘Truly?’
‘Oh, you may believe it is so.’
‘Why do the shepherds do it?’
‘For a lucky keepsake, what do you think?’
Will did not know what he thought. The talk had set his mind on fire. ‘Fetch me a piece of it, will you, when next you go up there?’
‘Oh, and it’s a piece of the King’s Stone you want now, is it?’ Tilwin had a strange way of speaking, and a strange, deep way of looking at a person at times. ‘Ah, but you’re lucky enough in yourself, I think, Willand. Lucky enough for the meanwhile, let’s say that.’
The strange feeling welled up and squeezed his heart again. His eyes ran along the Tops, looking for a sign, but there was none. And when he looked around again Tilwin had vanished. For a moment it seemed that the knife-grinder had never been there at all.
Will wandered down and stood under the painted sign of the Green Man. It was a merry face – one of the fae folk – green as a leaf and all overgrown with ivy. The sign was bedecked now with white Cuckootide hawthorn blossom.
Cuthwal was inside, playing his fiddle, but there was no sign of Eldmar, his father, so Will wandered away, sat down on the grass for a while and watched folk coming up from way down the Vale. Then it was time for the boys’ race and there was cheering as half a dozen lads sprinted across the green and tried to be first to lay a hand on the Tarry Stone.
But Will did not feel like cheering anybody on. Leoftan had mentioned an ill wind, and an ill wind had sprung up – or at least a cold one – and not just over the Tops either. Iron-grey clouds had begun to boil up and gather darkly in the west. At first no one among the villagers seemed to notice, but then as the sun went in, one or two of them started to look skyward, and soon the bunting began to flap and the crowns of the tall beeches in Pannage Woods started to sway and roar. Folk began to feel a sudden chill touch them. It looked suddenly as if it would rain.
The music stopped and folk set to helping one another clear the stalls and tables away. They muttered that this was unheard of, because the last time the May Pole dance had been washed out was beyond living memory. Will had just finished lending a hand when a cry went up. He turned and saw old Frithwold coming up the track, shaking his fists as he ran.
‘Jack o’ Lantern!’ he wheezed as he reached the Green Man. ‘May Death cut me down if I tell a lie! Jack o’ Lantern’s down in the lanes!’
‘Now, sit down and catch your thoughts, Frith,’ Bregowina, the brewster’s wife, said coolly. ‘There ain’t no warlocks round here.’
‘Sit down be blowed! It be Jack o’ Lantern in the lanes over by Bloody Meadow, I tell you!’
Baldgood peered past his barrels. ‘You’ve had too much of them cider dregs, Frith.’
‘Noooo! It was Jack o’ Lantern, as I live and breathe!’
They settled him down, and the clearing away carried on until all the doors were put back on their hinges and everything was closed