The Standing Stones

Sometimes the warnings your elders give you are actually worth listening to.

“Are you sure you read the signs correctly?” Sam asked his friend. The forest was dark, with first light having not yet arrived. Their only illumination was the bullseye lantern his friend Marcus was carrying, pilfered from his parents’ house before they left on this illicit mission.

“I’m positive, Sam,” said Marcus. His face scrunched up with annoyed focus, having answered this question enough times to be uncertain if he had, in fact, correctly read the signs. He was committed to his assumption that he knew where they were going, and wished his friend would stop acting like they were lost. [1]

[1] Which they were - but Marcus didn’t know that.
Sam had the better read on their current situation.

“It’s not long until sunrise. We’ve been wandering around the dark for ages trying to find this hill. You’d think hills would stand out.” Marcus added, mostly to hear the sound of his own voice.

Sam snorted. “A hill standing out in a forest at night?” with unnecessary sarcasm.

“Right. That’d be silly to expect wouldn’t it.” Marcus said, sighing.

They were both dressed for the fall season, and the forest had begun it’s annual shedding of leaves. The colours of gold and red were abundant throughout the thinning forest line. The days had grown colder and shorter, and much of the harvest had already been pulled in for the year. Sam and Marcus were nearly adults, probably destined to be sent to the war in a couple years, and were living their ‘best’ lives. [2]

[2] Meaning that they were still alive, and aware that those lives would be snatched away and sent to the maelstrom of violence, chaos and magic that was the war with the ancient Sidhe menace.

So their lives had been ones of teenage rebellion, tipping cows and setting fire to things best left unburnt. Mischief at dawn, when it suited, and at midnight, more often, because why get up early when you can stay up inappropriately late. The harvest festival was coming soon, and every year came the warnings to stay away from the depths of the forest as the equinox approached.

Which is how, as all other parental warnings result in, Sam and Marcus wound up in the very forest they were warned away from. [3]

[3] This is the driving principle behind why the Tobacco industry is globally more profitable than ever. We keep telling kids and adults to stop smoking - and there’s nothing quite like telling someone who has never done a thing to stop it to really drive the temptation to taste the forbidden fruit.
Likely also why Adam and Eve ate the apple. Curiosity kills more than cats.

Birds could be heard singing their wake up songs to each other as first light arrived. The fluttering of wings zipping through the forest at high speeds followed soon after. Worms don’t just get themselves, after all, and hungry young nest-izens would be demanding food soon.

There was a hill in this forest that the villagers spoke of in whispers, carefully out of earshot of the curious and rebellious youth. Sam and Marcus had vowed to find this hill, and learn why it was to be avoided. It was special, and some whispered of ancient magic. All the adults of the village had been there before, as it was a sacred site to them. But none of the children, and even the adults never went during the equinox.

So with the arrival of first light, they finally found “the signs” that had eluded Marcus’s watchful eyes, and he was able to prove to Sam they weren’t “totally lost.” [4]

[4] Only because Sam noticed the signs that Marcus hadn’t.

They found the hill moments before sunrise. It was the tallest hill in the region, but buried so deep in the forest, surrounded by smaller hills, that no one would have known it was there from outside the forest. The top of the hill was covered in large stones of unusual size and shape. The forest was aged and mature, so these stones, bare of moss and vegetation, stood out with unnatural starkness.

The sight of the stones invoked feelings of purpose and intentionality. These weren’t “just” stones.

“Where do you think these rocks all came from? And why are there so few trees?” Marcus said to Sam.

Sam shrugged, not knowing anything about the world that Marcus didn’t know - which didn’t amount to much between the two of them. All they knew was how to milk goats, shear sheep, plough a field, sharpen a blade, chop down a tree and the rest of those skills you learn in the countryside that would mystify most city folk.

But they knew nothing about mysterious rock formations on the top of a hill deep in the forest. [5]

[5] Neither would most city folk. And city folk wouldn’t know much about milking, shearing or ploughing either. The troublesome ones would definitely know about sharpening blades though.

Strong winds blew around them as they climbed the hill towards the cavernous stones that stood in a circle around the peak of the hill. These winds died almost immediately as they crossed the threshold of the stone ring, immediately giving them the feel that they had just entered a small roofless house of stone.

Marcus, spying curious patterns, ran his finger along one of the large stones. Small grooves were cut into the large stone, making strange and unidentifiable patterns. It looked…

“It’s witchcraft,” Sam said with unfounded certainty. [6]

[6] Most people blame witches when they spot something clearly weird and unexplainable, not realising that the ecosystem of weird things is much larger and darker than the things witches are usually responsible for.
Like, for example, these stones.
Druids would have been a more appropriate group to blame for this.
But still wrong.

As they stood in the centre of the standing stones, they observed strange stone furniture occupying space within the circle. A large table towards the north, benches along the sides, and a large pillar in the centre with symbols carved into it. Another curious feature was many of the stones on the northern half of the circle had holes in them at head height.

The Sun chose that moment to crest over the horizon, and its light came pouring down around them. The wind picked up as the pressure of the air changed as the sunlight heated the air. Marcus and Sam both felt the hairs on their arms stand up as the atmosphere took on a charged quality.

Marcus was the first to notice the beam of sunlight that pierced through one of the rocks to the north east, painting a spot light on the large centrepiece pillar in the centre of the circle. A glowing circle of sunlight illuminated a single symbol on the stone. If there was any uncertainty over the intentionality of the design of this stone circle, the sight of this glowing symbol burned away all last doubts from Sam and Marcus. They exchanged looks.

“I think you might…” Marcus began, beginning to feel actual fear.

“What are you two doing here?” An amused voice cut through the moment and Marcus’s words like a sword. They both jumped and looked guiltily at the voice, expecting to see one of their village elders discovering them where they absolutely shouldn’t be. [7]

[7] It wasn’t a village elder.

A man, probably, dressed in clothing the colour of a decaying forest, covered in leaves and moss stitched into ‘his’ robes. His skin looked leathery and brown, the colour of bark. Antlers grew from his head, their bases covered by shaggy brown hair, with tiny twigs poking out. His eyes were pools of darkness that reflected no light. They exerted a gravity upon the two boys that stripped away their feelings of uncertainty and fear, leaving them only curious and fascinated with the ‘man.’

Which was unfortunate for them.

“We… were exploring. Heard about this hill. Wanted to see it for ourselves.” Marcus found himself saying. Sam nodded along, confirming Marcus’s words, though he wasn’t sure why.

“How fun! Exploring these woods without any guardians on the day of the autumnal equinox. At dawn no less! You two truly are brave heroes aren’t you?” the man said with a grin that both boys mistook for something like ‘fatherly pride.’ They felt themselves puff up with the praise.

“Yes! We’re both going to be great heroes!” Marcus said, not really knowing why. He didn’t want to go to war, but felt it’d be much better to go to war as a hero than as a farmer’s son.

“Yes,” Sam agreed.

“Amazing!” said the man, nodding with encouragement. “Which one of you will be the great hero that goes to battle the Sidhe, and which one of you will be the great hero who will accompany me to the underworld?” his smile, again, easily mistaken for the smile of a doting father.

Sam and Marcus looked at each other, their faces curiously blank of expression. Marcus saw himself pointing to Sam, his lifelong friend, and say with a dreamy quality to his voice, “He’ll go to the underworld.” [8]

[8] This sentence burned itself into his memory, and would return to him like an obsessive lover for years to come - reminding him of this day no matter how hard he would try to forget.
It’s hard to forget the day you throw a lifelong friend under the bus.
Particularly when that bus is “the underworld.”

The man clapped his hands with excitement. “Wonderful!”

The sound of his clapping hands were like thunder that reverberated inside the stone circle, amplifying with every agonizing wave. Marcus clasped his hands over his ears with pain and closed his eyes.

When he finally opened them again, the man was gone.

And so was Sam.

Marcus stood still, the dream broken, wondering what he was doing here on the hill, feeling frightened and alone. He wandered back towards home in a daze, his memories of what had happened slowly replaying in his mind. It was at the forest’s edge when he finally broke down and began to sob uncontrollably.

He volunteered to join the village’s levy for military service the next year. This caused a stir in the village as he would be the youngest levy by several years in nearly a decade, and some of the elders protested about him setting a bad precedent.

“He’s too young to go die for the crown!” one of them said in dismay.

“The lord will expect us to send our youngest to die from now on!” another said in anger.

His parents agreed to let him enlist and his family wasn’t upset to see him go, as Marcus had grown colder and angrier since his friend Sam had gone missing the year before, and had begun to make them nervous.

He no longer took part in youthful rebellion, completing his responsibilities with focused and unhappy duty. He was appreciated by his neighbours, as he was always willing to help and had outgrown all the other village boys in height and strength in such a short time - yet they still felt reluctant to invite him to dinner. Even the girls his age around the village had begun to avoid him.

And so Marcus left for the war, and as he left many of the villager elders breathed a private sigh of relief. It was bad luck to go to the stone mound on the autumnal equinox. Bad luck for Marcus, but worse luck for Sam.

That day belonged to “him.” And his gifts came with prices too high for any simple villager to pay.

---

Editorial Note;

Tear down at the Flying Canoe is wrapping up, and my attention is turning back to writing full time. I’m looking forward to this with trepidation, as this albatross of a book still taunts me, and my desire to slay it has grown all consuming.

Well some consuming. Consuming-ish.

MY DESIRE TO SLAY IT HAS GROWN CONSUMINGISH.

If there was one skill that I think I’ve levelled up far more than any other in this bizarre life of mine, I think it’s procrastination.

I’d hoped to get my photo editing done in time for this post, but I wound up taking something like 156 photos, in both HEIC and DNG formats, and sorting through that pile of shots is taking time.

But I have a couple fun ones that I thought I’d throw in here so you can see some of the other artistic ventures I wind up on. I have a penchant for driving the vibrance and saturation kinda hard with my edits, so if you don’t like surrealism you may not like how some of these turned out.

But if you don’t like surrealism, then you’re probably reading the wrong sub-stack. But even if this isn’t where you parked your car - stick around and keep reading - you may still enjoy the weird stuff I have planned.

“How many artists does it take to screw in a lightbulb?”

“What’s your budget?”

Cheers,

Robin George