But he was right, she knew that something was different, that something had changed, the song in her heart silenced by a resounding, unknown lament of another’s.
‘I can’t just throw it away, it’s an artefact,’ she reasoned. ‘It should probably be in a museum. I’m not throwing it in the bay. I’ll put it back where I found it,’ she replied, compromising.
‘Are you serious?’ A short, hard laugh burst from him. ‘Do you think I’m just gonna let you go back there?’
An involuntary groan emitted from her as she tilted her head to the sky, her eyes rolling.
‘You ungrateful bitch!’ Dylan erupted, glaring at her through wide eyes. ‘We were out there for hours looking for you. We had to carry you back on a stretcher! You could’ve died out there. Do you think I’m just gonna let you wander back there again?’
Deidre threw a harsh affronted chuckle at him, her ire up. ‘There you go, telling me what to do again!’ Her voice was loud in the morning quiet. ‘Who the fuck do you think you are? I’ll do what I damn well please! You can’t stop me!’
His gaze fixed on her like glue, his voice quiet when he spoke. ‘You’re right; I can’t tell you what to do or where to go. Like you say, we’ve only known each other for a couple of weeks.’ He paused. ‘But I thought we might’ve had something. I thought we got each other.’ His voice was low and strained, splintered.
Deidre nodded, feeling the tap on her heart, like someone insistently knocking at the door begging for her attention. ‘So did I,’ she replied. If he would just give her the cross back, everything would be okay, everything could go back to the way it was. ‘Just give me the cross, Dylan,’ she said reasonably, ‘I’ll take it back to the croft, put it back where I found it and that’ll be it.’
He shook his head, regarding her in a tight-lipped stare. He finally said, ‘I’m asking you not to go back there.’
‘I won’t do anything stupid. I’ll go right there and come straight back again. It’s nearly twelve o’clock now. I’ll be back in time for dinner. I promise.’
Dylan didn’t move, his gaze hard and unwavering. Two small red circles of colour had formed on his cheeks, like painted rouge on the face of a porcelain doll.
‘I’m leaving next Thursday, remember Deidre,’ he finally said. ‘We need to sit down and talk about what happens from here. It’s not like we live anywhere near each other,’ he continued. ‘We don’t even live on the same side of the world.’
Exactly. He would leave, there’d be the phone calls, then the slow tapering off, emails that degenerate into text messages; the slow drawn out death of what she thought had been love. Maybe this was why he was being so pigheaded now, deliberately causing an argument, ending it quickly, a severance, a clean amputation before the gangrene sets in.
‘Well, my guess is you’ll go back to your life and I’ll go back to mine and we’ll both mark it down as a nice holiday affair,’ she replied coldly. ‘Maybe we’ll catch up the same time next year for another short fling and a quick fuck.’
‘It wasn’t like that at all, and you know it,’ Dylan said quietly, a steel tone in his voice, the expression on his face rigid and hard.
‘So you don’t need to worry about what I do, or where I go,’ she continued, ‘or what I choose to wear around my neck,’ she said, stepping forward and grabbing the cross from his hand, leaving him startled and empty handed. She pulled the car keys from her jacket pocket heading for her car filled with self-righteous indignation.
‘Deidre. Deidre!’
She slammed the door closed and started the ignition, reversed out, turning, catching sight of Dylan in her rear-view mirror lifting his arms, protecting himself against the assault of gravel flying through the air in the speed of her exit.
Saturday Afternoon, Walking in Old Footsteps – Muddow’s Field
Deidre stood on the Coffin Road looking down into the loch, out across the marshy moorland surrounding it. She closed her eyes, rubbing her thumb down the stem of the crucifix hanging from her neck, trying to remember the loch as she’d seen it in the dream. Standing here now, it looked much smaller and she wondered if it was the same body of water. She gazed out across to the headland, pulling out the collection of George’s drawings and the map and unfolded them, the wind tearing at the old paper. She studied the map, the place names written in blunt pencil; Muddow’s Table and Field, Swabbie Bog she knew, but others, Penntyr Field, Pitemween, Bettara, Urquhart Hill, were unfamiliar to her. Aennods Glup she knew from the dream, the blowhole, the place where the great whale slumbered. She headed for the higher ground that circumvented the loch and its boggy surrounds. A bearable wind blew as she climbed the swell of open grassland, clouds opening and closing in a mad rush across the sky, the landscape glowering in dour gloom one moment until the sun broke through spilling its palette of colour. Her hands constantly touched the cross, her fingers stroking its smooth surface, reassured by its weight hanging from her neck.
She walked on, the ground pitching upwards again towards the wide-open headland of Muddow’s Table, a faint boom coming to her from a distance, a different sound to the sea crashing against the cliffs. Her eyes scanned the headland rising in front of her as she waited, listening. It came, the whoosh! thump as water ejaculated from the edge of the headland in an explosion of moisture sparkling in a brief moment of sunlight. The blowhole. Aennods Glup. She felt her gut tighten as she raced towards it.
In the dream, the blowhole had been in the middle of a tongue of land. Somewhere in time a large section of the headland had fallen away leaving a small squat stack standing alone in the sea. The Peg. From this vantage, she could only see the flat grassy top dotted with nesting birds. Deidre walked upwards towards the edge of the rising headland to see the full view of the craggy column standing alone in the heaving ocean. She could see the cavity in the wall of the cliff face. The Twins had told her a story about George trying to get into a cave half way down the side of the squat column of granite.
The blowhole boomed, startling her, spraying water. Turning, she gazed inland. This was where she had stood in the dream. She surveyed the landscape, the loch over in the far valley smaller, more contained than in the dream, the edges sharp and defined, a burn cutting a thin deep gully away from the marshland of Swabbie Bog and across to the expanse of open field, gravity pulling it down towards the inlet below her.
She pulled George’s sketches from her pocket again, the map and the drawing of the mound, studying it before looking out across the low rising meadow stretching out below her. Muddow’s Field. This was the place, but it seemed bigger, more open, boulders and exposed bedrock scattered across the wide sloping field. Studying the drawing as she walked, she scanned the landscape, scrutinising every hillock and knoll, every rock formation, comparing them with the sketch and her memory, a difficult task, the area so vast and filled with a profusion of rocks and enormous boulders scattered as though they’d fallen from the sky like confetti.
The memory of the entryway was strong in her mind, replicated on the paper in front of her; two big boulders side by side like two gaping front teeth. They should be easy to find being so unusual in their shape and positioning, but it took some time, hidden amongst all this camouflage. Then she saw them, jutting out of the side of a small knoll, higher up in the swell of land than she’d been searching. Racing up to them, she stopped, disappointed, glancing down at George’s sketch drawn with the entryway open, unobstructed. Now, rocks piled up between the gap of the two large boulders blocked her entry, grass and moss growing over them like a fungus. She stated at them dismally, reaching out, touching the cold stone. It felt unreal. She’d been here in her dream. She’d walked between these two large rocks, she knew what was behind there. Taking a deep breath, calming her nerves, she tucked the cross inside her jacket, and began pulling the rocks out one by one.
The clouds had knitted together like a blanket of freshly shorn sheep’s wool, dirty and grey, spilling a gloomy twilight over the valley.
With a trembling hand she pushed the button of her small torch and peered into the darkness. Light spilled across a stone flagged floor that reached deep into the dark cavity and disappeared into the blackness.
‘I’ve come this far,’ she said to herself, dropping the torch through the hole, hearing it clang loudly on the stone floor before squeezing through head first.
She found she was able to stand, although hunched over to avoid hitting her head against the stone ceiling, the passageway stretching out before her. It was longer than she’d expected, taking a slight bend before opening up into a small round room, a cavern, the torch light splaying across walls made of stone just like the crofts. This was the room she’d been in during her dream-time wanderings. Directing the torch into the middle of the room, she saw the small round fireplace, the urns against the wall, the bones and tools just as she’d seen it. It came to her like a revelation, her knowledge of what lay on the other side, on the bed of grasses and heather, and she felt her scalp prickle, every follicle of hair on her body rise as a cold sweat blossomed on her skin.
The torch light wavered as she directed the beam towards the bed, a deluge of fear suddenly swamping her nervous system in shuddering jolts, her hand barely able to hold the light in a steady beam.
A low moan escaped from her as the trembling torchlight fell onto the luminous whiteness of bone, stark and brilliant in the brightness of the light, the skull an unmistakable shape, not sheep or deer, the wavering light following the length of the skeleton, small in stature but fully formed. It lay on the stone floor, intact, untouched, where it had died, on its back, one arm down by its side, the other lying in the empty space between the ribcage and pelvis. The light caught the ragged edge of the left pelvis. Deidre stepped closer, kneeling down before it. It was just a bare skeleton, no adornments, no remnants of clothing, the bed of grasses and heather disintegrated and blown away in the draughts of time.
She pulled the cross from around her neck, carefully placed it on the ribcage and lay down beside it.
Betarra – 792AD
They were coming from the north. There was no time to send warning. There was no time to run to Brud Stone and light the signal, the call to arms. The cry for help.
Five demonic water dragons approached the mouth of the headlands, gliding silently like spectres over calm waters, shrouded in the mists of early morning.
Their small settlement couldn’t go into battle against so many, there could be as many as twenty men to a boat. Their farmstead boasted ten, maybe fifteen able bodied men. There was Meqq, who was a strong warrior and Caltram and his three sons although Gest was barely growing the first hair on his cheeks. Denk was elderly now, in his fiftieth year whose chores around the farm consisted of no more than a child’s responsibilities, watering and feeding the animals, scraping up the animal spoils to enrich the crops, collecting eggs. He was unlikely to see out this coming winter. He was unlikely to see out this day.
They wouldn’t stand a chance, even with the brawn of Pitemween and Pobla settlements.
Deidre felt her heart thump in her chest, pumping blood, the sweat of fear flowing from her pores. She dropped the bundle of wool she’d been taking to Fren in Pobla valley, payment for the sharpening of her grass cutting tools. Turning, she ran down the hill back to Betarra, glancing up at the stone standing on the edge of the headland. It was too late to send the signal to kinsmen in surrounding settlements.
She ran inside through the stone passageway that led into the depths of the hillside. She must wake Breeta, alert the farmstead. Meqq and Caltram would want to fight. Defend. She knew it was the right thing to do, the only thing, but you had to pick your battles, not rage against an unbeatable foe. This was the time to flee not fight. She wanted to live another day. She wanted to grow old with Breeta. She wanted to see their child grow in Breeta’s belly.
Blood ran cold through her veins. She knew she would die this day.
The passage moved forward to the central living space, embers glowing in a large fire pit in the middle of the room, archways opening up to two smaller chambers, a third opening up another corridor connecting other living spaces that stretched out along the valley, built in under the low slant of the hill.
She needed to wake Breeta and send her off safely, then make her way through the living quarters of her kinfolk, alerting everyone quietly, before heading for Brud Stone to light the signal.
She entered a small round chamber just off from the central living space, a small fire burning in the middle lighting the room. She had placed a brick of dried turf on the dying embers before leaving earlier and now a strong flame had taken hold.
Deidre looked at the woman lying on the bed, curled up under a pile of sheepskins. Breeta. She lay with her face turned towards the fire, the light dancing on her features, her hair aflame in its glow. Deidre felt an unbearable weight of love press down upon her.
She had to wake her, get her up, get her moving. Breeta and the child she carried had to be saved from the heathens approaching the shore. Deidre had heard the stories of their raids up and down the coastline, small settlements just like this slaughtered, ransacked, their worldly goods, their lives stolen by these barbarous thieves. More frighteningly, she’d heard tales of their torture to men, their raping and killing of women and babies. Their savage cruelty.
She wondered if Breeta‘s Christian God would save them from this.
Deidre moved to the bed. The arm, her arm, reaching out was solid and muscular, covered in heavy dark hair, the hands thick and strong, and dirty. She shook Breeta awake. ‘Cail,’ she said in a voice and language that wasn’t hers. ‘Marsainn, qeuvol fuundegal.’ She understood the meaning. Wake up. You must have strength.
Breeta awoke, looked up at her bleary eyed, a broad dopey smile on her face. She lifted a hand up and stroked Deidre’s cheek.
‘Maith, eko-baiko.’ Later my love, I’m tired.
‘Breeta. Angicier izara, arnev toirm,’ Deidre replied. Breeta, you must get up, you must to leave. ‘Esbal ridbren mayen coil.’ You need to take our riches and hide them. Hide yourself. Deidre looked deep into the woman’s eyes. She was so beautiful. She loved her so much she felt a physical pain in her chest. ‘They are approaching the bay,’ she said quietly, watching the realisation come over Breeta’s face and she knew that she understood. She helped Breeta up out of the bed, noticing how her belly had started to swell with child. Deidre moved to the shelf set into the wall behind her while Breeta dressed.
A large bronze plate, embossed and engraved around the edges, took up most of the stone recess built into the wall. It was too big for Breeta to carry. It had been a wedding gift. A metal box sat beside it, too heavy and cumbersome for Breeta to run with. She would need swiftness. It would be best for her to carry things on her.
Deidre reached for the box, catching sight of her reflection in the polished centre of the plate, her face half lit in the firelight, distorted in the nature of the metal. The reflection wore a full-face beard, a long drooping moustache blending into long, dark hair. Her nose, his nose, jutted out like a promontory from beneath heavy protruding brows, the eyes black shadows. Deidre knew everything about this face, about the life it had lived. She knew his name was Taran, she knew how he got the scar across his forehead and the three broken ribs. About how he’d grown up here, in this valley with his mother and father Denk, his four brothers and three sisters and all their husbands and wives. It was a good life, they worked hard, bartering and trading with the other settlements, intermarrying, growing crops and sharing grazing land. Coming together in times of threat.
He needed to warn the other settlements, allow
them the time to prepare themselves.
Taran opened the box, scooped the contents out and turned to see Breeta sit down and tie up the leather thongs of her shoes. He loved her so, her passion, as fiery and spirited as her wild hair that matched the colour of sunset. She was fearless and she would make a better fighter than him. She had already fought for him and won. But not this day, this day she must run, protect herself and their baby growing inside her.
Taran knelt down at Breeta’s side, pinning broaches onto her tunic while she tied the thongs of her other shoe. The fire crackled. He took her right hand and forced two heavy silver bracelets over the protruding bone of her thumb and onto her wrist.
‘Ow,’ she complained, retracting her arm from his grip. ‘Barasioka. Bakatan, eku-abargh.’ Don’t be so rough.
‘We must be quick, Breeta.’ He took a large flat pendant and pulled it unceremoniously over her head. ‘Put everything on,’ he said, standing, stepping into a small dark alcove. He felt through a curtain of various textures of furs, leathers and wools, pulling out Breeta’s cloak and hood, detaching the heavy gold and bronze fastener from his own cloak. It had been a gift from his father the day he’d become a man. He treasured it. These thieving brutes wouldn’t get their hands on it. He stepped up to Breeta and threw the cloak around her shoulders, pinning the soft leather closed with the fastener. He looked into her eyes, such beautiful eyes that he loved so much, had waited for all his life. Now they were coming and they would take it all away. ‘You must leave now.’
Breeta looked back at him, her face solemn. She understood. She knew the consequences. She knew the reality of this moment.
‘Go to the Priest’s chamber in the Penntyr Field. Hide there,’ he said, and he saw the look on her face, torn between the two fears of leaving and staying. ‘If I can I’ll meet you there. Don’t come back until its safe.’
The Stone Dweller's Curse: A Story of Curses, Madness, Obsession and Love Page 16
