Circles and Stones

By the time my mind caught up and had mentally remonstrated with my feet I was halfway across the field  heading for the cairns.  There were a number of them dotted up and down the Glen, so much so that it is described as a linear cemetery...

Oh yeah...Check me with the knowledge.

It was really weird to see them complete and unopened.  In my time they had been dug up, dismantled, rebuilt and quarried.  In fact they were pretty much nothing more than mounds of stone.  Landmarks in the landscape.  Well, except the one at Dunchraigaig, that one always made me think of that chapter in Lord of the Rings where the Hobbits are lost on the Barrow Downs.  That’s pretty much EXACTLY how I imagine that looked.  But these.... They were still the silent mounds of stone that i knew, but it was kinda weird, even kinda creepy knowing that there was still someone, well, a body of sorts, in there.  This travelling in time wasn't so bad.  I could answer so many questions if only I could find someone to actually answer them.  I mean, it’s not like he -

Damn.  Would you believe I didn’t even know camper guy’s name?? 

Aaaaaaanyway.  The cairns. I could see them stretched out to my left, heading up the Glen past where Kilmartin would be in like a billion years time, and down to my right... down towards the Bullock Shed, where it would be I mean.  That might be quite cool to see, I mean back in my time it had been pretty much completely destroyed.  At some point in the past... oh god, i mean the future.. i mean....

aaaaaaaaarrrrgggghh!!!!!  This is starting to bend my brain.  Let’s just refer to everything in the never ending present yeah?  At the very least it stop me having a grammar induced breakdown.

In my day, the ruins of the Ri Cruin cairn were hidden amongst the trees, destroyed by the early Victorians in their quest for riches.  It’d be kinda nice to see it as it was, whole and unopened.  I loved it more than the others ‘cause it was the first place that ‘adad had taken my on my first visit to the glen.  It was also the first time i had managed to discover rock art.  Now, when i say discover i am very well aware that i didn’t discover anything but to my young mind id discovered them.  That made them mine.  The trees were still there and i could see the cairn peaking out from the clearing at the centre

Of course i know they weren’t the same trees.  Jeez, give me some credit.

Oddly it was smaller than id expected.  And it was open.  How could it be open?  We were thousands of years in the past.  There was literally nobody here.  How could it already have been desecrated?  I looked closer and it became more and more apparent that it hadn’t been opened.  IN fact, it looked to me like it had never been finished.  The cists were open and empty.

That’s a stone sided box where they put the bodies to you and me.  A stone coffin if you will.

I looked down into the cist...looking for the rock craved axe heads.... they should be there...on the head stone...

Huh, how about that.  I’m not sure I was even surprised anymore.  where there should have been a stone covered with axe heads there was nothing

I guess it wasn't really THAT  surprising. These things were supposed to have been in relatively constant use over a long period of time, tens, possibly hundreds of years.  It was hard to imagine how or by whom these were used when there was literally nobody about.  No villages, no real signs of habitation at all.  It was really weird looking at a landscape that was so familiar to me but which had been stripped of everything that made it so.  No roads, no house and  no villages. Weird.  Really Weird.
What to do now?  I still had time to play with and i was pretty sure i wasn’t going to get any answers until he was finished with whatever it was he was doing.  Lacking a better idea i just kept walking in the direction in which i was going, following what in a couple of millennia would become the old Poltalloch road.  Step by step it drew me down towards the coast, down to the old ferry


***


It was always one of the more beautiful spots in the glen.  The tide was out and the wide expanse of the mud flats stretched out across the bay with the narrow meandering channel of the river taking slow wide sweeps on its journey to the sea.  There had been times in summers past when I’d walked from one shore to the other, the water being barely waist deep at low tide. The sound of the waves had begun to seep into my mind.  It was such a soothing, almost hypnotic sound.  Soon all thought of time travel were being washed away to be replaced a calm acceptance.

I was always more of a beach fan than a forest fan, the wind in the trees is all well and good but you just can’t beat the whisper of water on shingle.

You know that feeling you get when someone is staring at you?  That kinda uncomfortable prickling feeling??  Yeah, that.  I was having that in spades.  I opened my eyes and there,  about 20 meters from shore, was a boat. A small round boat. What did they call them??  Coracles?? 

Regardless. 

There was a boat, and in that boat, was a man. 

And he was staring.  Right.  At.  Me.

What in god’s name was I supposed to do??

I did the only thing I could think of. I stood and waved hello.  Shouting things like I meant him no harm.

Can you believe I actually said that?  Me??  a 15 year old girl telling this fully grown man that I mean him no harm??  Who did i think i was??  Queen Medb??

Whatever he made of my attempts at friendship it was clear by his frantic backwards sculling that he didn’t want to exchange phone numbers. I think, more to avoid causing him additional distress I decided to head back.

The poor guy was currently spinning in circles... Don’t mock.  You try rowing a round boat and see how well YOU get on.

Surely my host would have finished whatever it was he was doing and could answer some of my questions now.  Which, I made a solemn promise to myself to at least attempt to ask in a calm, relaxed and coherent manner.

See?  I was calm. Go me!!

The sun was low on the horizon by the time I made it back to the camp, and even from this distance I could hear the sound of stone on stone and as I pushed my way through the grass I could see the source of the noise..

He was on his knees.... hunched over one of the stones.....  It sounded like someone striking a flint...  That rhythmic sounds of someone trying to coax fire from stone.  tap....tap.....tap....  Sitting by the fire, I waited for him to finish...  Eventually, with a roll of his shoulders he sat back and stared in silence.

There, faintly glowing in the twilight was  a spiral, seeming to almost writhe and move against the stone, as if a snake had been coiled and pinned to the living rock.

Good lord Jen.. just ask him his name already!!

"Who are you?" my voice seemed overly loud in the silence.  He turned...and his face....  oh lord his face seemed to echo with the memory of a thousand other faces.... strange eyes staring out from an even stranger face. 

"I....” he sighed.  “I am a relic.  A traveller.  I was the first and will most likely be the last.  My name is Bran.”

"Bran? As in Game of Thrones Bran?"  Bran the Broken? By the way he sighed I was pretty sure this wasn’t the first time he'd been asked this.

"No, not Bran from Game of Thrones.  Goddess!!!  It's not like he was writing history!  I mean, i may have given him some ideas, pointed him in the right direction and to my horror he includes my name in his book!! 

I couldn’t stop staring at the spiral,  This was the guy.  I mean this was THE GUY who did the carvings!!!  I can feel him staring at me, eyes boring into my face. Finally I met his gaze and the words came.

“What's the connection... the spiral on the stone, my keyring, the tattoos. There MUST be a connection!”

He looked surprised, as if it wasn’t the question he’d been expecting but which had pleased him nonetheless. "The spiral??? In itself it doesn’t actually mean anything but the first of your kind who managed to use the portal had this as a tattoo.  It naturally followed that others who had failed to duplicate his feat believed that it was due to their lack of a similar adornment rather than their own failure to understand the basics.  As with all such things belief has a habit of shaping reality and what started as an excuse became a reason and ultimately became accepted as fact.  As a result, it’s unlikely that any of your kind could successfully use the portals without such a thing.  It has in essence become a key and anyone who would use the portals needs to have the key.  Most had it tattooed on their person since it’s hard if not impossible to lose a tattoo.
“This however,” he held up my keyring, “Is dangerous”

How does he keep getting a hold of that??

“This could enable ANYONE to travel in time.  Anyone. You’ve no idea how much this could change everything.  For safety’s sake I’m going to need to keep this, maybe even destroy it.  This sort of thing just can’t be allowed to fall in the hands of those who would misuse it or by the goddess, someone like you who could end up hopelessly lost in time."

“But..but... if you destroy it, how will I get home?”. He looked at me, “Jen, if you're going to be travelling through time then there is no avoiding the fact that you're going to need a key.”

“Wait, you're talking about giving me a tattoo???? I laughed in disbelief.  MY mum might not noticed id already been gone for nearly a day but you can bet your last penny she would notice a tattoo.  “No way, no how.  Sooooo not gonna happen.  You shoulda seen mum's reaction when I shaved my head.  If I went home with a tattoo she would lose the plot completely!”

He shrugged. “It is of course entirely your choice, but it's the only way you are ever going to get home.”

I sulked. 

I didn’t really, I’d always thought about getting a tattoo but of something I’d chosen and in a place of my choosing, not some crappy spiral thing.

He was rummaging in his pack, “ I’m sure I had the stuff in here somewhere... Ah yes, here it is.” He pulled out something that resembled a long pointy stick(!!!)

Now, when I said I’d thought about a tattoo before I meant I'd thought about the aesthetic of tattoos, not the actual physical process of having them done.  For those of you not in the know THEY HURT.  To a greater or lesser degree, depending on the person, but the common thread here is that THEY HURT.

"It won’t hurt... and it’ll only take a minute.  Trust me."

“Trust you? Are you kidding?  First you tell me that you’re not gonna send me home and now you’re wanting to give me a tattoo.  Oh, and in case you didn’t notice that’s a freaking stick!!!  A stick for goodness sake and you think I’m gonna trust you?  Did you bang your head.?  Why on earth should i trust you???

He just stared at me till i broke eye contact,  “It's your choice Jen and you don’t need to decide now but understand this,  you’re not going home without one.  Think about it.  We can’t do anything until tomorrow at the earliest, we need to let the circles recharge…"  He tossed me a blanket and motioned towards the fire.  “Sleep whilst you can.  Tomorrow is likely to be a long day.