A Tale Of Four Stones

The boy descended from the ridge at dusk, the wind sharp as iron and redolent of cordite. His shadow skittered down the path ahead of him, cast by the actinic searchlight of a drone moon. He carried four Tyr stones in his pocket, smooth and black, taken from the ancient cairn built where the earth had once split and the fire had spoken.

His name was not his own, not yet. True names needed to be earned and came only with travail.

In the valley, the river ran low, reduced to a silt clouded trickle. The reeds whispered like tongues of green flame. He passed a solitary menhir, its face scarred with a scorch mark that resembled the sigil of Wayland, the smith who forged blades for long dead kings until he too vanished into fable. Some said he still walked this land, hammer in hand, seeking metal to shape.

The path widened into a clearing of bare dirt. At its centre, a bonfire was lit. An old woman fed it from a pile of dry twigs and coppiced branches. She was blind in one eye, while the other was limned red by smoke. Her hair, clothing and skin grey as if layered with ash.

She spoke of the world beyond the hills. “There is war in the east,” she said. “The sky is broken. Children sleep beneath rubble. The land cries out.”

She told the tale of Koschei the Deathless, who hid his soul in a needle, in an egg, in a duck, in a hare, in a chest, buried beneath a tree. “He cannot die,” she said. “Not until the soul is found.”

The boy listened and grew drowsy in the heat. The crackle of burning wood became distant gunfire and the launch of Tamirs and Pac-3s. He felt the stones in his pocket heavy and cold as bullets. He saw the menhir looming like a checkpoint at the borders of Annwn, Al-Jannah and Vyriy.

He did not believe he dreamt.

Later, feeling rested, he continued along the path into darkness, accompanied by the old woman who was more spritely than expected. She told him she had come from the city, where the streets were a cacophony of protest. She had seen banners and placards raised like the standards of a landless nation. She had stood beneath the lion of Trafalgar and shouted until her voice was silenced as treason.

“They do not hear,” she said.

“They do,” he said. “But they do not listen.”

As they walked, she told him another tale of lovers torn apart by fate, who wandered the Najd desert in search of each other, speaking only to the wind. She said the city was full of Laylas crying out for justice and Majnuns who had forgotten their names.

They arrived at an ancient barrow, beneath which the remains of a prior civilization lay at uneasy rest.

The old woman took three of his Tyr stones and placed them in an irregular triangle upon the rounded earth. “This is Gaza,” she said. “This is Kyiv. This is London.”

“No,” said the boy, slapping his palm on the soil. “This is us.”

The wind rose. The stars came out. The remaining stone in his pocket grew warm.

At home in his village, he dreamed of bodies of fire and water that separated estranged families. Of men in suits trading insults for the promise of wealth. Of children with no mouths. Of contracts written on human skin. He saw Baba Yaga’s hut walking on chicken legs across the Black Sea. He saw djinn dancing through the smoke of burning oil fields. He saw Herne the Hunter riding towards London, antlers crowned with CCTV cameras.

He woke with his name in his mouth.

Time passed. He returned to the menhir and placed the remaining Tyr stone at its base. The earth cracked as in ages past. The voice of an old woman echoed from the deep fissure - not English, not Russian, not Arabic, but older than all of the languages of humankind.

The wars were never over. But Gaea herself had spoken.