by Clive King
He could see now that it wasn’t going to be the same as bringing it along the track. Now it was going downhill. If they weren’t careful it could go bounding away down the slope and even knock the standing stones flying like a lot of skittles.
The old king stood speaking to the group of important men. He seemed to be pointing to the eastern sky with one hand and urging them on with the other. Barney looked towards where the king was pointing. Was the sky beginning to get light? Was it nearly morning? Was there something that had to be done before the night came to an end? – before the end of the shortest night! the night that seemed to have been going on for such a long time?
The women and children scrambled down the hill to get a good view of the standing stones, and there was a lot of scolding and cuffing of little ones who got themselves in the way of where the stone was to come. The men with the poles and ropes made ready again. This time it was different: because of the steepness of the slope they couldn’t pull from the front, but had to do all the lifting and pushing from behind. And to stop the stone running away down the hill there was a rope leading uphill behind it, with a lot of people hanging on it to act as a brake. Stig took hold near the end of this, and Barney attached himself last of all, as anchor-man.
There was no hearty heave-ho-ing this time. It was easy enough to lift the rock on edge, but then everybody watched anxiously as the brake-rope was paid out and the rock was allowed to sink gently forward. There was no loud thump either, but a lot of hissing of breath and sighs of relief as each turn-over was safely done.
The steps along the top of the mound towards the top of the standing stones were even more anxious. One mistake, and the stone could topple sideways off the mound and charge off downhill. Barney thought the women and children were standing dangerously close on each side. But they made six steps safely along the mound, each time letting the stone settle gently down by the brake-rope. And now it was standing on its edge near the end of the mound, ready to be lowered on to the top of the standing stones. The king was looking anxiously at the sky, which now showed a bright glow over the shoulder of the downs to the East. Sunrise couldn’t be far off. The workers on the brake-rope took the strain as the stone began to fall forward.
But what was this?
Dinah, of all things, scrambling up the mound straight in front of the toppling stone, with Lou in desperate pursuit! And then Lou’s voice shouting, ‘Stop! Stop! Don’t let it down! There’s a baby!’ and there was Lou disappearing in front of the stone too!
The stone was moving. Everyone on the brake-rope was doing his best to hold it back, but once it had started it was almost impossible. Barney, on the end, dug his heels into the slippery turf, but he could feel himself being dragged slowly forward.
And then he saw, just beside him on the hillside, a scrubby thorn tree, weather-beaten and stunted, but with strong roots clutching the earth.
‘Stig!’ he gasped. ‘The tree!’ Stig looked round and saw. With one hairy arm Stig reached out and grabbed the trunk of the tree. The rope was wrapped round his other wrist and his bones seemed to crackle as his arms took the strain – but the brake-rope stopped moving forward. Trying not to fumble, Barney passed the end of the rope twice round the little tree and pulled it taut, and Stig grinned as he saw that he could let go. The hide rope stretched, the roots of the tree strained in the ground, but Barney let himself look at the stone, and saw that it was not moving. And then Lou appeared from under the tilted stone, followed by Dinah, and carrying a naked, black-haired Stig-baby.
The king shouted impatiently Barney let the end of the rope run out round the tree-trunk, the great slab fell forward with a hollow sound on to the tops of the standing stones and…
… and over the shoulder of the downs appeared a red spark, and the valley was flooded with light. It was sunrise. From the low mist in the bottom of the valley appeared the spire of a church, the tops of oast houses and electricity pylons. The solid forest was gone, and there were the squares of cornfield, orchard, and hop-garden. There were the villages, and the distant chimneys of cement-works, and the broad ribbon of the main road sweeping down the hill below.
Barney looked around the hillside. The people of the tribe had disappeared. There were no huts, no sign of a camp fire. They had all vanished with the last shades of darkness. But one thing had not changed. The three stones with the great slab on top were still before his eyes – weathered now, with grey lichen growing on them. The mound was not there, but the stones stood just as they had done when he had let go the last of the rope. Sitting against them was Lou, blinking her eyes at the rising sun as if she was waking from a deep sleep, and holding Dinah in her arms.
‘Oh, Barney, I’ve had such a funny dream,’ said Lou sleepily. ‘I’m glad I’ve woken up, though.’
‘So did I,’ said Barney. ‘Are you sure we’ve woken up?’
Lou looked around. ‘Well, I dreamt about a tribe of people long ago,’ she said. ‘They’ve all gone and now it’s now. So it must have been a dream.’
‘What are we doing here then?’ asked Barney.
Lou opened her eyes at that. ‘Good gracious,’ she said. ‘We don’t usually wake up on top of a hill, do we?’ She curled herself up at the foot of the stone and shut her eyes. ‘I’m going to dream myself back to bed,’ she said firmly.
Barney shook her. ‘Get up, Lou!’ he said. ‘It isn’t that sort of a dream at all. We really are here. We’ve got to get back to Granny’s somehow.’ Barney knew that it was something more than a dream. The tiredness in his arms and legs told him that he really had been hauling the great stone that looked as if it had been there for thousands of years.
He walked round to the front of the stones, where the open side looked over the valley – and there, sitting in the entrance as if he was on his own front porch, was Stig.
Barney gaped and Stig grinned. Lou put her head round the stone and gasped too. ‘Stig!’ she exclaimed. ‘What are you doing here? If you’re a midsummer fairy, or whatever the others were, you’re supposed to vanish too.’
‘But I told you,’ said Barney. ‘Stig’s always here. He’s my friend.’
Barney and Lou have almost forgotten how they got back to the house that summer morning. They remember catching the pony, who was grazing peacefully on the hilltop, and riding back half-asleep, clitter-clatter through the empty lanes, with Stig walking beside them. And they remember falling into their beds, and waking very late on Midsummer Day Probably they agreed on the way back not to say anything about what had happened. Anyhow, what could they say?
It wasn’t until quite a long time later that they went with their parents for a picnic on the North Downs where the four stones stand. And as they ate their sandwiches their parents got into an argument about Stone Ages and Bronze Ages, and about how the stones had got there at all, until Barney said, without thinking, ‘They had flint spears, and it was the heave-ho that did it.’
And everybody thought about this quite a lot, and had to admit that Barney was probably right, though they couldn’t think how he knew.
And then Barney and Lou said together, ‘But I wonder how the baby got there?’ And that was a question nobody could answer.
And what about Stig? Well, if you ask Barney he will say in an off-hand manner that he’s still living in the dump. The grown-ups never really knew just how real he was, but they got used to the idea that wherever there was a pile of old thrown-away things an unseen Stig was likely to be poking around in it. And whenever there was a particularly odd job to be done (like making sure a rainwater butt didn’t spring a leak when it was empty and overflow when it was full – or a new tool for lifting parsnips) then someone would say: ‘Let’s get Stig to fix it!’
Actually the dump’s filling up fast now, and Stig may be on the move. One report was that he’d been seen working at a garage by the main road, where they collect old wrecked cars and put the pieces in rusty piles. And somebody else said he saw him in a back lane of that woody cou
ntry at the top of the Downs, mending a chicken-run with an old wire mattress. It certainly sounded like Barney’s friend Stig, but perhaps it was only a relative of his.