The Thirteen Stones

by Finegan, KT

  Angel and Grizelle seemed to be the only ones apparently unmoved by the experience. We walked backwards out of the building and, without discussion, headed towards Angel’s flat. Behind us we heard the noise reduce, probably as people realised that the police were on their way.

  ‘What’s happened to this town?’ I asked, still in shock at seeing people I’d grown up with and respected fighting and shouting with each other. I couldn’t believe how quickly the meeting had turned into mob rule.

  ‘What is that group doing in the town? I asked. ‘I don’t know any of them. Where are they from? It was like “rent-a-mob”! I thought environmentalists were supposed to be peaceful. Those guys were like something you see on the TV outside global political summits… and how quick to anger were some of the townspeople?’ I knew I was rambling nervously, but I couldn’t seem to help myself, my mind was a jumble of thoughts and questions. ‘Even the business people were going crazy. We didn’t get a chance to hear what was happening or when they would announce the results of the planning application. Did either of you hear the detail of how close the quarry would get to town? After all, Gran’s cottage is close as well.’

  ‘I heard someone say that there would be news tomorrow,’ Angel replied calmly. ‘It will probably go out on their website. Events like tonight play into the hands of the politicians and council. They’ll say that they can make better, less emotional decisions for the good of the town, because we can’t be trusted.’

  Grizelle, walking quietly in the middle of us, suddenly stopped and grasped us both by the arm. ‘I have an anxious feeling,’ she said quietly. ‘Angel, would you be okay if we all went to your place? I feel we have to have a ceremony to clear these stuck energies over the town. Something just doesn’t feel right.’

  As she finished, I looked around me and noticed that the fog had once again descended, filling the usually clear air with an opaque, other-worldly tinge. Despite my warm waterproof clothing, I shivered.

  Within a few minutes we reached the courtyard, but instead of climbing to the warm, well-lit flat, Angel and Grizelle stepped over to the pyramid structure, lifted one end of the brushwood covering and herded me inside. Angel tapped some lamps and I realised that they were battery-operated and shone some light onto the brass-piped pyramid inside. As we bent inside the structure and sat down, I noticed coloured crystals hanging down from the centre point five feet or so above our heads. There would have been space for maybe ten people inside. It was like a Native American wigwam, similar to a red one I’d owned as a child.

  I breathed in an aroma of earth and pine, added to the fragrance of sandalwood incense as Angel burned a stick in a small holder at her feet. She lovingly touched and re-arranged small crystals in the middle of where we sat, as if welcoming them to our party.

  Then Grizelle took charge, sitting across from Angel and me, breathing in and out deeply. We sat for a few minutes in silence whilst my eyes adjusted to the dullness, but my mind was racing. There was something so bizarre about the last few days and yet it all felt very familiar, normal even. It was as if some deep part of my DNA knew all of this already; perhaps that’s why I had started to accept it.

  Grizelle spoke in her usual deep tones, and I immediately closed my eyes without bidding.

  ‘Mother Earth and Father Sky,’ she said, ‘please send love and light into the heart of everyone involved tonight. Please help those struggling with fear to find a new way to express themselves and move into the light of love. Please help all of us to accept all aspects of ourselves; the shadow and the light; the masculine and the feminine; the mind and the heart. Please send light to the town and help us with healing anything which hurts us, and let us turn that into love. For the highest good of all concerned. Amen.’

  They both sat for another few minutes with eyes closed, as I nervously glanced around the pyramid. We couldn’t see the church, but I had a sense that its light had dimmed in the foggy night, and I had a horrible feeling of fear that something nasty was coming, but I didn’t know what.

  When I looked back, Angel and Grizelle were watching me intently, and Grizelle asked what I was feeling. I tried to shakily laugh off my thoughts and feelings of dread, and instead asked about what she had said.

  ‘Was that a prayer or a meditation, Grizelle?’

  ‘Both,’ she replied. ‘We do what we do to help people as they struggle with life and emotion. It is not for us to judge. We’ve all been in a place of fear, and we all know how easy it is to react when we feel afraid. People are good at heart, but sometimes they forget that.’

  I didn’t want to disagree with her, given the crazy night we’d just experienced, so instead I asked another question.

  ‘What do you think is happening here? Angel said you knew lots about the history of the town. Is there a legend about the danger of the March Stones being moved? Do we even know who put them there, or why? And do you know what the markings on them mean? The spirals and the holes at the top.’

  I knew that all the March Stones had similar, if not identical, symbols on them, but that only our stone had the holes along the top; cups, I think they had been called. Personally, I thought it was ancient vandals, bored with life, who had scratched away in the surface of the stones not knowing that hundreds of years later people would want to know more. To me, it was ancient history and not that interesting. But something told me that Grizelle might have been one of the volunteers at the museum and was taking it seriously.

  ‘There is a legend, yes,’ she told me. ‘I don’t believe it has been written down, but if there is anything, I think you might find the museum or the library of interest. Your gran and I would meet there often to look through their archives. The markings are similar to those made by Stone Age man in other sites throughout the West of Scotland and Ireland. The spiral shape is shown a lot in early Celtic art, and relates to energy, the sun, the earth, elements and eternity. The cups were cut into the stone to signify water.

  ‘Your gran believed that the March Stones were standing stones, put there by Stone Age man, perhaps by Druids. After all, there was a Druid temple uncovered in Glasgow only 25 miles from here, along the River Clyde. We know they held the earth in reverence, so is it too much of a stretch of the imagination to believe that this was one of their sacred sites?’

  ‘I didn’t know there was a Druid temple in Glasgow.’ I was intrigued. ‘Where is it?’

  ‘On the boulevard heading west. I read that it was covered over before the Second World War to make a roadway, would you believe? But I think the energy of the place still exists. Just like here, and we know that Christianity often “borrowed” the sites and ceremonies of earlier times, like pagan festivals.’

  ‘So there are other sites which have the same types of stones?’ I asked.

  ‘Probably hundreds, if not thousands of sites,’ she said, ‘but your gran believed that there was something especially important about our stones. Particularly because of the way they surrounded the church site. She believed that there was something special here which needed protection. Perhaps that’s too harsh a word for you and conjures up fear? For us, it’s about safeguarding and maintaining balance. Think of that instead.

  ‘There was a settlement of people on this site from early Stone Age, as far as we know from the artefacts found locally,’ she continued. ‘We also know that the Romans found the town to be of strategic importance to their domination of the region.’

  ‘Hold on,’ I interrupted. ‘I thought the Romans didn’t get into Scotland. Isn’t that what Hadrian’s Wall was all about, to keep Scots out of Roman Britain?’

  She smiled. ‘It’s true that the Romans did build Hadrian’s Wall to protect the rest of Britain, but there were many attempts to colonise the North. We know that there was a Roman garrison here in the town. It is said that they tried to move the old March Stones, and that’s when monsters from beneath were awakened to unleash hell on e
arth. The Romans retreated south and built the wall for protection from the Picts, and the other ancient tribes and their supernatural helpers.’

  ‘Supernatural? What do you mean?’ This was too strange to believe. I was sure Grizelle was playing a trick on me, or else was unhinged. What else could there be?

  ‘I’m sure you will find some really interesting information in the museum and the library. There are some copies of ancient manuscripts from the Romans about a great defeat which happened here at their garrison. They lost many men in a single night, or to be more accurate, many men “disappeared” in a single night. No record of a battle exists in any of the literature, though. So we surmise that there was an incident and the word “supernatural” appears in the literature. It’s not me trying to trick you or losing my mind, I can assure you of that.’

  It was as if she had read my mind. I took a deep breath and asked again about the markings on the stones.

  ‘Could they help with this? Whatever this is. I know you said you had a horrible feeling. Can you tell me more about things?’

  A cold, sharp wind blew against the pyramid and we all jumped in fright.

  ‘Let’s go up to the flat and have a hot drink,’ Angel suggested.

  As we climbed the stairs, I couldn’t help looking behind me into the grey swirls of fog. Grizelle and Angel kept talking about protection or safeguarding, but it all sounded the same to me. Despite their words, I really felt like we were being watched.

  16

  Upstairs, it took Angel only a few minutes to again work her magic and soon we were sitting across from the dancing firelight, with warm drinks and cakes laid out on the low table in front of us. I could see only fog through the big window. As I‘d imagined, the light from the church had indeed dimmed and it was hardly discernible through the foggy night.

  Grizelle, sitting across from me, asked if it would be helpful for me to know more about her friendship with my gran. Keen to have something tangible to investigate or hold onto, I nodded encouragingly and sipped my hot tea. Despite everything, I still feared that there was some sort of insanity hovering close to me.

  ‘Our families have been friends for generations,’ she began, ‘and your gran and I played together as children. Although she was a little older than me, our mothers were good friends. While still quite young, we were introduced to the other side of our families’ lives, if you will. We were trained in the power of nature, and taught to accept that there is an innate intelligence in life.

  ‘No-one has to tell a seed planted in the ground how to grow, and we see that acorns turn into oak trees, not birch or fir. We were shown by our mothers how beautiful life is and how all we need to thrive is all around us. Like your gran, I have never left this place. Why would I, when everything I need is all around me?’

  ‘By the time we were teenagers, we understood herbs and plants and how to work with them to benefit others. Your gran also had some special gifts of helping people understand how to love and accept themselves. After all, isn’t that what we all seek? Some might call it enlightenment, but for others it’s called contentment. When we stop looking for something outside of ourselves, we come into our own. Your gran would help people with this. She called it “balance”.’

  Grizelle paused briefly to drink her tea, and I waited patiently for her to continue her story.

  ‘As well as helping people, we knew we had another role. This town is such an important place, and many have recognised that over the years. We knew we were here to safeguard the March Stones. So many myths had grown up around the stones over the years. But more recently the townspeople had moved away from any sort of legend, and the Stones had become part of a tourist attraction along with the bands and the festivities. To be honest, that suited us all, as we felt it a smokescreen.

  ‘Like your gran, I married young. To an accountant from Edinburgh. Gordon was a lovely man, but he didn’t understand nor accept my need to be here. He was a very practical person and I think he found my beliefs a bit strange. We argued all the time. It really wasn’t a happy marriage. Over time, I found it exhausting continually having to defend my beliefs. If I said I was going over to your gran’s house for anything, his eyebrows would rise and he’d make a face of what looked like derision or contempt, or at least that’s how I saw it.’

  She shook her head slightly, as if trying to rid herself of the unhappy memories.

  ‘It was a really horrible time my life. I lost my way. And all the time I pretended to everyone that things were good. The stress was terrible. But your gran knew and understood. She said he would come round in his own time, and she was a great support. I think I would have gone mad if she hadn’t been there for me. You have to understand, we weren’t doing anything bad, or even that strange by today’s standards. We met and meditated; we worked with herbs and plants; we grew them at your gran’s house.

  ‘Oh, how I loved that garden.’ She and Angel shared a smile. ‘As soon as I stepped into the garden, I could feel my tension ooze away. It always felt magical to me. And then, of course, there was the March Stone. The thirteenth stone. We would sit at it for hours, feeling its energy of peace and protection. I believe that’s what the symbols meant. Just think, they were carved thousands of years ago by people who wanted to leave a mark. They must have been important to them, and all that time later they were important to me and your gran, and to all our ancestors before us. Beneath the trees we could sit and feel strong and safe and, yes, protected.

  ‘I know you are wondering from what? But I can’t answer that. Your gran had to be the one to tell you, because your family had a special purpose. I can guess, but that’s not the same as hearing it from Kirsten herself. I knew that woman so well, and I know that she had found a way to really help us….’

  My thoughts took me back to the conversation with Angel the previous night. ‘Why here, and why now?’

  ‘Again, all I can tell you is that we all had a sense, a feeling, that things were changing, and are continuing to change here. We could feel a disaster coming towards us, but without our usual knowing of what that was. Personally, I believe it is connected to the quarry expansion. In my dreams I can hear the stones calling to me, to all of us, to prepare, to get strong, to be aware. What that means, though, I really don’t know.’

  She ran her hand through her hair in a gesture of tiredness or frustration, I wasn’t sure which. ‘Your gran and I had such a connection that I know she found a way to help, and I really, truly believe that she is helping us even now. For me, death is not the end, it’s only the end of our current physical life. Death permits us to move into spirit, infinite, expansive, universally connected.’

  She paused and gave me a sympathetic smile. ‘Forgive me if this is hard to hear when you loved your grandmother as much as you did, but this is another beginning for her and for all of us. I know she will be helping the way she always has, but in a different and bigger way. Does this make any sense to you at all, Kirsty?’

  I realised that I had tears on my face. I didn’t know if it due to her words, her faith or a sadness inside me. I knew I could sense Gran and my mum moving closer to me. As if in answer, the lights and candles around the room flickered again in agreement.

  Angel had sat quietly whilst Grizelle talked, but now she stretched over to put another log in the stove, before speaking. ‘I told you to go within yourself before you made any decisions, Kirsty. What does that part of you say? Can you feel the truth, the authenticity in what we say? Dark times are coming to this town, and your gran wants to help from another place.’

  She sighed sadly. ‘You know what she was like, if she could have supported from this life she would have done so. There can’t have been any other option for her. She was so connected, you know that, with nature, the earth, and the universe. There was no other way, Kirsty. And as hard as that might sound, you are involved in this, too.’

  At her words, I
felt something stir inside me. Sadness at my gran’s passing definitely, but something else. I didn’t know what, but perhaps a curiosity of some kind. Something in my genes, if you believe in things like that. It was as if she was suggesting that I had something to do, some role, a life purpose. Or perhaps that thought was way too fanciful for the situation. I knew I needed to find out more, and made up my mind I would go to the museum and library the next day to see if there was anything to find.

  Grizelle left shortly after, and Angel and I relaxed on the sofas with some hot chocolate. I nibbled contentedly on the chocolate and nut cookies that were left.

  ‘Is Grizelle still married, Angel?’ I asked. ‘She didn’t really finish telling her story.’

  ‘Sadly not. Gordon died about twenty years ago. He had a heart attack at his desk in Edinburgh. He died in the middle of a fraud investigation, and he left Grizelle penniless. There was such a scandal at the time. It was all over the newspapers, and Grizelle was horrified as you can imagine. I’m sure she’ll tell you all about it some time, but she had to completely rebuild her life. I think it took her a long time to get over it, if anyone ever does with a sudden death. Sometimes it takes a long time for the shock to subside and for the person to find a way to live with it, with loss, I mean.

  ‘Given that Grizelle and Gordon were never that happy, I think guilt probably came into that as well. I mean, she has such strong beliefs in the spirit world that it’s not like she doesn’t know Gordon is in a better place. I think it’s more that she wished she had been kinder and found a better way to live while they were together. Guilt is such a destructive thing, isn’t it?’

  I wondered if she had realised what I felt about not speaking to my grandmother that final day, and shivered. I felt exhausted, so much had happened in the day and yet nothing at all, really.