by James Comins
Chapter Thirteen
Druids and Stones
or, Don’t Know What Hit Me
Compliments burst out of the company at regular intervals. Emily beamed. When dinner was over, Brugda rose and took Lenna’s hand at once.
“Thank you,” she said abruptly to their hosts. “Is there somewhere private? To talk?”
“Woll make up the big bed for you, and the guest bed and Andy’s. Till then, you might talk in the study.”
“Pol! The study?”
“It’s all right, Em.”
Lenna peered down the hall toward this deeply suspicious study, wherever it was.
Andy directed Brugda down the hall to the far end. She took Lenna firmly by the hand and half-dragged her down the sloping hall. The door opened at her push into darkness, quickly filling with light.
Every surface, every shelf, tables, the floor, cedar chests, some old bamboo chairs, and a long workbench socketed to the far wall were covered with carefully placed stones. Building stones, cut stones, flat slate, spotted blue stones, river stones with a hole worn through them, gray stones with a marble-orange line down the middle ... Off to one side was a single brick and a lump of clay. None of these things even existed in the new, shifted world. They were the stones of dragon-land.
The room had its back to the end of the building. Instead of being walled up with plaster like the rest of the flat, the room had been lined with a spider’s web of iron. One-inch spaces separated the threads of the web.
“Shouldn’t touch the stones,” said Andy before he ducked out. “They’re Dad’s.”
Brugda nodded vaguely. Lenna faced her.
“What did you talk to them about?” said Lenna. “Did you tell them all about Binnan Darnan? Also, oh! I need new clothes. Maybe a new ribbon for my hair.”
“Shut up, you,” Brugda snapped.
“Omigoodness,” very quietly. Threats bobbed around them, not at all in tune with these interesting rocks. Lenna’s eyebrows fell to the bottom of her forehead. Brugda sat in a big red leather chair that was probably Pol’s, the leather cracked in a few places, while Lenna defiantly stood in the only other place in the room not full of rocks.
“What did you do?” the woman snarled.
“Omigoodness.”
“Say it,” Brugda barked. “What did you do to me?”
Lenna pressed her lips tightly together and shook her head.
“You did something, girlie. I can see it in your face. You’ll tell me,” said Brugda.
Again Lenna shook her hair no.
“You know what it was. I don’t.” Brugda coughed, her eyes still dark. “Don’t know what hit me.”
“It wasn’t me,” Lenna lied.
“What wasn’t?”
“I don’t know.”
“Tell me!” Brugda barked.
“No!”
Brugda lifted a big rock, flung it, and just missed Lenna’s head. It happened too fast to notice. Lenna ducked, raising her elbow protectively, and the rock smacked into it painfully, throwing her backward onto her butt with the rock in her lap.
Instantly the world squiggled around her. The room wasn’t there. She was gone.
* * *
It was a cricket-chirp night and blue sullen cold outdoors. A clearing. Pine trees and the sight of stars and haunting owls were arrayed in a circle above her. A low chant of men’s voices shifted below the boughs. Rocks were set standing upright in a smaller circle on the moss of the clearing. Dark boots squashed the ferns between the stones, and in the boots were druids.