by Mike Crowson
* * *
It had been a pleasant day and it was still a pleasant evening, so most of the group tramped a couple of miles to the pub. Alicia, Frank and Gill stayed behind in the cabin. They were joined by Manjy and Steve. Manjy was about to bring the computer record up to date. She had just switched the machine on when Gill interrupted.
"Right!" she said, "We can't pretend it didn't happen or that Frank didn't discover a hand today. What do we make of Steve's story now?"
Frank studied his fingernails intently for a moment or two and then said, without looking up, "Steve 'knew' where the hand would be. Did he know because he guessed or because he dreamed it somehow or ..." Frank paused and looked even more absorbed in his fingernails, "... or because he somehow WAS that person?"
"It's a pretty involved guess with no clues that I could see," said Gill. "You must have remembered somehow."
"I dreamed the story but I also dreamed I was the storyteller." said Steve.
"A guess would be stretching it," ruminated Alicia. "I can't see how Steve could possibly have known all that detail by guesswork, so we can more or less rule that out. Either he somehow read memories stored by the ring or, if you believe in reincarnation, he relived a past life."
"That's absurd," said Frank. "There's Gill's story as well. It's a bit of a coincidence, to say the least, if they both had a past life involving the ring."
"The whole thing's absurd."
Frank was impatient. "Mebbe it was the late stone age. There'd be some overlap."
Gill shook her head at him. "No," she said, "I had the distinct impression the ring was already very old."
Frank was insistent. "You were old at forty," he told her, "It wouldn't take many years for the ring to be very old."
"There's one way to find out," remarked Steve.
"I know. I've been thinking about it." Frank turned to Alicia. "Where's the ring?"
She stood up to open a cabinet drawer. "Here," she said and gave it to him. Frank examined it again. Apart from its good condition there was nothing remarkable at all about it.
"Go on," Gill urged him and he pushed the ring onto the little finger of his hairy hand.