THE SILENCE OF THE STONES: Will the secrets written in the stones destroy a young woman's world? The runes are cast. Who will die?

by Rebecca Bryn

  She tried another tack. ‘Pity the cottage is so small. It’ll be a squeeze when your family visit.’

  ‘That’s not likely to happen. Mum and Dad are separated and I’m an only child. Dad’s busy with his new woman. Mum doesn’t like to drive far… She and I have had a falling out as well.’

  ‘That’s a shame. Family’s important, Alana. Nothing’s so important it’s worth falling out over.’

  ‘I sort of fell out with Dad, too.’ The girl’s eyes were bright with tears. ‘I wanted to make it up with him last time I was there, but he was away. Living his new life, I suppose.’

  There was bitterness in the girl’s tone: a sudden brief connection. ‘Oh, you poor girl.’

  Alana smiled, despite the tears. ‘I’ll get over it. I’ll make it up with them next time I see them. We’ve always had a difficult relationship. This is no different, really.’

  She put down her cup. ‘Thank you for the tea. I must go and feed Pryderi, my cat. He’ll be sitting outside scratching at the door, otherwise.’

  The girl got up. ‘And thanks for the marmalade. Why do you have such a lot of it if you don’t like it?’

  She shrugged. ‘I’ve no idea. Next time, I’ll bring you some crisps. I don’t much like cheese and onion.’

  She hurried back across the green, hailstones as big as marbles smacking against her head. Pryderi ran out from beneath a bush. She threw open the door and he rushed past her and jumped onto the table.

  So there was not much danger of visiting relations. That was good, very good. And if Alana had fallen out with both parents, they wouldn’t be expecting her to keep contact.

  Once inside she drew a single rune tile from her bag and invoked Odin’s cast, speaking her question aloud, once more. ‘What must I do about the girl?’

  She dropped the tile in surprise. Hagalaz - Hail… and it was hailing outside. Hagalaz was sacred to Heindall the watcher and Mordgud, keeper of the icy bridge to the underworld. It warned of illness, upheaval, discord and destruction. And bad luck. Much must be endured to come through to the other side. The watcher. She must watch and wait…

  She would watch and wait, but she wouldn’t do nothing. Keeper of the icy bridge to the underworld. Bad luck… a walk on the cliffs… Cliffs Kill: the signs were everywhere on the coast path. A walker could easily fall off the edge rescuing an over-enthusiastic dog and Siân’s fat terrier could do with a good run. If she couldn’t drive the girl away, she would prepare the ground, gain the girl’s trust: plan her destruction to the last detail.

  ***

  Sleep refused to come in the loft bedroom of The Haggard, as it had refused to come since her visit to Mum’s the previous Thursday. Alana pummelled a lump out of her pillow and turned to her right side. She’d never had the chance to know Cadi and the loss flowed from a deep well inside her. She rolled onto her back and stared up at the pale oblong of moonlight shining through the Velux. They could have been so close, grown up together, raised their children together. She and Tony would have had a family. The well deepened: the space on the other side of the bed grew colder. Losing Tony was an ache that never left her, try as she might to move on. She felt a connection to Greg, but he was Maddy’s, even if he didn’t know it, yet: he wasn’t truly interested in her any more than Tony was.

  She flopped onto her left side and let thoughts of what could never be ebb away. Not being a victim seemed harder in the hours before dawn. She couldn’t blame Dad for not forgiving Mum and Siân. A man would have to be a saint to agree to such a proposal. How Siân could have suggested it, she couldn’t understand.

  Mum had said the maternal instinct was all powerful: hers had been all but destroyed during nine months of having the spawn of rape grow inside her. But it must be as strong as Mum had suggested: Saffy’s fingers in her hair, the sticky kiss, had awoken something she’d not felt before, or not since that brief spark that had ignited and almost instantly died at Saffy’s birth. She drew up her knees and curled into a ball. She hadn’t been prepared for Mum’s explosive reaction to her and Saffy coming to live with her, either.

  A faint tapping rattle sounded and she propped herself on one elbow, listening intently. There was no wind to make the rose tap against the glass. She felt on her bedside table for the torch Aunt Siân had kept there, the light-switch being out of reach. She threw on her dressing gown, cupped the light in her hand and crept down the steep stair to the living room.

  Silence brooded.

  She waited, breath held, for the rattle to come again. Letting the light spill on the door she watched as the door handle slowly turned. She froze, heart hammering, unable to remember locking the door. As she moved silently towards the door, a shadow darkened the window. Cautiously, torch at the ready, she took hold of the curtain. She took a deep breath and yanked the curtain aside, shining the torch wildly from side to side.

  No-one.

  A soft laugh?

  She closed the curtains, yanked a bolt across the door and sank onto the settee. The laugh could have been a figment of an overactive imagination, but she hadn’t imagined the turning of the door handle, the tap of the gate closing or the rattle of the gate catch.

  She made tea, a habit born of stress, and surveyed the mess that used to be her living room. Mum was right: this was no place for a child. She sipped the hot liquid. Allowing her fear to take over made her the victim she refused to be.

  She’d fight for Saffy, if she had to. She’d finish the carvings and remove the quarry: show she could offer her a fit home. She buried her head in her hands. She’d never wanted Saffy, had been determined not to love her… She picked up the small sculpture she’d shown Mr John, and let her hands follow the smooth form. He’d seen love in it.

  She hadn’t carved love, or not consciously. Now that she looked at it more critically, the pregnant roundness at the centre, which represented the cancerous blemish of rape, was cradled by the surrounding stone in a strong, maternal way. It mirrored how she felt: she wanted Saffy to be happy and safe as strongly as she’d wanted to cut her from her body, and forget she existed. Why did she feel the need to take her from Mum, now?

  She dressed, since there was no point in trying to sleep. She needed to think. Torch in hand she opened the front door. An almost full moon hung low in the sky, picking out the swords of rimed grasses and the delicate filigree of spider webs on hawthorn. It shone on a thick black mark on her door. The sign was like an H, but not quite so straight. It hadn’t been there yesterday.

  It was ghostly silent. Not a car on the main road, not a voice, not a dog barking. Gradually her ears attuned to the faint sound of the river, rushing down the valley on its way to the harbour. Her eyes adjusted to the moonlight and she put her torch in her pocket. A walk would clear her head.

  She passed Rhiannon’s cottage: there was a face at the window, pale in the light of the moon. For a moment she thought it was Rhiannon, it was so like her, and she considered knocking the door to ask if she’d seen anyone out and about, but this woman looked older, smaller, and more careworn. Her shoulders drooped in an attitude of despair and she held her arms crossed, her hands rubbing her upper arms mechanically as if she were chilled to the bone.

  She raised a hand to wave but the woman gave no response, no hint of recognition that she was even there. Her eyes were blank and staring, her expression devoid of emotion.

  She changed her mind about knocking: as she walked away she thought she heard the soft sound of a child sobbing. She paused to listen but the sound didn’t come again. Harriet would have said if there was a child living there: she was imagining things, tonight. She walked on, but she couldn’t get the image of the old woman, keeping her night-time vigil, out of her mind.

  At four in the morning she returned home, her head no clearer. Dawn saw her trudging across the rough moorland towards the stone circle: it could be her last chance to visit it for a while. Minnie’s MOT was booked for that afternoon and, if she failed, she’d be stuck in the middle of nowhere
with no transport. The stone circle loomed above her. According to the map it was called Cerrig o’ Týr. She stood on the stone slab at its centre and let the landscape in, let the stones speak, as the sun rose above the horizon. What had they been like, the men and women who’d stood among the stones and worshipped here two thousand, maybe as much as five thousand years ago?

  Her fingers flew across her sketch pad, making strong graphite marks, a darker dark against a storm sky. The stone pillars leaned towards her, enclosing and menacing. This was the attitude she wanted to capture and mutate into the dance of the twelve children, making it a joyful thing, full of life not death. She moved from stone to stone: they were rough beneath her hands, the enigmatic symbols alien. She drew and re-drew the shapes until they lived in child form and danced across her pages.

  One stone bore a symbol she hadn’t seen last time she’d come. She drew it carefully. Who had carved it and why? A mark on the next stone stopped her in her tracks. It was a slightly crooked H, like the one she’d found daubed on her door in the night, and it was freshly carved.

  ***

  Minnie had failed, big-time. New piston rings, new clutch, brake pads, exhaust system, welding... Alana stopped listening as the mechanic reeled off a list of all her failings.

  ‘How much?’

  The mechanic sucked air between his front teeth. ‘Won’t be cheap.’

  She owed so much money a bit more wasn’t going to make the difference between paying Mr John’s twenty percent and selling up. ‘Just get her running again. I need her.’

  She walked home, lack of sleep dogging her steps. Her mobile buzzed annoyingly.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Alana? It’s Greg.’

  ‘She was wide awake now. ‘How are you?’

  ‘We’re fine. Maddy has some disturbing news. She’s been…’ His voice faded.

  Maddy sounded excited. ‘I’ve been digging into trial transcripts, electoral rolls and newspaper reports. Alana, all the women who died in the last year lived in Coed-y-Cwm at the time Cadi and Bethan disappeared. They all testified against Nerys.’

  ‘Maddy, the police say the deaths aren’t connected.’

  ‘I don’t believe in that much coincidence. There’s another thing. The runes.’

  ‘What runes?’

  ‘The signs on the doors? They’re called runes. They’re from an extinct language. Some are thought to mark ancient grave sites and they can used for divination.’

  ‘I can see they might be a language, but divination? I don’t believe in such stuff.’

  ‘It’s to do with the subconscious. Divining with rods works. I know people who can do it. Why not runes? It isn’t about seeing the future, it’s about cause and effect, and likely outcomes. It’s not as daft as it sounds.’

  ‘I’ll take your word for that. Maddy, I found runes carved into standing stones. Some look thousands of years old, but some of the marks are fresh. I found a new rune this morning, and it’s the same as the one on my door.’

  Muffled voices argued. Greg’s won. ‘I don’t want to think this is my mother’s doing, but if it is… if she’s psychotic… There’s no telling what she might do.’

  ‘You haven’t found her yet, then?’

  ‘No. She’s disappeared without a trace. Maddy’s tried every avenue… it’s hopeless. I’m trying to locate her sister, now.’

  Icy fingers crept down her spine. If Siân’s death wasn’t an accident: if the other deaths were murder, then it was someone who knew the village and their occupants well. ‘Someone tried my door last night.’

  ‘Alana, please be careful. We’re hoping to get back down, soon. Hopefully, at the weekend. We’ll talk more.’ There was pause, heavy breathing. ‘Promise me you’ll ring me if you need me. I’ll get the train, hire a car…’

  ‘If you’re right, and it is Nerys, then it was Siân she was after, not me. Maybe she’s just trying to scare me off, because I’m Siân’s flesh and blood.’ Flesh and blood… Grave sites. If it was Nerys, she was having some success. ‘I’ll make sure I lock my doors and windows. Don’t worry.’

  Home, she locked and bolted her door, and examined her drawings. She googled runes. The word rune means whisper, or secret, and are thought by some to interact between the living and the spirit world. Myths surrounding the origins of the runes suggest the Volsungr, a Northern ancestral tribe, crossed into Europe before the Ice Age, bringing their writing with them. Used as an alphabet, runes were also used to divine, and have power over, fertility, tides, love and healing: even death. As late as 1700 people were burned at the stake for using them.

  Witches had been burned at the stake. Whoever was using the runes was trying to exert some kind of power over her? Like a curse?

  The runic alphabet, spread throughout Europe by the Anglo Saxons, finally became settled into a basic alphabet of 24 Runes called the FuThARK, and are arranged into three families comprising 8 runes each. Each family, or Aett, is ruled over by its own particular spirit or Norse God. Freya & Frey - Goddess and God of fertility and increase, Heindall - The watcher: keeper of the icy bridge to the underworld, and Týr - War leader and spirit of the just.

  Týr: Cerrig o’ Týr was named for a Norse war leader? She scrolled down to the symbols themselves. She recognised several of them. One was the wonky H that she hadn’t yet removed from her door. Icicles fingered further. Heindall - The watcher: keeper of the icy bridge to the underworld.

  Alana spread her sketches across the table. If the runes meant someone, maybe Nerys, bore her ill-will, she’d be stupid to ignore them. I, the sign that had been on her door when she’d come to The Haggard, stood for ice. Siân had died of hypothermia. The sign could be recognition of what had happened, or a warning of what was to happen. Had someone lured her aunt out of the house that night? The lop-sided cross had been on her door, too. It was Nauthiz, sacred to the Norns, whoever they were, and was the symbol for N. It seemed to caution patience. It was a rune she’d seen at the stone circle, too.

  The sign on Mair’s door was the less-than sign, and it stood for the letter K: Kaunaz. Kaunaz was the sign for fire. Arson… She loosened the neck of her jacket and looked closer at another sketch: She intended it to represent two children holding hands and swinging in dance. Called Mannaz, and sacred to Odin, it was the letter M… for Mair? Other marks on the stones were one that looked like M, but which, oddly, was the letter E, and a rather geometric B, which was Berkana, and sacred to the earth goddess.

  The women who’d died were Mair, Non, Siân and Bronwen. She searched through her drawings. There was no symbol for S, for Siân. It was coincidence… ancient graffiti. One stone had borne a row of four symbols:

  K, something, M, I. The something was Ansuz, another rune sacred to Odin, and was the letter A. KAMI. The name of a Bronze Age king? She tried to remember the feeling of the grooves beneath her fingers. They were weathered but not worn by millennia. The symbols danced before her eyes. She was missing something crucial.

  The language was brought to Britain millennia ago, but the modern alphabet had much in common with it. There were twenty-four ancient runes: the modern alphabet had twenty-six. Which were missing? It wasn’t that simple. Three of the runes stood for TH, NG and EL. There didn’t seem to be a C, V, X, Y or Q. Apart from C and Y, those letters weren’t in the Welsh language, either. She remembered Mum telling her that. In fact, K wasn’t in the Welsh language: the C was the hard sound, as in... cat. CAMI?

  She stared at the runes as if sheer will-power would make the stones speak. Her heart thudded. It wasn’t an M. The M rune had legs… The one without the legs was Dagaz…a D. It didn’t read CAMI: it read CADI.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The stones loomed out of misty rain, lashing horizontally from the south-west: underfoot the ground squelched. Heather and gorse soaked Alana’s scratched legs, and rain dripped down her neck. The police sergeant followed her round the stone circle like a dejected dog. She almost expected him to shake.

 
; She pulled her collar higher and pointed to a weathered rune. ‘It’s an ancient language, but the marks, or some of them, are fresh. These same marks are on the doors of some of the houses in the village. ‘I’ve had this one, and this one. This one was on Elin Davis’ door and this on Mair Parry’s.’

  ‘And you know what they mean?’

  ‘They’re letters, among other meanings. They can be used a bit like tarot cards. Some of the letters correspond with our modern alphabet.’ She pointed to Kaunaz, on a stone that leaned into the gale. This stands for K, but it’s also a symbol for fire. It’s on Mair’s door and her house burned to the ground.’

  He didn’t seem impressed. ‘And this one?’

  ‘Stands for M. M for Mair? And now she’s dead.’

  ‘Sounds a bit obtuse. I can’t go digging up an historic site without better reason than this.’

  She brushed wet hair from her eyes and pointed to the four symbols that had made her phone the police. ‘These stand for K, A, D and I. There isn’t a K in Welsh. C is the hard sound. It says Cadi, clear as day. And this one, above Cadi, is Kaunaz reversed. It means a light or a beacon gone out. Doesn’t that suggest death?’

  ‘I’d need an expert to verify all this.’

  ‘Then get your expert up here.’ She found the place she remembered from before, not far from the stone that bore her sister’s name, and scuffed wet earth with her foot. She plucked a discoloured pale shape from the mud. ‘This is bone.’

  ‘Probably a fox or a sheep.’

  ‘And it could be human.’ Tears pricked her eyes. ‘It could be my sister. If these are Cadi’s bones, I want to know. I want her to rest with her… our parents.’

  He frowned. ‘I wasn’t aware Cadi Ap Dafydd had a sister.’

  ‘We…’ She shouldn’t have let that slip. Unlike Mum, she wasn’t practiced in lying.’ We were brought up apart. I never knew Cadi.’

  Rain dripped from the officer’s cap. ‘This whole place gives me the creeps.’

  She walked to a nearby stone and pointed to a rune. ‘Someone tried my door last night. They put this sign on it. It’s Hagalaz, keeper of the icy bridge to the underworld.’