Legend of the Celtic Stone

by Michael Phillips

  Neither Fidach nor Cruithne led. They walked forward purposefully, yet in no hurry. An eerie silence accompanied them. Neither sparrow nor robin nor wren nor finch, usually plentiful in the trees above, could be heard. Only their footsteps and their occasionally whispering voices broke the tranquil stillness. Some presence other than their own seemed to have settled over Muigh-bhlaraidh Ecgfrith, commanding everything in it to repose.

  The sun was now well past its zenith. The shadows from their own forms, broken by those from the surrounding trees and forest images, were lengthening in front of them when suddenly Fidach stopped. For several moments he stood motionless. Cruithne and Domnall waited at his side.

  “I hear him, Cruithne,” uttered Fidach solemnly.

  Unconsciously Cruithne’s fingers tightened around his spear. “In which direction?” he whispered.

  Behind them, Domnall’s feet stood unmoving, as if they belonged to the earth. He struggled intently to divine whatever snap of forest twig or step of cloven hoof had reached Fidach’s preternaturally keen ear. But he heard nothing. All remained deathly calm.

  Fidach turned his head slowly this way and that.

  Cruithne and Domnall searched his face for some sign of his thoughts. But though his countenance was alive with meaning, for once Cruithne could not apprehend its purport.

  Slowly Fidach crept forward, on his toes lest he cause any forewarning sound. The others followed.

  Through a deep thicket of pines they went, treading softly on the blanket of fallen needles, carefully avoiding the multitude of small dead branches that lay strewn over the brown carpet. Emerging from the grove, Fidach sent his gaze out across a grassy clearing, surrounded by trees. At its far end stood a gnarled ancient hawthorn alive with a wild, queer, beautiful grotesqueness.

  His eyes scanned the small open field, then came to rest upon the hawthorn. Steadily he stood as one transfixed, then slowly turned his head in Cruithne’s direction. As their eyes met, he motioned with one hand.

  Cruithne knew his meaning instantly. He retreated several paces back into the pine wood, then slowly began to work his way around the perimeter of the green meadow while remaining under cloak of cover within the trees. Not a sound could be heard from his steps.

  Fidach turned to Domnall and signaled likewise in the opposite direction. The son of the bard, following Cruithne’s example, understood his task and immediately crept away. He had learned well the lessons of his two elders from earlier in the day.

  Fidach waited until the two were perhaps a third of the distance in their respective directions toward the hawthorn, then gingerly stepped forward into the grassy meadow. With steps of tiniest degree, he inched his way forward in absolute silence.

  When he had traveled some ten yards—traversing the distance had taken some three or four minutes of stealthy deliberation—suddenly a great commotion reached his ears from the wood beyond the meadow. The next thing Fidach heard was a shout from his brother. But he had time to apprehend no words.

  The same instant, from behind the trunk of the great hawthorn, there suddenly emerged a great stag, with antlers of points too numerous to count and a huge majestic head of white that faded down his neck and along his back into a light gray.

  Whatever silence had previously descended upon the place was utterly shattered. The stag crashed out of the forest in a dead run, in a tumult of legs and hoofs, bending brush and breaking branches, with echoing shouts behind him. The tempest of flurry and sound and movement, however, lasted but a moment. The instant the stag broke free of the wood, he saw Fidach directly in his path. As suddenly as he had sprung into flight, he now stopped.

  The giant animal seemed to sense he had no retreat to the right or the left, where Domnall and Cruithne were poised in readiness. And he could not go back, for they would cut off his path before he reached the hawthorn again. His only course lay forward, across the clearing.

  From thirty paces, the eyes of the beast met the wondering gaze of the youth who would become chief. They held each other for several long seconds. It seemed an hour.

  Fidach would fain have approached him. Yet he could see that the eyes of the one he had so long sought glistened with fear. The huge round black orbs shone from the center of the white head with an uncanny and mysterious cognizance that the one standing before him was no enemy. The powerful silver flanks gave not so much as a shiver to betray their muscular readiness to bolt again. Neither did the tiny thin tail divulge the slightest twitch. The great white stag stood motionless as a statue of stone.

  Fidach timidly held forth his hand, then took another step closer.

  To his right Fidach heard his brother’s step plunging out of the wood. The head of the stag turned quickly, perceived his danger, and sprang forward. Cruithne’s spear rose above his shoulder and the brawny strength of his arm flexed backward to heave it toward its mark.

  “Cruithne—no!” shouted Fidach.

  But already the beast was gone.

  In two giant bounds he came straight toward Fidach, then leapt mightily into the air.

  Cruithne arrested his javelin. To send it forward now would endanger the brother he loved.

  To the left of Fidach, and nearly over his shoulder, the great stag flew, landing in full stride well past him. In another instant he was receding from sight into the pine wood from which they had just come, vanishing in a light blur against the dark forest.

  Fidach spun around to follow the movement, and then stood gazing after the stag in wonder, a great smile of awe and joy on his face. Feelings indefinable filled his breast. Slowly Cruithne approached and placed his arm around his shoulder.

  “We have seen him, my brother,” he said.

  Fidach sighed and nodded. “It was worth everything, for just that moment,” he said softly. “I do not understand all he had to tell me, but in time it will come clear.”

  “You were right,” said Cruithne. “It would have been wrong to kill so magnificent a creature. I do not know why I was unable to understand that before.”

  “If only that fear in his eyes could be banished—from both beasts and men.”

  “I regret raising my spear against him, Fidach. I did not think to kill him. I found myself taking aim almost in spite of myself.”

  “Think no more of it,” replied Fidach, pulling his gaze away from the forest, and now looking intently into his brother’s eyes. As he did, Domnall approached from the other side of the meadow. “We all have much to learn,” Fidach added, “not only about the beast and the land and about our fellow creatures . . . but also about ourselves.”

  It was enough. No more needed be said.

  They turned again toward the hawthorn. Arm in arm, with young Domnall at their side, they continued their journey.

  Each of the three knew they would not see the great white stag again.

  Fourteen

  It was beyond midafternoon the following day when the two brothers and the bard’s son ascended the final slopes of the mountain known as An Stoc-bheinn.

  It was the highest mountain in the region, and though its peak stood less than four thousand feet above the surface of the Dark Waters, the northern latitude ensured that snow remained on it for nine months of the year. It was a rugged place, extremely rocky, with little vegetation above three thousand feet, and it took no small amount of skill and stamina to conquer its height.

  After an early start from the edge of Muigh-bhlaraidh Ecgfrith, the three youths had reached the mountain’s base before noon. There they had rested and refreshed themselves before beginning the strenuous and circuitous assault on the summit. Now, breathing hard and perspiring freely, they climbed at last to the peak and paused to gaze around them.

  To the north, beyond Tuarie Brora, which ran far below them toward the sea, they could easily descry the three sister lochs, Tri piuthar, which signaled, along with the river, the borders of Kildonanoid. To the west, from their bird’s-eye vantage point, they saw spread out below them the low-lying expanse
of moorland which steadily ascended toward the range of snow-capped peaks that cradled Loch Bruid. Toward the southwest they gazed down upon the dark green tops of the trees of the forest where dwelt, for the present, the white stag. And toward the southeast they saw, spread out between the two great inland rivers, the gradually descending plain that connected, in a series of hilly intervals and broken by valleys and burns and hollows and glens innumerable, the Dark Waters eastward and the rocky peaks of the snowy highlands to the west.

  It was not for the exercise of the climb, however, nor for this magnificent panorama upon which their eyes now feasted, that the brothers had come here. After a pause of several minutes, therefore, they pressed on, passing the summit and moving down around the mountain’s northeasterly slope, where under shadowy overhanging ledges the snow piled in high white drifts of twenty and thirty feet in thickness. Their destination was a tiny hidden valley situated perhaps some thousand paces from the lookout point at the peak but only some one or two hundred feet less in elevation.

  The glen extended but two hundred feet in length, was perhaps fifty feet wide, and appeared to have been scooped out of the mountainside like a gigantic dish—no doubt the geological work of some icy glacial hand in millennia long past. Its western and northern edges were walls of vertical granite that shot straight up to the peak of An Stoc-bheinn. Thus the flat little hollow on the side of the great mountain was almost completely protected from the blasts of wind that swept down from the highlands to the north and west. Opening toward the south and east, in certain seasons it even boasted here and there some grass and patches of heather. It was the only such place on all the mountain, which otherwise resembled a single gargantuan hunk of granite that had been thrust skyward from the center of the earth during some prehistoric upheaval.

  Even now, however, they still had not reached their chosen destination. This scenic and protected glen was not the reason the sons of Caldohnuill’s chief had adopted this unknown locale as their second home. What they were seeking was the cave they had discovered when, at sixteen, they had wandered from the peak of An Stoc-bheinn down to the hidden valley for the first time. Since then they had sojourned here at least twice yearly, and had gradually turned the cave into a shelter in which a man might survive comfortably the year round if he so desired.

  The cave sat square against the northern cliff of the glen, partially obscured by a ledge that jutted out from the mountain, and thus directly beneath the peak they had just left. Its mouth was not large, and might even at a second glance be easily mistaken for a shadow thrown from the ledge above. Fidach barely cleared the entrance with his head, Cruithne had to stoop slightly to enter, and only one at a time could walk through the opening. Once inside, however, the unpromising entry gave way to a magnificent open, flat-floored hall measuring twelve feet at its narrowest and twenty at its most expansive, with seven to eight feet of clearance above at all points.

  When Fidach had years before first wandered inside, he knew even by the dim natural light that he had chanced upon what to a sixteen-year-old lad could be described as nothing other than a veritable paradise. Quickly he had called to his brother, and the two had ignited a hastily assembled fire as quickly as their trembling fingers and beating hearts would allow. As the firelight brightened the cave’s interior, they had glanced this way and that, beside themselves with ecstasy, talking and pointing and looking and laughing and shrieking all at once.

  They had discovered their own private retreat—from all discernible evidence, known to no human in all the world but themselves!

  Animals had apparently been to the place. There was evidence of dried dung. But no creature seemed to have claimed the cave as a permanent dwelling. No odor of recent occupation could be detected.

  Immediately on that first visit of discovery, as if by common consent, they had begun preparations to turn the cave into a hospitable dwelling. Before many days were out, the brothers had excitedly hauled as much wood as they could gather from the lower slopes of the mountain and as many chunks of peat as they could cut from the plain beneath, back up to the valley and into the cave, to dry in preparation for their next visit. They kept their fire alive and slept cozily there that first night, envisioning all they could do to make the place more habitable.

  Indeed, the cave was rendered even more suitable to their purpose by the presence of two or three fissures in the rock of the roof overhead. These, they concluded, extended all the way to the surface above, for smoke found egress through them. Yet the cracks apparently twisted and turned through the solid granite of the mountain in such a manner as to reach the surface a good distance below the summit, projecting in a downward direction, for never a drop of moisture reached the cave. In the wildest of rainy storms, no matter how furiously the wind swirled, or during the most rapid of snowy thaws, the hole in the mountain remained utterly dry. And whatever the temperature outside, the youths discovered they could quickly heat the place with a peat fire carefully placed so as to induce just the right flowing draft between the door of the cave and the fissures in the ceiling above. After many trials, they had learned the precise spot where a fire would burn hottest, expend the least fuel, and smoke the least.

  This was the first visit they had made to the valley of the cave with anyone but themselves. As they entered, young Domnall’s exclamations of delight could hardly have been greater than the brothers’ inward pleasure, undiminished after more than a dozen visits.

  Against one wall stood a great stack of dried, cut peat and pieces of wood, large and small. Fidach gathered a stack of these to assemble a fire. While he worked with the stones and iron and bits of twig and straw to ignite what he hoped would soon be a warm blaze, Cruithne led their awestruck young visitor around in the semidarkness, explaining what he could see in his mind but Domnall could only guess at from the dark shapes.

  Within moments, Fidach’s nimble and experienced fingers, working in perfect harmony with gentle puffs of his breath, had created from a random momentary spark that most marvelous of man’s discovered creations—a barely smoldering single piece of dry grass. It only remained to convert that single stalk into two, then four, until at last suddenly a tiny flame burst forth, igniting a handful of the tinder.

  Twigs came next. When they were caught, he added small scrapings of peat dust. The peat gave the infant fire heat and helped larger fragments of broken branches ignite. These in turn provided a slightly elevated cradle upon which to set one- and two-inch chunks of crumbled peat, which, with flames now burning around them and a draft of air flowing from underneath, soon glowed bright orange around their edges. Within ten minutes the fire was secure and had begun to produce both warmth and light within the surrounding enclosure of the earth.

  Fidach rose from his knees and joined his companions.

  Domnall was still gazing around him with mingled amazement and sheer childish delight.

  “But . . . how could you have done all this?” he exclaimed. “There are provisions here for an entire tribe . . . wood . . . peat . . . skins . . . and—is this . . . yes—even food!”

  Cruithne and Fidach laughed in unison.

  “We come here often,” said Fidach. “We must be prepared.”

  “Prepared . . . for what?”

  “One night,” Fidach went on, “when we slept in the cave, we awoke in the morning to twelve feet of snow. It had piled up in huge drifts and completely blocked the doorway. Had it not been for our provisions, we would surely have frozen to death. As it was, we stayed for five days, comfortable, warm, and well fed.”

  “We had not only dried venison,” said Cruithne, “but barley and wheat grain, and oat groats.”

  “All the water we needed we took from the snow,” added Fidach. “We had already brought in pots . . . and stone slabs to cook upon.”

  “We ground grain, mixed it with the snow water,” went on Cruithne enthusiastically, “and even put together oatcakes which we baked on hot stones over the fire. That was truly a wonderfu
l visit. We got much work done in the next room.”

  “The next room!”

  Again the brothers laughed.

  “Certainly, Domnall, son of Pendalpin,” said Fidach with a smile. “You do not think two young men such as we could be satisfied unless we enlarged our mountain home.”

  He grabbed a pole from where it stood in readiness against one of the cave’s walls and thrust one end of it into the blaze.

  Clearly intended for that very purpose, the formed mass of peat soaked in boar-fat, clumped and securely attached to the tip of the pole, slowly took the flame onto itself. A moment later Fidach raised his burning torch aloft. “Come, Domnall,” he said.

  Shadows and light danced intertwining from the two sources of radiant light as Fidach crossed to the far end of the cave. He stooped low, followed by the bard’s son, then Cruithne, and led the way into an adjoining chamber about a fourth the size of the larger room. All about were evidences of human labor.

  “You see, Domnall,” said Cruithne once they were inside, “this room is of our doing.”

  In truth, almost from the moment they discovered the place, the brothers had conceived the idea of developing it into a more congenial dwelling than a mere highland cave. To it they had carried not only supplies and provisions and necessities for fire making, but also what tools they could spare from the hill-fort. Other tools they had fashioned for themselves out of stone and iron and wood, and for the last six years had lost few opportunities to use them in this remote place on the slopes of An Stoc-bheinn.

  Gleann nan uaimh, they called it, valley of the cave. It was their private world under the mountain, and much had they managed to accomplish with the might of their arms and the skill of their hands.

  Searching the perimeter of the cave’s granite walls, by and by they had discovered that the density of stone was not all uniform. Softer spots they had hollowed into shelves and ledges in the great interior sphere, and even chipped out a low-placed bench that would accommodate two persons. But the greatest discovery of all was the deposit of limestone at the distant end, farthest from the mouth. Once they realized what their tools would accomplish against this softer stone, they were well begun on a second cave inside the first.