Boneland

by Alan Garner

  The man took the Stone and looked close at the blackness and at the working. Behind him there was a spirit face, new in the Rock.

  ‘Hi, Colin,’ said Owen. ‘How’s your mother’s rag arm?’

  ‘Is R.T. in?’

  ‘If he’s not out.’

  ‘Anyone with him?’

  ‘Don’t think so.’

  Colin picked up the telephone.

  ‘R.T.? Colin here. Would it be possible to have a word with you? Now. Thanks. Thank you very much.’

  ‘What’s to do?’ said Owen.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Buck up, youth. It might never happen.’

  ‘It already has,’ said Colin.

  He left the control room and went to the Director’s door and knocked.

  ‘Yes, Whisterfield.’

  Colin opened the door. The Director was at his desk.

  ‘Come in, my boy. What may I do for you?’

  Colin shut the door and stayed by it.

  ‘Come in. Come in. Take a seat.’

  ‘I’d rather stand. R.T., I want to apologise.’

  ‘Apologise for what?’

  ‘Everything. I’ve wasted your time. I’ve wasted the budget, the telescope. Everything. I thought I was right. I was wrong. Completely wrong. I didn’t need them to find the solution. All it took was a pocket calculator and a map. I’m sorry.’

  ‘You are describing research,’ said the Director. ‘No one is right at once. You may see the answer in an instant, but finding and then clarifying the question can be another matter entirely. You speak as though you are on the edge of discovery. Trust me. I have heard this before. I have said it myself. I know how you feel.’

  Colin shook his head and stepped forward. He took an envelope out of his pocket and put it on the desk.

  ‘I want you to accept my resignation. With immediate effect. My desk will be cleared by the end of today. I am so very sorry.’

  ‘Your behaviour is impractical and ridiculous,’ said the Director. ‘Sit down.’

  ‘There’s nothing more to be said. My work is pointless.’

  ‘Look here, Whisterfield,’ said the Director. ‘It is you that are wrong, not your work. Your work, until you became ill, and that will surely pass, has been the most promising I have known in my lifetime. My dear boy, you have it in you to go beyond the Singularity. Your vision could take us to our next understanding.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Colin. ‘Forgive me. I must.’ He turned and left the room and closed the door. He went to his office and sat. He pulled open the drawers of his desk and stared at them. He felt an empty cold and heard silence.

  The air moved behind him and a hand put the envelope, unopened, by his elbow and laid something on it and withdrew.

  Colin looked. The envelope was under the Director’s black stone paperweight. Colin looked at the curve and the scars of the stone that swept to make a sharp edge of one side and the narrow flaking that drew the end to a point.

  He took the stone in his hand, which fitted on the smoothness so that the edge was between fingers and thumb and the point below. He felt; and he saw. Colin stood, kicked the chair aside, and ran.

  ‘R.T.! Where did you get this? Where?’

  ‘I found it.’

  ‘Don’t you know what it is?’ Colin was shouting quietly.

  ‘It is a comforting object to hold,’ said the Director, ‘and I think you may benefit from it now more than I. Beyond that, it is a stone. A tactile stone. But a stone nonetheless.’

  ‘It’s Abbevillian! Or Acheulian! Non-derived! Pre-Anglian! MIS 13!’

  ‘You must help me there, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Homo erectus, or heidelbergensis!’

  ‘I still do not understand your excitement, Whisterfield. What is the matter?’

  ‘Where did you get it?’

  ‘Strange that you should ask that. When I decided, younger than you, to proceed with my “contraption”, as you call it, after the survey had defined the mid point under the dish I took a divot out with a spade to mark the moment, and the stone was lying on the sand beneath. I picked it up and have kept it out of sentiment.’

  ‘But it shouldn’t be here!’

  ‘And why not?’

  ‘It couldn’t have survived the climatic conditions! The sands are recent: Holocene: post-glacial. This is an artefact: five ice ages and half a million years old!’

  He woke. The sky was above and the world swayed under him. He was lying on thongs lashed between poles, and four men were carrying him on their shoulders. He heard their breath. The holly was along his body and his arms crossed over it. In one hand he held the white blade and in the other the Stone. He did not have the strength to move or to look. He lay lulled in the rhythm of the breathing and the thongs, moving in and out of sleep, weary beyond fear.

  The men stopped and set him down. He could not see the sky, but there was warmth and smoke. He turned his head. There was a man sitting over him, his face no different from the others, but painted green, red and blue; and in his eyes there was a light theirs did not have, and the smoke was sweet.

  What are you? The man spoke straight, without sound.

  I dream in Ludcruck.

  What is Ludcruck? said the other.

  It is the cave of the world.

  The other looked down and into him.

  I see it. Why are you here?

  To fetch the woman I cut from the veil of the rock.

  Why did you cut?

  To send her spirit out so that she would come to make the child for me to teach to dance and sing and dream to free the beasts within the rock to fill the world.

  Have you found her?

  She is not here. There are only people horrible to see.

  Where are your Stories? said the other.

  I cannot tell them. My head is a cloud.

  A hand lifted him, and another put something hard between his teeth and dripped water from it. Then a mouth, with no beard, came and a tongue fed him warm meat that he did not need to chew, and the hand came again for him to drink; and the mouth again; and the water. And he slept.

  ‘The wind, the wind, the wind blows high.

  The rain comes pattering down the sky.

  She is handsome, she is pretty,

  She is the girl of the windy city.

  She has lovers, one, two, three;

  Pray will you tell me who is she?

  Pray will you tell me who is she?

  Pray will you tell me who is she?

  Pray will you tell me who is she?

  Pray will you tell me who is she?

  Who is she?

  Who is she?

  Who is she?’

  Colin turned in his bunk. ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Pray will you tell me?

  Pray will you tell me?

  Pray will you tell me?’

  ‘I can’t hear you.’

  ‘Pray will you tell?

  Pray will you tell?

  Pray will you?’

  ‘Meg.’

  ‘Pray.’

  Where are your Stories?

  The man with light in his eyes sat over him, and the smoke was sweet. The cloud moved from his head.

  Here is my Story.

  In the Beginning was Crane. It opened its wings. And that above it called Sky, and that below it called Earth. The wings lifted Sky from Earth and flew between to hold them apart. And Crane laid a black Egg and made it with its beak to be a Stone. And when the Stone was made Crane breathed on the flakes that it had shed and said: Be spirits. Take the Stone and with it shape the world. Give mountains and rivers and waters.

  And Crane laid another Egg and opened it and said to the yolk: Be Sun, and give light. And it said to the water about the yolk: Be Moon, so that when Sun sleeps you will give light. And because you held Sun inside the Egg you are its mother and will live for ever; but you will remember how you gave birth, and each month you will grow big and then small and then rest for three night
s before you grow again. And so that there will be no dark, I shall take the shell and make it into pieces and call them stars and give them spirits and shapes to light the world. And from the skin of the Egg I shall make a mighty Spirit to send out eagles from its head to feed the stars. And I shall put people to walk the earth, and make beasts that they may hunt. And so that they may have spears to hunt with and blades to cut, I shall shape a Mother of rock from a bone of Moon and set it in the hills. And the people shall come and sing and dance and tell stories of the Beginning and dream, so that she will let them take of the bone, and live.

  Then Crane came down to the world and broke the loud crag with its beak and opened it to the waters below and called it Ludcruck. And in the lowmost cavern it put the Stone and the spirits around it to take the Stone and make all that would be.

  Then Crane went back to fly for ever so that Earth and Sky should stand apart and life could live.

  That is my Story.

  It is a true Story, said the other.

  Colin rang the doorbell.

  ‘Good morning, Professor Whisterfield. Is Doctor Massey expecting you?’

  ‘No, she isn’t. It’s a social call. A very important social call. Very.’

  ‘Please come in, Professor. Would you excuse me a moment, please? I’ll see if the Doctor’s available.’

  ‘She’s got to be. Tell her who it is. Tell her. Now. Tell her it’s urgent. It’s me. Tell her.’

  Colin paced the room. He counted the knots on the fringe of the carpet. He counted the colours. He counted the right angles in the design. He counted the wear.

  ‘What do you want, Colin?’ said Meg. She was in the library doorway.

  ‘Amazing. Meg. Amazing.’

  ‘So, because you decide to be amazing, the rest of the world has to stop and listen to you.’

  ‘You’ll be astonished.’

  ‘It can’t wait, can it? It may be the most critical moment of the year, two patients have topped themselves, the cat’s got fleas, the house is on fire, the samovar is empty and the old pig has died; but tomorrow won’t do. The little boy has to have attention now.’

  ‘Yes. Now. It’s incredible.’

  ‘If it can’t be believed, then what’s the point?’ said Meg. ‘Oh, come on in. But you are more than a tad manic, you know that?’

  Colin went to the low table by the hearth, threw the box of tissues into the chair and skewed the table to the chaise longue. He put a cushion on the table.

  ‘Sit down, here, Meg. Sit down. Sit down! Sit!’

  Meg sat on the chaise longue and Colin sat beside her. He reached into his pocket and took out a folded handkerchief, laid it on the cushion, and opened it.

  ‘There.’

  ‘Oh, great,’ said Meg. ‘Terrific. You’ve made my day.’

  The black stone lay on the white linen.

  ‘Look at it,’ said Colin. ‘Don’t you see what it is?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Meg. ‘I see it. I see a pebble.’

  ‘Meg!’

  ‘OK. A big pebble.’

  ‘Meg!’

  ‘OK. A big black pebble.’

  ‘Meg!’

  ‘OK. A chipped big black pebble. A lump of rock.’

  ‘Meg! Look! It’s a Lower Palaeolithic Abbevillian hand axe!’

  ‘It is? You astound me, Colin.’

  ‘Hold it. Feel it. Look at it. But keep it over the cushion.’

  Meg took the stone in her hand.

  ‘Turn it. It’ll tell you.’

  Meg moved the stone around in her palm and fingers.

  ‘Good grief. It’s alive.’

  ‘It is! You can feel it!’

  The stone fitted her hand. The smooth curves were against her skin. The rough serrations were outside her thumb and fingers, and the fluted point below.

  ‘Is it human?’ she said.

  ‘Hominin. Just about,’ said Colin. ‘Homo erectus, perhaps, or Homo heidelbergensis; but definitely not sapiens or sapiens sapiens.’

  ‘Lower Palaeolithic?’ said Meg. ‘So how old are we talking here?’

  ‘About half a million years.’

  ‘“About”?’

  ‘It’s impossible to be more accurate. There’s no context.’

  ‘Where did you find it?’

  ‘I didn’t. R.T., the Director, he dug it up when he was planning the telescope. It was directly beneath where the light of the focus would be when it’s in the zenith.’

  ‘Mm. That is remarkable,’ said Meg. ‘It is amazing. I agree.’

  ‘You don’t know how much,’ said Colin. ‘It’s half a million years old, but he found it under the turf, on top of soil that’s only ten thousand, at most.’

  ‘How do you account for that?’

  ‘I can’t. It shouldn’t have been there.’

  ‘Let’s get real,’ said Meg. ‘I grant you it handles as if it’s a tool, but are you sure it’s not natural?’

  ‘I’m positive. It’s a cobble made from a flake. It has smooth natural facets and naturally rounded butt, all showing derived features, which means at one time it was rolling around in water; a brook or river, say. Then someone picked it up; chose it; worked it. The end has been pointed, by pressure or indirect percussion, though that, I must say, is unusual, and a sinuous edge has been formed through bifacial chipping and step flaking to give a triangular section. The opposite edge has been heavily blunted. All the flake scars appear to be contemporaneous and non-derived. Secondary silication of the scars is uniform and complete. Somehow it has been protected from the Anglian and subsequent glaciations. It shouldn’t be possible for it to have survived here. Yet it has. Of that there can be no doubt.’

  Meg turned the stone over and over in her hand. ‘OK,’ she said. ‘I don’t get the technical malarky, but it sits one way, and one way only, and right.’

  ‘I told you it would tell you,’ said Colin.

  ‘Yep. I wasn’t tuned in. I am now. You’ve converted me. “This stone is poor, and cheap in price; spurned by fools, loved more by the wise.”’

  ‘Sorry?’ said Colin.

  ‘I’m translating. You say you’re crap at Latin. Well, this asks the Grail Question. And, come to think of it, the Grail can be a stone, too.’

  ‘I don’t understand what it is you’re saying.’

  ‘You don’t understand? That’s a relief. I was beginning to feel a bit of a bozo.’

  ‘I’ve heard of it, but I don’t know what it is,’ said Colin. ‘The Question.’

  ‘“What is this thing? What does it mean? Whom does it serve?” If those mediaeval retarded adolescents of the Round Table hadn’t been so anally retentive but had asked the Question straight off, a lot of knights would have been out of a job quick smart.’

  Meg turned the stone.

  ‘That’s just what R.T. used to do,’ said Colin. ‘He found it comforting. But he couldn’t see that it was anything more than what he called “tactile”.’

  ‘I know what he meant,’ said Meg. ‘It’s a feely. Yes. Better than worry beads, any day. There could be quite a market. The way the smooth goes into the sharp and out again; and the ripples in the scars; like sea shells.’

  ‘That’s the conchoidal fracture,’ said Colin.

  ‘And how’ve you come by it?’ said Meg.

  ‘R.T. gave it to me.’

  ‘Gave it to you? Why?’

  ‘He said I had more need of it now than he had.’

  ‘Oh? How’s that?’

  ‘I resigned from my post.’

  ‘Shit and derision. Colin? What did I tell you? I can’t be doing with martyrs. Is this how you fail better? Have you not got one single ounce of gumption in you?’

  ‘I know. But I felt I must. Had to. Immediately. But he wouldn’t accept it.’

  ‘I should think not. You prannock. You total pillock.’

  ‘He gave me this instead.’

  ‘Good on him. Did you tell him what it was?’

  ‘I tried to tell him, but he
didn’t seem to be interested.’

  ‘Wise man.’ She turned the stone. ‘How black is that?’

  ‘Black blacker than black,’ said Colin. ‘Black as carbon; though it is probably a silicate. But when you look, it’s got some tiny inclusions. If you look long enough it feels as if you’re staring into it, not at it; into. But that’s me. I would, wouldn’t I?’

  ‘Mm. Perhaps. Then perhaps not.’

  Meg laid the flat side in her palm and weighed it.

  ‘This way, it’s a heart,’ she said. ‘But if you turn it this way, the profile is more like that of a car.’

  ‘A car. It is. It is,’ said Colin. ‘One of those tinted-windowed things they drive round here.’

  ‘Ah, drivers,’ said Meg. ‘“The bimbos of Lower Slobovia,” as I’ve heard tell. I know what you mean. They don’t take kindly to being carved up by my bike; not one bit they don’t.’

  ‘I’ve been in a ditch many a time on their account,’ said Colin. ‘What are they hiding that’s so important?’

  ‘Cotton-woolled kids, mainly. But I do agree.’

  ‘Wait a minute,’ said Colin. He took the stone from Meg’s hand. ‘There’s something else. Wait a minute.’

  He held the stone sideways on. ‘No.’ He put the stone down on the cushion and sat back, his hands behind him.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ said Meg.

  ‘No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No.’

  ‘Oh, cripes,’ said Meg. ‘Colin, I thought you said this was social. Come on. Oi. Off. Shift your bum. Move. Over there. Now.’

  Colin went wide round the table and sat in the chair, watching the stone.

  ‘What is it?’ said Meg.

  ‘Crow. Upper mandible. Crow. Carrion crow. Corvus corone corone. You know. Corneille noire; cornacchia nera; frân dyddyn; varona chernaya; wroniec; nokivaris; Rabenkrähe; svart kråka …’

  ‘Right,’ said Meg. ‘And not before time. Colin, what is it about crows with you? Eric put in his notes that when he suggested you came here you asked whether I was a witch. Now that’s something I get, in one form or another, nearly every time, especially from goofed-up males and loud-mouthed honking know-alls. I’m used to it. But then you asked if I liked crows. It was the first thing you asked me. Did I like crows? So what is it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Sorry, but Yes. The stone’s trying to help you. Listen to it. What’s it telling you? What is it you see?’