Boneland Read online

  The hammer rocks were as hard as the Motherbone, but not so hard that they bruised or flawed the blow. They were not as fine as the bone, but glittered packed night, and stars that would fly as they hit and worked. He took them and climbed back to the hills.

  He rested, shaping his thought; and the next day he went and sat in Ludcruck between the walls of making. In each hand he held a hammer stone and sang to them the story of the world and how they came to be. He told them their names and how the spirits had grown them in the earth. He told them the Motherbone that they must strike without wound and how his hand would help and his fingers teach. He moved them to find how they would turn, and to make them know how they would sit and take knowledge from his palm. He moved them so that his fingers knew to guide, and he sang for learning from the old, for them to give his eye their skill, to hit with wisdom and to guide his song. This was the last bone that he could carry from the Mother. If the blades he brought from it should break or he not cut, the woman would be kept in Ludcruck at the rock veil and the world would end.

  When he had told and done he set the hammers down and fetched the Motherbone. He laid it by them and sat through the night, and he and all were singing in one dream.

  At dawn he drank and fed and shat. He breathed in and a little out and breathed and breathed again. He felt the spirits wake. He took the hammer that was white and black and with it tapped the bone. He took the yellow and grey. He tapped. The one knew the way to the blades, and the other how to free them.

  His palm held, his fingers told, his eye grew strong, his hand lifted, the spirits came, and all cried down upon the bone. It sang hurt and joy. It sang birth and making.

  The hand lifted and bore again. Hammer and hand and eye and bone spoke, and the maker spirits in the walls answered and shaped their spirit blades of spirit bone. He was of them and they of him and Ludcruck rang.

  On through the day he hit, and the blades rose towards him from the marrow. He rested, drank, and hit again. But though his eye was strong, his hand began to lose its thought. His fingers slurred. The voice of the bone was dulled, the hammer deaf; the spirits paused and watched. He lifted, havered, struck. The bone shattered and the blades were gone.

  Pain sat all in him. His eye told his hand, but his hand did not hear. He went to the lodge, and it was cold.

  He woke and felt to know that he was dead. His groin was warm. He touched his eyes. It was day. He rolled onto his knees, pushed and stood against the pain, holding the pole of the lodge. He went out to Ludcruck.

  The hammers glinted, but the shards of the Mother lay spent. He gathered them and searched their veins. He saw that they were old and he had chosen wrong. Brown lines of blood that could not live again ran deep. His eye had not heard. The world was lost through him.

  He turned the last piece. It was no bigger than two hands. The brown ran through all the weight that he had brought; but ended here. In this one fist there was no flaw. He took the white and black, and tapped. The bone answered, and it was another song, deep where he could not see. He took the yellow and grey. He tapped. He took the white and black again and worked down into the bone. He stopped and tapped with yellow and grey.

  He went on, unfettering the rock. Something lay within. It was close, though he could not see. He came upon it as he would a hare. Tak. Tak. Tak. Tak. Tak.

  At his most gentle touch the bone split and stole the dawn. He covered his face and looked between his fingers. In the last hope of the Mother lay a rod of light. Its ridges were crests of blades worked by other hands, hands from the Beginning, waiting in the bone. He lifted it. The Mother had given. The spirits laughed.

  He took the blades and trimmed their crests, strengthened their edges with pressing and soft blows. He went down into Ludcruck, his mind hard against pain, past the nooks of the dead, along the seam of grit, by the clamour of beasts, down the cliff to the great cave and the Stone above the shining waters. He sat by the Stone, moving his thought, and then he danced until the moon lifted in him, brought pictures to his tongue and shone across the wall to the gap. He followed, twisting at the crack. The waters were near. He stretched. He touched the nipple in the rock.

  He shifted back and raised his lamp. The swelling of the veil was more than he could pass as the woman pushed, but there was a groove beneath. He lay flat and crawled under the belly, though he could scarcely go. His arm, head and shoulder led him through, and the lamp showed the space beyond.

  He stood, and looked back. Now he saw the breast. From here he could cut the veil. He set the lamp where it would light the work, and he took a blade and put it to the rock where the nipple thrust. And then he cut, guiding his hand with song.

  He carved the breast, and when it was clear he followed the throat to open the mouth so that the woman could breathe. He marked the eyes so that they might see the way, and shaped the head so that it would turn. Then he worked the other breast for milk to flow.

  He curved the belly full of life and cut the slot wide to bring the birth. He shaped one arm to hold to the breasts, another to hold the young moon, and legs to stand and to be cranes to fly to carry the spirit across the land.

  And when that was done he rested and lay deep in Ludcruck by the waters until he had the strength to climb, back from the cave, by the clamour of the beasts, along the seam of grit, past the nooks of the dead, into the day and the loud crag.

  The woman was free; and she would come to him.

  ‘Hi,’ said Meg. ‘Am I too early?’

  ‘No. No. Not at all,’ said Colin. ‘How did you get here?’

  ‘Bert dropped me off. I hoped we might go for a walk.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Colin.

  ‘I’d like you to show me the Edge.’

  ‘That could last for ever,’ said Colin. ‘But we can take a stroll, if you like.’

  ‘Strolling is what I do best.’

  ‘Splendid. I’ll just pop the lamb in the oven. Oh, thoughtless of me. I didn’t ask. Are you vegetarian?’

  ‘Carnivore,’ said Meg. ‘And I like my lamb pink.’

  ‘Good.’ He unhooked his plain gown from behind the door and put it on. ‘Allow me.’

  They left the quarry and walked through the woods.

  ‘Of course,’ said Colin, ‘you have to bear in mind that all this is eighteenth-century landscaping. Before, it was called a “dreary common”.’

  ‘Well, it isn’t now,’ said Meg. ‘Hush.’

  ‘Sor—’

  ‘Ah?’

  ‘—ry.’

  They walked without speaking. Colin led the way down into a deep hollow. The floor was uneven and they skirted mud. The sides were cut straight, herringbone patterned by picks. It was another old quarry, huge and grassy. At the end Meg stopped. Pines stood above on the rim, and their roots had teased down and split the rock with life. The stone was pure, without blemish or grain, but near the bottom of the wall was a bed of red marl. The clay had weathered out, leaving a shelf. Meg reached up and took some in her hand and worked it on her palm, spitting to make it soft. Then she lifted her finger and drew it across Colin’s forehead and on his cheekbones and along his nose. He could not see what she was doing, but the marks were careful and even, matching either side. Her brow was furrowed, her finger light, precise. She looked, smiled and put her arm through his as they went out of the quarry, by a cut gap along a path, with a cleft on each side, to a broad way, and ahead was treeless sky.

  ‘Wow. What’s this? Where are we?’ said Meg.

  ‘Stormy Point.’

  The ground was sand and quartz pebbles: loose pebbles lying and pebbles in the rock. Stone thrust out. Below, the scarp was tumbled with boulders to the land beneath. The brindled fields stretched to the hills. Meg sat on a rock to see, but Colin shook his head.

  ‘Not here. Not now. Keep moving.’

  ‘Why?’ said Meg.

  ‘There are things to show you, and I don’t want to overcook the lamb.’

  ‘That path’s interesting.�
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  ‘No. This way. Another time, perhaps.’

  ‘But where does it go?’

  ‘Saddlebole. Too far.’

  ‘And what’s Saddlebole?’

  ‘A spur, that’s all.’

  They were back among trees. The scarp curved in a horseshoe. The path had been rerouted, but Colin took her down along an older one, with the wall on their left and the drop to their right.

  ‘What the flipping heck is this?’ said Meg.

  They were below a pointed wedge of the hill that jutted high above the path.

  ‘Castle Rock,’ said Colin. ‘It’s the most instructive part of the Edge. It shows the Permo-Triassic boundary clearly. Which is why it’s so remarkable. Here, where we are, the polychromatic sandstone has eroded because it’s a soft aeolian desert and the grains have lost their facets through being worked by the wind; hence all the graffiti. Then above, a slow estuarine feature has moved in, hard, with no inclusions. And above it is the conglomerate, without stratification but full of derived quartz pebbles, indicating high-energy flow, a torrential fluvial deposit.’

  ‘It’s the colours that get me,’ said Meg. ‘They’re psychedelic almost.’

  ‘Come this way.’ He led her around a corner to the further side. ‘Look at this.’ A streak of green showed under lichen. ‘Malachite. Hydrated copper carbonate. The Edge is full of it, in a manner of speaking. But here is its furthest exposure in this direction. Now look across to the left and up a bit. Can you see anything?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Try again.’

  ‘Well, I’ll go to Leek and Ludchurch!’

  ‘What do you see?’

  ‘It’s a carving.’

  ‘Of what?’

  ‘I don’t know. It’s so weathered. Concentric squares? It’s not a face. Is it? Or is it? Not squares? More trapezoidal? A labyrinth? Maybe.’

  ‘Must it be “either or”?’ said Colin.

  ‘You mean a doodle?’ said Meg.

  ‘A doodle is meaningless, random. This isn’t random, whatever else it is. And it’s taken skill and effort and time. There’s no way that that can be a doodle; and I don’t think it was done with metal, either.’

  ‘So what is it? What’s it for?’

  ‘I’ve no idea. A territorial marker? Perhaps a claim. A warning. An indication of a special place? Whatever it is it signifies something important about here, or even another dimensional boundary. Or all. Or more.’

  ‘If I were playing hard to get,’ said Meg, ‘I’d say that you were claiming it’s whatever you want to see. It’s a Rorschach blot.’

  ‘That’s your modern thought,’ said Colin. ‘We have to make the imaginative leap into the ancient mind and the likelihood of a different world view. I agree that you could argue that for a thing to have a multitude of possible meanings is tantamount to its having no meaning at all. But perhaps the opposite could once have applied. Perhaps a thing that could be thought to have a multitude of meaning, then, gained strength and importance from the ambiguities. We simply don’t know. Nor is there any way of our knowing, at the present, whatever “the present” may be; but we must keep our minds open; though, yes, not so open that our brains drop out.’

  ‘OK,’ said Meg. ‘It’s old. But how old is old?’

  ‘It looks Neolithic or Bronze Age,’ said Colin, ‘but I’d say possibly Mesolithic, if Mesolithic is possible; which it may not be.’

  ‘Why Mesolithic?’

  ‘I’m best-guessing. Look there. That overhang further along is perfect for a rock shelter.’

  ‘But we’ve seen plenty like that.’

  ‘But not like this one.’

  A path with steps came between Castle Rock and the overhang. Colin went to it and bent down, scanning the ground.

  ‘Here we are.’ He picked something up and went on looking. ‘And another. And another. That last lot of rain we had was useful. And another. Another.’

  He held out his palm. On it lay five splinters of pale stone.

  ‘And?’ said Meg.

  ‘Microliths. Flint. Flint doesn’t occur here naturally; it has to have been imported. Someone brought it, and sat by Castle Rock and knapped it. These are diagnostic Mesolithic, eight to ten thousand years ago. They’ve been waiting for us to handle them and recognise what they are for the first time since the end of the last Ice Age. We may even share DNA with the person that made them.’ He threw the flints back to the land.

  ‘Why don’t you keep them?’

  ‘That would compromise the site. Shall we see how the lamb’s doing? It’ll be about right by now, I should think, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘You’re a strange one,’ said Meg. ‘Sometimes you are very strange. “Compromise”.’

  They climbed round and to the top of Castle Rock.

  The ancient river bed had been quarried into planes and low benches of ledge, and the prow of the rock smooth, drawing up to the point where it stood over air.

  ‘This is terrific,’ said Meg.

  ‘Careful,’ said Colin. ‘You need a head for heights here.’

  ‘That’s what I’ve got,’ said Meg.

  ‘Well, I haven’t,’ said Colin. ‘This is as far as I can go.’ He sat on one of the ledges, away from the drop.

  Meg went to the tip of the point and looked down and about her. ‘Wow.’ She spread her arms. ‘Wow! Whee!’

  ‘Please,’ said Colin.

  ‘What a view,’ said Meg. ‘And the wind’s great. I could fly.’

  ‘Don’t,’ said Colin.

  ‘Geronimo!’

  ‘Please come back, Meg.’

  She began to whistle a tune.

  ‘What’s that?’ he said.

  ‘Something we used to sing in the playground at school.’

  ‘I’ve heard it before.’

  ‘I shouldn’t wonder. You were a kid once. We all were.’

  ‘Please come away from there,’ said Colin. ‘You’re making my insteps hurt.’

  Meg turned round, her back to the drop. ‘It can’t harm you,’ she said. ‘The rock has no opinion.’

  ‘Hasn’t it? Please.’

  ‘You great mardy. You’re frit.’ But she came and sat by him and looked to the hills. She hummed the tune.

  ‘What is that?’ said Colin.

  ‘You know,’ she said, and began to sing quietly and slowly.

  ‘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?’

  ‘I know it. Somewhere,’ said Colin. ‘Yes. Bert whistled it. But I have heard it before, too.’

  ‘I tell you what,’ said Meg. ‘I’m ready for that lamb.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Colin.

  ‘Come on then. Let’s go. Doesn’t the telescope look good from here?’ Away to the south the structure stood out from the land as a bowl, pointing straight up. ‘What’s it doing?’

  ‘Nothing at the moment,’ said Colin. ‘It’s in the zenith; what we call “parked”.’

  ‘At this distance it’s a goblet, or even a chalice. It could be the Grail.’

  ‘It’s certainly a Questing tool,’ said Colin.

  They left Castle Rock by a shorter way and came to Church Quarry from the side and down a path to the hut. Colin hung up his gown and opened the oven door.

  ‘Mm. Smells delicious,’ said Meg.

  Colin tried the meat with a fork. ‘Perfect.’ He lifted it out and set it to stand.

  The table was already laid.

  ‘I like your silver,’ said Meg.

  ‘It needs to be used.’

  ‘Couldn’t agree more. If you’ve got it, flaunt it, that’s my motto.’

  Colin put an oil lamp on the table. He lifted off the globe of frosted glass, and removed the clear chimney. He set them side by side and took a pair o
f scissors and trimmed the two wicks, lit them, and turned them down until they burned a low flame. He left it for a while, then he fitted the chimney back on.

  ‘What I can’t stomach about period films,’ he said, ‘is that no one knows how to light a lamp. They’re always flaring and smoking and the top of the chimney’s black with soot. It kills all credibility. You have to start cool, wait for the glass to warm, and turn the wick up gently to give a clear flame. Like—’ He checked that the wicks were level, and lowered the globe over the chimney. ‘—so.’ He chose wood to put on the fire.

  ‘You can’t beat a log fire, can you?’ said Meg. ‘It’s atavistic.’

  ‘And it warms you three times,’ said Colin. ‘Once fetching, once splitting, once burning. But you have to know how to use that over there.’

  ‘Hey. Some axe.’

  ‘Scandinavian. They’re the best. But you can’t fool around with them. If you do, you’re dead.’

  ‘It must be four foot, if it’s an inch.’ Meg went to the corner where the axe stood and put her finger to the edge. ‘Sharp as a razor. I see you keep it greased.’

  ‘If you let it get dull the energy is dissipated through friction,’ said Colin. ‘And if rust takes hold you might as well thump wedges. Here’s another lost art.’ He took sheets of newspaper and rolled each tightly across from corner to corner to make a thin rod. He bent the rod into a triangle, leaving the two ends long so that he could turn them back and weave and lock them between the three sides. Then he crumpled a sheet loosely in the grate and laid the triangles on the paper. He built grids of kindling on top at right angles to each other. ‘The secret is to make plenty of room for air.’

  ‘Where did you learn all that palaver with rolling the paper?’ said Meg.

  ‘At the farm, I imagine.’ Colin chose small logs, arranged them above and around the kindling, and lit the loose paper. ‘The rule is, “One log can’t burn. Two logs won’t burn. Three logs make a fire.” And mix them. Ash, thorn and oak are best, if it’s heat you want. Birch, holly and fir for brightness.’

  The rolled sheets were red, and blue flame spurted from their ends. The kindling caught.

  ‘Brilliant,’ said Meg. ‘Strange how things often come in threes, isn’t it?’