by Stuart Atkinson

Chapter 19: Hidden Treasures

By mid-afternoon Fee was ready to resume her hunt around the village.

Rested after her nap - the combination of rain-sodden exhaustion and a bed fit for a princess had given her the best sleep she'd enjoyed in weeks - she made short work of a plateful of sandwiches and a bowl of hot chips, provided by a relieved-looking Mrs. Hale, then insisted on making a recce of the churchyard and its surroundings. Her father didn't try arguing; he knew that she wouldn't be able to rest - or let him rest - until she found out what the mysterious "circle" shown on the store's little map actually was.

So, with Mrs. Hale watching them from the doorway, concern still etched on her plump face, they headed away from Ivy Cottage for the second time that day, determined to make the most of what remained of the afternoon.

To their relief the bad weather which had made their return trip from the Castle such a misery had failed to develop into a fully-blown storm; during lunch the wind had died down and the rain had slowly eased too, and now, although the Sun was still obscured by pillows of gray-edged cloud, a little of its warmth was finding a way through to the ground. Not perfect, by any means, but good enough.

Walking down the main road they passed several scattered groups of people, some local, some visiting, and Fee could tell from their lack of cameras and maps that the sight-seers weren't visiting Gallowdale itself, but were merely passing through en-route to somewhere more interesting. They drifted along as if they were lost, not really focusing on their surroundings. Fee wondered what the village would be like in summer - probably just two rows of buildings on either side of a long, long line of cars heading Somewhere Else...

In contrast, the locals were very focused, walking briskly between their personal A's & B's. If they passed some of the sight-seers they would invariably smile, or nod, exchange pleasantries, then move on. It all seemed very civilized, very polite. A quiet, pleasant little village.

Turning into the church yard Fee and her father met two of the locals coming the other way, and, anticipating a similar greeting, Fee offered the elderly man and woman a bright smile. The word "hello" was on her lips, ready to be spoken - but the locals looked right through her as if she was transparent. No smile, no nod, just a cold, almost accusatory stare before they continued on their way.

Strange, Fee thought, wondering why she had been treated so differently. But she knew better than to worry about it; Maybe the elderly couple had just had a bad day... in fact, now she thought about it, they had probably been to visit a graveside. Oh... idiot! No wonder they had been less than welcoming.

Feeling bad for pre-judging them she glanced back over her shoulder, hoping to send them an apologetic smile - but saw they had paused on the opposite street corner, and were still watching her. Staring at her.

Moments later they were gone, leaving Fee shaking slightly. What had just happened? Suddenly she felt less like a tourist, and more like an alien, crash-landed on Earth.

But time was short, and they had work to do, so ignoring her own
discomfort she pushed her disturbed thoughts aside and headed into the churchyard.

The first time they'd walked past it, Fee had said, jokingly, that the church was "haunted", but up close it proved to be even more spooky; with cracked, moss-stained walls and lichen-smeared headstones the church and its yard could have come straight from a horror film. To add to the overall creepiness, as she walked past the small graveyard she looked up and saw several gargoyles leering down at her from beneath the church guttering, snarling and baring their fangs at her angrily.

Definitely not a place to come to after dark, she shuddered, walking on quickly.

The cemetery eventually opened out into a field, stretching off to the right and left, and when she saw what was in the centre of that field, sitting on the top of a small hill, Fee wondered why she hadn't guessed the true identity of the map's mysterious 'dotted ring' from the start.

It was a stone circle.

Of course it was, she laughed...

She had seen many such ancient monuments on her travels, and this one was one of the more modest. The gravestone-sized slabs were widelyspaced, and protruded from the hilltop like a skeleton's teeth. Arranged in a roughly circular pattern, each one was chipped and broken, ravaged by Time and stained countless shades of green, yellow and brown by centuries' slow but relentless growth of moss and lichen.

"Makes sense," her dad observed, looking up at the stones, arms folded across his chest studiously, "there's a big stone circle at Castlerigg, near Keswick, that's not too far from here... I went there with your mother when we... "

His voice trailed away as he pushed the memories back into their dark corner. "Well, I should have known," he concluded awkwardly.

"How old do you think this is?" Fee asked, tactfully changing the subject as she counted the stones. There were ten.

"Three thousand..?" he surmised, "Maybe a little older... I'm just guessing, there's no way of telling just by looking at it."

"So we're not going to find any meteorites embedded in the stones, then," Fee joked. That would just be too good to be true.

"If you do, then they're nothing to do with your dragon," her father said, adding, with a wink, "but you never know." Then he nodded towards the circle. "So, what do you think... Stone Huggers or archaeologists..?"

Fee looked and saw several parka-clad people clustered together at one side of the circle, standing in a tight group, heads almost touching.

"Archaeologists," she replied confidently, "no patches on their coats." He laughed at that. She was right, he hadn't noticed. "But we of all people can't really mock others for hugging stones, can we?" she chided him, remembering their recent epic haul across the Nullarbor... and the dozens of others prior to it.

"Point taken," he conceded. On the hill the knot of archaeologists broke apart and the men and women, all fairly young, spread through the circle, and a couple of them cast curious glances down at him and Fee. He ignored them; he was far more concerned with the circle's surroundings than with the standing stones themselves.

Looking around the field he nodded with satisfaction as he saw what he had been hoping to find.

"Listen, Fee, you okay checking the circle out on your own?" he asked a little self-consciously, "I want to have a prowl along that." He nodded over towards the high dry-stone wall which ran the length of the field, neatly separating it from the neighbouring golf course.

"Be my guest," she laughed. As soon as she'd seen the wall she'd expected him to wander off; her father's belief in the hunting potential of dry stone walls was both legendary and unshakeable, and even though a decade of scouring them had failed to reveal anything even remotely resembling a meteorite, whenever he saw one of his beloved walls he was drawn to it like a moth to a flame. "I'll take some photos from up there, every little bit of altitude helps..."

"Sounds good... give me a shout if you find anything," he called, jogging over to the wall. "Good luck!"

"You too," she echoed, and started up the gentle rise to the top of the hill, towards the standing stones.

After a quick look around the general area she started to work her way around the stones, smiling blandly at the archaeologists as she passed them, ignoring their disapproving glares. She had as much right to be there as they did, she told herself. Probably more right; she knew more about the place's history than they could possibly imagine... the mystery she was decoding was beyond their wildest dreams.

If she was right, of course.

Up close, the stones proved to be in a very poor condition; cracked and splintered by tens of centuries of wind, frost and rain, they looked more like rotten teeth plucked from the jawbone of a Neanderthal than proud monoliths raised and worshiped by wise, ancient priests. But apart from their great age, they appeared unremarkable.

Until she reached the stone on the eastern rim of the hill.

It was the tallest of the ten, not by much but by enough, and appeared, on closer inspection, to have been taken the most trouble over, too; its shape was better defined, sharper than the others, and its surface had been rubbed smoother too. She ran her hand over it slowly, almost tenderly, feeling the sharp lichen rasping against her palm like sharkskin - and sensed a pattern underneath.

Crouching down she began to rub the yellow lichen away, exposing the bare stone lying underneath. When it was totally cleared she rocked back on her heels, surveying her discovery.

It was a carving; very, very crude, but recognizable nonetheless. Reaching out her hand again she traced out several shapes - a multispiked circle, with several straight lines radiating away from its rear.

A comet. Or a fireball, one or the other, it didn't really matter which. All that mattered was that the monument's creators had Seen Something and recorded it in stone.

"Well..." a gruff male voice said from behind her, and she turned, expecting to see her father. She was wrong. It was one of the younger archaeologists, peering over her shoulder. "What have we got here..?" Fee stiffened, not entirely sure if he was referring to the carving or the owner of the hand which had uncovered it.

This was awkward. What should she do? She had to play dumb, she decided. It wouldn't do to let the Diggers do what she was really doing there...

"Oh, I got some of that yellow stuff on my hand," Fee said, tutting at herself and deliberately raising the tone of her voice a little, just enough to sound like it was a horror on a par with standing in dog dirt. "I was trying to WIPe it off and..." She let the explanation wisp away, hoping he would fill in the blanks for himself. He was standing too close for comfort.

"That yellow stuff is lichen," he told her, his voice heavy with
delusions of his own intellect, "and it will wash off no problem... but what was beneath it is pretty interesting..."

He leaned a little closer still, peering over her shoulder at the carving, and Fee wanted very, very badly to shove him away, out of her personal space. But she knew she couldn't; the last thing she wanted to do was draw even more attention to herself. Pushing the snob down the hill would bring the others running... then her dad would follow...

"Well, I wouldn't know," she replied, adding an uncertain, embarrassed giggle for good measure, but thinking Get Away From Me...

But the young Digger was having none of it. "Oh, it is," he repeated, "we've uncovered quite a treasure there my girl..."

She shot him a deadly look. The "we" was bad enough, but "my
girl?" She'd show him whose -

"Brian, Professor Kerry," he shouted suddenly, waving over to the other members of his group, "come see what I've found..."

Now it was what he'd found. This guy really was something...

The other Diggers tramped over to join them, none of them so excited by their young colleague's exclaimation that they broke into a joke. It made Fee wonder if he was known for crying wolf. She wouldn't have been surprised: every word coming out of his mouth made her like him less.

"Interesting," commented the eldest of the group as he crouched down to look at the carving, and Fee realised he was the Professor the young Digger had called to. Grey-haired, with a dark green woolen hat perched on his head, Fee thought he looked more like a train-spotter than a field archaeologist.

"I was just WIPing my hand clean," Fee explained a second time, sneakily making it clear just who had really found the carving. The young Digger standing beside her shuffled uncomfortably as several of his team-mates exchanged knowing looks. Ha, Fee thought, you are so busted...

"Is it important, really?" she asked the Professor, feigning ignorance.

"Well," he considered, tracing out the carving's outline with his calloused fingers, just as she had done, "on its own it's definitely interesting... an early stone age representation of some celestial phenomena, I'd say..."

Fee gulped. Celestial phenomenon? How much did he - and the rest of the world at large - know about what had happened at Gallowdale?

"... but it is a very crude effort," he continued, losing enthusiasm the longer he studied it, "there are a lot better astronomical designs on other circles, further south..."

"So, interesting but not important..." she summarized aloud, unable to stop herself. She had to know just how much he knew.

"Important? Now, that I can't say," he replied honestly, "but considering its neighbor, I'd definitely say 'curious'..."

Fee's ears pricked up as she heard the keywords "neighbor" and "curious". She asked why it was curious.

"Well, there's a single standing stone over there," he said, pointing out across the field to the golf course. "Actually," he corrected himself, "it's not even a whole stone, just the stump of one really... can you see it?"

She peered out over the field, looking across the golf course to where he was indicating with a pointed finger. Yes, there was something there... something, but from this far she couldn't tell what.

"Strange thing is, there's part of a carving on it which just might be the same design as this one, or at least a similar design," the Professor said slowly, mulling it over. Don't think too hard, she told him, I don't want you getting too excited by this...

"And they're aligned," the young Digger butted-in, clearly trying to reassert his claim to the being the carving's discoverer. He turned to Fee, flashing a flashy smile. "Look, draw a line between them..."

Forcing herself not to push him away Fee traced out a mental line between the tall stone and the one stranded on the outskirts of the golf course... arrow-straight. He was a pain, but he was right.

"See... they align almost exactly with the eastern horizon..." he declared, so close now he was almost on top of her. That was it, she'd had enough -

But before she could say anything the Professor intervened. "Well, that's strange for pairs of standing stones now, isn't it, Greg?" he said sarcastically. "Pointing at the Sun, who would have thought it..."

Greg fell silent, fuming at the very public humiliation, and as the Professor and the others chuckled, Fee hid her own amusement at the young Digger's clumsy attempt to lever his way back into the discussion; even the ten year olds at her school knew that predicting sunrise and sunset times was one of a stone circle's primary tasks.

But Fee didn't have time to waste on his sulks. Her pulse was
racing now, joining the dots between the new clues: two ancient
stones... lined up on the east... each one carved with the same celestial design... She had to get over there and see it for herself.

For a change, luck seemed to be on Fee's side: even as she was wondering how on Earth she was going to escape from the Digger group, to go and examine the other stone, the Professor called everyone away, eager for them to go see something he had found on a stone further along the rim. It was a relief on two counts - it left her free to go and check out the other stone, and also confirmed the Professor wasn't involved in researching her own mystery in any way.

Yet. She knew she'd have to be careful not to draw attention to herself.

Ignoring the fiery glares from a clearly still-seething Greg, she watched the Diggers drift away, padding across the hilltop after the Professor like ducklings following their mother. She knew she had to time her run just right, so filled in the minutes by checking how far down the wall her father had got in his search. Bent over, walking so, so slowly, he seemed to be about half-way along. Another piece of luck; it meant he was too busy to stop her doing what she was about to do...

She waited until all the Diggers had their backs turned, bustling around the professor, then ran down the side of the hill and headed for the stone wall. It was no challenge for her long legs; she was up the side and over it.

She was walking briskly towards the solitary standing stone before she even had time to think how crazy she was.

"Just keep walking," she told herself, striding across the manicured green, "don't look back..." Even though the golf course was deserted she felt self-conscious.

After what seemed like an age she reached the stone, and ducked down behind it, placing it between herself and the Diggers on the hilltop. Concealed behind the ancient monolith she relaxed a little, and crouched down to examine it.

Just as the Professor had said, it wasn't a complete stone; just a small stub of rock protruding out of the green, barely a couple of feet high. Fee quickly decided it looked more like a strange kind of plinth than a piece of ancient monument.

Which only added to its mystery. Why, Fee wondered, would people who'd taken so much trouble creating a beautifully flat, pampered golf green leave an ugly old plug of rock sticking up out of it?

Surely hundreds of golfers had fallen foul of it over the years,
helplessly watched their perfect shots deflected by the stone and go pinging off in a completely different direction? It was like putting a statue there, or a shed. It made no sense: you just didn't leave big bits of stone standing out in the middle of golf courses.

Unless there was a very good reason.

Like an ancient carving which made the rock something more than just "a rock".

She leaned forward, running her hand over the flat upper surface of the stone, then told herself not to be so stupid; the design would hardly be there now, would it, where the original stone had been snapped? No, it had to be on one of the sides...

She moved her hand around the outer edge - aah, there...

The Professor had been right about the symbol, too; all that was left was the head of the comet/fireball/whatever-it-was. Fee's sensitive fingers traced out what felt like the outline of a small circle, multi-pointed, with an inch or so of tail intact behind it. Bending down until her cheek was almost flat against the ground she saw she had been right.

It was as frustrating as it was exciting; with the main mass of the stone missing there was no way of knowing how long the tail had been originally. But really, it didn't matter; it was the same design as the one on the larger stone directly to the west, Maybe even the work of the same artist.

But why? What was the reason behind the carving? The story?

Fee's pulse quickened as she worked through the possibilities. Occam's Razor - an informal but often-quoted scientific "Law" which stated that the simplest explanation for something was usually the correct one - suggested that the comet design was nothing more than a carving of a one-off event, something which had impressed, or, more likely frightened the stone raisers sufficiently to inspire them to immortalize it in a piece of art.

But there was another possibility, a much more intriguing one, and Fee's pulse quickened as she ran through the scenario in her mind.

The Baillie Theory suggested not only that there had been a cosmic impact in 540 AD, but that there had been other impacts before it, several of them, occurring regularly. Bang, pause... bang, pause... repeated bombardment over centuries, thousands of centuries...

Fee's hand shook as she touched the remains of the comet carving
again, the feel of the cold stone beneath her fingertips sending one outlandish idea after another spinning through her mind. Had the stone circle's designers carved the comet design upon the stones not merely to commemorate a comet sighting, but an actual impact?

Or, even more outlandish, was the stone circle and its solitary companion an early-warning device? Had they raised the monoliths and arranged them in this specific, pre-calculated pattern, lining them up in such a way that they could be used to predict the next impact?

She had a fleeting image of a tribe gathered together in the centre of the stone circle, waiting fearfully as their elders and wise men peered along the line between the two
widely-separated comet stones, looking east, afraid of what they might see -

The sudden impact of a strong gust of wind snapped Fee out of her daydream, startling her, and as she steadied herself against the "comet stone" she looked around in amazement, unable to believe what she was seeing.

Thousands of tiny pink flowers were settling to the ground around her, drifting down from the sky in elegant slow motion. No, not flowers, she realised, catching several in her still-shaking hand, they were blossoms...

Looking back towards the church yard she saw, for the first time, how a line of cherry blossom trees ran along the outer edge of the small cemetery. The wind was buffeting them, shaking them and scattering their pink flowers through the air in all directions, picking them up and carrying them away in all directions, eventually dropping them to the ground again, covering everything, the grass, the gravestones, the standing stones, the golf course, everything...

Including her. They were in her hair too, she realized, running her hands through it; each blossom was like a tiny, perfect butterfly settling on her -

"What do you think you're doing?"

Fee froze; this time there was no confusing the voice with her father's - it was too deep, too gruff. Too angry.

She looked up and saw yet another old man looming over her, silhouetted against the angry sky. But this was no kindly professor; this man was dressed in a long, expensive-looking wax jacket and green wellingtons. A cap almost but not quite covered piercing, bluer than blue eyes - eyes which were and staring right into hers impatiently. He was waiting for an answer.

Here we go again, Fee thought, what the hell should she do this time? Come clean? Probably; she'd already had to lie far too much today. But something, perhaps instinct, perhaps the brooding expression on the old man's face, told her this wasn't the time for the truth.

"Looking for golf balls..." she offered, cringing at how lame it sounded, even to her. "I thought I saw one land over here."

"Blasted kids, I've told you before," the old man hissed, "can't you read? There's a sign over there that specifically says 'No Collecting Allowed'."

"I'm sorry," Fee stammered, wondering if she should get to her feet yet or not. Probably not; if she stayed down he would feel more in control.

"This is a privately-owned course," the old man continued, eyes flashing, "you should leave at once - "

"I said I was sorry," Fee repeated, "of course, I'll go." She was starting to feel intimidated by the old man now; he seemed genuinely angry - too angry for someone just annoyed at a simple trespassing. There was more going on here than she knew.

Fee began to get to her feet, but the old man had other ideas. "Wait a moment," he said, eyes narrowing, placing a heavy hand on her shoulder, effectively holding her down. She shot him a fiery look, her eyes demanding that he get his hand the hell off her, but he didn't flinch, didn't even blink.

"Where are you from?" he demanded, speaking slowly, "you're not local, I don't recognise you."

Now she was really worried. Her father was back in the church yard, which was only a couple of hundred yards away but, at that moment, might just as well have been on the other side of the Moon. No. She was totally on her own. And if he was wary of her for not being local, well, that might mean a whole different kind of trouble.

"I asked you a question, girl", he growled, and looking up into his cold eyes Fee realised the tables had turned. Whoever he was the old man really was in control now. There was danger for her here, real danger.

She needed a miracle. Or at least a lifeline.

But the best she could do was buy some time until Scotty beamed her up. "No, I'm not a local," she admitted blandly, "I'm here on holiday - "

"Who with? Where are you staying?" he demanded fiercely. Now his hand was gripping her shoulder like a vice, and his eyes widened wildly at the end of each word. Fee was genuinely scared now. "Come on girl, tell me - " She prepared to cry out for help - and the tense silence was broken by a sudden musical trilling from within the folds of the old man's coat. Instinctively he lifted his hand off her shoulder and slid it inside his jacket, searching for the mobile phone hidden in his breast pocket.

Seeing her chance Fee took it. And ran.

She ran hard and fast, skittering away as quickly as she could. Shouting at her, ordering her to come back, the old man made a futile, frantic grab after her, but Fee was already well beyond his grasp, and as she scrambled away he eventually turned his back on her and his attention to his incoming call.

Fee couldn't see him any more, but she heard him barking orders furiously into his phone.

She heard him say his name too.

And when she realized who he was, she ran even harder.

She was scared, but as she ran she comforted herself with the knowledge that she had been right: there was "something" hidden in Gallowdale, she hadn't been deluding herself.

But now she was in more trouble than she had ever thought possible.

"Fee!" her father exclaimed as she vaulted back over the wall into the church-yard, not more than a few feet away from him, "come see what I've found - "

But there was no time for that. Without slowing down, without even speaking she grabbed his hand and dragged him after her towards the street. He protested frantically, yelling at her to stop, to wait, to let him show her something, but she didn't listen. She couldn't listen. They had to get away, now, and eventually he relented and let himself be led out of the yard and out onto the main road.

But even then Fee didn't stop; she led him up the street, away from the church and back to the safety and seclusion of Ivy Cottage.

She didn't stop pulling him after her until they were through the door and safe back inside the Cottage's "snug", flopped down on the big sofa. Only then was she able to tell him everything that had happened. Everything, that is, apart from the identity of the old man who had frightened her so much. There was no point worrying him with that snippet just yet. She still wasn't quite sure she could believe it herself.

When her father had finished listening he sat there in silence, staring out the window as rain began to fall again outside. Beside him Fee said nothing, not a single word. Picking the last few pieces of blossom out of her hair - more to have something to do than because she found them irritating - she knew what a confusing jumble of thoughts was swirling through his head: he was excited about the discovery of the comet designs, but seething with anger over what had happened on the golf course.

Looking at him from under her long fringe she knew he wasn't quite sure what to do. He wanted to scold her, he wanted to ground her for a million years at least for taking so many risks, and under any other circumstances she knew he would have done.

But at the same time he knew that this was different; they were on a hunt, the usual rules didn't apply. They were a team, and he wouldn't scold or ground her because he knew that risks - and sharing them - were part of the job. And part of the attraction.

"Well... " he said, patting her hand affectionately, "I think we've had more than enough adventure for one day... let's go get something to eat, that pub opposite the hotel looked nice..?"

Fee nodded in agreement, reading between the lines: he didn't want to talk any more about the day... what was done was done. She'd been stupid, but he knew she knew that herself, and trusted her not to repeat the mistakes she'd made.

Fair enough.

"Sounds good to me," she said brightly, drawing a line under the
events of the day by getting up off the sofa. She winced as her legs creaked beneath her. Great, she thought, 16, and I creak when I walk...

The rain held off just long enough for them to walk to the pub, and as her father opened the door Fee cast a glance at the sky. It was dark, brooding, shadows moving among and merging with other shadows...

Just like the village itself. And its people.

Looking around her in the fading light, suddenly Gallowdale didn't seem so pretty or quaint anymore. It felt... different somehow. It concealed secrets in the churchyards, on its golf courses, secrets everywhere, she could feel it. It was as if she'd been lied to by a friend. The village had wooed her with its innocent, pretty face, then turned away from her, laughing at a joke it didn't want to share.

But at least she had had her eyes opened. At least now she knew where she stood - and what they were up against.

And as she turned her back on the brooding sky and stepped into the pub, she vowed that the next time she met Major Lowell she'd be the one in control.
 

© Stuart Atkinson 2004