Callum and the Other by Alan McClure

Author:Alan McClure
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Beaten Track Publishing
Published: 2022-03-28T00:00:00+00:00

Stone

The next morning, Callum and Jenny are awoken by the cold and they sit up, shivering. Their breath plumes above them, and they pull the furs tightly around their shoulders, blinking in the low dawn light. A couple of dogs who had cooried in next to them leap to their paws and dash off, startled.

“Morning,” croaks Callum, his throat dry and his bones aching pleasantly. Jenny wiggles her fingers at him and sneezes. Off in the distance, Wullie and Brian are still doggedly digging their ditch and seem to have been doing so all night, perfectly happily. Whatever it is they’re up to, it appears to suit them fine.

Elsa, of course, is already awake and standing some distance away, deep in conversation with Things-of-Stone. If she feels the cold, she doesn’t show it, and Callum is struck yet again by her ability to speak to these beings as if she is one of them.

“What’s she doing?” asks Jenny, and the two friends decide to go and find out. Keeping a firm hold on their furs, they rise and stagger over to Elsa, who turns to them with a smile.

“You are awake,” she says. “That is good. This is a momentous day.”

“Yeah, ‘good morning’ to you too,” says Jenny under her breath. Villagers are emerging from their huts, yawning and stretching, many of them ambling down to the shoreline, stripping and lowping into the silvery waves with whoops of glee.

Just the sight of this is making Jenny shiver, but for a fleeting moment, Callum thinks it might be just the thing to wake him up. One sight of She Who Devours Boys heading shoreward is enough to change his mind, however, and instead he asks Elsa, “Why, what happens today?”

“It is the Equinox,” she says. “The first since these people settled here. This is a thing which must be marked.”

Callum furrows his brow and tries to remember why an Equinox should be important, but Jenny is instantly excited.

“Oh, wow!” she cries. “I know about this! Day and night are equal, right? It’s like the turning of the seasons? Me mum took me to Stonehenge one Equinox. It was like a little festival!”

Callum is a little bumbaiselt.

“Right,” he says slowly, “but how could these guys know that today is that particular day? I mean, it’s not like they have a calendar or anything, is it?”

“That,” comes a grinding voice at his side, “is to be rectified today.” Things-of-Stone casts a long shadow in the morning sun, adding an eldritch weight to his already unsettling presence. He doesn’t stand, he looms, and for Callum he has always been the hardest of the Things to know.

Jenny, who has no history at all with the Spirits of Skerrils, can barely even look at him. Fetching up in a stone-age village is one thing; actually talking to an animated stone is quite another. She’s a brave lass, though, so she swallows her unease and asks, “Rectified? How?”

The huge figure beside her turns with a sound like tumbling scree and says, “Come.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.