Stones and Stories

Some stones really do have stories...

Nine Passages

The stone waited, on the windswept moors above Morvah, as it had for thousands of years. Nestled there on the Cornish moorlands Mên-An-Tol stood, a silent sentinel of a long forgotten magic. There it stood waiting, weathered grey granite with a perfectly circular hole at its centre. The hole had the appearance of watching, watching the centuries pass as if with an ancient, knowing gaze. This was the epitome of prehistoric craftsmanship, one large central stone with its perfect circle cut through the centre flanked by two larger standing stones placed like silent guardians. Maybe there had been more stones in the distant past. Stories had been passed down through the generations, stories that spoke of more than just stone and earth. Shepherds and farmers had long whispered tales of this place and its links to fertility. Others told rumours of the stone being a portal between worlds, a portal so thin that only the most perceptive could sense the boundary.

On those nights when the mist rolled in across the moors, and moonlight filtered through low clouds, something different appears to inhabit this place. The air would grow heavy, and seemed charged with an electricity that defied scientific explanation. Whispers seemed to drift on the wind, fragments of long forgotten languages, the tinkling of what might be fairy laughter - or perhaps simply the wind playing tricks. This stone had seen civilisations rise and fall, and Druids perform their mysterious rituals. Such Celtic tribes sought wisdom from its strange geometry. There were stories told by generations of locals about those who had dared pass through the circular opening – some returning changed and some who never returned.

Nine passages these old stories proclaimed, nine times through the hole and the veil between the worlds would part. Most dismissed such stories as mere folklore, imaginative stories of those who were trying to make sense of a world they didn't understand. Then there were those who truly knew the moors, those who had lived beside these stones for generations – they knew better. They knew that some boundaries are not meant to be crossed, some portals were best left unopened – unless, of course, you were willing to pay the price.

Author's Note
This is just the beginning.