Stories

Life looked a lot cruder in the harsh light of the morning, even though the festival performances continued through the day, and the city was bathed in the unmistakable humid scent of spring.
I met my new friend in the lobby and we walked through the narrow streets, sometimes so narrow a person could barely pass through, braving the rain and listening to the music in silence, like an understanding between us, and ended up huddled at the cafe on the pier, hungry and tired, looking forward to a toasty sandwich and a hot cup of coffee.
“So, you’re not going to ask?” she said, eventually.
“I wouldn’t know what,” I replied, still awkward about hijacking a perfect stranger’s time to satisfy my curiosity.
“What do you know about the stones?”
I started reciting the historical and anthropological data and the scientific opinions regarding the details of the sites, and she stopped me with a curt hand gesture.
“No. Not that. What did the stones tell you when you were there?”
I stopped, not knowing how to respond to that, hesitant to share my intimacy with the untold story of this place with someone I’d just met, but who, obviously, could read it on my face like in a book. I answered, eventually.
“How did you know?”
“It’s written all over you, girl. Do you speak to the Old?”
“The Old? What is that?”

The entire city was caught up in the preparations for the Folk Festival, so I had to postpone my visit to the heritage society, whose normal hours were restricted for the duration.
I gave myself the excuse there is nothing for me to do anyway, so I might as well drive back to Stromness and enjoy the performances.
I stopped at the Stones of Stenness this time, Fiona, trying to find a reference we share. They are 5000 years old, and they must have felt just as old in your day as they do in mine, timeless.
There was nobody else there, just the silence, swept by the wind, and I had this eerie feeling of stepping out of time altogether, into a “different” space I couldn’t understand.

I ended up back at Saint Magnus’ Cathedral, with my nose buried in the old records, strangely comforted by the smell of old ink. It is amazing, really, the church’s archives go back centuries! After a few hours of being fully immersed in the lives and the trades of the people of old, you forget what century you’re in; you lose track of time altogether.
Marriages, home deeds, conflict resolutions, old public announcements, the births of children.
This is what time really looks like, reading the birth announcements of people who passed out of existence centuries before you were born.
Seeing their aspirations, hopes and heartbreaks, the bitter and the sweet displayed together like in a painting, equalizes their significance and turns them all into the same substance when watched from a distance.

The car trip to the Brough of Birsay led me through treeless landscapes, shy and soft in the sunshine, and filled with the bright smiles of wildflowers, a poem in white, rose, purple and green, laid down as scenery by a benevolent god.
I stood beside them, with the wind in my face, trying to remember an older time, as if I’d been there before. But maybe those were your memories, Fiona, not mine. Maybe that’s what the stones are for, repositories of memories, remembering the fingers of all who had touched them.
I was looking for an excuse to go to the other side of the island, and it was interesting to learn your family tree had spread some of its roots there.
The ancient burial customs of this place exercise a strange fascination on me, like a spell cast centuries before I was born.

I used to see this sea wall in my dreams. You can’t imagine how weird it feels to look at it in real life! I’m not really sure I’m awake right now, Fiona. There is an elusive threshold of weirdness and serendipity past which we stop believing anything is real, a madness of sorts, a sweet, addictive madness.
Ever since I was awarded this research grant to explore your life and times, I'm in disbelief, constantly questioning what I'm seeing in this taffy-like reality that shifts and changes its colors with the slightest tug.
I half expect to see you on that wall, as I did so many times in my mind, with the wind playing with your hair and your sights set far away, while you silently call on the mist.
My parents thought me irresponsible for picking anthropology as a field of study, not easy to make a living at studying dead strangers from a thousand years ago, and this last research project really set them off, because, as they said, just like a soft cow pile, the last thing I needed was another bucket of water.

There are things we don’t talk about, and they weigh heavily on our souls. Who decided they don’t matter? Life is like virgin land. It only surrenders its bounty after we drench it in our sweat, tears, and blood.
People squander their lives, energy, and purpose as if they don’t value themselves enough to live for real, instead choosing to take a backseat and yield the spotlight to some higher power which, based on the results, doesn’t care about them too much.
While I’m writing to you, Fiona, I’m gazing at the same moon you watched from afar in your distress centuries ago, hoping for the miracle that never came, the one that would have freed you from your fear and pain. This moon is like a symbol of unanswered prayers. Some wishes are granted too late, aren’t they? I wonder if God works this way, if all the questions that are left unanswered are in fact processed in a much slower and more permanent frame of reference, in God’s time.
For some, this is a metaphorical musing. They don’t know how lucky they are, the innocents, to live their lives in real time, and not in retrospect.

The authorities of Yavapai County had been looking into by a series of disappearances, going all the way back to 1965, when the leader of an archaeological team, Jack Mattingly, vanished without a trace from the excavation site.
His disappearance was followed by several others, seven people in total, all males in their fifties, sharing an academic background.
The police investigation into the missing persons cases has been frustrated by a series of natural phenomena, possibly related to an anomaly in the local magnetic field which rendered electronic equipment and even old-fashioned compasses useless.
The investigating team ventured as far as they felt it was safe into the undeveloped terrain, but had to turn back eventually when they couldn’t get a clear satellite view of the area due to unusual atmospheric activity.

Gwen dragged her feet through the desert, walking behind No. 5 to the tequila barrel, when she noticed what looked like the corner of a trap door barely covered by dirt.
She stopped to get a closer look and by the time No. 5 noticed her absence; he was too far to stop her from sweeping off the dust to uncover it.
“Hey,” she waved at him. “Hey! Over here! I found something.”
“Leave it alone, Gwen, it’s getting late, we need to get back.”
“It’s a door!” She said emphatically.
“We don’t have time for that now, come here.”
“Might be important! What are you talking about? What if it’s provisions, or tools, a clean change of clothes? Help me open this,” she started pulling at the handle in vain, because the solid metal door was very heavy.
“You won’t be able to open that. It has an electronic lock and you don’t have the code. Leave it alone,” No. 5 engaged in a failed attempt at persuasion.
“You know what’s inside?”
“We’re not supposed to talk about it.”
“Is it a secret government facility?”
“No.”
“An alien artifact warehouse?”
“No.”
“A nuclear bunker?”
“No.”

‘That’s pretty,’ she thought when she picked up the little transparent pebble. Its deep red gleam looked spirited in the bright light of the sun; it felt warm to the touch, and despite its heaviness, reminded her of amber.
She sat down on one of the flat rocks at the end of the white pebble path to study it at length, turning it on all sides, trying to figure out what it was and how it got there. It wasn’t larger than an acorn and if she didn’t know any better, she’d have thought it was beach glass. Or a gemstone, maybe? Was this place an abandoned gemstone mine at some point, and if so, was that a ruby? She quickly abandoned the idea, because the tactile experience of the material was all wrong for it.
The little gem tickled her palm, and she giggled, fascinated by this strange interaction with a mineral, which felt intentional, somehow, like a conversation between equals.
Their little silent talk made Gwen smile, and as she sat there, communing with a rock, she didn’t even notice No. 3 standing there and watching her with a look in his eye that wavered between awe and dread.

“Would you say she passed?” No. 4 asked No. 5. They both evaluated Gwen with critical looks, like project managers running through a punch list at the end of a project.
“I don’t know. What other tests do you think we could run?” No. 5 replied. “Call No. 1, he might have some logical routines to run her through we didn’t think about.”
Gwen smiled, insecure. 
She was feeling very self-conscious in the face of this evaluation process, which made her feel like a product.
“What’s up with you guys?” She said, eventually. “Pass? Pass what? Is this some sort of test or something?”
“That looked very natural, didn’t it?” No. 4 turned to No.5. “I sure couldn’t tell. How about you, No. 1?”
“I don’t know,” No. 1 came closer and stared uncomfortably, as if he expected some standard reaction.
“What test?” Gwen raised her voice, and they all stopped and looked at her.
“The Touring test, dear,” No. 4 replied, kindly.
“Hilarious,” Gwen brooded.
“I definitely couldn’t tell,” No. 1 smiled, relieved. 
“Congratulations, team, we got lift-off.”