Secret Countdown: Free Short Story: Dawn, By the Light of a Barrow Fire
Eight Days To Go
It’s eight days until SECRETS OF THE DRAGON TOMB is published! No, I’m not nervous. Honest. Really not.
For today’s countdown post, I thought I’d give away a free short story.
I started writing when I was a teenager, but when I got to university, that kind of fell away for ten years or so. I played about with stories and books a little, but I didn’t really put any focused time or effort into them and I didn’t achieve anything. But in 1999, I was in a pretty awful job and I needed something, anything to stop myself melting from the boredom or it. I decided to actually put some effort into writing again.
I joined the online writers’ workshop, Critters, and then went to Clarion West in 2001, and between those two, I finally turned myself into a professional writer.
Today I’m giving away the first short story I ever published, back in 2002. I wrote it soon after finishing my time at Clarion West, and I still like it. It’s not as smooth as what I write these days, but I think it still holds up.
This story was first published in Realms of Fantasy, December 2002. Enjoy!
Please note that some parts of this story are not suitable for younger children.
Dawn, by the Light of a Barrow Fire
I knew something was up as soon as I saw Frank trudge out of Bennett’s trailer. Twenty years of working in mud and dust and dirt beside him meant I could read him the way he could read a pile of ancient bones. Anyway, something was always up when Bennett asked to see one of us.
This last year, since David died, had been hell, and working under Bennett had only made it worse. If the university department hadn’t been so short of cash, we would have quit in a week. Instead, we had gritted our teeth, bowed our heads, and tried not to scream, praying for the next funding round.
Marcy straightened beside me, and brushed her hair back with a muddy hand.
“I’ll bet you a tenner at three-to-one Bennett’s decided he wants a long barrow instead,” she whispered.
“Do you think he knows what a long barrow is?”
Marcy, Frank, and I were the consultant archaeologists on this project, although Bennett did far more instructing than consulting. We were reconstructing a Neolithic settlement and round barrow for an English Heritage project—one of those projects where you’re supposed to work using the same techniques that were used for the originals. In other words, it was pretty much guesswork from start to finish. We were the second team to work on this; Bennett had fired the previous team when they had refused to comply with one of his more ridiculous whims. We had avoided that fate so far, if only because we couldn’t afford to lose the project.
The whole project was supposed to be for Ancient History Year. Only Ancient History Year was ancient history four months ago, and we still couldn’t agree a design for the huts. Frank and I were for the standard rectangular, thatched design, wooden posts at the corners, and stone walls, a single room centred around a hearth pit. Marcy was holding out for circular with a partitioned interior. We were all trying hard not to let Bennett have a say. He would probably want a two-up, two-down with a conservatory on the back.
Frank reached the top of the hill, and collapsed into the bracken.
“Well?” Marcy said.
“He wants a trench.”
I looked across the hillside, past the half-finished earth mound of the barrow, to the open moor of bracken and brambles. A hawk hovered in the blue air. There was nothing out there for miles. “Where? It’s solid rock up here.”
“He doesn’t care,” Frank said, wearily. “There’s a TV crew coming. Apparently ‘everyone knows archaeologists dig ditches’, so he wants one.”
I groaned.
* * *
It rained most of the next day, a cold spring rain that threatened to turn to sleet several times. The water poured in rivers down the hillside, submerging the proto-trench we had started to dig in the valley where the ground was softer, and threatening to wash Bennett’s trailer away. But no such luck.
By three o’clock, the rain had eased and Bennett sent us back to work, armed with a rusting pump. In minutes we were soaked and frozen. Thank God for students. We sent two of them into the deepest part of the trench to flail away with mattocks and shovels, while me and Marcy hunched over damp cigarettes. Frank was assiduously, and pointlessly, examining a pile of stones some distance from anything wet. Two minutes in the trench had been more than enough for him. No wonder. The whole thing was a façade. We had no reason to believe there had ever been a settlement in the valley. After all, who would want to live in a quagmire? And even if there had been, what did it have to do with building the barrow?
“Hey, look at this,” one of the students shouted. He was crouched up to his waist in the brown water of the trench. I pushed myself up. Mud squelched beneath me. No doubt some innocent flint was being mistaken for an axe-head again.
“He’s found an ancient plastic cup,” Marcy whispered, and I covered a grin.
He hadn’t.
He’d found a bone.
He was waving it around, spraying water in his excitement.
Frank came wandering over, and relieved the student of his find. “It’s definitely human,” he said, turning the brown bone in his hands. “A tibia, probably from a juvenile. Pretty old, I’d say.”
A child. A cold stone dropped into my belly. I pushed past the others and dropped to my knees, scrabbling about in the lowering water.
Within moments my hands caught on something hard and curved. I pulled it free from the peat, not caring that I might be damaging it. I knew it was a skull the moment I touched it, but I didn’t admit it to myself until I had it out the water. It was small. I turned it in my hand. Most of the left side was missing. Smashed away.
I felt a hand on my shoulder.
“Are you okay?” Marcy asked. I nodded, not trusting myself to speak.
“We should do this properly,” she said. “Come on. Leave it to Frank and the students.”
I followed her out of the trench. I was starting to shiver. Maybe it was the cold water.
A child. David had only been a child, just nine years old. My son. A boy chasing his ball. The car hadn’t even stopped.
Marcy sat me down on a stone as the sun emerged from the black clouds. My knees were weak.
I sat and watched them uncover the skeleton, a bone at a time. The skeleton of some poor dead child. Maybe one who had been chasing his ball. Then a car hit him leaving a hole like a fist in his skull.
No. I shook my head to clear the memories. These bones were too old. They weren’t David. David’s ashes were scattered across the field behind my house. No one had scattered this child’s ashes. No one had buried him.
“I’m okay,” I said to Marcy, getting to my feet. “I’ll be fine.” I’d dealt with David dying. But it would be the anniversary of his death in three days, so it was natural that I should be thinking about him. It had been a moment of shocked memory, that was all.
“I’m going to carbon-date the bones,” Frank said, looking up as we approached. “I’d bet they’re at least a couple of thousand years old.” He showed us one of the bones. “Look, they’re in pretty good condition. We might be able to get some DNA.”
I nodded, trying not to feel queasy.
A loud tooting made us all turn. A van had pulled off the road near the trailers.
“That’ll be the TV,” Frank said. “Last chance to hide.”
I tried to smile, but it came out like a grimace. Like a skull.
The back doors of the van opened. Two men emerged carrying a film camera and microphone. A third man, wearing a flying jacket and dark sunglasses, and carrying a clipboard, got out the passenger’s side. The wet ground had begun to steam slightly in the hot sun. I was still cold.
“Into the bunker,” Frank called.
“Hush,” Marcy said. “They’re coming over.”
I was feeling sick, and weak, as though I hadn’t eaten for days.
“You must be Bennett,” the man in the flying jacket said when he reached us, extending a hand to Frank.
Frank started to choke.
Marcy stepped forward quickly. “I’m Marcy Raney. The comedian is Frank. The cute one is Cameron.” She pointed at Frank then me. “What do you want to film?”
“Any swords, armour, stuff that’ll look good on TV,” Flying Jacket said. “No rocks though. People don’t like watching rocks.”
Marcy stared at him for a moment, then, “You know this is a Neolithic project?”
“Cool.”
“You do know what Neolithic means?”
Flying Jacket frowned. “Huh? Yeah, yeah, of course.”
“It means stone age.”
Flying Jacket frowned. “So no swords?”
My head was throbbing. All I could see was David’s body, lying by the side of the road, bleeding. I was choking.
“You’re not from the BBC, are you?” Marcy said.
“Satellite,” Frank whispered.
“Hey,” the cameramen called. “They’ve got a skull over here.”
“All right!” Flying Jacket shouted. “Let’s get-”
“Leave the fucking skull alone!” They all turned to look at me. “Just … just … leave it alone.” I remembered the journalists when David was killed. Wanting to see his room, his clothes, his photos. Hanging around outside the house, night and day, pointing their cameras. It had been a politician’s car. It hadn’t stopped.
“You okay?” Marcy whispered.
I nodded. “Just don’t touch it,” I said to the TV crew. “It’s … it’s not been catalogued yet.” It was pretty lame, and we all knew it. Maybe even the TV crew knew it.
I walked away.
* * *
He has seventeen scars on his chest. His son has only three. The boy is young. Too young to be out alone at night when there are bears and wolves around.
He walks from his hut to the barrow. The boy has too great an interest in the barrow. Maybe he will be there.
The ancestor-bones are bright in the sky tonight. The ground is white and the trees are flat against the sky. It is not a good night. Spirits can see too easily on a night like this.
He grasps the bones around his neck and hears them click together. Protect me, he thinks.
He wants to call out for the boy, but he does not want the spirits to hear. Nor the other men. They will think him a woman for worrying about the boy.
I have the soul of a bear, he thinks. He wears its teeth sewn into the hides of his cloak. I fear nothing.
The boy is not at the barrow.
* * *
I awoke from the dream, shaking. It had been cold, and my son had been lost near the barrow. David had been lost. I had been looking for him. But that hadn’t been me, had it?
Dawn was close.
I got to the site early, when the mists still cloaked the hills and turned the barrow into a ghost floating above the ground. We were going to try to place the capstone on top of the barrow today, before covering it with a final layer of earth. We, and several dozen volunteers, would haul the ten tonne block of granite up the slope of earth that made up the side of the barrow, and drop it onto the upright support stones, sealing the barrow. We were leaving part of one side and the entrance clear so visitors could see how it was constructed, and compare it to the quoits that dotted the landscape hereabouts. We would do the same with some of the huts, if we ever built the damn things.
“I knew you’d be here.”
I turned. Marcy was climbing the hill behind me. I hadn’t heard her car approach.
“Couldn’t sleep, huh?”
“No,” I said. “You?”
“I was worried about you. Want to talk about it?”
“Not really.”
She slipped her arm through mine.
“You’ll make the students jealous,” I said. Students always had a crush on Marcy. I could understand that.
She smiled sadly. “Students don’t get up this early. Nor do you.”
The sky overhead was a pale blue, almost white. The bracken and heather and brambles were speckled with dew. Spiders’ webs bowed under the weight of drops of water.
“It’s stupid,” I said. “It really shouldn’t have got to me. I’m over it.” I shook my head. “I guess I was tired.”
“Bullshit,” Marcy said. She grabbed my arm so I had to turn to face her or I would have jerked my arm away. “You’re not over it, Cam, and you’ve never been over it. You’ve never talked about it. You’ve just bottled it up as though that’ll make it go away. Well it won’t.” She took a breath and glared into my eyes. “Shit, why do you think Alice left you? You never even talked to her.”
I recoiled. Marcy never held back, but she’d never thrown that at me before. My face reddened and I started to turn away.
“Cameron…” she said. She tugged my arm. I closed my eyes and breathed deeply. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Just … just talk to someone, Cameron. If you can’t talk to me or Frank, talk to a doctor.”
“I don’t need to talk,” I said. My throat was so tight it hurt to speak.
She pulled me round and to her. I resisted for just a moment, then rested my forehead on her shoulder. Tears were cold on my cheeks. “I don’t know what to do,” I whispered into her rough hair.
“Talk,” she said. I shook my head against her shirt. Talking would only hurt more. Better to bury the hurt, like ashes in a barrow.
Eventually she pushed me away and wiped my eyes with a corner of her scarf.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m okay.”
Marcy gave me a sad grin. I knew she didn’t believe me. Hell, even I didn’t believe me.
Someone shouted, “Hey,” from down the hill. We turned to see Frank.
“I thought I’d find you two canoodling up here,” he said.
The mist must have been killing the sounds of cars. There could have been a convoy down there.
“It’s a morning for early mornings,” I said.
“It’s not an early morning,” Frank said. “It’s a late night. I spent the night in the trailer studying the bones.” He looked at me. “I figured you’d want to know.”
“And?” My voice caught on the word and I had to repeat it. “And?”
“It’s pretty hard to know without getting them into a lab, and even then…”
“Guess,” I said.
Frank shot a glance at Marcy, then shrugged. “A young boy, probably between seven and twelve or so. It’s difficult to tell until we know exactly when the bones are from. People’s development rates have changed over time. I would guess they’re late Neolithic, but that really is a guess until I get the carbon dating results.”
“What killed him?”
Frank grimaced. “It could have been anything…”
My heart hammered. My mouth was as dry as sand.
“The head?” I croaked.
“Yes, it could have been the head wound. Maybe a blow from a weapon, or an animal, or maybe just an accident. We’ll never know.” He shrugged again. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay.” I turned away. My chest was tight and I couldn’t get enough air. “It’s okay.”
* * *
The capstone got stuck halfway up the slope of the barrow when the rollers sank into the soft earth. Bennett suggested using a crane, but apart from the fact that we didn’t have one, that would rather have destroyed the point of the exercise.
I stood with Marcy and Frank on top of the barrow, just above the gaping burial chamber, and we scratched our chins, three bruise-eyed, tired archaeologists whose theories had just collapsed.
“Bigger rollers,” Frank said.
“Tougher volunteers,” Marcy said.
“Planks,” I said.
We didn’t have a clue.
* * *
The frost is hard on the ground. The cold bites into my skin. It is dark, but the moon is bright. I am standing in the shadows of a hut. It is round, with stone walls sealed with dried mud, or perhaps dung. The thatching protrudes almost to the ground, and the roof is steep. The door is a thick fur. From here, the dwelling appears to be sunk into the ground. It looks like Marcy’s design for the Neolithic huts, apart from the roof.
Where the hell am I? It reminds me of my dream, but it seems too real for a dream.
Nearby, I see three other huts. Between them is a low stockade. I can see three or four goats huddled together, breathing clouds of hot breath into the air. I smell smoke and goat dung and something else I’d rather not think about.
The door of one of the huts pulls open, and a man steps out, then pauses and looks around. He is dressed in a heavy, hooded fur cloak. I guess he is about five four tall, but heavily built. He has a long black beard, and long straggly hair. I can’t see his eyes.
He grunts, then turns and walks from the huts by a path that leads up the hill. I follow him. He doesn’t seem to notice.
The path curves around the side of the hill as it goes up, passing through a stand of trees. I think I can identify oak and lime, and maybe hawthorn.
Something howls. My mind says wolf, but how can it be? Wolves have been extinct in Britain for hundreds of years.
I emerge from the trees. The man is fifty yards ahead of me, but I see him clearly. He is near the brow of the hill. There is a barrow there, a dark silhouette against the moonlight.
The man reaches the barrow and circles it. Then he climbs to the top and peers around. His shoulders slump. He descends and sits before the barrow, crouched over. Within minutes a small fire springs up. His face is made gaunt by its flickering light.
I think that maybe he can’t see me. I can’t be here, so he can’t see me. I start up the trail again.
The stones are hard and cold beneath my feet. My joints ache.
I reach the barrow, and the sitting man. He is staring into his fire. I step past him.
“He is gone,” the man says. I jump, then turn to him. He has a deep, accented voice. If he is Neolithic, as he seems to be, he can’t be speaking English, but that is how I hear it.
“Who?” I ask, softly. Maybe he isn’t talking to me. Am I here, or is this a dream? If so, whose? Mine or his?
“The boy. My son. He is gone. I fear he is dead.” He looks up at me. “The boy has no fear.”
Sadness rolls over me so suddenly that I have to close my eyes and clamp my jaw. He is dead, I want to say. Nine years old, I want to say, and hit by a car. It didn’t even stop.
“Can a boy survive seven days out here?” the man asks. “I have searched everywhere. I cannot find him.” His eyes are staring straight into mine when I open them. They are a deeper blue than I have ever seen. His voice turns soft, so that I have to strain to listen. “He had only three scars. Now he is gone. I cannot find him. I cannot bury his ashes. He cannot travel to the tchetchla.” I don’t recognise the word. “Help me,” he says.
I stand. On the other side of the hill, I see a wooded valley. It looks very familiar. If it had no trees, and a small stream, and a road, and a couple of trailers…
I leave the man behind and descend into the valley. It is hard to place myself, but I think that there is where Bennett’s trailer would be, there in the trees.
A film of ice splinters beneath my feet. The ground sinks, and peat-dark water wells up. Not far away are the tracks of a large animal. Something bigger than me, with claws.
And there, just ahead, where the mud is deep and only a couple of dead white tree trunks stretch from the water, there is where the trench will be. I feel sick.
* * *
“You look bloody awful,” Marcy said.
My head hurt. I was sure a migraine was coming on. “Bad night.”
“We’re going to try the capstone again, tomorrow,” Frank said, looking pleased with himself. “We’re going for larger rollers.”
“Round huts,” I croaked.
“What?”
“I think we should have round huts, like Marcy said, and steeper roofs.”
“Traitor,” Frank whispered to me, then glared at the smirking Marcy. “Go suck on your trowel.”
“What’s on the agenda today?” I asked. Pulses of pain were making my vision swim.
“You’re going home,” Marcy said. “Me and Frank have been talking. We’re going to gang up on Bennett and make him give you a day or two off, and we’re making an appointment for you to talk to your doctor.”
“Don’t…” I said, then took a breath and started again. “Don’t tell me what to do.” Pain thudded through my head and I grabbed at my eyes instinctively. “I’m coping,” I whispered.
Frank and Marcy exchanged glances.
“No,” Marcy said. You’re not,” She had her fists on her hips, and her lips had turned white. “I’ve been watching you this last week. If you go on, you’re going to have a breakdown. You’re going to talk to someone, if we have to drag you there by brute force. I’m not joking.”
I looked her in the eyes, through the pain. No, she wasn’t joking. Something crumpled in me. I nodded carefully. “Okay,” I said. “I’ll talk to someone.” And I would.
* * *
I parked the car beside Bennett’s trailer. The luminous hands of the clock showed 3:15. It was a clear night, with a thin layer of mist floating just above the valley floor. I pulled on my big coat and my gloves, and let myself out.
My nose ran immediately, and my eyes streamed. I wiped them with the back of my glove. I wished I’d worn another pair of socks and brought a hat. Too late to go back for them. Tomorrow was the anniversary of David’s death.
I slipped my key into the lock of the second trailer, the one me and Marcy and Frank shared. It was slightly warmer there. I turned on the light. The desktops and surfaces were covered in drawings, photocopied articles, and bits of pottery and stone, the normal mess.
I went straight to the drawers at the far end of the trailer, and pulled open the top one. The bones were there, where I had seen Frank put them, sealed in clear plastic bags. The sight of them made me tremble. I forced myself to calm. I clenched my fists until my hands stopped shaking.
Bennett would fire us for this, I had no doubt. It would be the end of my career, and God knows what would happen to Frank and Marcy and the department.
I took a deep breath. I had no choice. These were the boy’s bones, I was sure, the poor lost Neolithic boy’s. “I’m sorry,” I muttered under my breath. What a way to repay Frank and Marcy.
I carefully emptied the bags one by one into my canvas rucksack. I heard the bones clatter together brittlely. Bile rose in my throat. I swallowed.
I turned off the light, and locked the trailer behind me.
I started along the track, up the hill.
* * *
He is waiting for me outside the barrow. A small fire is burning fiercely. Wolves howl out on the moor. I see trees in the valley, and on the other side of the hill, the dark shapes of the settlement huts, smoke still rising from one. I smell the goats even from here, a rich, cloying smell.
I hug my coat tight around me.
The fire is hot as I seat myself beside him.
“The boy is dead,” the man says.
“Yes,” I say, through tears. I see tears on the Neolithic man’s own cheeks. “I loved him,” I say, and when the man nods I know he knows I am talking about David. “I miss him.” I think it’s the first time I’ve been able to say this.
I pass the rucksack to him. He fumbles with the buckles, then opens them. Slowly he pulls out the dry bones, one by one, and places them on the fire. They catch quickly and burn brightly.
“I loved my boy too,” he says. “Here I set him free.”
Finally he removes the skull, kisses it, and hands it to me.
“Here I set him free,” I say, choking on the words. David, I think. Goodbye.
I kiss the skull too, then place it on the fire.
We sit before a fire of bones, as the morning pales the sky. When the bones are entirely burnt, he scoops the still-hot ashes into a clay pot, and hands it to me. I place it in my rucksack.
In the morning I will place the pot inside the barrow, before the capstone is finally levered on. The boy will travel to the tchetchla.
-The End-
