I was too far away to see if it was, indeed, a monument. But inexplicably I found myself walking toward it, as though it had been my destination all along. The wind grew colder. My ears ached and my fingers grew numb. There was an overpowering reek of the sea, of ebb tide and decay; of the wasteland for which the standing stone served as sentinel and threshold. In a few minutes I stood within its shadow.
It was a granite pillar twice my height. Upon its rough surface letters or symbols had been carved. The capital bore the crude outlines of a face, and I could make out the pitted remnants of eyes, nose, gaping mouth. Beneath this the stone had worn away so that only a few written characters remained, sinuous letters that ran from its weed-choked base to the decayed visage at its top. There was something repellent about those undulating characters, as though they held hidden representations of awful things; the spoiled swollen coils of entrails, the burst vesicle of an oak gall that reveals teeming spiders in its husk. I shut my eyes but that was even worse. The grotesque characters writhed across my eyelids, entwined with the spectral tendrils of capillaries, nerve endings, muscle tissue, as though burrowing into my skull. After a minute I opened my eyes.
In the darkness voices echoed. A sustained despairing wail was joined by a chorus of howls and yelps, and the unmistakable sound of footsteps.
“…oooyyyehhh…”
And now I could hear panting, a tormented sound louder than any human voice; the clatter of hoofbeats and those unrelenting cries of pursuit all coming toward me.
“…ooyehh…”
Desperately I looked around for a place to hide, but the hillside was barren of anything except the ruined column. I shrank back, crouching, scrabbled in the dry grass for a weapon but found only cold earth and bits of shattered rock. I yanked at the folds of my dress, steeling myself to run if I had to, and waited.
An instant when the landscape was still. Then beneath me the ground shook. Pebbles bounced against my bare knees. A black shape blotted out the horizon then broke away from the greater darkness. Its head swept back and forth, droplets of blood flying from its mouth. It halted, swaying slightly, then stumbled toward the column.
It was a deer. No: not a deer: a stag, a huge heraldic creature that towered above me black and silent as the pillar. The span of its antlers was greater than that of my outstretched arms. Behind them I could see its humped back, like glimpsing a hilltop through leafless trees. It moved with painful slowness, stones flying where its hooves struck them. When it was only a few yards from where I hid it halted and dipped its head. I covered my mouth to keep from crying out.
It had been flayed, the flesh stripped from jaw and muzzle and brow-ridge so that the entire skull was laid bare. I could see the smooth concavities where its eyes should be, its curved mandible and great peglike teeth fixed in a skeletal grin. Bloody furrows led to where its exposed vertebrae burrowed into the hair of its back. As it panted its breath spurted in white gouts from its nostrils.
“God, no—”
I staggered to my feet, but before I could flee the stag turned. Cries rang out all around us. The stag stood with one foreleg raised, and I gasped.
The skeletal visage was gone. In its stead was the image I had seen in Hillary’s book so long ago: the megaloceros, the Irish elk. It lifted its massive head and stared back at me. Its eyes were each the size of my fist, golden brown, with striations of green and amber radiating through the iris. Behind us the cries grew louder, but the stag seemed to take no notice. I could hear its breathing, like the rhythmic pumping of a bellows, and see its breath silvering the air. When a howl rang out from the darkness the stag tilted its head to gaze at the sky, and its antlers blotted out the stars. Then the hunt was upon us.
It was as though a wave broke upon the hilltop. A dozen figures crested the rise. They ran like dogs, bodies bent close to the ground and long hair flying behind them, and so swiftly I could not tell if they were men or women, or even if they were clothed. A few carried spears or cudgels. Most were unarmed. I could smell them, rank sweat and dried grass and carrion. I don’t think they saw me at all.
They raced toward the stag, and I slipped behind the column so that I could watch without being seen. The stag stood silently. Only the vapor staining the air about its head indicated that it was alive, and not some grotesque monument. One of the hunters broke away from the rest and darted beneath the great beast, jabbing at its leg with a spear; then thrust it upward into the stag’s breast.
“No,” I whispered.
It was like watching a tree fall. The immense crown of antlers trembled as it twisted its head, vainly seeking its assailant. Then slowly, as though its legs were roots being torn from the earth, the stag tumbled to the ground.
With a shriek, first one and then another of the waiting hunters raced toward it. One plunged a spear into its belly; another clambered onto its side and began hewing its neck. Still another darted toward its face, thrusting a lance into its eye.
I could watch no more. I turned and ran down the mountain, catching myself when I stumbled, not stopping until I once again felt the familiar ruts and furrows of a path underfoot.
I slowed, panting, and looked behind me for signs of pursuit. There were none. I shivered: my dress hung limply, damp with sweat; my arms and legs were scratched and smeared with dirt. Voices drifted down from the hilltop, their somber undercurrent heightened by a single sharp cry of grief, like a blade drawn against a stone. On the summit I could see the thrusting finger of the column; the elk’s curved antlers, like the rib cage of some extinct reptile; the stooped figures of the hunters intent on disemboweling their prey. I was far enough away that I felt safe, but now that I was safe I perversely wanted a better look. So I made a half-circuit of the hillside, keeping low until I found a natural hollow that hid me, even as it gave a better vantage point.
Above me the hunters worked without talking. The only sounds were the wind and the measured hack and crunch of bone against bone, bone against rock, stone against skin. In the grass, the slain megaloceros loomed like the remains of an ancient fortress. The wind shifted and brought with it the stench of slaughter. Blood and fat, excrement and trampled grass, turned-up earth. I gagged, wiping tears from my eyes and moving uphill slightly to escape the shifting breeze. When I looked up again, the scene had altered.
The great stag was gone. Or rather, it had diminished. What I saw now was not the massive creature felled by the hunter’s spear, but something smaller, its curves more graceful—and familiar. Even in the half-light I could make out its color, pale brown darkening to gold, and its antlers, a dozen tines still furred with autumn velvet. A twelve-point buck. Magnificent in its way, but no dream-elk; no enchanted stag.
The figures crouched around it had changed as well. There were still a dozen of them, with one slight man standing apart from the rest. He alone spoke, chanting in a high, almost boyish voice; words that were meaningless to me. The others worked deftly and in silence, slicing chunks of raw meat, tugging strands of sinew and glistening fat from the hide. But the knives glinting in the dimness had metal blades now, not flint or obsidian. Their clothes, too, were less primitive, dun-colored robes or loose trousers of cloth, rather than ill-cured hides and pelts. I thought I could smell smoke and my eyes stung; but when I blinked the scene changed again—
—yet O so slowly this time, so that I could actually see it change, centuries passing, millennia perhaps: the figures blurring as though I glimpsed them through a rainy window. Now they stood solemnly in a line, their eyes dark holes and their mouths open, though they made no sound. Only the slight sharp-featured man continued to chant, his arms raised above a figure on the ground before them. At first I could not see it clearly, but then it seemed that this, too, changed, so that I was no longer half-crouched upon the hillside but standing in their midst.