“Not to mention the noise you make investigating reincarnation. Being in the news for cutting-edge scientific inquiry into past-life regression therapy techniques isn’t the best way to keep a low profile,” Jac joked.
“Hardly.” Malachai laughed. “But we’ve managed nonetheless. There was a bit of attention about thirty years ago when a local Native American tribe attempted to claim the land. But since there was no evidence the ruins were built by their forefathers, their fatuous claims were quickly dismissed.”
“No. Even if Indians found this place and used it, they didn’t build it,” Jac said.
Malachai gave her an approving glance. They’d reached an incline and he led the way, climbing a staircase of rough-hewn rocks. Despite his hip’s giving him a hard time, he didn’t falter.
Above them the storm clouds intensified. The sky darkened. Jac looked up just as the first few droplets fell.
“You don’t melt, do you?” Malachai asked, smiling.
She always had thought his smile was odd. His mouth moved the right way, but the sentiment somehow eluded his eyes.
“Not that I know.” She smiled back.
“Then there’s no reason to be afraid of a little rain, right?”
No, Jac wasn’t afraid of rain. Or of storms. And Malachai knew it. Just as he knew she panicked at edges. The rare phobia had first cropped up when she was a child. She and Robbie had been playing hide-and-seek and she’d gone out on the roof looking for him. The many chimneys and eaves were excellent hiding places. As she crawled around, looking for him, she heard voices. Walked to the edge. Looked down. Her parents were below, standing in the street, arguing. Their altercation was especially nasty and loud. She was so absorbed in their insults and threats she didn’t hear Robbie coming up behind her. He said her name, startling her. She turned too fast. Her left foot slid over the edge. She was falling. Robbie grabbed her, held on, and pulled her up across the tiles. Scratching her as he dragged her, but saving her from what would have surely been broken bones or worse.
In her therapy with Malachai, they’d explored the metaphor of her almost falling off that roof and into the violent argument. When talking about it hadn’t cured her, Malachai had worked on the phobia in a series of hypnosis sessions. When that didn’t work either, he’d suggested her fear was a holdover from a past-life tragedy.
As she did with every attempt he’d made since those early days at Blixer Rath, to connect her present issues to a past life, she’d rejected the idea.
“If it gets too nasty we can always take refuge in the stone shelters up ahead,” Malachai reassured her. “I wanted to show them to you anyway. During the summer solstice the sun enters a pinhole in the east wall, sending a light beam onto the floor and illuminating a series of stones incised with runes. No one has yet been able to translate the symbols.”
“Can I take a fast peek?”
He nodded. Jac walked closer and began to inspect the hut. Dropping to her knees she ran her finger over the carved runes.
“I recognize some of these designs,” she said.
“You do?”
“Look at this one.” She pointed. “To me he looks like Dagda, the chief father god in Celtic mythology. He had a harp made out of oak that he played to keep the seasons in order. Don’t you think this could be a carving of that harp?”
Malachai stared. “You know, you might be right. We can come back this way again. We should go now. I want to show you the rest before the rain comes,” he said.
“I can’t believe the huts aren’t the main attraction,” she said.
He chuckled.
As they continued on, she asked who’d dated the sites. She wasn’t impressed that whoever he’d brought in hadn’t recognized the harp symbol.
“It’s been a delicate dance-wanting information but fearful someone would become too excited by what we’ve found and reveal our secrets and location. Generous grants to the archaeologist’s and historian’s personal research funds have proved a satisfactory bribe in every case. There’s not a trace of what we’ve found in a single book or anywhere on the internet. But at the same time there have been experts I haven’t been able to bring in.”
Up ahead was an allée of gracious giant oaks. Just past it, in the center of a clearing, Jac glimpsed a monolithic rock. Even in the darkened afternoon it shone silver. What was making it glow like that? Mica chips?
When they were within fifteen yards, Malachai held her back.
“Wait. Before you get any closer, tell me, how do you feel?”
“Great. Why?”
“I want you to focus for a moment. Become aware of your psychological and physiological state.”
“But why?”
He shook his head. “All in time. Just do it, please?”
She nodded. Closed her eyes. Got her emotional and physical bearings. Then she nodded at him. “Okay.”
Still holding her arm, he led her forward. “Several of the experts I’ve brought here concur these structures were built at least four thousand years ago. One highly respected member of the esoteric movement actually thinks the area was once an intergalactic portal. That people took off and landed here.”
“But you don’t believe that, do you? Reincarnation is one thing, but extraterrestrial activity?”
“Extraterrestrial activity… a Celtic monument… whatever it might be, given your search for a new myth to base a season on, I thought this might tempt you.”
Malachai was referring to Mythfinders, Jac’s television show and also the title of the book she wrote on the same subject. “That’s amazingly generous,” she said. “Especially because I thought you wanted to keep this place secret.”
“I do, but surely you can film here without giving the location away to the public.”
Jac was thrilled by what he was saying. If there were enough ruins here, this forest might be the end of the long tunnel she’d been traveling since the early summer, looking for her next mythic mystery to feature on her show. Before she could start suggesting myths that might have some connection to a place like this, he started talking about the gigantic menhir just yards way.
Jac had never seen one this large outside Western Europe.
“I believe this stone”-Malachai gestured-“this monument, is the heart of the entire ancient complex. We can examine it more closely if you like.”
There was something curious in his voice. Had they been anywhere else, had she not been so intrigued by the ruin, she might have questioned him about what he wasn’t saying. But what she was looking at was too enticing.
In a clearing was a giant boulder. Standing over eleven feet tall, the rock was at least sixteen feet around. She took a few steps closer. Weathered by the centuries, its surface was smooth and incised with runes. Craning her neck, she thought she recognized Dagda’s harp again. And perhaps his bottomless cauldron of bounty.
On the ground, a two-foot-wide moat of pebbles encircled the plinth, cutting it off from the grassy mound.
It started to drizzle steadily. Jac looked away from the rock, at Malachai. “Can we wait a few minutes before we head back? Can I just go up to it, touch it?”
He nodded.
Jac crossed the gravel stream, walked up to the monument and reached out.
Its surface was warmer than the air. She sniffed and searched the encyclopedia of scents in her memory. This was how she had always imagined the moon to smell. Gunpowder, earth and salt mixed with a harsh but beautiful metallic note.
She turned to ask Malachai, who’d stayed on the other side of the moat, what else his experts had said about the stone, when she was overcome by a profound and sudden wave of sadness. More than anything, Jac wanted to weep.