Sir James Erskine sat up so abruptly that the rest of the committee looked at him in surprise. “Sorry,” he apologized, colouring slightly, “I … er, didn’t quite catch what you said, Alex.”
Pale April sunlight streamed through the windows of the Scottish Parliament building at the foot of the Royal Mile in Edinburgh and slanted across a small room where five men sat round a polished table that was littered with maps and documents.
Alex Crawford looked across at him and smiled. “I know it sounds ridiculous,” he said, looking again at the letter he’d picked out from the sheaf of papers that lay in front of him, “but that’s what it says here. Apparently a crofter reported seeing a stone giant walking down the side of a mountain.”
“Was he sober?” Duncan Fletcher asked, amid laughter.
“It would seem so,” Alex allowed. “There was a storm at the time and he saw it in the lightning flashes. He says it was the size of a house.”
“Where was this?” queried Sir James.
Alex looked at the address. “Sutherland,” he said, “that’s in your constituency Malcolm, isn’t it?”
Malcolm MacLeod looked up and nodded. “Stone giants, eh! Well, well! The last time I heard of them was in story books when I was a wee lad.”
“Did anyone else see it?” Duncan asked. “I mean to say, stone giants the size of houses must be pretty noticeable.”
“It’s a lonely glen. There is another house there but apparently the people in it were all fast asleep at the time.”
“And where did it go?”
“According to the letter, it seemed to disappear. He only glimpsed it for a second or so, but by the time he got down to the road, it was gone. The storm had caused a landslide, though, and blocked the road completely. Not only that, it broke a bridge, dammed a river and took down the telephone line as well.”
“Have they cleared it yet?”
“I don’t think so. It’s a pretty isolated area and not very high on anyone’s list of priorities. By my reckoning, there are at least fifty glens currently cut off by landslides, broken bridges and the like. The storms have been playing havoc all over the Highlands and it’s causing real problems!”
“Climate change?” offered one of the committee members.
“It would seem so. At the moment we’re inundated with demands for support from community centres across the Highlands. There are so many people in need of temporary housing that they just can’t cope.” He sat back in his chair. “You’ve all seen the media coverage. It’s a serious situation. People are having to sleep in schools, libraries and town halls all over the north.”
“Do we have a map of the damaged areas?” queried Sir James. “I’d be interested to see it.”
“I’ll put it up on the screen. Hang on a minute.”
Several of the men pushed their chairs back to get a better view as a map of the Highlands clicked up on a wall-mounted screen. It was dotted here and there with red crosses.
“The red crosses mark the glens that have been cut off by landslides,” he said, “and you can see just by looking at it, that the damage is widespread.”
“Are the crosses just a general indication of damage in the area or do they actually pin-point the landslides?” Sir James asked.
“They pin-point the landslides,” was the reply.
“I don’t know if it’s by accident or design,” Malcolm pointed out, “but don’t you find it interesting that the landslides seem to be quite … strategically placed?”
There was silence as five pairs of eyes scanned the map thoroughly.
“You’re right, you know, Malcolm,” Alex Crawford said slowly. “I didn’t think of it like that before, but you’re right.”
“It surely can’t be deliberate … can it?” someone asked.
“What are you implying?” Duncan frowned. “Landslides don’t fall to order … they’re a natural occurrence. There’s no rhyme or reason to them.”
“The fact is, though,” Sir James said, “that each and every one of those landslides blocks a road or breaks a bridge at a vital point. That’s why people are having to leave their homes and stay with relatives and friends — because they can’t get in or out of their own glens. And in most cases, the phone lines are down as well.”
“They could use mobiles, surely?”
Malcolm smiled ruefully. “You’re a Lowlander, Duncan. If you’d lived in the Highlands for any length of time, you’d know that quite a lot of people don’t have television sets, far less mobile phones. The mountains block out any signal there is.”
“It might be my imagination,” Alex said, taking charge of the conversation, “but if you look at the crosses, you can see that there’s a sort of eastward trend. There are lots of crosses in the north and west but very few in the east.”
“That’s true,” agreed Malcolm. “You can almost tell which glens will be cut off next.”
“Another thing is that so far no one has been hurt, no houses have been damaged and as far as I know, no livestock has been killed.”
“Yes, it is strange, isn’t it? The only damage so far seems to be to the roads, bridges and telephone lines.”
“Do you think the landslides are being caused by explosions, then?” Duncan said worriedly. “I mean, if they’re being triggered deliberately then the storms would provide good cover. Thunder would disguise the noise of any explosion and nobody would be any the wiser.”
“But why would anyone want to do a thing like that?”
“Well, there are so many weirdos around these days, you just never know.” He gestured vaguely. “It could be some maniac that wants to restore the Highlands to their natural state.”
“That’s not as far-fetched as it sounds,” Sir James said thoughtfully, indicating the papers in front of him, “for that’s actually what’s happening. Look at the statistics we’ve been given on the numbers of refugees that have moved to coastal areas. To a great extent, the Highlands are being cleared of people!”
Alex Crawford looked at the crosses on the map and regarded Sir James with alarm. “Good heavens,” he said, “you could be right, at that!”
“Havers,” one of the men snorted. “I just can’t believe that people are going round causing landslides all over the place. They’d be spotted for a start! Strangers in the Highlands stand out like sore thumbs, especially shady looking characters!” He leant back in his chair and looked round the table. “There’s still the odd bit of cattle rustling that goes on from time to time and the farmers are wary. Besides which, mining the hillside so that roads and bridges are blocked wouldn’t only take a lot of skill — it’d need unbelievable luck!”
“It’s much more likely to be the Cri’achan,” agreed Malcolm MacLeod with a laugh.
“The who?”
“The Cri’achan,” Malcolm repeated, “the stone giants.”
“You must be joking!”
“That fellow in Sutherland said he saw one …” Malcolm said reasonably.
“Faery tales!” snorted Duncan.
“Come, now. Haven’t you ever heard of the Old Man of the Mountains?”
“Well, yes, vaguely …”
“He was King of the Cri’achan, the stone giants,” Malcolm explained. “The story goes that they walked the Highlands for hundreds of years until they tired and when they slept, the mountains captured them, covered them with soil and rocks and made them part of themselves. But legend has always had it that the Cri’achan are still there, asleep on the slopes of the glens and that one day they’ll wake and walk the mountains again.”
“And you think that one of them has woken up?”
“More than one, by the sound of things,” Malcolm said.
“This is altogether ridiculous!” Duncan said loudly. “I can’t believe that we’re all sitting here listening to such a load of old … er … nonsense. I don’t believe a word of it! Stone giants! Whatever next, for goodness sake!”
Many of those around the table looked doubtful and the chairman, too, shook his head in disbelief.
“I don’t know,” Sir James said, “crofters are generally a pretty hard-headed lot. I think he definitely saw something. Maybe it wasn’t really a stone giant but it could have been an accident of the weather that loosened the side of a hill and made him think there was one.”
“You’re probably right, James,” Malcolm admitted, “and, really, I was only joking about the Cri’achan.”
“Let’s keep it that way,” the chairman said brusquely. “If the press gets wind of stone giants tramping through the Highlands, there would be panic everywhere!” There was a nodding of heads. “And can you imagine the media?” he added. “They’d milk a story like that for all it was worth!”
“What was the name you gave them, again? The stone giants, I mean?” asked Sir James.
“The stone giants?” Malcolm repeated. “In the Highlands, we call them the Cri’achan.”