A little further round the coast from Trefynys harbour, craggy cliffs dropped to a small pebble beach with a bubbling river running through it. Here the oldest tradition of the festival was upheld.
Gruff clambered down the earth path. Torches swung this way and that, the light bouncing off the stones and the waves. Everyone was searching for a pebble as close to the shape of the island as they could find. No one spoke. In solemn silence the tradition played itself out, year after year after century.
Gruff crouched and started to search through the pebbles. People began to switch their torches off, leaving only the light of the rising moon in the blue-black summer sky. ‘Gosteg,’ Nain whispered nearby. Gruff looked up and watched her draw her arm back and throw her island pebble into the lapping water. Low tide. All around the small, packed beach, figures threw their stones into the waves. Gosteg. A call for calm, silence, stillness, peace. Gosteg.
Gruff, sifting through sun-dried pebbles, felt one wet and slick beneath his fingers. He drew a sharp breath and picked it up, his heart hammering.
It was the stone from the museum. Same shape, same size. And it was the only wet pebble amongst all these dry ones.
In one swift movement, Gruff stood up, hissed ‘Gosteg,’ and threw the stone as hard and as far as he could, away from him into the water.
‘One,’ Gruff whispered, counting slow seconds against his pounding heartbeats. ‘Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven.’ Seven Sleepers. Seven seconds for that stone, which should not have been wet, should not have moved, to be taken by the sea.
Had he done the right thing?
That stone was following me.
On a sudden thought, Gruff touched his wet fingers to his lips. He tasted salt. Had that little piece of rock been something to do with the Weeping Stone, the seventh Sleeper?
Laughter and voices warmed the air as people turned from the sea and headed back for more food and music and dancing.
‘Hi!’
Gruff jumped and turned to find Mat standing next to him, grinning from ear to ear. ‘That was fun. Everyone was so serious! Your dad said we had to say goss-teg. He says it’s asking the sea to be calm.’
‘Yeah.’ Gruff pinched his palm to bring his brain into order. ‘It’s an offering. That’s why the stones have to look like the island, so the sea doesn’t decide to take the island itself.’
An attempt to save the island from the merciless Wounded Sea storms. A shiver passed across his shoulders as he fully realised the significance of the tradition. Did it work? Would it save them? Finish it, or he’ll kill us all.
‘How long have people been doing it?’
Gruff shook his head as they climbed back up the steep path to the village road. ‘No one knows. That long.’
Mat’s mum bundled her away to meet the rest of the lifeboat crew. Gruff stood a little way back from the pub, watching the music and dancing strike up again but unable to walk towards it. His thoughts were full of stones that moved and blacksmiths that foretold danger. His thoughts were full of storms.
Then Gruff spotted Nain. Like him, she was alone on the edge of things, but she was not watching the party. She stood as still as a statue on the cliff path above the village, looking inland at something he could not see.
Gruff started towards her, suddenly desperate to tell her everything. He had always told them everything, her and Dad. They were his family, his closest friends. He didn’t want to deal with this on his own any more.
Gruff skirted the dancing and jogged up the cliff path to where he had seen Nain, but she was gone. He looked around and spotted her at the entrance to the barley field, leaning on the gate, staring out across the centre of the island in the direction of the farmhouse.
‘Nain?’ Gruff said it quietly, not wanting to scare her. She did not turn but she shifted slightly to show she had heard. Gruff went over and leaned on the rusty gate. He glanced at her and thought how fragile she seemed: paper-thin skin, tired eyes, her mouth sad and resigned.
‘Your Taid and I,’ Nain said softly, ‘met at the festival.’
Gruff knew this story. But he didn’t stop her.
‘He came in on Iolo’s fishing boat. Hitched a ride across to the island with a pack of his friends for the fun of it, just for a bit of dancing.’
Nain stopped. Gruff realised that her eyes were sparkling with unshed tears. His own eyes pricked.
‘But that one night dancing,’ Gruff said huskily, picking up Nain’s story for her, ‘turned him into an islander, and he hardly set foot mainland again.’
Nain’s face crumpled and Gruff’s own tears escaped. He wiped them away with his sleeve and searched desperately in his pockets for a tissue to give to Nain.
‘Stop flapping like a panicked goose,’ Nain said, and Gruff looked up to find her glistening face set into her best glare. ‘I have my own hankie, thank you, and it isn’t full of your snot.’
Gruff laughed and sniffed and Nain dried her eyes and nodded briskly. ‘He is in the earth of the island, Gruff.’
‘I know,’ Gruff said. They had scattered Taid’s ashes on the farm that had become his home.
‘And he is everywhere I walked with him,’ Nain said. She sniffed in a businesslike way, folded her handkerchief carefully and put it back in her coat pocket.
Gruff understood then what this was about. It wasn’t just the festival making her remember. This was Nain fearful she was about to leave the island. Leave behind not just her home but every moment of her life. Every moment of Taid.
It had been the right thing to do, sending that text to Mam.
‘You look like a grandson with something on his mind,’ Nain said. ‘Can your aged relative lend you some wisdom?’
Gruff’s tongue was so full of words he couldn’t form any of them. He shook his head. ‘Maybe tomorrow.’
‘Quite right, too,’ Nain said, and she gave him a quick, sweet smile. ‘Tonight is for dancing.’
Gruff woke three hours before high tide.
He knew this because his glow-in-the-dark alarm clock told him it was ten to two in the morning and his internal tide timetable kicked in without being asked. He turned over and closed his eyes, hoping to fall asleep again before his brain remembered all the things he had to worry about.
Too late. Images crowded Gruff’s mind. The blacksmith on the Weeping Stone. The glistening lump of rock from the geology display. Nain’s tears. He thought of the text he had sent to Mam. He fumbled for his phone but there was still no reply.
He stared at the ceiling, which he could see well enough to know the moon must be pretty bright outside. Why had he woken up?
A scratching noise from the floor by the open window made him jump but also answered his question. ‘Hello, Mouse,’ he said loudly. ‘Go away, I’m trying to sleep.’ Whoever had come up with the phrase ‘as quiet as a mouse’ had obviously never met one.
Scratch, scratch. Claws on wooden floorboards, coming closer.
‘Shut up,’ Gruff said, but the scratching continued. He leaned over and turned his light on to scare the mouse away.
On the floor beside his bed, glimmering at the end of a trail of water, was the stone from the geology cabinet.
Gruff bit back a yell of shock. He stayed still as a startled mouse himself, staring at the stone, waiting for it to move.
It did not move.
It’s come to get me, Gruff thought wildly.
But why? Why had it moved towards him in the museum? Why had it found him on the beach? Why on earth was it in his bedroom?
Perhaps it wanted him to do something.
‘What?’ Gruff hissed, angry suddenly. ‘I don’t know what to do!’
Apart from finish the sword. And that was a pretty unhelpful instruction since he had no idea what it meant. Perhaps he should have taken the blacksmith’s hand. Fear had stopped him, but now he felt only desperation to know what she wanted. If he had seen the blacksmith and the Weeping Stone had wept, the island must be in terrible danger. Finish it, or he’ll kill us all.
The small lump of rock glinted in the light from Gruff’s bedside lamp, water pooling around it on the wooden floor.
He was part of whatever was going on, however he felt about that. He may as well leap in with his eyes open.
Just like that, his decision was made. Gruff threw the duvet back and got out of bed. He dressed quickly, in jeans, long-sleeved t-shirt and wool jumper. Steeling himself, he picked the stone up. Cold salt water trickled between his fingers.
He crept downstairs and pulled his trainers on at the door before lifting the latch and slipping out. The moon shone so brightly he could almost see colour between the deep black shadows. He rounded the farmhouse and set out across the fields towards the Weeping Stone.
Brine seeped from his fist to spatter the silver-green grass.