How it works

This is the interactive version of Two Stones. It has clickable links throughout it that will give you more information as you read.

Please remember, though, that the information will only be relevant to the story and the characters at that moment of the story. Therefore, if the characters don’t know something, neither will you. Sorry, but there can’t be any spoilers. Mind you, these clickable links will gradually show more and more information on the same topic as the characters learn more and do more.

Lastly, to make things cleaner, there is a single file with all the information in it under the headings People, Places, Things and Other Elements.

I was hoping for something like Wikipedia, but alas! (PS. If you know how to create this functionality within Squarespace, I would be delighted to hear from you!)

For now, enjoy!

Prologue

He is in a city not his own, taking the first step on the path to his own murder. The moon, a cheap penny, glares at him from a high window. He grimaces at it in the dark of the room and climbs down through the hole in the stable floor. The passages are colder than he remembers.

He tucks the precious book into a cloth bag slung across his shoulders and draws it closed. Keep it safe for the lad!

Candle. Flint.

With light, and the smell of the dank darkness in his nose, he pulls the trapdoor closed above him.

Not time for dying yet. There would be enough darkness in the Unseen for him later.

No end of darkness for my iniquities. Now for that farmer boy.

With light, he takes a step, and another, and another. Candle-glow drags shadowfingers along walls. The passage squeezes in behind him, heaving him forwards.

Those Segreati folks! Shaking their disapproval off his shoulders, he spits. Curse them all!

Watch him now. One other will tread this path later and wonder at him. For now, he is at the centre of all the world and hope.

I know something that no-one knows. I know the secret at last. Time now to tell the lad.

The passage slopes downwards. He knows where it leads.

Darkness.

Chapter One

Father

The sound of weeping woke Rohan Nevacria Haftell. Not his own, though there had been many boyhood mornings when it was.

He slipped out of bed and stood, shocked awake on the cold, bare floor of his tiny loft. Listening to the rough, hacking cries, he slid one toe half into a boot, then paused. No. It didn’t sound like Hap the yardman’s voice. He shivered. Strange. If he wanted to know, he would have to be quiet. No boots.

He knew all the tricks of silence, of moving about the house beneath his father’s bearded disapproval. Mousequiet Rohan knew where the creaky boards were. All the noises in the house belonged solely to his father. No-one else. Except Hersinde, the family’s nurse-become-housekeeper, whose wise and defiant mischief kept Rohan upright.

Silent, then, he crossed to the ladder and started down, keen to know. The weeping became silent as he did, and Rohan was careful to miss the creaky rung four from the top.

At the foot of the ladder, Rohan hesitated. The door to the front room and scullery was open, as it always was, but the forbidden door was also open. The door beyond which he had never seen, that whispered to him in a voice he could almost hear,

Come come.

The door from which soft, choking sobs and anguished cries sounded on windless days when Rohan was the only one in the house. The door of his missing brother.

The shutters of his brother’s room had been nailed closed for as long as Rohan could remember, and the door bolted and locked. Almost every day, Rohan sat outside it in the empty house, thinking about the brother he might have had. A brother to wrestle with, to go fishing with, to sling packs on together for rambles past the far fences of the Gather Hills. A striding brother, a brother to shove the world aside with a laugh and take Rohan with him. But his brother was missing, never to return. Without him, Rohan’s sapling heart was still putting down roots, feeling for water in the dry dirt of his boyhood.

The weeping began again beyond the door, and Rohan realised in fascinated horror that it was his father. A hundred strange feelings collided inside his head as he listened, though he was more eager than afraid or ashamed to see what was making his father weep.

Rohan crept towards the door and peered around. The sight of his father kneeling at his brother’s bed ripped all the breath out of him.

And the soft urgent words that his father was murmuring! Rohan frowned at the wrongness of it. His father who could carry two sheep across his shoulders - this was no man to kneel! As though he were begging! And something in his intonation made Rohan realise that his father might have spoken the same words on this one day of the year for many years. Rohan frowned. Not his father! Even the hills stood back to make room for him.

Under his feet, a floorboard creaked, and Rohan knew that this time silence would not save him. His heart skidded.

His father turned on Rohan like he was two steps away from killing. His black eyes ploughed the still air, sharp as a Greenbeck plough, and his voice was like a collision of roaring armour. Even as Rohan’s futile fingers tried to protect his legs from his father’s imminent belt, he realised that his father was afraid.

“How dare you come here!” his father shouted, reaching for his shepherding crook and standing so fast that Rohan doubted he had ever knelt. “You will never come here again! Never, you hear!” The glazed wetness on his father’s cheeks terrified Rohan. “You’ll never be the boy he was, and . . . and if it weren’t for your deceiving mother, you would never have been born!”

Rohan trembled without speaking. He knew his father would belt him if he did. But his heart aimed itself fully at his father nevertheless, unafraid of the threat of his belt wrapping around his legs. All he wanted was the strong, gentle acre of his father’s hand on his shoulder.

Please smile at me, Father. I meant no harm. Not the red scream of his father’s glare.

His father reached down for his belt, began pulling it out as Rohan listened to its smooth, ripping promises of pain, his scrawny feet twitching cold on the floor. But his father hesitated, scowling, then turned and strode out through the front room, calling for the dogs as he went. The house shuddered against its pillars as he passed.

Cold and shivering, Rohan did not move, terrified his father would return. Alone in the passage, with his fists pressed firmly against his legs to prevent a belting, he wondered what he could do to earn his father’s smile.

Maybe if I could find my brother, Father would smile at me.

But he knew that was foolish.

He’s been gone for years! Doesn’t matter - that would make Father smile. Hersinde might know something about it.

Hersinde smiled weakly around a fit of coughing when he found her. She held a finger to his mouth, and wiped the wetness from his eyes. She had a way with him with her wide laughter and the warm lanterns that glowed under her papery skin. Her wise mischief fattened his underfed humour.

“Come now, young master. Yes, I heard your father too. But he’s gone now.”

She hacked out wet barks as though her throat was stuffed with rotting cloth. “The wise man falls six times and rises seven. Get yourself dressed properly, and you can be helping me with dusting.” Her hand was made of old petals.

“Where did my brother go? Did he . . . go to another country somewhere or just . . . vanish? Will he ever come back? And what’s special about today?”

She paused and frowned in the way adults did when they were thinking. “Your father remembers your brother every year on this day. But you shouldn’t be asking further, lad. That’s too dark for either you or me. Ask your grandfather, if you’re brave enough. If he ever comes back.” She coughed, and bent over, clutching her apron. “For now, this house won’t be dusting itself.”

“Dark?” he whispered. Rohan knew his brother had disappeared while out shepherding with his grandfather, and that was strange enough. Rohan loved secrets. “But . . . but . . . what if Grandfather doesn’t come back?”

Hersinde ruffled his hair. “We’ve some mat-making to do tomorrow. Ask me then. Maybe this coughing will be done by then.”

Grandfather. The old man who was never home, always off wandering to the fabled island city of Cleiadne and other strange places. Rohan’s father always growled and grimaced at the mention of his name. Once, twice maybe, his father had permitted his grandfather to tell of his travels. As eager as Tumble the puppy, Rohan listened, completely rudderless on his grandfather’s wide beckoning sea.

Tell me about the riders of Cleiadne, Grandfather! The walls thick as our house! The archers and knights and foot soldiers!

Pondering, Rohan dusted through the front room, along the main passage, up the stairs, until he stood within sight of the other forbidden door in the house. It breathed secrets to itself at the end of the top corridor past his parents’ room. He halted, the dusting cloth limp in his hand, staring along the corridor at it. Distant sounds registered on his brain, but the door had the most beguiling voice.

Come come, it whispered.

Rohan knew his father’s rule. You’re not allowed past my bedroom door. But Rohan was curious about doors and things that shut, going through them and coming back, and the door of the forbidden room fascinated him most. Perhaps child-eating goggies lurked within, perhaps it was a door to another country, perhaps his father had locked Rohan’s mysterious grandfather inside. Maybe Hersinde would tell him secrets tomorrow.

He paused. Maybe his brother was locked in there. Maybe that was the darkness Hersinde had spoken of.

The urging of his pulse stronger than his terrified feet, Rohan dropped his dusting cloth and walked past his parents’ room to stand outside the door. Perhaps if he whispered, his brother might hear.

All the air in his heart rushed out of his mouth when he put his hand on the handle and found the door locked. Even more followed when his father returned from shepherding, took him from his room and belted him. In silence. Perhaps the door itself had leaned down and whispered to Rohan’s father of his transgressions. The watching walls. Rohan sat on his bed and wept. Quietly so his father would not hear and belt him again.

Later, when he went to look for Hersinde, Elensie the maid shushed him. She was poorly, Elensie said, her mousy hands fidgeting, not well enough to see the young master. Rohan hoped she was well enough to tell him about his brother. There seemed to be little other hope for him. His father’s smiles were hidden in a secret room and his brother was the key.

As he sat in his room, it became clear to him that all the noise was draining from the house, what little noise it had. He couldn’t find Elensie in the scullery when he went to look, nor was she helping Hersinde in the kitchen with dinner, nor anywhere. And because it was denied him to call out, he sat on the doorstep and waited.

It was Elensie who found him. She had been wiping her eyes. She made choking sounds, took his hand, sniffling, and took him to Hersinde’s room in the servants’ quarters. Her room was neat and plain and he saw her loving hands in it everywhere. She was in bed. The lamp that Hap had fixed there on the shelf above her bed glowed with yellow light. Hersinde smiled when Rohan entered. Elensie knelt by her bed and held her hand, weeping openly. Rohan’s father and Hap stood bleakly in a small corner, their fists knuckling. There was too much silence in the room.

His mother shuffled in behind him, and peered over his shoulder. “Hersinde?”

“Lady,” she smiled. “Glad you brought him. Come here, boy.”

“What for?” he said, but as he stepped forward and took her hand, he knew full well what for. Through prickling, stupid tears, he longed instead for dusting with her in the impossible tomorrow, and weaving mats with rushes under the simple sun. Elensie stood and stepped back, sobbing. Even as she did, all the papery lanterns under Hersinde’s skin were set alight, glowing like waiting angels. Her whole life’s illumination swelled up in her face, as though she were witnessing far-off stars. She sighed as her light dimmed, leaking through the fragile porcelain of her skin, and her eyes wandered, as lost as children. Her skin lost touch with Rohan’s hand. Then her form shimmered slightly, and she vanished.

That evening, he lay in bed on his side, staring through tears at the forest of shadows twitching on the raftered ceiling. The image of Hersinde’s vanishing was scribed with soft light inside his eyes, and he remembered her with pathetic, bewildered fondness. His mother came into his room, and Rohan realised raggedly that she wanted to cheer him. He kept silent, like his mother always was.

She sat on his bed, and in her soft, musing voice, she told him of the Last Gate that only opened once in a thousand years to keep the pure-hearted from ravening giants. She didn’t say so, but Rohan thought that Hersinde had passed through that Gate.

Well, I want to open it. Wherever it might be. Open it and go through. Maybe my brother is there as well.

His feeble ten year old heart made feeble plans. Adults made no sense. The walls whispered. Maybe even his own loft room conspired with his father.

**********

In the morning, darkhearted without Hersinde’s papery lanterns, Rohan sat on the doorstep, waiting for his father, hopefully counting the occasions of his father’s smile.

Three times in ten years. He had stored the memories in the secret places where he hid his treasures. Counting on his right hand: the first smile on the thumb, when Rohan had fallen into the sheep trough two years ago. The second on his big finger, when eager Rohan, keen to please his father, chopped wood in the rain and then couldn’t get out of bed for two days with chills and fever. The third on his middle finger was for the time that his father bought the Crooked Hill field and flocks off old Brostedda for barely more than an ale at Uthbart’s Tongue. Rohan knew that smile wasn’t for him, but he counted it anyway.

Three smiles. Three fingers. The chances were against it, he knew, but he hoped that he’d move onto his other hand some day.

The front door opened behind him. Maybe today was the day.

He can’t be angry forever.

Rohan stood aside. He had his words prepared.

May I come with you, Father? May I help you today?

The thickfisted pillar of his father filled the doorway. Rohan opened his dry mouth, waiting for a smile on that bearded trench of a face, where laughter never stood a chance.

“May I - may - may I hel - ?”

His father paused, just long enough for Rohan to hope. “What are you doing here?” he snapped. “Get out of my sight!”

Rohan sagged heavily against the doorstep. Hope rotted in his throat.

“Hap!” his father yelled, and when the yardman stumbled from his barn, his father snapped, “Get a place ready for Hersinde’s stone!” and strode off to the shepherding path without waiting.

Hap was wearing a clean shirt, a wonder of itself. His hands and trousers dirty, but his eyes clear and his face as intent as he was able, he began clearing a sizeable space for Hersinde’s gardenstone, though not as large as his grandmother’s and elder brother’s. He glanced at the retreating back of Peregrine, then nodded quickly at Rohan.

“Can you hear it, Hap?” whispered Rohan when his father was out of sight, not caring that even Hap might turn him in to his father. “The house?”

Hap frowned, leaned on his shovel, and glanced back to where Peregrine was entering the shepherding path that led out through Hunters Wood to the Gather Hills. Hap cocked an ear to the door, closed his eyes tight and concentrated.

“I c’n ‘ear ‘lensie weepin,” he offered.

Rohan shook his head and sighed. Dear stupid Hap. Hap went back to digging.

But Rohan could hear it, the whole house mourning Hersinde. Already it had closed itself, holding in her memory against the brash day, keeping her laughter from slipping through the shutters with the breeze. With colours only Rohan could see, the house was painting the walls yellow for her cheer, green for the vigour she held on to until it leaked from her vanished fingers, white for her wise mischief that firmed up Rohan’s heart against the stern silence of his parents. Now, without Hersinde and her secret signals, their comradely conspiracies against his father, the rooms of Haftell Hall banged against his heart in raucous emptiness.

He wept quietly. No brother. No Hersinde. No smiles.

He had long known that none of the Elderdale girls would be interested in him when the time came to marry.

They won’t have you, his father had said. You’ve got nothing worth offering. You’re not even worth a quarter of nothing.

For the first time in his life, with a suddenness that frightened him, the doors of the house closed behind him. Without his vanished brother, without Hersinde, vanished into the Unseen, maybe through the Last Gate, he wanted to run. Run to a horizon and never come back. Find the Last Gate and never return. His father would never smile. With a start, he wondered if the Gate might be in Hunters.

He made his face out of steel so Hap and Elensie wouldn’t know what he was thinking. His mother was inside somewhere, being silent as always. He called for Tumble, the licking puppy, but Elensie’s quavery voice followed him out from her scullery, bumping off walls.

“Rohan! Where are you going? Your father said you had to be staying close, now that Hers - ”

He sighed, paused on the step and waited for her. Tumble’s bark and tongue reached him first; the dog licked his leg as Elensie appeared, wiping her eyes with her apron. Her mousy face was red.

“Beg pardon, young master,” she sobbed. “The house is all wrong-ended today. I’m hardly knowing which to be doing first or second . . . ”

Rohan’s hand moved to comfort her, though he hardly knew how. Hersinde had always been there to do any comforting. Heart and hands clasped awkwardly against pushing tears, he looked down. “I’m going into Hunters,” he muttered.

She fumbled in her apron pocket. “Watch out for puddles after the rains last night, then,” she said. “Splash ‘em and keep yon Green Folk from reachin’ up through the surface and draggin’ you down by your ankles.” She pressed a handful of dried cedar leaves into his hand. “Or throw some of these on the surface. That’ll keep the beggars down.”

He knew well all the warnings: Watch for thieving goggies! Stay clear of puddles and things that reflect, or they’ll be a-reachin’ up and snatchin’ ye by yer innocent wee ankles! That’s what Leighan mothers told their children. And be on your guard against giants! They’ll be a-slippin’ in through yer shutters and stealin’ ye from yer nightbeds!

Rohan made to thank her, but she had already turned back into the house, clutching the hem of her apron, weeping quietly. He honoured the stones of his grandmother and brother with a quiet moment. They were the last two in the long line of his ancestors’ stones that marched around the eastern and southern walls of Haftell Hall.

Rohan walked under the house’s eastern eaves, trailing a finger over the tops of the stones, though his father had warned him never to do so. Tumble followed him into the sunny cathedrals of Hunters Wood, where Rohan often went to listen to the trees.

Where birds had often seen him wandering alone through the still, grey spaces of Hunters Wood, aimless as daylight, making stories to explain to himself why he could hear the trees mourning. He was never sure if he heard them with his ears or another more secret sense. Whenever they sang, he would stand amongst their still shadows, breathing through his mouth, wonderfully entranced. Once when he told Hersinde that the trees of Hunters Wood were grieving because they had seen so many murders, she clipped his ear.

Now, as he went, intent on puddles, he threw a cedar leaf or two onto some. Humming aimless notes, he wondered if Hersinde was dusting the mantles and sills beyond the Last Gate. And whether his brother was there with her, laughing together. He knew that goggies lived below the surface of puddles.

Under his favourite horse chestnut, sticky with new spring buds, he saw a wide sun-faced puddle. He thought for a moment, then dropped his handful of cedar leaves. Robins and blackbirds sang above him, grieving for nothing now that spring was opening her bright doors. Tumble sat near him for a while, panting quietly, then wandered off to sniff at nothing and everything.

A solitary lark beguiled the air with song, but something dark and bleak took flesh and sat beside him, whispering cold words of urging.

Come below the surface. Come.

Rohan dusted his hands and stared at the puddle’s surface, uncertain. He called Tumble to his side.

Come below the surface, the voice lured. Come.

Rohan’s feet moved out under him, drawn towards it. He knew he shouldn’t, that terrible things lurked below the surfaces of puddles, but he just couldn’t help himself.

Three steps took him to where the reflected sun blazed into his eyes. The clean surface of the puddle - so beautiful! - held sky and water and a long sweet plunge. He blinked.

Come.

As he stared, strangely troubled, he realised that he wanted to feel his body grow strong and beautiful with light, and then vanish, like Hersinde had . . . To vanish forever? No. He knew he could vanish and then come back.

He staggered a step forward, almost unbalanced by the water’s pure witchery. He had never seen his own face before. Sandy hair, blue eyes, a face not quite filled out. He took a step closer, and a second, and looked in. Wind rippled the water. Rohan waited, watching the arcs of sun on the water shimmer and join. Darkly fascinated by the dangers and promises of puddles, yearning for Hersinde’s smile, he knelt and slowly lowered his face into the water.