This time they are in Cornwall. They live in a cottage just outside of Marazion overlooking St Michael's Mount. Annie is a artist who makes jewellery from local amethysts to sell to the tourists in her shop in Penzance. Charlie has been trying his hand at writing and has his third novel currently with the publishers.
They find the amethysts by scavenging the mining tips that are scattered across Bodmin Moor.
*****
We pick up the story with Snooky stuck down a hole.
I pulled the
white cloying soil away from her and found that her muzzle was caught up in
what looked like wire netting. It
was probably old mining waste.
Snooky whined a little as I gently started to pull the wire away from
her. She wriggled wanting to get away.
The wire gave way and I passed Snooky out of the largish hole we were in
to Annie.
It was then that
I became aware of a high-pitched sound that was almost out of my hearing
range. I shook my head and tried
to focus my hearing. Was it
tinnitus? It certainly was a high
frequency, was that what Snooky was following? I started to feel a little lightheaded.
‘Hey Annie can
you hear that?’ I poked at my ears.
‘What?’ She was
busy trying to hold a wriggling dog that was attempting to lick her face.
‘That noise, I
can hear a noise, sort of high pitched whirring noise, can you?’
She looked
puzzled. ‘No, perhaps it’s that.’ She pointed to a mobile phone mast on top of
a nearby Tor.
The noise seemed
to make everything brighter. I looked to the back of the hole I was stood in
and something didn’t seem quite right. Lodged in the soil was something a
squareish, something that was out of place.
Square things
with straight edges are not made by nature. This was manmade and it was deep in a spoil heap that could
be a couple of hundred years old.
I was intrigued, but a little irritated by the sounds in my head. I pushed my shovel forward and
started to clear around the object.
It definitely wasn’t mining waste.
I reached down
and pulled what looked like a well-tooled metal box out of its resting place.
It was roughly the size of a Quality Street Christmas tin of chocolates but it
wasn’t square. It vibrated
slightly as I held it. I’d felt
vibrations like that before.
I was in a dark
corridor holding the hypersphere before me waiting for the redhats to tear me to
pieces.
I climbed out of
the hole and made my way down to the bottom of the pile where Annie and Snooky
were waiting for me. Snooky had
her harness on now – she wasn’t getting away again.
When Snooky saw
me place the box on the ground she whimpered and moved away and behind Annie. I
could still hear a high frequency whine in my ears.
Annie coupied
down and rubbed the top of the box with her fingers. ‘What’s this?’ she asked.
I shrugged.
‘Dunno, it was at the bottom of the hole Snooky was in, strange isn’t it?’
‘It looks old’
she said. ‘Is there anything in it?’
I picked it
up. The shape reminded me of
something but I wasn’t quite sure what. I counted the sides. There were
twelve. In my past life I had
trained and worked as an engineer so I knew it was a dodecagon. Interesting.
*****
I'm currently working on Chapter 3 where the Spriggan's make an appearance.(A spriggan is a legendary creature known from Cornish faery lore. Spriggans are particular to West Penwith in Cornwall.) There are going to be a lot of Cornish myths and legends interwoven with Celtic and Biblical mysticism in this story.
Stay tuned.
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