Little Boy Of The Mountain K
--K--
The child was able to re-arm and loose his sling with one hand, and with the other he guided the donkey (whom had never been perturbed by the boys' battle-play from the saddle). The boy was very fond of Clipper, and so too the trusty donkey appreciated his ambles with the farmer's son. The little boy patted his friend and tickled his ears. The slope of the track began to level out.
Alternating with the sling, he practiced loosing it with one hand, and then with the other. He was getting quite accurate, and could hit the path-stones from many yards away.
On his right, out of the haze and mist the standing stones were now fully revealed.
This was a strange place. There were nine great stones in a ring, and these surrounded a shallow bowl-like crater, which of old was made, it was said, by a falling star that crashed to earth, leaving a smouldering lump of strong iron in the ground.
Rustic legend told that ancient men dwelling here had erected the ring of stones and worshiped the fallen star. But in later ages, when the reverence for the iron was forgotten for a time, and the peopling of the lands had changed after many wars, other folk had turned the crater into a water reservoir by building up the sides with masonry, and they had planted what would become eleven great oak trees rooted in a ring around the circle of stone and it's pool.
The iron star was submerged beneath dark waters, and though not forgotten utterly, it lost it's significance to the people, and the terror of the stone faded. The boy was now passing by this old, empty, unused (and to him, slightly spooky) reservoir. For years it had been used by his own family, but they had abandoned it for a new one nearer to the house - for the southern wall of this older had caved in and collapsed and its' water was emptied after a series of powerful rainstorms a few years back. A great lighting and thunder had cracked the sky then (as it had on the ancient night when the star had first fallen, but none remembered this).
The iron star had been revealed at dawn, and a number of the surrounding folk had come to see it. The boy could still remember that exciting morning. The stone, after long years beneath the quiet water, had grown an unusual rough patina that exhibited curious honey-comb patterns.
The boy did not often go into the ring, before or after the storm breached it, for while the star-stone exerted a strange pull on the mystery-loving lad, he was simultaneously repulsed by it. The thought of it being from Outside cowed his usual bravery.
After the great storm, Obúdius had helped dig and build the new reservoir that replaced the ruined one. This was closer to the house, smaller in area, but deeper. The new pond, with the young boy's help, his mother and father had landscaped, surrounding it with interesting plants and shrubs and rockeries. It was partially covered with lily pads, and upon these little frogs croaked lazily in the evenings.