Cait was the first to arrive as the sky was beginning to lighten. How bakers like Cait and her husband Brice get up before the cockerals crow I’ll never know.

“I brought two loaves for us. I’ve also got a fresh water bag. Do you have any cheese to go with the bread?”

I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes. “Yes, cut some out of that pot against the wall.”

I splashed some water in my face as the Valcars came through the door. They had collected Mathilda on their way, so now our little troop was complete. Lucy waved two cooked rabbits at me and dropped them into a bag at her waist. Both she and Hume had water bags at their hips and a long bundle strapped to their backs.

Hume led the way, with Lucy following the rest of us. It was mid-morning when we puffed over the last crest and saw the meadow with the Stones off to the left. Cait took a deep breath and said, “I’m not 15 anymore.” Hume waded through the knee-deep grass and led us to a halt as we reached the Stones.

Lucy pulled the cooked rabbits out of her bag, along with two knives, and handed one knife to Cait. She and Hume sat down in the grass, and she started slicing pieces of rabbit onto a cloth. I guess we eat now.

Cait sat down as well and began slicing the bread and then the cheese and handed pieces around. Mathilda and I stared at the Stones. Almost twice the height of a man, I couldn’t imagine how they got here, but here they were.

“Do we go inside the circle?” Mathilda asked.

“We wait.” Hume responded.

I had just finished my slice of bread, rabbit and cheese when “Good Morning” sounded in my mind. It didn’t sound like a man or woman, just my mind heard the words without going through my ears. I looked around, but there was nothing to see but Mathilda’s wild eyes and a tiny smile at the corner of Cait’s mouth as she watched us.

“Cait! You’ve been here before and never told us!” I accused.

She looked over at Lucy and snickered. “Yes. But it is something you need to experience yourself.”

Mary’s Mercy! Both of them?

“Uh. Good Morning to you…”

“Anthracyda.” finished Cait.

“Welcome to the hillside, Marion and Mathilda. And welcome back Hume, Lucy and Cait. To what do I owe the pleasure?”

I felt like I was feeling colors as the voice spoke in my mind, but feeling colors makes no sense. I can’t describe the feeling of blueness and greenness and sparkle, but that was how I felt.

Mathilda tentatively offered, “You told the Vicar you were a neighbor. We thought neighbors should not be afraid to meet.”

“Does the Vicar know you are here?”

Mathilda responded, “He’s dead. He got sick and died. Did you do that?”

“No. That would not have been ’neighborly’.”

There seemed to be a sigh in my head. “If he was still alive, you would not have dared come, would you?”

I spoke up. “No. He would have accused us of trying to make a pact with Satan and we might have been hung.”

There was another mental sigh. “So much fear. So much envy.”

Hume spoke up again, “Easy for you to say. You don’t need to kill to survive, don’t have children to raise, and no one can hurt you.”

“True. My philosophy probably doesn’t work for you.”

I carefully asked, “Is the relic real?”

“You mean the human finger bone the Vicar kept waving around? It was a human finger bone if that’s what you’re asking.”

“No, I mean is it a finger bone of St. Thomas?”

“No idea. I’ve never met St. Thomas.”

“Are you here, in the stones?”

There was a little chuckle in my mind. “No. Humans put the stones up to mark where they talked to me and to make some calculations for seasonal planting.”

“So they never sacrificed anything here?”

“No. I would have suggested that was a bad idea and, if they have to do it for some misbegotten reasons of their own, do it elsewhere.”

“Can you come into the village?”

“No. I’m in the hills even farther away. This is about as close as I come to your village.”

“Can you cure the sick?”

“Depends on the sickness, but probably not. I might be able to give advice on what you should do.”

“Could you have cured the Vicar?”

“No. I didn’t cause him to become sick, either.”

Mathilda spoke up. “What could we give you to be good neighbors?”

“The people who set up the stones used to sing and dance here. That would be nice.”

Mathilda grimaced. “Our God might think we were worshipping you.”

“So sing songs about it for me to listen to and maybe I’ll come to know it better.”

“Him.” Mathilda said firmly.

“Him? Is there a ’Her’ god as well? In this world they normally come in pairs.”

“Actually there is a trinity and all three are ‘him’.”

The mental voice laughed. “I think we need to talk about something else.”

Mathilda asked “Are you a him or her?”

“I’m an it.”

“An it? What are you?”

“Call me a small god or a spirit of the hills if you want.”

I joined in. “You told my husband you were a child of the EverChangingIs. What does that mean? Who or what is the EverChangingIs?”

“Everything arises from the EverChangingIs. Think of a thunderstorm. There is wind and rain. The rain is uncounted drops of water. Almost everything is the drops of water. From time to time, there is lightning and thunder. The small gods are like separate lightning bolts that last a really long time. Each of us are different and we are very unlike raindrops.”

“So you think the EverChangingIs created you?”

“You believe God is a person who decided to create everything. We don’t think the EverChangingIs is a person any more than we think a thunderstorm is a person. It just is and rain and lightning and thunder happen.”

“We?”

“Small gods. We can talk to each other. Some of us can travel beyond the stars, though I can’t”

“How many are you?”

“I don’t know. Not that many.”

“So what do we do now?”

Cait, silent this whole time, spoke up.

“Anthracyda. Can you show Hume and Lucy’s aura to Marion and Mathilda?”

Suddenly I could see colors glowing around Hume and Lucy. The glows expanded and, when they touched, there were little sparkles all through each glow. Then the glows faded.

Cait said “When we sent my daughter Fiona and Alastair Cullane up here, there were no sparkles. Fiona said it was just an ugly bruise. They would not have been a good couple for each other.”

I choked. “Alastair Cullane knows? Is that why he left?”

Hume replied. “No. Anthracyda put Alastair to sleep before speaking to Fiona alone and doing the color thing.”

Cait laughed. “Fiona had some strong words for us afterwards telling us we should have warned her what to expect. She thought the Spirit of the Stones was just stories we told children.”

“As opposed to the Demon of the Stones stories. So it’s a marriage test?”

Cait said “Call it a second opinion. We knew Alastair was an ass and so did Fiona, but it was our way of letting Fiona ‘meet the neighbor’. We also knew Anthracyda could handle Alastair. Hume and Philip Ruderfurd escorted them so Alastair didn’t get any ideas on the way up or down the hill.”

“So Ruderfurd knows as well?”

Hume responded “You hunt in the hills, you come close to the Stones. Anthracyda can decide to talk to you or not. There were a couple of Border Riever bands that would have come over the mountain if Anthracyda hadn’t thoroughly confused them so I think its a good neighbor. We just have to be careful who we talk to about it.”

“Who else knows about the glowing test thing?”

“Duncane and Hannah Lyfelde. Elspet and Dauy Malison.”

“Dauy Malison the fisherman? What was he doing on the .. no, I don’t want to know. ”

I suddenly realized I wasn’t feeling colors in my mind anymore. “Is it gone?”

Lucy spoke up. “Yes. It said there was a doe somewhere over there having trouble with a birth and it wanted to comfort it.” She waved her arm to indicate further up into the hills.

“It can talk to animals?”

“And plants and trees, apparently.” Lucy replied.

“And wants to comfort them when they are in pain?”

“Yes.”

Cait interjected “The whole village knows that the Vicar tried and failed to exorcise a demon at the Stones. What do we say about coming up here?”

I chewed my lip. “I think we say we wanted to make sure we could be good neighbors, in spite of the fact that the Vicar tried to attack it. It agreed.”

I looked at everyone in turn, got a nod from Lucy and Hume and “yes” from Cait and Mathilda.