Trollhenge

So, NaNoWriMo is finished, and I did successfully meet my goal. :)  I also managed to write a couple of longer short stories with which I am immensely pleased and polishing up for varying purposes that I won't go into here yet.  But I thought I might sporadically post a few smaller ones.  They won't be polished but they should be fun.

11/11/20.  Prompts: The Sea of Trolls by Nancy Farmer; Darkhenge by Catherine Fisher.

 

There is a henge on the edge of town.

            It sits atop the hill behind the churchyard, its stones crouched atop swaying grasses up to your hip.  Unlike other henges, the stones aren’t particularly oblong, and the wind (it is quite windy) hasn’t worn them smooth.

            There is a lot of local lore around those stones, and the local postcards show them against the sunset, but no one knows who built the henge or what it’s supposed to do.

            At fourteen, Catherine had played at the henge plenty of times and was nearly old enough to know better than to meet Jeremy Sea there after dark.

            “I’ve seen it by daylight, of course,” Jeremy had said cunningly—he was new to town and, though seventeen, had immediately picked out Catherine.  It possibly had to do with the way her long, long ash-blond hair flowed behind her when she walked.  “But I didn’t want to go alone at night.  I wanted to go with someone special.”

            So there Catherine was, just before eleven, shivering in her light summer jacket at the bottom of the hill.  The moon shone fatly above, casting the land in its ghostly light.

            Fifteen minutes past, then another thirty.  In tears, Catherine turned to trudge home alone—but as soon as she reached the road, she saw Jeremy’s car parked there, dark and abandoned and . . . oh, no!  She’d made a terrible mistake—or he had.  He must have been waiting on top of the hill rather than at the bottom! 

            Catherine ran back, eyes rolling with a different sort of tears.  She swiped them away, embarrassed and hoping the darkness would hide the evidence, and panted up the hill.

            She slowed to a walk three-quarters of the way up, heart pounding in her throat.  Why was she suddenly afraid?  It made no sense.  But afraid she was, and that fear stopped her from calling out Jeremy’s name or breaking the silence.

            She stopped fully a pace before cresting the hill.  Something is wrong, she thought, and didn’t know why she thought it.  Catherine tried to shake her uneasiness, but it wouldn’t budge, and she found herself slowly creeping around the top of the hill, looking inward for any person-shapes.  She saw no one, but the feeling of wrongness grew and grew until it finally burst upon her what caused it:

            The stones had changed.

            Some that had before crouched low stood straight and moved to the edges like sentries.  The rest had clustered near the center of the hilltop, as if bending over something.

            Catherine took a step back down the hill a step, then another.  She turned and ran, but her foot caught on a low stone, and she tumbled head over hills down the hill.

            The grass cushioned her fall, and she kept her breath.  She never even stopped moving, just rolled onto her feet and fled, not looking back, the half-mile home.

            The henge watched her go.