Story: Stone Circles
Written in response to the prompt to "write about some aspect of Stonehenge that impresses you."
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"This change from 'some rocks you eat your sandwiches on' to 'world heritage site' within my own lifetime is a fascinating transition in our collective evaluation of Stonehenge."- reader comment on "Stonehenge Road Tunnel Plan: Some Say Victory, Others Say Disaster” in The Guardian
Sofia was sitting by the window, reading her solar tablet, when she suddenly looked up. “Mum, let’s go to Stonehenge.”
“It’s a bit of a drive, sweetie,” Lauren replied. Prices had come down since the end of the last war, but petrol was still expensive.
“It’s only a hundred kilometers, and I’ve never even seen it. Livvy wants to see it, too.” Sofia smiled and nodded encouragingly as she spoke to her little sister. “Do you want to go with me and Mum to Stonehenge, Liv?”
“Stonehenge! Stonehenge!” the five-year-old shrieked with no idea what it meant.
“Maybe we’ll see a UFO.” Sofia held up her tablet. In a luridly retouched photo, beams of phosphorescent green light radiated from the iconic ruin, while ghostly figures walked among the stones. “The Sun posted photos of an alien landing there.” Sofia combined a genuine interest in history with a mania for all things supernatural. Lauren was not sure whether her daughter actually believed in these tales of the paranormal or just thought they were bizarrely funny. Or both.
“Your school should take you there. My class went when I was in first form. Though we didn’t see any UFOs. It’s a shame that with all the funding cuts, they can’t afford school trips anymore.”
“We could go on our own, couldn’t we? The website says it’s still open.” Sofia read from the tablet, “‘Open every day of the year excluding bank holidays’.”
Livvy ran in circles, singing, “Let’s go to Stonehenge! Let’s go to Stonehenge!”
“Maybe. I’ll have to see if I can get a Saturday off from work.” Nowadays, the hospital was always short of staff, but she hadn’t taken the girls on an outing in ages.
Time off from work was arranged so they left early on the next Saturday. The plan was to visit the World Heritage site then stop for tea in a nearby town. Lauren hadn’t been down A303 since the early 2010s. The Salisbury plain was as knobby and green as she remembered, but it was strange to see robots at work alongside the farmers on their tractors. A mile before Stonehenge, they passed the gaping maw of the unfinished bypass tunnel, abandoned in the wake of the Great Decline.
Why didn’t the government just move the damn road? Lauren thought. Instead, they’ve left this bloody mess. A fitting monument to my generation. We never finish what we start-wars, political reforms, vaccine development, you name it. Five thousand years from now, archaeologists will be scratching in the dirt, trying to figure out why we dug this great, useless, mucking hole.
On the horizon, Stonehenge appeared. Sofia hung her head out the open window, staring in silence as A303 drew near the ruins. From the back seat, Livvy asked, “Will they have chocolate cupcakes, Mummy?”
After a stop at the visitor center, they took the tram to the monument. Nothing seemed as large as Lauren remembered. Maybe because she’d been shorter then, or maybe because visitors were now kept farther back. A transparent barrier, at least three meters tall, surrounded the stone circle. Despite the signs asking visitors to please avoid touching or leaning on the security wall, the lower half was blurred with countless handprints, large and small.
Next to one of the signs, Sofia pressed her nose against the glass. “I wish we could touch the stones. They’re supposed to be channels for psychic energy.” She fiddled with her optic, trying to adjust the glare settings.
“I know, it’s too bad. But the government has to protect it for everyone to enjoy.”
Since it was a Saturday, the circular viewing path was packed. Robes flapping in the wind, a group of neopagans chanted softly as they walked. Two German tourists discussed a map. A toddler wailed with boredom. Yet above the commotion, Lauren still could hear the wind hissing among the stones. What are you trying to tell us, old rocks? What draws people to this desolate place?
They walked around Stonehenge twice, with Sofia pointing out different features. She was an enthusiastic guide, though her knowledge was a strange mixture of tabloid ravings and scientific research. She was clearly disappointed when Lauren said it was time to go, but Livvy had reached her sight-seeing limit.
As they drove down A303 toward a local café, Livvy gave a shriek. “Look! There’s a little one!” She was pointing to a small circle of boulders in a field.
“Aw, it’s sort of cute. The world famous Chibihenge. Can we stop and see it, Mum?”
“We might as well since we’re here.” The stone circle stood in the open, without any fence, and the only guard in sight was an old, white-haired farmer. Lauren pulled down a side road then parked the car on the graveled shoulder. The three of them stood at the side of the road and stared.
“It’s broken,” Livvy said. The stones shambled in a disjointed circle; some leaned at dangerous angles while others had tipped over. Though the hay had been mowed neatly around the circle’s outer edge, thistles and spindly blue flowers grew waist-high in the open center. The air hummed as a row of agbots, painted in gleaming yellow and green, crawled across the field on their tracks, excreting bales of hay. The farmer walked behind them, a hand rake carried over his shoulder.
“Hey, that guy looks older than Stonehenge,” Sofia whispered. Both girls started giggling. “Maybe he built that stone circle.”
The farmer had seen them. He waved then tramped through the stubble to where they stood. “You lost, miss? A303 is back that way. This lane don’t go nowhere.”
“No, we just stopped for a look at the stones. That is if you don’t mind.”
“Most folks don’t bother to ask. Go right across the field if you’d like to see ‘em up close. They’re a bloody nuisance to mow around.”
“Thank you very much.”
“You’ve been up to Stonehenge?”
“Yes, the girls had never seen it. And I hadn’t been there since school. When did they put up the glass?”
“That was just a few years back. They keep adding more and more barriers. Up until the mid ‘80s, you could walk around inside and climb on the stones. Or sit and eat a sandwich on ‘em.”
“But people also used to chip off pieces of rock for souvenirs. They had to do something to protect it, didn’t they?”
“Why? Maybe it was meant to be used and not just stared at. Maybe it was meant to be chipped into souvenirs. No one knows what it’s for, not none of this.” He waved an arm to include the stone circle in his fields.
“Did you ever eat a sandwich on Stonehenge?” Sofia asked with a look of mingled horror and delight.
“All the time. Cheese and pickle on rye with a beer and a smoke. Until the government fenced it off.”
Sofia stared at him as if a mammoth had come to life and stood before her in prehistoric splendor. No one they knew smoked.
Shading his face with one hand, the farmer squinted across the field. “Gotta adjust that damned robot. They’re more trouble than they’re worth. I’d trade ‘em all for a good hired hand. But you lot feel free to stay as long as you please.”
“What’s a hired hand?” Sofia asked as soon as he was gone.
“Someone who helps a farmer with his work.”
“But robots work faster and harder. Why would that farmer want a person instead?”
On the far side of the field, the old farmer dragged the hand rake back and forth, tidying up after the machines. “Maybe he is just used to working with people. Sometimes it takes a while to adjust to change.” Lauren wondered how many children he had lost to the pandemic.
She followed behind as Sofia and Livvy ran to the circle. Bird droppings and yellow lichens mottled the rough-cut stone. They had to step carefully to avoid the piles of votive candles and beer bottles. This had clearly been a low-budget project compared to Stonehenge-the slabs were barely two meters tall-but the girls didn’t seem to care as they rummaged about.
“What’s this?” In the palm of her hand, Livvy held up a smooth stone painted with green spirals.
“It’s probably an offering. Some people think these old places can bring them good luck so they leave little gifts. Like when we throw pennies in a fountain.”
Sofia spread her arms around one of the standing stones and leaned her forehead against it. “It feels warm! I can feel the energy!”
“That’s great,” Lauren said, though she suspected that any energy was simply the stored heat of the afternoon sun.
Half-hidden as she crouched in the weeds, Livvy began arranging some twigs in a circle. “I’m building Stickhenge,” she announced.
“That’s marvelous. People from all around the world will come to see it.”
Livvy’s smile was radiant.
Lauren sat down and settled her back against one of the standing stones. The warmth from the sun felt so good. When Sofia aimed the optic at her, she waved and smiled. Sofia took video of the megaliths, the beer bottles, the agbots, Stickhenge. Everything had to be documented to share with her friends back home.
“I like this one better,” she told Lauren, dropping to the grass beside her.
“It’s hard to believe this has been here for five thousand years. And will probably be here for the next five thousand years.”
Sophia frowned as she brushed an ant off her leg. “Do you think there will be any people left to see it?”
Lauren wasn’t sure what to say, though the question did not surprise her. Some days it did seem that the end of the world was in sight. The easy way out was to answer with a lie, but her daughter deserved better than that. “I don’t know,” Lauren told her. “Nobody knows. But I think that the people who built these stones must have wondered that, too.”
Singing to herself, Livvy poked the stems of blue flowers into the dirt around Stickhenge.
“Some years, the crops must have failed, and people died of hunger. Or they were killed during a war. Or a new sickness came, just like the mersa pox.” She had to swallow quickly to keep from crying. “It must have seemed like the end of the world. But some of the people survived, and they kept on building stone monuments, because that was the will of the gods or maybe because they didn’t know what else to do.” The old farmer was still raking stray tangles of hay. She remembered how she had washed the kitchen floor over and over again after John and the baby died. Anything had been better than sitting idle in that house.
“Please don’t cry, Mum.”
“If they could survive all that, then so can we. And they didn’t have computers or science or”--Lauren gave her daughter a quick hug-“smart girls like you.”
“Do you really think we will make it?”
“I think we have a chance, so long as we don’t give up.“ Though not superstitious by nature, she reached out her hand to touch the old rock. For luck. Because mankind certainly needed it. Had always needed it, she reminded herself. “Now let’s round up your sister and go find some tea.“
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"This change from 'some rocks you eat your sandwiches on' to 'world heritage site' within my own lifetime is a fascinating transition in our collective evaluation of Stonehenge."- reader comment on "Stonehenge Road Tunnel Plan: Some Say Victory, Others Say Disaster” in The Guardian
Sofia was sitting by the window, reading her solar tablet, when she suddenly looked up. “Mum, let’s go to Stonehenge.”
“It’s a bit of a drive, sweetie,” Lauren replied. Prices had come down since the end of the last war, but petrol was still expensive.
“It’s only a hundred kilometers, and I’ve never even seen it. Livvy wants to see it, too.” Sofia smiled and nodded encouragingly as she spoke to her little sister. “Do you want to go with me and Mum to Stonehenge, Liv?”
“Stonehenge! Stonehenge!” the five-year-old shrieked with no idea what it meant.
“Maybe we’ll see a UFO.” Sofia held up her tablet. In a luridly retouched photo, beams of phosphorescent green light radiated from the iconic ruin, while ghostly figures walked among the stones. “The Sun posted photos of an alien landing there.” Sofia combined a genuine interest in history with a mania for all things supernatural. Lauren was not sure whether her daughter actually believed in these tales of the paranormal or just thought they were bizarrely funny. Or both.
“Your school should take you there. My class went when I was in first form. Though we didn’t see any UFOs. It’s a shame that with all the funding cuts, they can’t afford school trips anymore.”
“We could go on our own, couldn’t we? The website says it’s still open.” Sofia read from the tablet, “‘Open every day of the year excluding bank holidays’.”
Livvy ran in circles, singing, “Let’s go to Stonehenge! Let’s go to Stonehenge!”
“Maybe. I’ll have to see if I can get a Saturday off from work.” Nowadays, the hospital was always short of staff, but she hadn’t taken the girls on an outing in ages.
Time off from work was arranged so they left early on the next Saturday. The plan was to visit the World Heritage site then stop for tea in a nearby town. Lauren hadn’t been down A303 since the early 2010s. The Salisbury plain was as knobby and green as she remembered, but it was strange to see robots at work alongside the farmers on their tractors. A mile before Stonehenge, they passed the gaping maw of the unfinished bypass tunnel, abandoned in the wake of the Great Decline.
Why didn’t the government just move the damn road? Lauren thought. Instead, they’ve left this bloody mess. A fitting monument to my generation. We never finish what we start-wars, political reforms, vaccine development, you name it. Five thousand years from now, archaeologists will be scratching in the dirt, trying to figure out why we dug this great, useless, mucking hole.
On the horizon, Stonehenge appeared. Sofia hung her head out the open window, staring in silence as A303 drew near the ruins. From the back seat, Livvy asked, “Will they have chocolate cupcakes, Mummy?”
After a stop at the visitor center, they took the tram to the monument. Nothing seemed as large as Lauren remembered. Maybe because she’d been shorter then, or maybe because visitors were now kept farther back. A transparent barrier, at least three meters tall, surrounded the stone circle. Despite the signs asking visitors to please avoid touching or leaning on the security wall, the lower half was blurred with countless handprints, large and small.
Next to one of the signs, Sofia pressed her nose against the glass. “I wish we could touch the stones. They’re supposed to be channels for psychic energy.” She fiddled with her optic, trying to adjust the glare settings.
“I know, it’s too bad. But the government has to protect it for everyone to enjoy.”
Since it was a Saturday, the circular viewing path was packed. Robes flapping in the wind, a group of neopagans chanted softly as they walked. Two German tourists discussed a map. A toddler wailed with boredom. Yet above the commotion, Lauren still could hear the wind hissing among the stones. What are you trying to tell us, old rocks? What draws people to this desolate place?
They walked around Stonehenge twice, with Sofia pointing out different features. She was an enthusiastic guide, though her knowledge was a strange mixture of tabloid ravings and scientific research. She was clearly disappointed when Lauren said it was time to go, but Livvy had reached her sight-seeing limit.
As they drove down A303 toward a local café, Livvy gave a shriek. “Look! There’s a little one!” She was pointing to a small circle of boulders in a field.
“Aw, it’s sort of cute. The world famous Chibihenge. Can we stop and see it, Mum?”
“We might as well since we’re here.” The stone circle stood in the open, without any fence, and the only guard in sight was an old, white-haired farmer. Lauren pulled down a side road then parked the car on the graveled shoulder. The three of them stood at the side of the road and stared.
“It’s broken,” Livvy said. The stones shambled in a disjointed circle; some leaned at dangerous angles while others had tipped over. Though the hay had been mowed neatly around the circle’s outer edge, thistles and spindly blue flowers grew waist-high in the open center. The air hummed as a row of agbots, painted in gleaming yellow and green, crawled across the field on their tracks, excreting bales of hay. The farmer walked behind them, a hand rake carried over his shoulder.
“Hey, that guy looks older than Stonehenge,” Sofia whispered. Both girls started giggling. “Maybe he built that stone circle.”
The farmer had seen them. He waved then tramped through the stubble to where they stood. “You lost, miss? A303 is back that way. This lane don’t go nowhere.”
“No, we just stopped for a look at the stones. That is if you don’t mind.”
“Most folks don’t bother to ask. Go right across the field if you’d like to see ‘em up close. They’re a bloody nuisance to mow around.”
“Thank you very much.”
“You’ve been up to Stonehenge?”
“Yes, the girls had never seen it. And I hadn’t been there since school. When did they put up the glass?”
“That was just a few years back. They keep adding more and more barriers. Up until the mid ‘80s, you could walk around inside and climb on the stones. Or sit and eat a sandwich on ‘em.”
“But people also used to chip off pieces of rock for souvenirs. They had to do something to protect it, didn’t they?”
“Why? Maybe it was meant to be used and not just stared at. Maybe it was meant to be chipped into souvenirs. No one knows what it’s for, not none of this.” He waved an arm to include the stone circle in his fields.
“Did you ever eat a sandwich on Stonehenge?” Sofia asked with a look of mingled horror and delight.
“All the time. Cheese and pickle on rye with a beer and a smoke. Until the government fenced it off.”
Sofia stared at him as if a mammoth had come to life and stood before her in prehistoric splendor. No one they knew smoked.
Shading his face with one hand, the farmer squinted across the field. “Gotta adjust that damned robot. They’re more trouble than they’re worth. I’d trade ‘em all for a good hired hand. But you lot feel free to stay as long as you please.”
“What’s a hired hand?” Sofia asked as soon as he was gone.
“Someone who helps a farmer with his work.”
“But robots work faster and harder. Why would that farmer want a person instead?”
On the far side of the field, the old farmer dragged the hand rake back and forth, tidying up after the machines. “Maybe he is just used to working with people. Sometimes it takes a while to adjust to change.” Lauren wondered how many children he had lost to the pandemic.
She followed behind as Sofia and Livvy ran to the circle. Bird droppings and yellow lichens mottled the rough-cut stone. They had to step carefully to avoid the piles of votive candles and beer bottles. This had clearly been a low-budget project compared to Stonehenge-the slabs were barely two meters tall-but the girls didn’t seem to care as they rummaged about.
“What’s this?” In the palm of her hand, Livvy held up a smooth stone painted with green spirals.
“It’s probably an offering. Some people think these old places can bring them good luck so they leave little gifts. Like when we throw pennies in a fountain.”
Sofia spread her arms around one of the standing stones and leaned her forehead against it. “It feels warm! I can feel the energy!”
“That’s great,” Lauren said, though she suspected that any energy was simply the stored heat of the afternoon sun.
Half-hidden as she crouched in the weeds, Livvy began arranging some twigs in a circle. “I’m building Stickhenge,” she announced.
“That’s marvelous. People from all around the world will come to see it.”
Livvy’s smile was radiant.
Lauren sat down and settled her back against one of the standing stones. The warmth from the sun felt so good. When Sofia aimed the optic at her, she waved and smiled. Sofia took video of the megaliths, the beer bottles, the agbots, Stickhenge. Everything had to be documented to share with her friends back home.
“I like this one better,” she told Lauren, dropping to the grass beside her.
“It’s hard to believe this has been here for five thousand years. And will probably be here for the next five thousand years.”
Sophia frowned as she brushed an ant off her leg. “Do you think there will be any people left to see it?”
Lauren wasn’t sure what to say, though the question did not surprise her. Some days it did seem that the end of the world was in sight. The easy way out was to answer with a lie, but her daughter deserved better than that. “I don’t know,” Lauren told her. “Nobody knows. But I think that the people who built these stones must have wondered that, too.”
Singing to herself, Livvy poked the stems of blue flowers into the dirt around Stickhenge.
“Some years, the crops must have failed, and people died of hunger. Or they were killed during a war. Or a new sickness came, just like the mersa pox.” She had to swallow quickly to keep from crying. “It must have seemed like the end of the world. But some of the people survived, and they kept on building stone monuments, because that was the will of the gods or maybe because they didn’t know what else to do.” The old farmer was still raking stray tangles of hay. She remembered how she had washed the kitchen floor over and over again after John and the baby died. Anything had been better than sitting idle in that house.
“Please don’t cry, Mum.”
“If they could survive all that, then so can we. And they didn’t have computers or science or”--Lauren gave her daughter a quick hug-“smart girls like you.”
“Do you really think we will make it?”
“I think we have a chance, so long as we don’t give up.“ Though not superstitious by nature, she reached out her hand to touch the old rock. For luck. Because mankind certainly needed it. Had always needed it, she reminded herself. “Now let’s round up your sister and go find some tea.“