The Druidstone

I close my eyes. Death is like a craving now. An insatiable thirst. I hunger for it.

When I look up, the prison guard is standing over my bruised body, his taunts lingering in the thick air of my concrete cell. “You will never beat us Finian, you weak, pathetic man.”.

In a way, he is right. The game is rigged. The only ones who can win are those who wrote the rules.

I feel the cold, metal chain of Aunt Aofe's necklace in the depth of my prison jumpsuit pocket. As I coil the chain around my fingers, her words echo through my mind, “this is an extremely powerful amulet, Finian. It has been passed down through the generations for six centuries. NEVER let this out of your possession. One day you will understand why”. I take comfort in the weight of the heart shaped locket in my palm. Solid, strong, heavy. A survivor.

But do I want to survive?

I close my eyes, gripping the locket firmly. A vision of an Oak tree appears in my mind, it’s gnarled ancient limbs stretching gracefully up toward the heavens. You beautiful beast! What a wondrous memory of a long time ago, when the Earth was dotted with forests, and dolphins danced in the seas. When the cycle of life was left to turn of its own accord. Before the Insentients and their Geoengineering, turned the sun on itself and poisoned the ground with buried carbon. “Technology will save humanity,” they declared. “We will create a safe Utopia where no man shall ever have to work again! ”

The guard pulls my cell door shut and I peer through the bars across the vast wall of prison cells. Hundreds of stories of barred, concrete cabins stretch on as far as my eyes can see. Millions of us, the keepers of the earth, stacked one on top of another; kept alive by manufactured air and laboratory grown food rations. Allowed a mere two hours of artificial light per day. Utopia indeed.

Opposite me, Abdullah sits slumped in a corner of his cell, a bony finger tapping listlessly on the floor, the sickness of defeat weighing down his thick brow.

I return to the Oak tree in my mind and imagine the feel of weathered bark across my palms. Smooth but ridged. Old but new. Alive and dead. Then I see him, a wiry grey beard trailing the front of his Druid cloak, perched casually between the boughs of the Oak;. I rub the locket and his face becomes vivid, dark smiling eyes peering out beneath the hood of the cloak. I rub the locket again. I hear his message but, strangely, his mouth doesn’t move. It is a message for a thousand generations.

“What is in your hand?”

Eyes still closed, I feel for the locket's clasp and snap it open. The Druid smiles and something inside me stirs. An electricity tingles up my arm and the weight of my body seems to evaporate. For the first time in years, I feel light.

When I open my eyes, I see the first one. The crack in the concrete is thin, but it’s definitely there. Through the crack, the tiniest of shoots is creeping through. Almost involuntarily, a laugh rises up from my chest and explodes into the air.

Abdullah stops tapping and looks over at me with surprise.

I watch the shoot climbing victoriously up the concrete wall, the crack expanding into rivers of broken concrete as it grows. The locket is shaking now and I am compelled to lift my arms to the heavens, just like the branches of the ancient oak. Just like the laughter, the song falls out of my mouth. The notes seem to be met by a chorus of ethereal voices and as they join me, the shoots grow longer and start thickening into branches.

Abdullah is standing at the bars of his cell now, looking over in disbelief at the Oak sapling that is now penetrating through the wall of my prison cell.

I throw the locket to him and he catches it in one hand, staring curiously into its glimmering stone centre. I watch him close his eyes and I know that he remembers too. Suddenly, his body straightens and he starts to spin. Whirling in a memorising circle, never falling off centre; dizziness strangely evading him. The cracks start appearing in his cell wall too and sure enough green shoots penetrate the walls and commence their ascent across the cell, breaking apart the walls with every inch. There is radically something different about him: his face looks younger and he seems to be emanating light.

The other prisoners are watching us now but not in disbelief. The whisper of a memory is written across their faces. They remember too. One by one, their faces light up and their bodies stand tall. The songs fall from their mouths and they lift their voices high, each note joining harmoniously with their neighbours. Every mind connected as one.

The guards coming running over now, panic in their voices. But it was too late. We had united as one. The keepers of the Earth

I close my eyes. Life persists. But the war is not yet won.