Crawling inside the cairn for anything other than a burial is forbidden. You know that. Everyone in your tribe knows that from the time of their first footsteps.
A storm worse than you've ever seen has blown in. You can't even make it back to the small copse of wood, never mind the sunken, subterranean grass-roofed stone huts that you call home.
To be out in this weather would be to give yourself to the gods.
Risk alienation or punishment: shelter with the rotting bodies and trapped souls of the ancestors in the cairn? Go to chapter [[23]]
Risk death but preserve honour: lie in the first hollow you find and hope for the best? Go to chapter [[3]]
You roll the huge, heavy boulder aside and slide into the cairn just as lightning strikes the ground above. You feel the power of the lightning bolt as it passes by you, through the packed earth and ancient placed stones. It makes you feel anxious inside to a degree you've never felt before. The hairs on your arms are sticking up. You crawl down the passage, turn, roll the boulder back into place, and turn again, pushing past the few roots that have made it through the soil and stone above. From thundering noise to near silence. There is no light save from a faint glow from luminous crystals in the walls. The crystals; legend tells of a rock falling from the sky and the tribe pulling parts of it up from the beach... but without having seen it yourself you aren't sure. When the stone is rolled back in the middle of the darkest season the low sunlight aligns with the passageway and light reaches the main room for the briefest of days. But for now, there is only that faint glow to move by.
The names of each builder are lost to time but it is clear that there were many of them. Nowadays it takes 30 people a full summer's day to move one slab from the cliffs up to the mound and there are 10 sets of 10 visible slabs inside (not counting any that can't be seen but are logically in there). And that's before soil moving is taken into account. Stories of the architect are told. Their name is remembered; Kirstin. The songs tell of how they started the project but it was their fourth grandchild that completed it. And there's no reason not to believe or embellish - that small a number of years is still unimaginable.
Down in the main vaulted area, you sit. Death is around every corner.
What should you do?
You're here anyway - go explore? Go to chapter [[2]]
Sit and wait the storm out? Go to chapter [[9]]
This place is creepy. Maybe the storm has passed already - go check? Go to chapter [[13]]Where to begin? Granny. You start with Granny. You slowly shuffle along the second tunnel on your left. Passing rows of niches with the skeletons of ancestors and the skeletons of dogs that have lived and been looked after by the tribe. You find her carrion-picked skeleton in an alcove - her flesh taken by the wind (and prey) long before it was buried down here. You remember the ceremony with fond sadness.
The skeleton is eerie in the dim light, so you sing a song to her that she sang to you as a child. A bridge to the past. The airflow around you somehow alters. When you reach the end of the song the silence feels vast and terrifying.
Expand your mind - ask her questions of the afterlife and universe? Go to chapter [[8]]
Use a bit of humanity - submit to the silence? Go to chapter [[5]]
Unlock your heart - let your emotions take the lead? Go to chapter [[20]]Lightning zaps you. You feel your body charr and your mind leave its home.
Any search party will be hard-pressed to identify you.
You will never rest with your ancestors.
But you don't mind. Sitting leads to napping and napping leads to your discovery.
You awake to the sound of scraping. At once you realise two things - it's an elder pulling back the door stone... and... you're doomed.
With medicinal knowledge that only a handful of tribespeople will ever be entrusted with at any one time, the elder has well-better sight in the dark than you do. You are stoned with a fist-sized pebble thrown to hit you square on the front of your skull.
Death!
You will spend the rest of eternity with your ancestors and will spend that eternity being nagged for desecrating their tomb. Zap!
You have reached both The End and your end. After a few minutes of sitting in solitude, you cry.
Nothing much else happens.
Ask her a question instead. Go to chapter [[8]]You cry.
Nothing much else happens.
Ask her a question instead. Go to chapter [[8]]Words are hard to get out so you stumble through a half-question about what the afterlife is like and you are met by a whistling wind that's part moan, part ether, all terror. You back away as quickly as you can whilst still trying to be respectful and not bump your head on the low stone ceiling. You thank her. In the last moment as you leave, you see a glint.
Investigate the glint? Go to chapter [[15]]
Crawl to a different part of the ancient burial mound and leave granny in peace? Go to chapter [[10]]
You shouldn't pry but you could leave an offering? Go to chapter [[17]]You only have so many items on your person. You aren't rich enough to own pockets - but are aware of their existence from some traders who have visited. You know clothing comes in three forms - draped, pinned and sewn. All you can afford... no, afford is the wrong word... all you have earned is one piece of hide and pinned at the waist. And another draped over your shoulders in the winter months. Barefoot. skin-wrapped with only hide, a pouch made of a rabbit's pelt - you are a complicated being with simple possessions. Excess is not a concept your meagre tribe has to deal with. The trader had tried to explain how they lived in a place with tens of tens of houses - a city they called it. They called this place a rural place. These were not concepts your tribe, with its meagre collection of stone huts, had to deal with either.
From the pouch that has hung around your neck since you could walk, you pull out a small carved spoon and contemplate it. Without it, you will be unable to eat some meals until you have made a new one. Nature is abundant in supplies but it will take you time. You will need to beachcomb for the perfect bit of hardwood, washing up from some distant forest. Since you have come of age you will not be loaned one by anyone - to do that would be to disrespect your standing... and to ask to borrow would show a weakness that you are not prepared to show to anyone. Carving a new one will take days, and days with no stew or soup will be hard... but you will endure.
As you think on the spoon you fondle your necklace. To give the rough gemstone rock from round your neck will be to honour the dead and dishonour the living. Your mother specifically gave this to protect you from accidents. It has been with you every moment of your life. She will be distraught at its absence.
You feel round to the back of your hair to the coiled, knotted, twisted length of hair and consider the drop in status of cutting it off. Even though you think that tradition is silly. Still - no tribesperson has ever become an Elder without having their hair like this. (At least not these past ten Elders).
Your nose piercing is made from a small mammal bone - the right hind leg of a water vole, to be precise. It has no value and could be replaced with any other small pointy bone or twig that you find.
That doesn't seem enough so you take the only item of practical value from your pouch - a flint knife. Without this, you would be unable to survive. The hours it took to make pale into insignificance behind the years of practice in making all of the ones that came before it. You'll make another.
Which essential item will you choose to abandon?
The spoon: go to chapter [[6]]
The necklace: go to chapter [[4]]
The braid: go to chapter [[19]]
The piercing: go to chapter [[12]]
The knife: go to chapter [[21]]You've barely crawled your body length when it happens; a rush of tilting, tumbling, bumping, slamming. You lay still, feeling the bruising emerging at various places across your body.
One explanation for falling through the floor is that the rainwater or the lightning strike has corrupted the stability of the ground. Another explanation is that the spirits are displeased. Especially displeased (from what you've had interpreted to you by the Elders they are rarely all that pleased). Another explanation is that they are rewarding you (it has been known to happen). To know for sure would require Elder judgement. For now, you only need to know that you must escape. As you start to move your body you are confused - the only light available to you now is a glow from a hole in the floor.
Drop down? Go to chapter [[16]]
Try to climb up? Go to chapter [[14]]
Shout for help? Go to chapter [[7]]Up? You stand and immediately smack your head - there is no up. It seems that the rockfall has sealed you into a pit. You feel around - the space that you are in appears to be completely filled in - or maybe carved out? - apart from the hole in the floor through which you can see glowing rock. You slide through, falling up, feeling like you've been tipped upside down as you land back in the cairn. You are violently dizzy and taste blood in your mouth but recover in a few moments to gratefully realise that you are still alive.
Where next?
The next alcove has a smell emanating from it. You take a glance that way and realise it holds a body that begs closer inspection. It isn't just a skeleton. Has it even decomposed at all? Only skeletons should be brought down here, decay should not be the fast post-death decay, but only the long slow transformation from skeleton to dust.
An icy drip hits the back of your head and startles you. You take a moment to recover your wits.
Curiosity drives you on. You reach close and touch leathery skin. The head is tilted away from you and, with terror in your throat, you gently tilt it towards you. Not human!
You freak out slightly - in this half-light, it looks alive still. It isn't all that cold. Not as cold as it should be. Sleeping?
You address it Go to chapter [[18]]
You feel for a pulse Go to chapter [[11]]Wuss. Your feeble cowardly shout gains you your deserved reward - death by rockfall. Dealt by nature or spirits, it matters not.You make a small cough.
You make a louder cough.
As quietly as you can manage you chant the prayer the Elders sing to summon the sun each morning. (You don't actually want it to wake up after all!)
Its pink eyes open... and slowly it turns to face you.
Gripped by absolute terror, you black out.
Go to chapter [[22]]The best thing would be to know if it was still alive. You are not sure if you are up to the task. You look around in the dim light - as if any of the brave heroes of the tribe will appear at your shoulder. Instead, you turn back to the body. You're going to have to find your own bravery.
When you were a child your tribe didn't have the healing knowledge of the tribes from the big island where the sun sets. When trading deer hides folks from your tribe would sometimes witness someone being nursed... and next visit they would be up on their feet and in good health. And so a trade of sorts had been set - an Elder, a warrior, a fisher, a cook and a climber (or at least five people who showed slightly greater than average prowess in each role - not you) went to live and support the other tribe for as long as the sun took from being at its highest point until the seasons had come and gone and the sun was back to its peak. They came back with a few small changes to how to do day-to-day things, a few more words, a few more plants which could be cultivated, and a lot more knowledge of healing. Of course everyone already knew of a pulse - anyone who has killed a deer has seen the way the blood pumps. And children are shown theirs at a young age mostly as an explanation of how animals and humans are not so different.
Now you have a chance to check for a pulse of this creature. So all you need to do is reach forward and touch the neck for a few seconds.
You feel for a pulse.
You feel a pulse.
You black out.
Go to chapter [[22]]In your excitement to find out what has glinted you disturb the skeleton enough that it makes a noise. No noise down here is good, but this noise especially. After a brief pause, you grit your teeth and press on, your fingers touching a small metal disc. You take it from under the body and crawl away with it, closer to the wall. Even close by, the glowing crystals offer barely enough light to read, but you can't read anyway so it barely matters.
You get lost in your thoughts as you try to comprehend the wealth, the value, the craftsmanship of a culture that can create hard, golden printed metal like this, and travel far enough that it was traded with a tribe such as yours (a tribe with no metal this hard, no tools able to make indents this precise, no written language beyond arrows and animals, no things of such value that a token could be necessary of all that effort, and a values system where everything is communal, greed is abhorrent, so why bother with signifiers anyway...)
You are so lost in your thoughts that you do not notice what is happening around you. Not at first anyway. Then you let out a squeak of surprise as you notice water bubbling up around you. You should not be sitting in a pool of water; you were not sitting in a pool of water a few moments ago! This place - of all places - should not have a pool of water!! Not a pool - a flood!
As you scramble around, water is bubbling up from the floor and quickly filling the space to the roof. The hard-packed clay floor has succumbed to an overloaded water table - either that or you are seeing first-hand why the Elders ward against the desecration of this tomb.
Cursed, you shall forever remain here... but your body will be removed in the morning by the Elders and left on the shoreline as a warning to all.You take one last look around the cramped space before you drop and, despite the lack of light, your eyes are drawn to a flat round pebble. Its warmth surprises you. Instantly you feel a rush of knowledge appearing in your brain.
You understand the medicine the Elders use.
You can speak the ancient language.
You can see the future...
...and it's terrifying.
Your fragile, untrained mind can't cope with the onslaught of knowledge. You drop the artefact and even before it hits the floor you are dead.With a great weight in your heart, you place the spoon at the head side of your granny. You sit there for a moment,
You hadn't anticipated feeling anything, which makes the fact that you are slowly feeling something altogether quite unwanted. The air in the cairn is warming. At first, you think it is just the warmth of exertion but it quickly moves beyond the warmth of running hard: you are quickly becoming much too warm.
Over the next few minutes something happens that you'll never be able to explain. Your body changes and strength grows - infinitesimally at first, but then faster and enough that you have a realisation that that is what is happening to you. You weren't weak beforehand but from the looks of your body you suspect that you will be able to hunt bison in the plains or even walrus out on the rocks by the distant cliffs. Your muscles feel hot - ready for action. The Ancients have truly rewarded you for your small sacrifice.
What will the rest of the tribe say?
The Elders have a way of testing different ideas, especially those which they cannot know the answer to. They take an idea that someone has and, through a conversation, presume that it is true and that that logic follows through and needs to be correct for the ideas that follow. Like if the stars are just really small suns and we have a sun then maybe there are really small other places where really small people live. Or if the shape of an arch can be logically seen to be a part of a circle then the sun - which seems to arch over the sky every day - maybe goes in a circle each day and it's the same sun that comes back each morning.
Which is a long way of saying that you think that the Elders are smart and will think your newfound strength through and come up with an idea. Breaking into this tomb and stealing ancient magic is certainly one of the logical options you'd come up with - there aren't that many sources of sudden strength.
Your body is gently cooling. You quietly thank the gods and crawl back to the exit. The next few hours will decide your fate - ostracised for breaking into the crypt or revered for your new strength. Either way you are going to start by carving a new spoon - you're already feeling hungry. Well done for surviving the night in this most ancient of memorials. Your clumsiness returns almost instantly as you set it down on the headstone - instead of setting the gem necklace down gently, your knee bone rolls over a small piece of gravel in a most agonising way and you fall awkwardly in pain. Your elbow and chin both hit rock and you cause irreparable damage to the skeleton's ribcage. With no protection from accidents, you are certain not to make it to your next birthday... you aren't to know it but the cut to your chin has already introduced an infection that is novel and will not be beaten. Sorry, my friend - this was the wrong choice. You may not believe in luck, but you are unlucky now.Your small flint blade is sharp, but cutting thick hair behind your own head is pesky. A few strokes more than you'd admit and the lock is in your hand. You take it and place it down by the headstone. The loss of honour is instant but you won't feel it until you are out of here among the tribe. Something else is happening though - something happening more hastily. Somehow you know that you are ageing even though you can't see yourself. It would be great to be out on the hill at the mirror pool to see your face right now, hoping a breeze isn't causing ripples when you get there. As more seconds pass you realise that it would be a terrible thing to see your reflection right now - you are ageing to an age beyond anyone you have ever met. The lock of your hair has turned grey and turns to dust as your soul leaves your body, drifting in the faint draft of the cairn.Your bone nose piercing pulls out with ease from the hole that's been there since the end of your childhood. Setting it down on the headstone feels almost meaningless. You are almost embarrassed by the low level of value of the offering. Really. It's an offence. But it's what you've chosen. As you begin to move away the ground shakes slightly and you feel a skirving of soil from above you fall onto your head. Then the shaking gets stronger. That's the last thing you experience. The ancestors were not pleased by your offering. You have the briefest sensation of your body flitting between genders and then between different animals until you find yourself slithering your way across a blade of dune grass just a few metres above and to the left of where your lifeless corpse remains below. The sensation passes and, in a few moments, all that you remember and all that you have ever been is a snail. The knife. Strong enough to tear through meat. To be found without your knife is a foreboding of a loss of your fertility, or so the Elders say. But on this occasion, your punishment is much worse. As you set down the knife and back away you hear a tiny glimpse of laughter - like smoke vanishing into the air and leaving only an impression. It is replaced by the building white-noise sound of the ocean. By the time you can think of something other than the noise, you have forgotten where you are, who you are and why you are here. The library of songs you've learned over your lifetime - even the one you were most proud of, the half-day-long saga of how your tribe moved from the most peaceful of islands after a terrible storm, has left your memory without leaving even a single stanza.
The punishment of the gods is relentless.
Without knowing why you are here you cannot hope to leave. You go to sleep in a niche in the wall.
Forever. You come to, thinking of how you just dreamt of how you blacked out right after having met something outside of any of your experienced animals or humans. You look over to the closest stone slab with relief and see that it is empty. Then a shuffling sound reveals the alien backing towards you from another space in the cairn. Sweat is pouring down your back and face. You're trapped anyway so you stay still.
Carrying a clay pot and some sticks, it turns and motions a hello with a small wave and a nod. Instinctively you wave and nod back. It smiles. You think it looks older than you and as it moves around, cramped by the low ceiling, it doesn't seem to move with ease. (But then if you'd been here a while you'd probably be all out of stretchiness and suppleness from running around outside too!)
It sits cross-legged in front of the pot and sets it on a few twigs. Even in this partial light, the wood looks damp but a snap of its fingers and the fire is alight. It smells of incense. The brightness stuns your eyes for a moment. You both watch the pot, as that is your custom. (A custom that makes simple sense - a burned meal will garner hatred from the whole tribe so you or anyone else responsible for the meal watch a cooking pot intently and stir regularly). Shapes from the flames dance in your eyes but you're looking out for the bubbles, knowing that burning will follow swiftly if the pot is not removed or stirred. But you needn't worry - you're with a cooking pot master. Whatever is in the pot bubbles and is removed, without the need for bark or wet moss to hold the hot pot you note. Pieces of ash spiral as they float from the fire.
The person - for you cannot see how they are anything other than a person, even if they are not like your people - reaches into the pot and pulls out a few unidentifiable leaves or soggy bits of mushroom, tucks them into their cheek and closes their mouth. They pull out some more from the pot and reach forward to offer them to you, indicating for you to do the same. You do.
You're used to foods tasting unpalatable. During the dark months especially, any seed, nut or root can be of questionable flavour. So the fact that the herbal substance tastes of soil, sage and the stings of nettles is not so big a deal. You both sit looking into the fire.
Time passes. Suddenly you fall on your side, retching and retching until you can be sick no more. When you lie on your back the stone and earth roof above you peels back and you feel your mind zooming up into the stars. Light and space and the universe pass you by - nebula and asteroids and sights each more wondrous than the last all fall past you. You have lost all concept of time.
When you drift back you are met with an overwhelming need for fresh air and a terror that the stone may not roll easily - crawling out you don't even glance back, knowing that your guide would not want to be disturbed and not knowing how you know this.
You step out into a fresh dawn, the storm clearing the path for a most beautiful morning. You roll the stone back and amble back home, your mind forever altered in a way you'll spend your life attempting to unfathom.
Congratulations - you survived the night in the Chambered Cairn.