Free Boneland by Alan Garner

Lane.’
    ‘Who did you stay with?’
    ‘An old man. And his wife. They were small farmers.’
    ‘How did you come to be there?’ said Meg.
    ‘I loved them.’
    ‘Then what?’
    ‘He died. And she died six years after I’d got my doctorate and was at the telescope, and the farm had to be sold. It was tarted up and gentrified, and I went to Church Quarry and built the Bergli. I don’t go down Hocker Lane. It’s too dreadful.’
    ‘Where were you when the amnesia began?’
    ‘It must have been at the farm.’
    ‘And your sister? Where was she?’
    ‘I don’t know.’
    ‘Do you remember her being at the farm?’
    ‘Sometimes. I can’t be sure. Bits.’
    ‘According to the records, Elizabeth Mossock, of Hocker Lane, was your legal guardian, and the couple adopted you when you were twelve. Did they ever mention a sister?’
    ‘No,’ said Colin. ‘But I used to ask them.’
    ‘And what did they say?’
    ‘Nothing. Every time I asked they changed the subject. It seemed to upset them, though they tried not to show it. They wouldn’t talk about her.’
    ‘I’m not surprised,’ said Meg.
    ‘But they must have known, mustn’t they? They could have told me. They could have said.’
    ‘Oh, supple your kidneys. Let’s not add paranoia, Colin. Now. Listen. Hear me. I’m not asking you to accept this; only to consider it. What you’ve been describing is well recorded in the literature. It’s known as Missing Twin Syndrome. It creates the illusion of another self. It can be pathological, but it often has a physical reality, where one embryo has absorbed the other, or aborted it. Does that possibility ring any bells for you?’
    ‘Cuckoo,’ said Colin. ‘
Cuculus canorus
, long-tailed, rather sharp-winged; in flight sometimes confused with sparrowhawk,
Accipiter nisus
, or even kestrel,
Falco tinnunculus
, commonly windhover.’
    ‘You are not a bird,’ said Meg.
    ‘Then where’s my twin?’ said Colin. ‘Where’s my sister? Give her back. Where is she?’
    ‘Good question.’
    ‘Don’t ditch me, Meg.’
    ‘I shan’t.’
    ‘What am I going to do?’
    ‘It’s a poser,’ said Meg. ‘Now you’re presenting juvenile psychopathy. That’s greedy. But getting you sectioned isn’t an option. Yet. So how’s about inviting me to dinner? A girl needs a break sometimes.’
    ‘I’d like that very much,’ said Colin.
    ‘You’re on,’ said Meg.
    When his legs could walk and his hands could hold and his fingers speak he went from the lodge the length of three days’ hunting down beside the river towards the Flatlands, to the earth where the hammers grew.
    He searched about the bank until he found two that were firm. One was white and black, the other yellow and grey. He pulled them from the mud and moved them in his hand. They were ripe to be taught their ways.
    The hammer rocks were as hard as the Motherbone, but not so hard that they bruised or flawed the blow. They were not as fine as the bone, but glittered packed night, and stars that would fly as they hit and worked. He took them and climbed back to the hills.
    He rested, shaping his thought; and the next day he went and sat in Ludcruck between the walls of making. In each hand he held a hammer stone and sang to them the story of the world and how they came to be. He told them their names and how the spirits had grown them in the earth. He told them the Motherbone that they must strike without wound and how his hand would help and his fingers teach. He moved them to find how they would turn, and to make them know how they would sit and take knowledge from his palm. He moved them so that his fingers knew to guide, and he sang for learning from the old, for them to give his eye their skill, to hit with wisdom and to guide his song. This was the last bone that he could carry from the Mother. If the blades he brought from it should break or he not cut, the woman would be kept in Ludcruck at the rock veil and the world would end.
    When he had