no money or literacy, only the wind in the trees and the old stones. I’ve been reading of Arthur, shapeshifting like the immortals but those gods belong to this time more than the warrior king and his bright sword, glinting out from the early Dark Ages. There were still spirits of forest and stream when Arthur rode to war but they were stepping back into the shadows. They were already many thousands of years old, at the height of their powers when people dragged the stones up the steep coombes to this place. Or did they have horses to help them by then, wild-eyed and painted, racing along the chalk tracks? My pace is slower, each step a breath. There’s a past here even for me, running and ducking inside the structure as a six-year-old on a day out from our house on the base a few miles away. Time not a river, time a quiet lake too deep to measure.