The sign of bells
It was just past noon when we came upon the wall near Compton Chamberlayne. It was not on the map, which seemed odd for such a substantial structure. Built of weathered stone, it was up to eight feet in height and extended for what seemed like a considerable distance. It looked like an old estate boundary, sagging in places, swagged with ivy, its stones greened and eroded by damp and moss.
And there was a hole punched through it. As if the wall had forgotten itself, collapsed chunks of masonry lying jumbled like old fallen memories. A pale, sinuous woody stem of ivy fell vertically across the opening like a twisted spinal cord. Beyond, what looked like old hazel coppice and brambles.
Margot said at once, “Well, that’s a door.”
Then, without a word, Derek clambered through, and because one cannot let Derek have all the fun, I followed.
The ivy brushed me lightly as if it were checking my shape. The stone was cold and crumbling. The woody stem pressed against my shoulder as I squeezed past, like a finger on the page, marking the place where the story got interesting.
The moment my boots touched the ground on the far side, the day seemed older. The air tasted of rain. I heard scrabbling behind me and turned to help Margot through what seemed from this side to be an impossibly small opening. Then we all looked around at the place we’d entered.
Before us, hazel stems rose in pale ranks. Each one seemed to be etched with faint, shifting sigils that vanished when stared at directly. A path paved with stone slabs curved away from the hole into taller woodland beyond.
“Just an overgrown garden,” Margot murmured, then fell silent as she looked up.
The sky was a sweep of stars, countless and cold against a blue backdrop, yet the landscape was bathed in an even, steady light, as if day had been poured over a sunless world, shining on the silvered stems of hazel.
I noticed a faint scent of peppermint, then realised it was just Margot. She always has a mint imperial on the go.
“I can hear bells,” she whispered.
Then she set off along the stone-slabbed path. Derek and I glanced at each other, shook our heads, and followed. We had heard no bells.
The hole in the wall was quickly lost behind us as the way curved between trees. Most of the slabs were smooth and unadorned, but now and then one bore a carved spiral or an inscription in an alphabet none of us recognised. Margot paused at these, making careful notes and taking rubbings of the lettering before we moved on.
The path straightened and we saw a hedge on each side. On inspection the hedge was hung with keys. Polished bronze and silver keys of all sizes; some simple, some intricately wrought, all hanging from living green stems, chiming softly against one another with a delicate sound.
Beyond the end of the hedged section the path entered a hollow and skirted a pond of clear water. We glimpsed reflections in the water of a different landscape entirely: low hills, a tower, a line of people walking single file.
We paused and Margot opened her notebook to sketch the scene and found that the page she turned to had filled itself with what seemed to be a map, charcoal lines showing paths and topographic features, labelled neatly in ink: “Quicksilver River”, “The Murmuring Woods”, “Ridge of the Sleeping Beasts”, “Shadow Pool Hollow”. There were also tiny symbols: keys, fish, circles, arches, stars; and that same spiral pattern seen engraved on the path.
Then we all heard the bells. A faint tinkling sound like glass being tapped by tiny spoons. The sound came from no direction and every direction.
We followed the stone path out of the hollow into a landscape of low hills cloaked in long waving grass, fine, pale green blades moving without wind. At the top of the first rise stood a signpost.
We walked up through the grass to the signpost. It was a wooden plaque, carved into an elaborate tangle of leaves and antlers, and from it seven small glass bells hung from silver chains. They trembled and chimed without visible cause.
“There are your bells,” I said to Margot.
Beyond the signpost the land sloped downward into a shallow valley, and there we saw movement.
We were not alone.
At first I thought it a fox. Then I thought it a child. Then it inclined its head, and a scatter of tiny pale moths lifted from it like shaken ash.
Suddenly it was standing right before us. We saw antlers and a face that was not a face but a suggestion of one, and shoulders draped in something that looked like moss, or a deep green cloak of heavy cloth falling to the ground.
The bells at the signpost stilled. Derek removed his hat.
“You have come far on a forgotten line,” said the antlered figure, a deep voice that seemed to come from far away.
Margot said “We are walkers. We mean no harm. We’re just curious.”
The figure regarded us, tilted its head. A scatter of moths drifted down to rest on the cloak as if settling after a storm.
“Welcome, Walkers.” it said. “Curiosity has a kind of authority here. The land acknowledges it more than you know.”
“You are not like the others,” the figure continued, “and that marks you. But remember this: the paths you follow are older than memory, and some doors, once opened, do not easily close. Some may never open again. Curiosity is a responsibility, and each step taken in its name shapes the world".
"Some things answer when called; others watch in silence, waiting for the next careless hand. Time bends here. See without taking. Hear without disturbing. Even when you leave, if you leave, the memory of your passage remains, shaping what is yet to come.”
A hush fell. Nothing moved. Then, far off, a horn sounded, like a summons, or a hunting horn. I felt uneasy. Derek obviously agreed.
“We should go,” he said, and put his hat back on, bowing as he did so.
The figure inclined its antlered head. Small moths lifted and dissolved into light.
“As you will,” it said.
The bells at the signpost trembled once, then stilled, and the figure drew back, fading into the valley.
I thought I caught a glimpse of riders cresting a ridge in the distance as we turned to find our way back to the wall. Then I recall nothing until the sensation of the crumbling stone under my hands, ivy brushing at my collar and my sleeve, as we stumbled through the wall onto the path under the sun, into the familiar world with its honest sky.
The hole in the wall gaped innocently, looking simply like an unremarkable maintenance problem.
Derek was missing his left boot. He was not inclined to poke his head back through the hole to look for it and had an uncomfortable trip back to the car.
There, Margot found that her notebook entries were missing, just blank pages. She intends to attempt to reconstruct them from memory, particularly the strange inscriptions on the path, and the mysterious map that had appeared. I wish her luck.
We found we'd been gone for three days. We still can't remember anything of our journey back to the wall, nor how Derek lost his boot.
Out of curiosity I returned a fortnight later with another walking group. I did not plan to go through the hole again, just to check it was there. But we could not find the wall, although I'm sure we walked the same path to where it should have been.
Yet since that day, sometimes when I am in the area, I catch the sound of tinkling bells like glass vessels being tapped by tiny spoons, just for a moment, then gone.
Postscript:
Margot’s reconstructed notes and sketches have been completed and placed in the FFS archive. Derek and I agree they are a reasonable account. Although we feel something is missing, none of us can place it.
Derek’s missing boot turned up on the doorstep of his home in Tisbury later that year, on the morning of the Summer Solstice. When he picked it up, a small pale moth emerged and flew away, off into the sun.
Julian Dark