[Primrose Bolger]

‘Well, well, well,’ said Primrose to herself as she drove her cart through the vendors’ gate and spied the juggler hustling the crowd in front of the Floating Log pavilion.

A last minute delivery of sloe-berry spirits had been sent by the Innkeeper, along with a cask of blackberry brandy from old Gaffer Holman. ‘Lumbago’s actin’ up, dearie,’ Holman had told her, as he sat on his rocker watching her load the cask. ‘Otherwise I’d go with you.’ He nodded at a small package wrapped in a piece of old cotton cloth. ‘Take that, too,’ he said. ‘Been meaning to get that back to him, but the years just caught up with me.’

Inside was an old gold torc set with a single red jewel he’d gotten on one of his excursions to the barrow-downs with friends. ‘Found that right inside a barrow,’ he went on. ‘Reached my hand in through a crack between the stone and the entry way it covered. Pulled it out and we high-tailed it outta there . . . afore that old Wight knew we were even there.’ He nodded his head remembering his younger glory days. ‘Still – it’s his. Best he gets it back.’

Prim delivered the spirits to the barman and threw a copper penny in the juggler’s hat as she passed by him on her way out. He gave her a saucy wink, and she returned it in kind, laughing at his cheekiness. Across the field she went, toward the Party Tree and the barrow beneath it. It was colder here in the shade of the limbs, and made colder, she thought, by the presence of the barrow with its endlessly dark interior. She thought she could just see some greenish glow away at the back and here the deep mutterings and rumblings of someone talking.

With a shiver, she ran quickly to the mathom table and laid the old gaffer’s present on it. A big-folk girl in a light blue dress with silver tracings was approaching, basket in hand. Prim nodded at her as she approached.

‘Pretty dress!’ she said, looking up at the girl. Then glancing back over her shoulder at the barrow and its table she pointed and said in a low voice. ‘Careful! He’s awake. I heard him moving about and muttering.’