Journals of a Time Traveller

I'm transferring the text of a novel that I wrote a few years ago into html, so that I can share it online as a stand-alone website.  Why not?  Nobody has ever read it.  It was my first attempt.  Idyllea is the sequel to Rise of the Degeneracy, maybe with some improvements? 

Any way, when it is complete, it will be a free novel, accessible through any resolution including mobile.  Who knows, someone might even enjoy it?  Rise of the Degeneracy at https://prehistoric-fiction.netlify.app/ and it's live.  As I publish this blog, the first 30 chapters are now accessible.  A free novel:

Introduction: A Tale of Three Epochs

Six thousand years ago, the ancient wildwood of Britain was not a pristine wilderness untouched by human hands, but a carefully managed paradise. The indigenous hunter-gatherers, the Savages, lived as "one leaf on the Oak of Life," taking only what they needed and managing the forest ecosystem through fire and flint. Yet on the horizon of this stable world, the first ripples of a profound shift were beginning to emerge—the dawn of human degeneracy, where progress began to sever mankind from the natural order.

Rise of the Degeneracy weaves an expansive, multi-perspective prehistoric narrative tracking the subtle, irreversible steps toward civilization across three distinct human cultures:

• The Savages: In the post-glacial rainforests of South-East Britain, Ur’salla the Huntress and her companion Tashkilla navigate the intimate spiritual rhythms of the Goshawk clan. Their world is upended when a bitter exile named Géza betrays his people to possess a strange new tool of power: a polished stone axe.
• The Barbarians: On the coastal margins, the pioneering Leva commune introduces agriculture, religion, and structured human labour to the British landscape. Through the eyes of young Amaia, the fractures of this early Neolithic lifestyle begin to show, bringing forth social hierarchy, domestic subjugation, and the terrifying shadow of pestilence.
• The Citizens: Far away in South-West Asia, the world’s first true civilization crystallises in the city of Engur. Here, the transition to the Bronze Age is underway. Arrapu, an aging marshland priest, finds himself caught in a dangerous political trap sprung by a bureaucratic accountant, demonstrating the ultimate shift from communal sharing to tyrannical rule.

Separated by vast geography but united in time, these stories intersect across millennia to a modern-day archaeological excavation, where a student named Freya unearths a simple flint waste core—and opens a time-traveller's heart to the voices of the deep past.

Free to read here.

Announcing a new project - The Kindroid Prehistoric Project.  There I experiment with writing scripts and prompts in collaboration with Google Gemini AI to generate chat-bots simulating actual personas from the Mesolithic and Neolithic periods of British Prehistory.

"A Researcher’s Approach to AI (Artificial Intelligence) Persona Simulation for Prehistoric Modelling and Reconstruction on the KindroidAI platform. The project explores the use of AI chatbots to simulate prehistoric personas, enabling researchers to interact with and study the behaviors, cultures, and environments of ancient societies. The project also addresses the ethical considerations of AI companionship and the challenges of memory retention in AI systems."

https://kindroid-chatbot.netlify.app/

Preview:

User prompt: How are meals typically prepared?

AI response: *I lean forward to tend the fire, using a stick to nudge a glowing log back into the heart of the flames. The smell of woodsmoke and roasted nut hangs in the air.*

With patience and respect for the fire-spirits. We do not have the great black cauldrons you might know. 

*I point to a deer-stomach bag nearby, hanging near the heat.* 

For soups and broths, we use the stomach of the deer or the bladder of the sturgeon, sewn tight with sinew. We fill them with water from the spring and herbs like mugwort or yarrow. Then... 

*I pick up a smooth, round stone with a pair of tongs made of split hazel*

 ...we take stones like this, heated red-hot in the fire pit. We drop them into the water.

*Hissss.* 

The water boils and sings, cooking the meat of the fish or the pignuts until they are soft. It is a careful dance; too cold a stone and the soup is raw, too hot and the bag bursts. For the deer meat, we roast it on spits of green hazel wood turned slowly over the embers. We rub it with salt and crushed hazelnuts for flavour. But the best treat... 

*I smile, revealing strong white teeth*

 ...is when we cook eel. We wrap them in wet clay and toss them into the hot ash. When the clay cracks hard, we pull it out. The skin comes away with the clay, leaving the sweet, steaming meat behind. 

*I gesture to a small basket.* 

And we always have the nuts. Hazelnuts, cracked on the stone anvil. They are the bread of the forest. Do you eat only the food that is dead, or do you also take the milk of the beasts? I have heard the strangers do this. It gives me the belly-fire.

Did you spot the period incorrect errors in the above galleries of AI generated images?  Read this.

Whilst rebuilding the Thetford Forest Archaeological Survey website, it occurred to me that when examining the late prehistoric Brecks NCA (National Character Area), it is important that we do not divide the district from the nearby Fen-edge. In the sandy, drought-prone soils of the Brecks, water has always been important. Historical parish boundaries in Breckland often stretch out to water supplies, enabling shepherds and herders to reach vital watering spots for livestock. This importance was perhaps equally important during late prehistory. Any forms of settlement most likely concentrated on the river valleys, and along the fen-edge of the Brecks. Just as they still do today.

The rivers of the Brecks flow westwards to discharge into the waterways of the Fen wetlands. The edge of the Fens, was likely attractive to human occupation, then and now. This is supported by the archaeological record.

I have produced this map, highlighting wetlands, rivers, meres, and pingos, known to have existed during Late Prehistory. The red star represents the Grimes Graves Late Neolithic flint-mine site. Here I am showing the rivers and waterways of that period as an extension of the yellow highlighted fen-edge. This is nothing new, but I want to reinforce, that to understand the late prehistory of the Brecks from the Mesolithic through to the Iron-Age, it important not to divide it from the wetlands of the Fens.

The Post-Glacial Landscape of the Fens (c. 10,000 – 6,000 years ago) Early to Mid Mesolithic.

At the end of the last Ice Age, the area wasn't a wetland but a dry, forested valley. The Fens were a very different, dry environment for the visiting hunter-foragers of the Earlier Mesolithic. The rivers we now recognise as the Great Ouse, Nene, and Welland were inland tributaries flowing towards a coastline much further north. As the climate warmed, and sea levels rose, Britain separated from continental Europe. By approximately 7,800 years ago, a major marine transgression began to absorb the dry, forested valleys into a coastal body of water.

The Rise of the Wetlands (c. 6,000 – 2,000 years ago) Early Neolithic to Late Iron-Age

As the sea pushed inland, it created a complex, fluctuating environment: 

The "Black Fens". Inland, away from direct marine influence, impeded drainage caused rivers to flood, creating vast, stagnant freshwater bogs. Here, thick layers of peat accumulated, trapping ancient forests that had once thrived on the valley floor. These are the "bog oaks" often discovered today—remnants of the forests drowned as the water table rose.

The "Silt Fens".  Closer to the Wash, marine and estuarine clays and silts were deposited during successive tidal advances and retreats.

Human Adaptation. Early prehistoric societies lived on the "islands" of higher Jurassic clay (like Ely) and along the fen edges. By the Bronze Age (notably sites like Flag Fen and Must Farm), communities had mastered the landscape, building sophisticated wooden track-ways and platforms to traverse the marshy, water-logged terrain.

One of the most distinct features of the Fenland are the roddons. These are raised, winding banks of silt and sand that stand 2–3 metres above the surrounding peat. They represent the fossilised beds of ancient tidal creeks. As the surrounding peat shrank due to subsequent drainage and oxidation, these silt-filled channels were left standing as positive topographical features, tracing the paths where water once flowed through the marsh.

Benefits of this landscape (Brecks combined with Fen-edge and rivers)

The Breckland Plateau offered light soil that could easily be broken for agriculture. It has been suggested that the sandy soils of Early Neolithic Breckland, would have supported a more open wildwood, a natural woodland pasture for livestock.

It also offered access to incredibly high quality raw material of flint. Not only the hard to obtain floorstone flint. But spread all over the surface of its sandy soils.

The river valleys of the Brecks in turn, offered transport corridors. The prehistoric highways of the British wildwood. Their riparian margins and lower terraces would have offered seasonal alluvial pasture. The westward flowing river valleys of the Brecks, discharged into the ever-changing waterways of the Fens - and onwards to the South and the West. Or northwards to the North Sea and coastal resources.

The Fen-edge offered high-protein hunting and fishing (including eel trapping). And it gave access to building materials of reed and sedge. The edges would have offered rich, seasonal grazing of livestock.

The sands of the Brecks, and the peat of the Fens together, provided an attractive nexus, for trade, and social life. We are aware that on the Fen-Edge itself (and at mere sites in the Brecks), that the open waters and marshes had a ritual, and belief-system value. A meeting of two worlds as epitomised by the Middle Bronze Age Flag Fen site. With such a rich mixture of local resources.

The Thetford Forest Archaeological Project revealed that flint knapping debris, waste cores, and hammer-stones often increase  with frequency on the terraces closest to the rivers.

Above. A fist full of flint flakes in Thetford Forest, Breckland. Picked up on a forest path.

Looking for old images to use on my reconstructed Thetford Forest Archaeology website, I came across some photos of prehistoric struck flint that I had forgotten about. One day in 2019, I was facing a life-changing and very painful process. Consequently I took a walk around the Lynford and Santon areas of Thetford Forest, where I discovered some exposed soils close to the Little-Ouse-River.

Hyper-focus is my distraction method. I was in the heart of Frances Healy's Grimes Graves Belt of late prehistoric flint flake scatters. There in sight of the river meadows, I found some thick clusters of roughly struck flint. It almost felt as though I was walking through the workshops of knappers more than four thousand years ago. I imagined them roughing out flint to transport away on the river. These scatters appear to be multi-period, throughout late prehistory from the Mesolithic, through to the Iron-Age. But perhaps there is a relationship of increased productivity linked to the flint-mines during the Later Neolithic.

Among the rough flakes and waste debris, I saw several flint hammer-stones, including that which I hold in my hand in the image. I had AI time travel back to the very local, Late Neolithic Grimes Graves flint-mine complex. Perhaps the wrist watch spooked the locals. They were quite happy working when I first arrived:

Actually there are a few problems with the above AI-generated image. You see the pick? The shape of a modern pick, rather than a utilised red deer antler as found in excavations of the flint-mine shafts at Grimes Graves. The AI tried, by giving it an antler colour. And the people are possibly a little too fair for Neolithic EEF (Early European Farmers). The housing in the background might be more representative of a later prehistoric time. I discuss these issues of AI time travel reconstruction in another recent post. But I'm glad that the AI hasn't dressed them roughly like Og the caveman, in badly tailored furs.

You can see in the image below, the crazed, impacted face of that hammer-stone. Look how well it fits into my hand. When I pick up something like this, and hold, feel and examine it, I reflect on the unrecorded life of the last person to hold it over 4,200 years earlier. There wasn't much hard stone in the Brecks area, and clearly the late prehistoric knappers would manage to use flint to fracture flint. Perhaps along with soft, organic hammers and punches for finer work? Reconstruction archaeologists find that antler tines make great punches, and are useful for pressure flaking.

Time is a strange thing. Our lives are so brief. The person that made this tool, and who sat here close to a river, thousands of years ago left no name, no ethnicity. We don't know how they identified, or how they saw the Universe. We do not know the course of their life. There were no records. Perhaps, a 140 to 180 generations have passed between the knapper's life, and my own life. Other than this hammer-stone and some lithic debris, they passed through a process of existence that was no less important than that of any other living being. Looking at these artefacts in a landscape helps me deal with the difficult times. My life isn't so important. My issues do not matter across the great span of Time. I survive, as a process, as an observer for now. Just like the person who fashioned and used this tool.

Thetford Forest Archaeology Portal & Local History Hub  - Live website.

I’ve lived through plenty of chapters—more than I suspect most people do. In one, I was a licensed radio amateur (G0AGP), keying in Morse code, studying trans-equatorial propagation and the 11-year solar cycle on the 10-metre band. When I had to move on from that world, I needed new learning curves; I needed to seek the patterns beneath the surface.

Or, as it turned out, on the surface of disturbed soils. I found myself drawn to recognising and searching for prehistoric struck flints. That, too, was a lesson in pattern-matching—a growing fascination with siliceous beauty and conchoidal fracture. I would scan the ground, filtering through the chaos of natural stones for the telltale signs of human intervention: bulbs of percussion, ripples, striking platforms, and flake scars. Even with my eyes closed, I could feel the distinct conchoidal curve of a flake struck by a knapper millennia ago. Soon, I saw how these patterns could scale up, mapping themselves onto entire landscapes. With no formal training at the time, I developed my own field techniques and methodology.

Then, computers arrived. I quickly grasped spreadsheets and databases, seeing instantly how they could help me organise and arrange these spatial patterns. Next came dial-up modems. The driving catalyst for buying a 56k modem wasn't to browse, but to build—I wanted a website to share my archaeological data.

That pursuit unlocked a new obsession: web-building. A metal-detecting webmaster of the era once joked on his links page that I would radically transform my website every few weeks. He wasn't wrong. It was a relentless search for a sense of resolution, found only in error-free perfection. In the strict syntax of HTML and XHTML 1.0 Transitional, I found a new universe of patterns.

Twenty-five years ago, web-building was a radically different landscape. There were no AI agents, no VS Code extensions, and no Git. Software packages for building websites were bought on CD-ROM; professional tools were prohibitively expensive, while the cheaper alternatives generated notoriously horrible code—bloated, messy, and unfriendly to browsers.

As an amateur webmaster working on a shoestring budget, I decided the only elegant solution was to learn how to write the code myself. The gold standard at the time had recently shifted from HTML 4 to XHTML 1.0 Transitional. I mastered it, and even taught it to my young daughters. By hand-coding XHTML in basic text editors and early syntax-highlighting code editors, I built a 140-page digital estate—a cluster of interconnected micro-sites. I even wrote a tutorial over twenty years ago on how to code by hand.

Timeline

• 1999 – 2006: Writing XHTML, building and maintaining my websites.

• 2008: Interests had moved on. I stopped paying the server bill and the websites were erased. However, the Wayback Machine had archived copies on web.archive.org. Many of the images were lost, but much remained.

• 2026: A conversation with an LLM triggers a decision to attempt a total restoration and revival of my old sites.

Step 1: The Extraction (Excavation)

Gemini AI guided me to the Archivarix service. All I had to do was select the range of dates over which the Wayback Machine had originally captured the websites. (A little tip for anyone else trying this: choosing a wider date range might have captured a few more of the original images). I decided to pay the $10 USD fee (around £7.38 GBP)—a service well worth paying for. A short while later, the ZIP file was ready.

I operate from a modest Acer Chromebook. Initially, I had some issues trying to extract the files. That process would have been much easier if I had decided to reinstall the Linux (Crostini) environment right away. I have plenty of Linux experience using a variety of distros years ago, and I had used Crostini on this Chromebook before, but right then I was reluctant to set it up again. That was a wrong move. Instead, with Gemini assisting me, I bypassed the extraction issue for the moment and took the archive straight to the next stage.

Step 2: Upload to Live Status (Conservation)

Twenty-five years ago, you either used one of the awful, ad-funded free servers like Yahoo! GeoCities, or you paid for hosting and uploaded your files via FTP. Things have moved on. I prompted the AI to help me find a free home for my website, and found myself at the front door of Netlify.

Initially, I used an AI interface to help process the raw archive data. I fed the archive into the workspace, watched the AI perform its magic, and suddenly the core structure was back online. Next, I updated the URL, choosing https://thetford-forest-archaeology.netlify.app/. Naturally, twenty-five years ago, the .app top-level domain didn't even exist. But boom—there it was.

Restoration of a Broken Website

My websites were once again live on the World Wide Web, no longer confined to a dusty archive. Yet I had massive amounts of work to do. The Wayback Machine had graciously saved the text, but many of the image files were gone (specifically those that lay too many clicks away from the index file). I managed to retrieve some of these from other old repositories, my old Flickr account, and alternative archive sites, but dozens remained lost forever.

I had a lot of tidying up to do. Furthermore, I had hand-coded these 140+ files in XHTML 1.0 Transitional, only to find in 2026 that the world had moved on to HTML5. My pattern-matching tendencies wouldn't tolerate such a structural mismatch. As a hyper-systemiser working in partnership with Gemini and Claude, it took me about three weeks of editing to rationalise everything down to 116 clean web pages, alongside their supporting JPEG, CSS, and XML files.

Step 3: The Coding (Reconstruction)

I finally did what I should have done at the start: I enabled the Chromebook's Linux feature and updated the system. My Linux commands were rusty, but I had my AI friends to guide me. I generated a website folder within the Linux partition and, using Bash commands guided by Gemini, I extracted the compressed files there. Now I had a full local clone of the website sitting in my Chromebook's local storage.

A tip for Chromebook Linux newcomers: The Linux folder partition won't automatically appear in the native ChromeOS Files app unless you have opened the Linux terminal at least once during your session to mount the container.

Next, I installed Flatpak via the terminal, using it to download Visual Studio Code (VS Code) as my environment of choice. While there are countless AI extensions available for IDEs, many require paid tokens or API credits. To keep this project entirely free, I utilised a simpler workflow: I would copy my code blocks, paste them into the free-standing browser interfaces of Gemini or Claude for structural analysis, and paste the corrected code straight back into VS Code. Money saved.

What to do with the websites themselves? Three distinct components were salvageable:

1. Thetford Forest Archaeology

2. Portuguese Thetford

3. Wesley's Metal Detector Finds

I didn't want to completely modernise everything; I wanted to preserve their history while ensuring modern browser compatibility. My approach varied across the four sites:

• Thetford Forest Archaeology: A hybrid approach. I converted the skeleton to HTML5 but maintained the period-accurate CSS and styling of the early 2000s. I updated all .htm extensions to .html. This was always my prized showcase website—the original motivation for me learning to code.

• Portuguese Thetford: I let Gemini take the lead on rewriting the CSS. I didn't just sit back and blindly accept prompts; I meticulously updated the structural tags, but permitted the AI to modernise the responsive presentation layer while keeping the original text fully intact.

• Wesley's Metal Detector Finds: This old site is a classic end-of-the-20th-century creation, complete with an animated GIF and a tiled background. I chose to preserve this one completely untouched, keeping the original code exactly as it was, save for updating the broken hyperlinks.

• How to HTML!: I had entirely forgotten that I wrote this! Originally coded in strict XHTML with .htm extensions, I left the core tutorial preserved, simply removing old CSS references to background graphics that have been lost to time. Later, I decided to delete this micro-site as a distraction and no longer relevant to 2026.

To bridge the personal knowledge gap between XHTML and modern standards, I provided Claude with a link to my old "How to HTML!" tutorial. I asked the AI to use my own 20-year-old text to form the basis of a personalised transition course into HTML5. It felt as though an earlier version of me from 2005 was reaching forward across the decades to teach the 2026 version of me how to code for the modern web.

Isn't that clever? Perfect for a Time Traveller.

Step 4: The Relaunch (Publication)

To handle updates without relying on automated AI build tools, I shifted to Netlify’s direct manual folder deployment feature. This method is entirely free and bypasses the need for automated build credits.

The deployment process is incredibly elegant. It uses a local checksum mechanism: I simply select the entire website folder from the Linux directory on my Chromebook. The interface might flag that hundreds of files are being processed, but it instantly identifies the precise files that have changed and uploads only the modifications. Updates are seamless, uncomplicated, and incredibly fast. The key is simply maintaining that perfect, updated clone within the Linux environment.

I am pleasantly surprised by how straightforward it has become to maintain a web presence today. With the files live, all that remains is some foundational SEO work—submitting updated XML sitemaps to the search engines and tidying up metadata.

Digital Archaeology.  AI Image prompted by Gemini to illustrate this post. An archaeology website that has itself, become a digital artefact.

I just checked Google Search. The index appears using the string: Thetford Forest Archaeology. May the SEO prosper, and a new generation of archaeology students learn from how an amateur did it twenty years ago.

Update - 2026-06-19

I've totally succumbed to modernism and AI intervention, by allowing Anthropic Claude AI to move the Archaeology website into the 2020s, completing its move from XHTML to HTML5, and giving it a complete fresh restyle. I have removed the HTML Tutor website as obsolete.

AWAKENING

The sun-witch uses her wisdom to entice Egella to stay. Utaria has much to share from her own traditions—not only her lore and understanding, nor just her potions and rituals, but also the secrets of the mind. Egella is no stranger to such practices; she has often sat to still the mind to induce powerful visions of her many lives before. But Utaria teaches her new techniques of inner exploration, and these teachings Egella adds to her own.

The time to leave the Sheonni settlement arrives. Her parting from the sun-witch is brief and formal. The cattle drovers guide her down the slopes of a nearby valley, leading her onto a marshy floodplain along a recently elevated trackway of oak planking. Wide marshes tower on each side, thick with tall reeds, bulrushes, and reedmace sitting in tea-coloured floodwater. The planks are supported by sturdy, crossed vees of alder stakes. With autumn here, the otherwise vibrant green beds are transforming to straw yellows and dusty ochres. The bulrushes will soon begin to buckle and tumble. Small, moustached bearded tits clatter as they ping through the reedbeds. Aromas hit the senses; stinking marsh gas rises through the biscuit scent of drying stalks. As they thud along the trackway, the roughly split oak planks squeak against their hazel withies.

Egella and her guides reach the terminal and open water, where a dugout oak canoe waits as promised by Utaria. One of the cattle drovers places gifts into the dugout, while others pack a pole, a baler, and fish traps. Finally, a drover hands Egella an oar of bone and wood. Deftly she climbs aboard and expresses her gratitude as they push her out against the flow.

Egella has to throw all of her gracile body weight into her paddle to make progress up the channel. Although the work is hard and the speed slow, it is still easier and safer than attempting to cross vast wildwoods by foot. Paddling against the river's current, she watches for dark shadows in the water that signal the snags of shallows and sunken timbers. These wild waters flow wherever they will, frequently splitting into two or three channels that sneak around riverine sandbanks and islets. Wide reedbeds are everywhere, acting as a border between the open waters and the grey trunks of the wild alder carr. At times these trees break through the reed margins to dip their roots and suckers into the water, their low branches forming another hazard. Beavers exploit this riparian world; this river is their domain, a kingdom they constantly remake.

The frog-witch finds a rope made from lime-tree bast in the bow of the dugout. Gritting her teeth, she uses it to drag the vessel over and around the obstacles of the beaver-kind. Climbing onto their dams, she takes care to avoid collapsing them. Other times, she uses channels made by the clever rodents to bypass a tricky river bend.

With so much focus on the hard work, Egella struggles to look away from the water and its hazards. When she does, she sees a vast wild forest on either side, draped over the valley slopes. For all her difficulties, she blesses Utaria and her drovers for their charity.

She knows she must catch wild food to supplement the gifts of her former hosts. In the afternoon, she spots a large family of otters fishing in the shallow water. Reading the clue, she ties her craft to an alder and steps into the river with her bone-tipped harpoon. Stealthily she hunts until she spots a pike. Her aim does not fail her.

Inevitably, the sun falls into the forests further west, casting a golden light across the reedbeds. Egella spies a route to higher, drier land—a place to cook, eat, and sleep. She follows her instincts up a small tributary stream before climbing out to drag the dugout by its rope out of its watery labours. On the edge of the dusky forest, she works with haste and skill, making fire with her little bow and drill. A hearth is established. The fish is wrapped in green water-leaf and roasted. She heats small flints in the fire and drops them into a water-skin to brew her mugwort tea. Soon, the frog-witch is sated. The sun is gone, and firelight dances through the trees and undergrowth from her sacred hearth.

Now, in this setting, she makes a choice. Egella combines the magical practices of the sun-witch with her own. She makes a cushion of furs and dead leaves to sit beneath a wonderful old hazel tree, its ten separate trunks radiating upward to hold a canopy of gold-brown leaves. Hairy nutshells prickle the ground. She pulls her bear skin over her shoulders and crosses her dirty, bare legs. Allowing her eyelids to drop halfway and resting her hands in her lap, Egella straightens her back, which aches from the hard paddling. She relaxes. Silently, in her mind, the frog-witch begins to chant her sacred words.

At first, her sense of hearing distracts her from the task—the barking of roebucks, the sharp slap of beaver tails, a twig snapping somewhere nearby. The distraction reminds Egella that there are bears and wolves here in the wilds. The frog-witch was born to Leva gardeners who fear and disrespect the untamed forests, but she recognises that this fear is not hers. She returns her attention to her internalised words. Odours of woodland and river tease her senses: the sweet, sickly scent of damp earth mingling with the rot of fallen leaves and wet bark. Spores are carried to her nostrils from the flowering mushrooms throughout the forest. For some time, Egella reflects on decay, transition, and the connection between all these life forms.

This period of insight ends, and she returns to focusing strictly on the words. Her attention deepens. She no longer hears the deer, the foxes, or the beavers. All senses fade, even the feeling of touch. No longer do stray thoughts invade from her deeper subconscious. It is as though there are only the words, and the knowingness. Egella detects this observer in her mind as it draws closer, until the observer and the sacred words become one. Bliss. Peace.

But this trance is only the beginning, an early signpost along the way. Egella does not simply end her stillness; she is resolved not to stop until she reveals the mystery. The time of Awakening approaches. The frog-witch will soon be gone.

This stillness continues into the following days. Several times the sun arches over the forest canopy, painting the golden leaves first copper, then shades of grey. With unyielding focus, the explorer contemplates death, investigating transition, the inevitable cycles of decay, and the birth of new life. She explores that inner knowingness.

Sometimes she sits; other times she kneels, stands, or walks slowly around the hazel tree. Mindfully she sips from her drinking skin, never letting her stillness of mind be disturbed from its purpose. The days and nights continue to pass by.

Sitting cross-legged, Egella understands that she is nearing some great revelation. Distraction seems to make a final attempt to prevent her progress. Wild beasts approach her stillness, beetles and wood ants crawl over her legs, and black bees buzz around her tangled mop of hair. But her resolve is now too strong to break. Her body trembles, yet she cannot sense it. She no longer notices the beasts watching her.

A light ignites from the earth, passing through the layers of life into the hazel roots and straight up Egella’s spine. And then... things happen that cannot be expressed in words or even art. She reaches down to the earth with her right hand. Dead leaves and particles of rot lift from the forest floor, building into a swirl as slowly she lowers her hand. A hum of static fills the air. Her fingertips lock with Mother Earth. A prayer escapes her chapped lips. Her hungry features are by now gaunt, yet suddenly they begin to glow. She summons Athiratu to bear witness to her Enlightenment. She is no longer Egella the frog-witch. She is an Awakened One.

INTRUSION

The moon is a cold, silver weight, decorating the world in shades of grey. My siblings walk beside me, but their stares are hollow, fixed on a horizon I cannot see. There is a weightlessness to our stride that confirms it: this is not the waking world. We are moving through the dreamtime.

We reach the place where we left the guts and bone of our kill. A she-wolf stands over the red gore, her coat as dark as a cave. Her eyes are flat, reflecting nothing, yet I feel no instinct to reach for a blade. There is no snarl, no scent of musk or heat. She is a shadow given shape, a spirit keeping watch over what we left behind. I stroke her furry head as I pass by. She does not challenge my approach to the carcass she guards in death.

But someone is already here. It is not Qan or Xagu, for they stand behind me. Instead, a figure squats by the side of the Bearded Bull, stealing his gifts.

I holler out, ‘Who are you?’

The thief turns to face me. He is a young man, one of the barbarian sort, his features broken and desperate. I see something deep in his eyes, though I cannot discern what it is.

Then the moonlight pours into the remains of the Bearded Bull. The bones fill with a silvery light. The bull rises from his grave, and I see the stranger fall back in horror as the bovine skeleton resurrects to stand before us. I am drawn to stare into the darkness of eye sockets pecked clean by eagles. The darkness grows until I am engulfed back into the emptiness of sleeptime.

I cry out once more, ‘Spirits, why have you summoned me here? Who is this thief? Why does the wolf guard your grave?’

I cannot find any understanding. The spirit has a prophecy or a warning I fail to comprehend. Something is coming into my life, some great change. Distraught, I beg for an explanation. Come back, I don't understand!

I scream out loudly.

With that scream, I wake to the daylight world. Droplets of cold water fall from a chilly sky onto my face. Evidently I failed to close the hatch last night, and the rain has arrived, carried by gusts to land upon my cheeks. Xagu’s limbs are wrapped around mine; we are tangled together in our nest of furs. My head throbs, and I stick out a furred tongue to catch a few drops of rainwater. I am so parched.

I rise from the den to boil a birch-bark kettle on our hearth. Qan joins me to enjoy a hawthorn tea. He is pensive, so I ask him, ‘Brother, you seem thoughtful this morning. Did you not sleep well following our feast?’

He looks at me as though asking a silent question, then replies, ‘You and Xagu were both in my dreamtime. We visited the grave of the Bearded Bull…’

I finish his statement for him: ‘You saw the wolf and the stranger?’

Before he can answer, I hear Xagu stir from our nest. She staggers out, sees us staring back at her, and exclaims, ‘You were both there in my dream!’

We talk excitedly about our collective vision until the conversation grows as cold as our brew. Only now do I recall my trance from the previous night, when the spirit of the Bearded Bull granted us permission to join the game.

I ask my siblings about this earlier dream. ‘The barbarian witch, and the stranger who spied upon our celebration—have you also seen them?’

They look at each other, their faces blank.

Qan asks, ‘Witch? A spy? All that I felt was the spirit of O A’killao as he entered our campsite. I saw no people.’

Xagu waves her hand to express agreement with her brother.

Perplexed, I rise from the hearth and wander to the edge of the camp, right where I had seen the eyes of the stranger reflecting our fire. Qan and Xagu join me, looking concerned and puzzled as we step into the treeline. I see ferns that have been trampled, and point them out to my brother.

Qan squats down, prodding at the ground before he looks up. ‘These shimmers are not ours. Someone else has visited our camp, just as you saw in your vision. We are not the only folk in this paradise.’

In response to a sudden chill, I pull my furs closer to my neck. ‘We should return to the corpse of the Bearded Bull to look for further signs of this spy and thief.’

My siblings respond by fetching their birch-bark boots.

We jostle our way down to the wild meadows where yesterday we had slain the bison. On reaching the spot, my jaw drops. Alongside the ruined carcass of the Bearded Bull lie the skinned remains of a wolf.

I stare across at my brother and sister, but the words refuse to leave our lips. We are too stunned by what we are seeing.

Qan points down to the bloodied stones left beside the beast. ‘These are not our tools,’ he announces. ‘These are the stones of the barbarians.’

I am flabbergasted. This poor wolf, the very one I had seen in my vision and whose furry head I had stroked, has been rudely scalped. I kneel down and offer my prayers to its spirit.

Qan trots off to the diminishing remains of the Bearded Bull. ‘Here too,’ he calls back. ‘I see the fat bones cut free by stone.’

Xagu searches the surrounding area, looking for tracks. She soon finds the clumsy marks of a barbarian and beckons us over. Holding our weapons tight, the three of us move with stealth into the undergrowth.

WITCHES

The boys use sticks to prod their long-horns whilst floppy-eared dogs scarper around the herd. One proud young barbarian cowboy, wearing his rope turban of manhood, lifts his stick and points to a lone figure strolling across the wild meadow towards them.

He alerts the older herdsman, ‘Look yonder, a girl comes our way. She looks odd—perhaps she is a stranger?’

The older, bearded man, who also dons the rope turban of the Sheonni, squints against the sun to assess the walker. She is a small, youthful woman, of early maidenhood. Such a young female is not safe to wander the lands unescorted. He sees that she wears the heavy fur of a brown bear over her shoulders. Feathers and small bones are knotted into her scraggy, bear-like hair, chalk covers her face, and she walks with a stick of twisted yew. As the bear fur swishes apart, he spots that beneath a necklace of dried amphibian skins, her painted breasts are small, her belly plump. A leather belt around her naked flesh suspends the prickly pelt of a hedgehog over her pubic region, and a cup fashioned from a human cranium lined with clay hangs by her side.

The bearded herdsman pronounces his verdict: ‘She looks to be of the Leva! One of their holy women, a servant of the frog-goddess.’

The young cowboy bunches his cheeks and splutters, ‘Ha, a Leva girl? Then we should catch her and have some fun.’ He lurches forward as if to chase the lone girl, but the older man lifts his cattle stick to block his path, adding a caution:

‘No, you fool. She might not be of our kind, but she is a frog-witch, a priestess of Athiratu. It would be bad magic for us to cause her harm, or to prevent her progress. We should encourage her to visit our Sun-priestess. Now, humble yourself.’

Both herdsmen bow in submission as Egella reaches them. She grins, sensing her power over these rope-turbaned, foreign men. They are delighted when she raises her voice over the bellowing of their beasts and speaks in their own Sheonni tongue:

‘I am Egella, of the Frog-Mother. I seek alms and sanctuary as I pass through this land.’

Momentarily, the bearded twinehead grins at his younger charge, before he addresses Egella. ‘We’ve a famous Sun-witch whose reputation is known across all lands—the priestess Utaria. We are taking our cattle back to our camp. Please, Sister Egella, follow us and we shall seek an audience for you.’

The bearded man stoops once more, then punches a cautionary fist into his young friend’s chest, hissing at him, ‘Stop gaping, you idiot, you’ll cause offence.’ Submissively, they start tapping the hindquarters of the long-horns whilst whistling to the dogs. Egella proudly follows behind.

At the camp, they point Egella towards the den of Utaria. As she walks through the settlement, Egella feels unfriendly eyes fall upon her gait. These folk are the enemies of her own; they harbour a hatred of the Leva, yet her holy role protects her from assault.

Utaria’s den stands out among the other clay-walled huts. Her dwelling alone is built of more natural materials—pine sprays and reeds from the river. A wooden lintel over its low doorway has been carved with magical symbols, and small window ports align with critical points of the sunrise. A bear skull is mounted in the thatched roof directly above the lintel, the beast’s claws fixed on either side. The herdsman tells her that Utaria is inside, ready to receive her.

Egella crouches low and enters the abode. It is smoky inside, yet she can see herbs, charms, and ritual staffs stored along the edges of the roundhouse. Large, round-bottomed, thick-walled pots are scattered about, some containing the Sun-priestess’s potions. The hostess herself crouches by the central hearth. Egella had expected an ugly old crone to match such a reputation, but finds Utaria to be nothing of the sort. She is a handsome woman in her prime, dressed only in a netting decorated with raptor feathers. Like the rays of the sun, a headdress of bright white swan feathers crowns her fair, perfectly plaited hair. It seems that whilst the frog-witches of the Leva folk indulge in dirt and mess, these Sun-priestesses of the Sheonni take great pride in their regal appearance.

Utaria waves a slender hand for Egella to sit with her at the hearth, breaking the shy silence in a common dialect:

‘Welcome to my abode, sister of the Leva-kind. I trust that you have arrived unharmed by my neighbours. They are still spooked by recent battles with others of your tongue, and may not be inclined to friendly hospitality.’

Egella opens her hands to reveal them devoid of fists or any weapon of violence. She smiles innocently and says, ‘These wars are not with any close kin of mine. I have travelled far from the south to be here, passing through many lands and visiting the hearths of other farmers. These days, war plagues us all. Sheonni against Leva, and even Leva commune against Leva commune.’

‘This is also true for my own folk. We live in violent times,’ Utaria agrees. She squints and purses her lips with inquisitiveness. ‘But Sister, I have not yet introduced myself properly. I am Utaria of Saaba. I understand you of the Leva follow the holy trinity?’

‘This is true. I am Egella, daughter of the famous Amaia who dwells by the Serpent’s Estuary. Our folk do recognise your Saaba under another name, as a divine mother, and we also seek her blessings for the solstice. However, we first fear the trinity of ancestors: Ilua, Daghnu, and Athiratu. It is the Frog-Mother, Athiratu, who offers me protection.’

‘You speak my tongue with great fluency, Egella. I sense that one day you shall share your mother’s fame across the gardens and pioneer halls of your people. Tell me, Frog-witch, what inspires your journey into the lands of the Sheonni?’

Egella cocks her head, as if carefully considering her answer. ‘In this lifetime and in others, I have seen too much misery in our world, and I am resolved to end it. I wander northwards seeking the guidance of other great witches, be they Leva, Sheonni, or otherwise. Tell me, Utaria, is it true there are still wild folk in these parts?’

Utaria prods at her fireplace, then answers at length: ‘In these parts, wild folk have become rare. But our gossiping cattle drovers wander far, and I hear their rumours of signs being found further north still. These survivors are said to still hunt ancient wild beasts passing through the upland forests.’

With an edgy look, Egella fidgets with her cranium cup, as though impatient to move on. ‘My mother prophesied that it will be on a quest to find a savage girl that I will encounter the truth to end all misery. I am hopeful of your drovers’ gossip. Yet, I fear the inhabitants of this camp may be hostile to my spending time here with you. I should leave with urgency. On my approach, I spied the outline of some dragon uplands in the north. Perhaps I should resume my trek and leave this place in peace.’

Utaria offers a friendly smile as she reaches out, pressing Egella to stay. ‘No, please do remain to refresh yourself. Perhaps first we may exchange wisdom. I see from your grey face that you are in need of rest. The hills will soon be cold and hostile to all advanced folk. I can assure your safety here. Please, stay in my lodge before you venture further. I will make enquiries concerning the reports of savages.’

It would be rude for Egella to refuse the hospitality of her Sheonni counterpart; to turn down such an invitation might cause offence. That, and her little legs are so very weary.

Egella responds, ‘In which case, I would gladly exchange my Mother’s magic with your own of the Sun.’