The Grolchen stiffened, sniffing the air like a dog.
'Is there someone there?' asked Maria.
The Grolchen's head nodded, deep and slow.
'Someone useful?' asked the Professor, raising his eyes from the invisible book in his lap.
For answer the Grolchen turned and wiggled an odd little dance, appearing and disappearing like grey smoke.
'Escape?' whispered Maria, with mounting excitement.
'Perhaps,' said the Professor, hope in his voice. 'At long last there is someone who can hear us.'
He raised himself up, tapping the cold surface, fading in and out of his shape.
'If only they can break the spell,' he said. 'If only.'

The stone fizzed under Leo's fingers.
He snatched his arm back, his face screwed into an expression of shock.
'It's electric!' he cried.
He was fascinated. The stone was one of two huge lumps of granite, hewn and embedded by ancient man, which stood like massive gateposts in the expanse of empty moorland. Across the windswept field in the distance was a stone circle. No stone in the circle was taller than three or four feet high, but these were three times that height.
'Why should it fizz like that?' Leo asked aloud.


His mother, Rhian, with her boyfriend Carl, and Carl's daughter Ginny were across the field walking round the stone circle, touching each one, as if counting them. Leo wondered whether they were feeling any fizzy shocks like he had.
He called across to them, wanting to ask them whether they felt it too, but the wind carried his voice upwards, blowing it away into the sky, and only Ginny, who was nearest, heard him and turned.
Leo rubbed his hand.
'I wonder if all the stones do it,' he said to himself, stretching out his hand again toward the great looming grey shape, this time not with his fingers, but with the palm forward, thrusting it against the rough cold surface.
Warm pins and needles teased their way through his skin and drizzled up his arm, like water moving backwards.
Within the stone, the Grolchen, Maria and the Professor listened, and reached out towards the small, still hand. They had waited a long time for someone to come and release them from their stone prison.
Leo did not know this. All he knew was that his fingers fizzed.
'What are you doing?' Ginny asked, arriving beside him.
'I'm conducting an experiment,' Leo said, turning his back on her.
He could not really be bothered to talk to Ginny. She was nearly two years younger than him, not yet eleven and, although Carl wanted them to be friends, Leo could not see the point. Ginny lived in Cardigan with her mother, and since Carl had moved in with Leo's mother in Narberth twenty miles away, they had met only occasionally, which was fine by Leo.
Ignoring his indifference, Ginny stood by and watched.

She was a serious looking girl, neither ugly nor pretty, with brown hair and freckles. Her small turned-up nose held a pair of finely-balanced spectacles which continually rode down their unsafe perch, threatening to drop off. She pushed them up and peered through them at the stone.
'It looks a bit like a human,' she said.
'It doesn't,' Leo scoffed. 'A human? How d'you make that out? It's nothing like a human.'
She shrugged.
'Maybe not. P'raps it was just a shadow.'
But she looked disappointed, as though she had wanted to say something clever and been caught out saying something dumb. She turned and began to walk away, sure that his reply meant 'Go away and leave me alone'.
But Leo surprised her, by calling her back and indicating the stone, his other hand still firmly stuck to its surface.
'If you touch this one, it fizzes. I mean really fizzes, like anything.'
She frowned at the stone with a wary expression.
'Don't touch it then.'
'It doesn't hurt,' Leo said, wishing he had not opened his mouth. 'It just fizzes, like electrics, under the surface.'
She looked doubtful.
'I'd be wondering if it's dangerous.'
Leo rolled his eyes as though she was more stupid than he had expected.
'I'm not hurt am I?' he asked. 'It's perfectly safe. Just well, odd.'
Ginny looked back across the field. Her father and Leo's mother were standing together in the centre of the stone circle, hugging. Leo glanced across at them too, and then he looked at Ginny, and just for a moment he felt sorry for her. She didn't know where to go or what to do. It must be very strange for her, he thought, and mentally made a decision to try to be kinder.
'Try it,' he said. 'Just try it. Honestly, it doesn't hurt, but it's seriously weird.'
He motioned to her to put her hand on the stone, and she found herself reaching toward it and, like him, placing her palm flat on its surface.
They stood for a moment as a suspended fragment of splintered time cracked through the circle. Inaudible, invisible, but tangible.
Inside the stone the trapped souls listened anxiously to what was happening. They knew that the alarm on their prison had been triggered and that their jailer would be alerted.
'I fear he is on his way,' said the Professor.
'If only they can hear and help,' said Maria.
'Mic, Mic,' said the Grolchen and turned around and around, fading and growing, appearing and disappearing.
All three prisoners raised their voices and called out to the children in silent sounds that made pictures in their minds.
Into Leo's and Ginny's heads swept a confusion of images; of ancient warriors, of a great cauldron, of skeletons moving in unison, of the crashing waves of the ocean. They stared, open-mouthed at each other, neither knowing what the other had seen, but each amazed by their own sudden, crystal-clear vision.
Then Ginny pulled away saying,
'That is really weird,' she said. 'And it makes me feel so creepy!'
'Creepy?' Leo dropped his arm and shrugged, hiding his own uncertainty about what had happened..........

...and then...

...She stopped and looked at him.
'I touched six stones in the circle and they never fizzed.' She chewed on her straw and waited for his answer.
'I wondered about that,' said Leo. 'If it's only that one that does it, do you suppose it's only us that can feel it?'
'Shall we ask them to try it?'
'Okay,' replied Leo, and then, as she jumped up, he said,
'Don't tell them what we felt. See if they feel anything first.'
They all walked back together to the stone. Ginny told Carl and Rhian that she and Leo had agreed it was the most interesting one and they wanted to know whether either of the adults found anything special about it.
They strolled around it first just looking at it.
Leo noticed that his arm had started tingling even before he reached the stone itself, and the closer he got to it, the wider the tingling spread through his body. He looked at Ginny, and saw that she was clutching her hand; opening and closing it. He knew she had pins and needles like he did.
It was, after all, a bit creepy, just as she had remarked earlier.
Rhian and Carl touched the stone, leaned against it, embraced it, and inspected it from every angle. They declared it a lovely stone but no different from the rest.
Neither Leo nor Ginny mentioned the tingling.
Carl got out his camera and took a photo of Rhian beside the stone. Then he lined the three of them up and told them to lean against it whilst he took pictures of them from different angles.
Leo did not know why, but he knew the pictures would not come out. His back against the stone tingled and he felt warm and pleasantly fluid. Again he saw strange images, but a voice broke his reverie. It came from some distance away but was directed toward them.
The dark-suited man Leo had observed by the van, was walking across the field, waving something.
'You left your handbag,' he was calling.
A chill came into the air and a distinct change of mood in the sky and in the wind. A faint sour smell, that had not been there before, made Leo hunch his shoulders and draw his breath.
The man was smiling, as was Leo's mother walking towards him. Carl was laughing and saying,
'You'd forget your head if it was loose.'
Something inside Leo growled like a defending dog.
The man, when he got up close, was handsome, with crinkly black hair and a lot of white teeth, but something about him made Leo want to run.
He made a great display of handing over Rhian's bag, and then stood staring at her.
'You're someone famous. You must be,' he said.
'No... I'm afraid not,' she replied.
'I'm sure I've seen you before somewhere. Tell me you're not an actress!'
'Only in an amateur way, locally,' said Rhian, but she looked pleased.
Any minute now thought Leo, laughing to himself, this joker would be asking her to take a part in his new film, ha ha!
'I used to do a bit of Amateur Dramatics myself,' said the man with a wide smile at all of them.
'Then I went professional and, well, I still like to see the odd amateur show. I expect that's where I know you from.'
'Thank you for returning my handbag,' said Rhian, turning away and quickly opening it to see if everything was intact.
'Yeah, thanks mate,' said Carl moving with her.
The man did not go.