The parish of Banathel lies in a valley of rich purple heather and high hedges of hawthorn, heavy with bees. Sam drives slowly along the narrow one-way street bordered by a handful of small shops; a café, a newsagent, a butcher with the blinds drawn against the sun. There is a row of granite cottages opposite a pub with tables outside on the cobbled stones. It’s pretty, but run-down. Sam had mentioned Banathel was a poor town in a poor county—a result of the closing of the mines and china clay pits—and here and there I start to notice empty shops and houses with newspaper taped over the windows,CLOSEDsigns in doorways. I notice something else, too, as we make our way through the village—stacks of pebbles with holes worn right through them, strung on beads and ropes and string and hanging in doorways.
“What are the stones for?”
“What stones?”
“The ones with the holes. Outside the houses? Haven’t you seen them?”
I point as we pass a small cottage with a recessed doorway. A large iron nail has been hammered into the brickwork from which hangs a cluster of lumpy, misshapen pebbles in grays and blacks and creamy whites.
Sam pulls down the sun visor and smiles at me.
“You know, when I was a kid, my granddad in Yorkshire had a stone hung outside his kitchen window. He told me it was his weather forecaster. When I asked him how it worked, he said, ‘If the stone’s wet, it’s raining. If it’s swinging, it’s windy. If you can’t see it, it’s foggy.’”
I laugh, turning back to the window. The newspaper that morning had been full of the weather; sunburn and ozone and a packed Blackpool beach, fears of food shortages, roads buckling in the soaring temperatures. Sam collected me from Penzance station in his old maroon car with the pine freshener hanging from the mirror. We made polite small talk on the drive toward Banathel, heading inland away from the glittering sea and the barking, listless gulls. I leaned out the window to taste the air: the shimmer of salt on my tongue; the softening tarmac; the smoky, parched heat. We drove through hedges of gorse studded with little yellow flowers and jostled over cattle grids and through a dry ford littered with pine needles, tarry with clay. Sometimes the lanes grew so narrow I could hear branches scraping the sides of the car, my skin freckled with sunspots in the flickering light.
We crest the rise of the hill where two roads intersect in a simple X, a signpost toward Prussia Cove to the right, an overgrown churchyard to the left. Sam indicates the left turning and as the car swings around, a small, dark shape darts out in frontof us so quickly that I feel the jolt of my seat belt before I can even cry out. Sam stamps on the brakes and utters a single expletive, leaning over the steering wheel to better see the figure that charged into the road, now fleeing through the mottled stone archway of the churchyard beside us. We look at each other in disbelief.
“You saw that, right?” Sam is sweating, running his hand through his hair. “That little girl? She came out of nowhere!”
I nod, unbuckling my belt. Sam looks at me, frowning.
“What are you doing?”
“Making sure she’s okay. Wait. I’ll be two seconds.”
Sam nods, almost panting in shock. He’s reaching for his cigarettes before I’ve even closed the car door behind me. I cross the road in three short strides, ducking through the ivy-clad archway and into the churchyard of crooked, moss-covered gravestones, grass grown long and yellow underfoot. Beside the low wall separating the churchyard from the road, the young girl is crouching and aiming a gun at me, a small, red toy revolver. Spears of sunlight fall through the branches of the large, spreading yew beside her.
“Hey.” I take a cautious step toward her, hands raised. “Don’t shoot. I’m not armed.”
She looks at me with such pantomimed suspicion that I almost laugh.
“I mustn’t talk to strangers.”
“Very wise,” I tell her, crouching down. “Is your mum around? You’re very young to be running around like that on your own. We nearly hit you.”
She shakes her head solemnly.
“Mum’s working.”
“You got a babysitter? Anyone meant to be with you?”
She squints along the barrel of the revolver.
“Bert. But he’s old and can’t run as fast as me.”
“Okay. We should probably get you back to him, huh?”
“My name’s Stevie,” the little girl says. “What’s yours?”
“Mina.”
“Now we’re friends,” Stevie says, before adding darkly, “so I s’ppose I mustn’t shoot you.”
She holds the gun up to my face and mimes pulling the trigger. “Pow,” she whispers. I laugh. She’s cute, with round cheeks flushed pink and hair as shiny as a chestnut, cut along her jaw. When she smiles, she is missing a front tooth.
“I was wondering, Stevie, do you know what all the funny-looking stones are for? The ones hanging outside the houses?”
“Hagstones.” She sniffs noisily and wipes her nose on her sleeve leaving a silvery trail of snot. “To keep the witches out. Witches canhurtyou.”