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The Stone Circle Legend

Weave # 8, Thread # V

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The summaries are at the bottom of this page. Just scroll down. You’ll find them.

“Wait, Sam…” Andy cuts in. “Our eyes, they’re amber.”

“Yeah, it’s sort of hard to miss,” Sam replies. He is already tracing the blue veins of light on the ground, looking for where the electric current begins and ends.

“Amber, Sam. Where else have you seen amber light?”

“TV remote, laptop charger, can you focus?” he snaps.

Behind them, Jennie stares at Andy as if she understands something, too.

“You mean we’re the chargers. We’re not grounding the current, we’re drawing from the earth’,” she says.

Andy realizes that he’s missed her voice, and then he wonders how he ever forgot it.

“Jennie, what happens every night when we… when we forget and leave? Why don’t you leave with us?” he asks.

“You don’t leave,” she says dispassionately. “Both of you idiots are kicked out. Your parents would raise hell if you went missing. I’m expendable, I guess.”

“But at night?” Andy asks.

“At night, we’re all digging under the stones — ”

“Digging under the stones?”

They scramble forth, and there lies a perfect ring of copper, slightly dull and freshly freed from the earth. It gleams under the rays from their amber eyes.

Andy races for the Miller barn, and sure enough, there’s a second ring of copper, barely hidden by the dirt.

“Watch out!” Jennie screams. For as Andy rises from the Miller barn, his eyes shine brighter and a serpent of white light rears up behind him, as if waiting for him to move.

He steps back.

The electric serpent slithers forward.

He steps to the right.

The serpent moves and stops where he stood before, burning the ground beneath.

He sweats from the heat and the pressure.

“There!” Sam shouts. “It’s the shoes!”

Andy lifts his shoes, and the serpent flickers. Beneath the shoes is a curious pattern — a logo he doesn’t recognize. Andy realizes that he cannot remember buying them in the first place.

Andy kicks off the shoe.

The serpent flickers.

The current inching toward the town flickers, too.

He kicks the other shoe off.

The light flickers again.

Sam and Jennie do the same.

The town sputters into darkness. The cruel stones lie quiet, and whatever evil work was being done here is no more.

“The shoes were the trick,” Sam mutters. “They didn’t send us back because they feared our parents; they sent us back so we could leave a trail of copper behind us every night. Tonight, that trail got thick enough to send the current to our homes. Tomorrow, our parents would have been dead.”

But Jennie isn’t listening. For the first time in a year, she steps out of the circle, one cautious tiptoe after the other, and joy spreads across her face. And for a moment, the boys look at each other.

They’d destroy the circle for good, of course, if they could convince their parents. But for now, all they can think about is the joy on their friend’s face, the sounds of night crickets and cats and owls, and the story they will tell at school tomorrow.

What we have so far:

Thread I by Jason Edmunds

Two students wake close to midnight with amber-colored, glowing eyes. They have no recollection of what happened to them. Soon, they discover they are near a mysterious local ancient phenomenon known as The Stone Circle.

The town they live in is alive with gossip about why people who come near the circles mysteriously disappear. What are the secrets of these ancient stones?

Thread II by Kaili Bisson

Andy and Sam wake in the forest near the Stone Circle. As they push through the underbrush toward town, they realize something is wrong — the woods feel unfamiliar, and a buzzing noise follows them. When they reach the old Miller barn, they find a burned circle in the dirt that looks exactly like the Stone Circle. Before they can make sense of it, a tall figure appears across the field, calling Andy’s name.

Thread III by Sunita Chakraborty

Andy and Sam are pulled out of reality by a second flash, emerging into a distorted version of the forest where the world moves to a strange internal rhythm. The figure resolves into Jennie, triggering fragments of memory that place the boys inside the stone circle with her. At the Miller barn, Andy discovers the burned pattern isn’t new — older circles and footprints lie beneath it. As lines of light spread from the site toward the town, he realizes this isn’t something beginning, but something already in motion.

Thread IV by Dave Of All Styles

Sam, Andy, and Jennie start putting the pieces together. As they figure out what’s going on, they get an idea about how to stop it. Now they know what they need to do, but can they stop it in time? Or is everything already lost?

Thread V by Clarity

The circle is destroyed and the children free. Turnd out, they were the conductos all along, and by breaking the circuit, they save the whole town.

And that’s it for this Weave! What do you think? Would you have ended the story differently?

Next up, we have the kickstarter for Weave # 9.

Drop a comment with the magic words, “I’m claiming the next Thread, and you’re up (Or don’t; Kaili has us covered this time).

Enjoy!

And finally (Zeest here), a warm welcome to Jason Edmunds and Dave Of All Styles. Welcome to the Weave! And, of course, to Kaili Bisson and Sunita Chakraborty for being there from the very beginning. Hope you all had fun.

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