S acraments …

»Where did the black sheep go?« Nigel asks as we are going to Brompton Castle's front yard through a floor-to-ceiling glass door coming from the library.

»Black sheep?« the llama asks with a diabolic grin. »There never was a black sheep. You did not see a black sheep. Did you, boy?«

It is moving its' frontlegs in strange circles in front of Nigel's face as if it wants to hypnotize him.

»Ah, forget about it«, Nigel says. »Let's take a look at those signs in the mud«.

The sun is shining. Birds are singing and tulips blooming in all shapes and colours. Feels like it became springtime from one second to the next.

The signs the dancing sheep-feet uncovered is a circle made of square stone slabs with deep and dark symbols engraved.

Claude Sideburns, the man the llama and we used to call Burnside, who is not a professor for archaeology, is kneeling next to the circle, touching the stones and… What is he doing? Is he licking and tasting the mud from the stones and his fingers?

»I think it's a dial«, he says.

»A dial of destiny?« I can hear butler Gilbert murmer to housekeeper Hildegard. The two servants are still standing in the glass door.

»The engravements suggest that this circle was build to celebrate the coronation of one of the great kings or queens of the Greenlion people. She or he got the sacred sacraments inside this circle of stone slabs before the shaman put a crown of feathers on their head.«

»Do you think it is time for his pills?« I can hear Hildegard murmer with a snickering in her voice.

Claude is stepping around the circle getting more and more exited.

»There are symbols for North, East, South and West.«

He is pointing at four of the dark symbols.

»Others say Here, There and Everywhere. And some of them I do not understand, yet.«

»Ah, come on, Master Claude«, Gilbert, the butler exclaims. »Are you serious?«

»What do you want from me?« Sideburns asks. »Just becaue I am not a professor for archaeology does not mean that I am not interested in archaeology and mysterious signs. And all the you others, stop standing around just staring. Somebody bring me that treasure map. I think I can find an instruction manual for this dial with the map somehow.«

And in my head I can hear a little bald-headed man singing,

Bored of the life in the City of Gold

He'd left and let nobody know.

Gone were the towers he had known from a child,

Alone with the dream of a life

He travelled the wide open road,

The blinkered arcade,

In search of another to share in his life.

Nowhere.

Everyone looked so strange to him.

They've got no horns and they've got no tail

They don't even know of our existence.

Am I wrong to believe in a City of Gold

That lies in the deep distance, he cried

And wept as they led him away to a cage

Beast that can talk, read the sign.

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Today is Sunday, the 7th of May 2023.

Circle of Stone