Cailleach

She is the last of her sisters standing, now. Once there were five, to face the major southern moonrise in alignment. The last of the standing stones. The last lingering silver tip of moonlight would bathe them in their purpose, dragged up from the coastal stones below, carved with intent. They were guardians, protectors, avengers. They formed a protective circle, an exclusive ring. Now only she is left. She takes in the current view over Dervaig, with its tourists and its pencil-tower church, all the matchstick-people scurrying in recent times beneath her watchful eye.

     Long years now since the others fell down, they could not stand and watch with her. They dissipated into green calm mossy sleep, forgetting their identity, and who had stood them there in ancient times to mark the seasons. Clocks, barometers, carved markers of the sea and land, made to guide the people of the time. How sharper than a serpent’s tooth is the scythe that slices through the clouds, the silver reminder of times past.

     The tides of life and death rise and fall beneath her. The people are born, raise their children, go to work, grow old and pass away. Already they forget the purpose of the five sisters raised on the headland, now reduced to one. Her testimony of the rocks still stands. How long will she last? The other three lie scattered around her, paying silent tribute to her upright status. She stands where they fell, silent soldiers of that past time, casualties of the weather, erosion, sheer human fickleness in forgetting. Perhaps she is the eldest, the original first planted like a cold stone rose, to flower in static bloom down the centuries. The people once looked to the circle as their friends, protectors, signs to the next life.

     The Cailleach rises up on the headland, she sneers at their human progress. A v-shaped cut in the rock could be a two-fingers at those who have forgotten. Whatever she was, she will be. Her survival speaks of the designs of ancient people, a purpose without a name that has lasted long, longer than other technologies, the rise and fall of wooden ships, into the age of the microchip. The three fallen ones salute her steadiness, her winning the game of life. She alone is the undead old woman, who thrives and will last.