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“There’s a well?” they attempted. “The rock was rolled over it?”
“More conjecture.” Her voice was suddenly hesitant. “But imagine, yes, there was a well, a sacred spring, known to the nuns of the abbey. They hid the hoard inside. Sexburga solved the riddle, but there was still great danger from the Northmen, raids and the like, so she had a rock moved over the well. And by the time of William the Conqueror and the Domesday Book, the well itself was forgotten, and the rock was a landmark, with a name that was just a name.”
They were still gazing at it, Holywell Rock. It had always loomed large, this boulder sitting on the line between two properties contentiously divided. Even as a child, if they stood on top of it, they could see over the hedges, into the forbidden realm of the enemy. They’d often climbed up with their wooden sword, to glare at Marsden Hall, at the tower, guarded by a dragon that they longed to fight, vanquish, and befriend, assuming the vanquishment wasn’t mortal. They’d passed embarrassing lengths of time atop the boulder, waiting for glimpses of the dragon, and for glimpses of the haughty girl who’d refused to introduce them to said dragon when they’d asked.
And beneath the boulder, all this time, a treasure had been waiting for them, for them and for Elf.
“It’s here.” They turned their gaze back to her. They had no doubt.
She nodded again. “We have to lift the rock.”
They laughed. There was no other fit response. She’d run to them with the knowledge of the hoard’s location flaming in her brain, and then she’d run back, too excited to waste a single second. And now what?
“We can’t lift it.” They stated the obvious.
She knew. But she tilted up her chin in refusal. And they weren’t about to let her down.
“That leaves us one option,” they said. “We must levitate it.”
This time, she didn’t need convincing. She sifted through her hair, searching for stray pins, and twisted the dark locks into a messy knot. Her eyes fixed on the rock with such dauntlessness and determination, they almost expected it to roll itself out of her way.
It did not.
“Ready?” She circled behind it. They paced closer and crouched, pawing at the grass to see if they could wedge their fingertips beneath.
No. Emphatically, no.
“Are your hands on it?” They put their palms on the rock, shifting their weight from foot to foot, settling themself. The rock was cool and scabrous, with luridly colored lichens and tufts of moss.
“Yes,” called Elf.
“Ready, then.”
She sent up the chant. “Light as a spirit. Light as the air.”
“Light as a spirit,” they chanted with her. “Light as the air.”
Their nose itched, and their thighs burned, and some bird was calling them a twit, repeatedly.
“Um,” they said at last. “Maybe it doesn’t work when we can’t see each other.”
And when the thing to be levitated weighed over a ton.
Moving this rock would take an army.
Unless…
They sidled backward and gave the rock a narrow-eyed look. “How would you quantify its weight in horses? Two? Two and a half?”
They stood, shaking out their skirt. “One more option.”
—
Charles Peach was in a field, pulling weeds from a row of robust-looking plants. Georgie approached, mindful this time of how they stepped.
Peach looked up and startled. His tanned face turned white as lime.
“Those aren’t turnips,” observed Georgie, upon closer inspection of the plants. “You’ve planted mangel-wurzel.”
