Hallowed Ground: The Mystery of the African Fairy Circles by Paul Twivy
This magical
story is inspired by the most haunting and least explored country in
the world - Namibia - with its foggy Skeleton Coast, buried
goldmines, shocking secrets and awe-inspiring sand dunes.
Spread across the
face of its deserts are hundreds of miles of ‘fairy circles’ :
vast enough to be seen from space. They grow and die with the same
lifespan as humans, yet no-one has been able to explain why or how
they appear.
Then one day,
three teenagers and their families arrive from different parts of the
globe. Helped by bushmen, the buried possessions of a Victorian
explorer, and a golden leopard, they solve the mystery of the African
Circles. What will be discovered beneath the hallowed ground? And how
will it change the future of the planet above it?
This
is the Prologue of the book which takes place almost 190 years before
the present-day setting of the main story.
Prologue
Ray
County, Missouri, The United States of America
13th
November, 1833
The
rain of the preceding days had cleared, giving way to a beautifully
clear air that you could drink like water. It had been hours since
the three-day-old moon had sunk below the horizon.
Alice
woke up from the brightness inside the tent and called out in alarm.
‘Father,
don’t keep stirring the fire. You’ll set the tent on fire!’
‘I
haven’t touched the fire,’ he replied. ‘The embers are dying.
You need to come out here. You’ll never see the like of this
again.’
At
the sound of his voice, high-pitched and trembling, stretched between
excitement and fear, the whole family woke and left the tent.
Beth
Wall exclaimed on behalf of her young family who were struck dumb.
‘My
God, the whole heavens are on fire. Is it the end of the world,
Edward?’ she asked as Alice and her brothers clung to her
nightshirt from fear, sucking in the warm scent of her body for
comfort.
It
should have been the darkest hours before dawn, but the whole sky was
ablaze with meteors. They were falling like a rain of fire, twenty or
thirty of them ablaze every second. The tracks of light remained
visible for several seconds. It was if their eyes were a camera set
to a very slow shutter speed. The falling stars seemed to radiate
from the North-east but the sheer number of them confused every
sense. The brighter ones left a trail of sparks like sky rockets.
‘Fireworks!’
the youngest one cried.
Around
the family, camped on the banks of the Missouri river, arose several
hundred people as if a graveyard had just disgorged its dead. They
were Mormon refugees sleeping out in the open. Many fell to their
knees and started to pray.
Occasionally,
a particularly bright fireball would explode as it neared the Earth,
with a sound that echoed half-way round the planet.
‘It’s
as if every star has cut free from its mooring,’ Edward cried.
The
plantations were lit up for miles around. The white farmers could be
seen calling all their slaves together, many of whom fell on their
knees praying, arms held aloft, convinced it was Judgement Day. The
owners ran around those whom they had enslaved, begging forgiveness
and freeing them. Some were telling them, for the first time, who
their mothers and fathers were, who they’d been sold to and where
they now lived. This brought brief tears of comfort to their black,
upturned faces, followed by the agony that, now, they might never
live to be reunited.
Everywhere,
people were screaming and praying.
‘There
can be no atheists on a night like this,’ Beth said. ‘Some of
these stars as big as Venus!’
‘I’ve
seen two as big as the moon,’ their eldest observed.
‘You
see those that just skim the horizon?’ Beth asked Alice. ‘They
call those “Earth-grazers”.’
Edward
raked up the fire and found more logs. The family lay down next to
it, holding each other tight. They watched until the rising sun
eclipsed the fire-storm. From the southern states to Niagara Falls
and the frozen wastes of Canada; from the land-locked plains of the
mid-West to boats adrift on the icy Atlantic, people finally fell
asleep at the touch of a new dawn on their skin.
Namibia,
1838, five years later
Captain
Alexander dropped the flaming torch, sending light scurrying
downwards and plunging the cave into darkness.
What
he had seen remained imprinted on his retinas. It raced through his
neurones like a train threatening to come off the tracks.
Was
he hallucinating? Or had he really seen something that would change
the way the human race looked at itself?
He
sank slowly to his knees and felt around the cave floor for the
torch. Its coarse hessian tip was unmistakeable on his finger-tips,
as was the reek of kerosene as he raised it close to his face.
He
struggled to remember where he’d put the matches. Then he
remembered the feel of them at the bottom of his canvas bag.
His
fingers trembled as he tried to strike one. The first match sent
sparks shooting down his legs in a brief explosion. The cave lit up
momentarily.
The
second match was steadier and he lifted the flame to his torch which
hissed and spluttered back to life.
There
they were: fifteen or more, almost organic in shape, laid out in
niches along the cave.
Then
his eyes rose upwards again. There were four paintings on the
ceiling. He propped the torch up and tried to sketch them in a
notebook, but his hands couldn’t stop shaking and he was forced to
stop.
If
only the Herero men hadn’t abandoned him, their superstitions
blazing in their eyes, their priest unconscious on the floor. Then he
would have had witnesses, help and comfort, and not been left feeling
like a madman, utterly alone.
Mind
you, they had been right to be afraid. The knowledge was too much to
bear.
The
Royal Geographical Society, which had funded his mission, would
blacklist him. The Church and the Army would call him a traitor. He
would be an outcast.
He
left the tomb and brought back a platoon the next day to hide the
entrance from the world. No-one was ready for this. Perhaps in a
hundred or so years they might be…
Paul Twivy
studied English at Oxford University and became one of the most
famous British admen. He has written comedy and drama for the stage
and radio. He edited the bestseller Change the World for a Fiver.
He is married with five children. He was inspired to write Hallowed
Ground by his first-hand experiences of the extraordinary
landscapes and culture of Namibia.
