At the center of the basin, the turf dipped into a shallow, circular hollow ringed by frost-split limestone slabs and a dry spring-bed.
Here the flower stalks grew shorter and thicker than the ones on the outer slope, their stems woody as old heather and their root-mats braided five feet deep into the cold clay. Ashaun stopped cutting at the edge of the stone ring, wiping her camp knife on her boot top with her right hand, because the flat slabs around the dry spring gave them bare rock to stand on without trampling the ancient roots.
Pip walked to the middle of the stone ring with the hemp rope still slack between its forefoot and Ysabet’s left hand.
At the lip of the dry spring-bed grew a single low cluster of grey-white bells whose stalks were crusted with pale mineral lime. Pip lowered its bound head, let the rope rest under its chin, and blew a slow, gentle shellhorn breath across the dry flower-cups.
The woody bells parted with a faint, creaking rustle, releasing a puff of heavy silver-gold dust that did not scatter on the air, but hung low over the limestone bowl.
Through the bond—and in the shimmering air just above the stones, where Osha and Ashaun stood within reach of the drift—woke an impression older and quieter than any animal panic they had passed on the way in.
