The Eye of Zoltar

We started to walk towards the archway that led to the gates and the stairway back down, and I turned to take one last look at the large semicircular area, from where the giant Idris would once have considered the cosmos.

‘He wouldn’t have seen much in this low cloud,’ said Perkins, thinking pretty much the same as I.

And that was when we heard a rattle as several things struck the ground behind us. We turned instinctively to investigate, and saw a few human finger bones rolling on the ground. They hadn’t been there before. Perkins and I frowned at one another as an ulna dropped out of the foggy murk above us with a wristwatch still attached by some dried gristle. I picked it up. It wasn’t a watch, it was a wrist altimeter, such as a parachutist or aerialist might wear. There was something engraved on the back.

‘To Shipmate Fly-low Milo, the finest aerialist that ever there was,’ I read.

‘Sounds like pirate grammar to me,’ said Perkins. ‘They missed out everything but the “Arr”.’

‘No, that’s engraved on the strap, look here.’

‘Oh. Right. But what does it mean?’

We both looked up at the tendrils of fog drifting past.

‘The old magic we can sense is the cloud,’ I said. ‘There’s a reason the top of Cadair Idris is constantly swathed in cloud … it’s hiding something.’

I picked up a stone, and threw it upwards as high as I could. There was a noise as the stone hit something, and a second later we jumped aside as a small section of rotted aircraft wing complete with tattered canvas came wheeling out of the fog and crashed to the ground. There was something hidden above us. We couldn’t find Pirate Wolff’s hideout for the very simple reason that it wasn’t meant to be found. That’s the thing about pirates. It’s not wise to underestimate their cunning.

‘If there’s something up there there must be a way of accessing it,’ I said, looking around. ‘We need to find the highest point.’

After a brief scout around in the damp fog, we found it – the high seat back of Idris’ chair, one side of which was twenty feet above the hard stone ground, and the other a precipitous seven-thousand-foot drop through the fog to the valley floor below.

‘Give me a hand,’ I said, and Perkins helped me to climb on to the large stone seat. I looked around to see how to climb farther and found a useful handhold, then a foothold, and then another. The holds were impossible to see from below against the wet stone, but had been definitely cut for a purpose. I had soon climbed upon the seat back, a narrow rock ledge less than six inches wide. I made a mental note that if I were to fall, I would try to land on the safe side of the chair – and when I say ‘safe’ I’m speaking in purely relative terms: a painful drop twenty feet on to wet rock rather than a seven-thousand-foot fall to certain death below. I cautiously stayed low, and reached above my head into the cloud, which here seemed to be thicker and distinctly uncloud-like – more like smoke. My fingers touched nothing, so, with fortune favouring the bold, I stood upright on the narrow ledge, all vision vanishing as my upper body was enveloped by the fog. I was mildly disoriented and my foot slipped on the wet rock, but I regained my footing, my heart beating faster. I stood up straight and reached above my head, straining to touch something. I even stood on tiptoe, but nothing. I was about to give up and return to firm ground when Kevin’s last message rang out in my head:

You may have to take a leap of faith if you find yourself on the shoulders of a giant.

I was standing on Idris’ chairback, about as close to his long-dead shoulders as I was likely to be, and if this wasn’t a leap of faith, I wasn’t sure what was.

I made a small jump and reached above my head, but felt nothing, and when I landed my feet slipped. For a moment I thought I would fall, but then I regained my balance.

‘Come on, Jenny,’ I said to myself, ‘that was nothing like a leap.’

‘Perkins?’ I called out.

‘Yes?’ came a disembodied voice from below.

‘I’m going to leap.’

‘And trust in providence?’

‘No,’ I said, ‘something better – I’m going to trust in … Kevin.’

And I jumped. Lept, actually. Even today I can’t remember whether I jumped on the cliff side or the summit side, but reasoning it out later it must have been the cliff side. Without the certainty of death, the leap wouldn’t have worked.

Because it did work. I leapt as high and as far as I could and put out my hands, hoping to grab hold of something, and I did. But it wasn’t the rung of a ladder, or a rope. It was a human hand, and it grabbed me tightly around the wrist, held me for a moment and then hauled me up until I was safe. I looked around and blinked, open-mouthed. I had not expected to see what I could see, nor the identity of the person who had just saved me.

The sky pirate’s tale

‘Surprised?’