The memory, he loses himself in now is older still, older than Camelot, or the house of Pendragon, older even than the Saxons. He thinks anyway, when they are not on this shore, he does not know their history. Maybe he shall ask someone more recently dead, when he has clawed his way back to the waking world again. But for now, all he can do is give himself to the memory.

It is an alarming recollection, even more so than the memory of the Raven King or Merlin. For while their meetings might have been startling, at least before them he can still feel like himself. Before they appeared, he could still recognise himself. He could watch himself laughing with William and the other Saxons, or eavesdropping on the pilgrim's conversations and prayers.

This memory isn't like that.

Because before her, he wasn't himself, before her he wasn't anything.

In this time, in this time before Saxons began to die and leave their ghosts, and the wider population of Britain decided to collectively claim the circle as a pilgrimage for their own gods, he was alone. Had been alone for at least 2,000 years…if not longer. Maybe 2,000 was just the number he chose to stop counting at. There was no one at his circle except him, most days there were not even birds or mice to chase.

There was only the wind, and the forest down below, and those were mostly empty right now. He had been alone so long he had forgotten the sound of his own name. Most days, most years or decades he had no name, no name at all. He was no one, he was nothing, nothing but the shadow.

This was the truth of things, and he had no longer the will to deny it anymore.

The shadow did not leave the circle anymore, not because it couldn't – but because there was no need of it. What was there outside the stones to intrigue the dead? There was only life out there, and that was no longer his business. He had no business anymore. The shadow had nothing anymore, neither speech, or eventually... thought.

All he did most days was sit on the side of his sacred hill, inside his stones that he did not really build himself, and watch the sun's progress through the sky. Sometimes he did not even bother to close his eyes and sleep when the sun left and the moon rose. A shadow did not need to sleep, a shadow on the ground needed very little to keep existing. Just light, and something to block it. He had that, nothing else was required and so he let himself forget…forget that he had ever needed anything else. Forget the feel of rain landing on his face, the taste of water on his tongue, or the smell of food. He was the shadow and this…this was all he had ever been.

This was all he was…until she stepped into his stones.

He did not see her at first, the shadow was too focused on watching the sun move so slowly across the sky. He didn't even notice the child – but then he was only a shadow now, so he didn't really notice most things these days. He would not have noticed her at all, if she hadn't stuck her face between himself and his view of the sun.

If she hadn't looked right at him then.

"Hello, I'm not bothering you, am I?"

Of course, in reality she would not have said those words exactly, she would have said something in Latin, but he had always found it easier since the loss of William, to remember his memories in the tongue of the Saxon. Anyway what she said didn't really matter, but rather that she had said it to him at all.

In a time that has not yet happened, Robin will tell a lie to the other ghosts that have yet to appear. There will come a woman to the house that has yet to be built, and through the actions of one of their own, she will fall out of its window. She will fall and smash her head on the ground. For a time they will think she is dead or chased off for good. But she will return with her husband, injured but not dead. She will return and she will be able to see them without the aid of gods, magic or fairy foster mothers. This will amaze the younger ghosts, and for once they will turn to him and they will ask him because he is the oldest, if he has ever seen anything like it before.

And without even stopping to consider why he does so, he will tell a lie. He will tell a story about a bear, how one day it saw him and tried to eat him, but because he was already a ghost it failed and didn't really understand why. Of course, all animals can see them, this should be no surprise even to the youngest amongst them, that is truth at least – but there was no bear, that was the lie, he would never let a bear get so close.

He will be surprised when he does this, that not one of them points out that they already know that animals can see and hear them, that they were asking if a human could. That surely, he knows the difference between what a man should be capable of, and what a beast should. But they do not – perhaps they have grown so used to him as he will become, his tricks and his backwards talk that they do not even question the absurdity of his stories anymore. He might be sad at that, or perhaps just pleased that they have not seen through his lie.

He does not know his feelings around it yet, it has not happened – all he knows for sure is that he will not tell them about her. About the girl that stood in his... his people's stones that sunny day all those thousands of years ago, during the time that he was not yet Robin of Button House, but no longer Rogh of the Family. During the time when he had been nothing but the shadow on the ground.

The shadow tried to roll out of her sight, for shadows should not be spoken to – but she didn't look away from him. Just stood there as he rolled across the grass, towards the two stones that so long ago now, were once one. He hit the larger of the two and stopped then, shuffled up until he was leaning – as all shadows will – against the great stone. And when he looked back up, he saw that the girl had been watching him the whole time. She was not smiling, not laughing at him as others might have. Her face was drawn and so pale it was almost grey under the bright yellow light of the sun. Her hair was black and her eyes were dark, almost brown with flecks of something more, something a little more metallic in their depths. The word came to him then, one of the words that as nothing but a shadow he had thought lost to him entirely.

Amber.

Yes.

Yes.

That was the colour of the girl's eyes, they were dark brown with amber flecks in them. It was such a strange word to suddenly come back to him, that he almost wanted to laugh from the surprise of it. But he kept that inside himself, not for once because as a shadow he should not laugh – but because if he made such a sound then surely the girl would run away and he would forget the word amber. He knew he would eventually, but why should it be now? Why couldn't he hold on to that word for just a little while longer?

The girl knelt on the ground then, and stared at him – so he stared right back, even though as a shadow he really shouldn't look at anyone or anything save the moon and the sun. She stretched out her hand then, and he, in a trance, stretched out his. Their fingers did not touch, they were sitting too far apart for that, but it didn't matter. He had reached for her, and she for him.

"They call me Rowena."

Said the girl in a language that would soon enough be dead to all but the stuffiest of scholars.

"What do they call you?"

The shadow wished that he could still speak then, that he had not wasted the time between his death and now existing in such silence and misery. But he had lost the ability, and it would take more than just being seen again to regain it. It would take practice, and the will to make it happen. And right now, all his will was being forced into the act of holding her gaze, so he could not answer her.

"Do you not speak…do the dead in this land not speak then, or is that just your people?"

All these were questions that perhaps even she knew, would go unanswered.

"That's okay," the girl assured him. "You don't have to speak; I've been told I can speak more than enough for two. My father says it all the time, with love I assume, but sometimes he sounds so annoyed by me that I think he would like it quite well if I could not speak. But not only can I, I think it quite beyond me to keep silent when it is wished of me.

"You wouldn't have heard of my father of course, because you're stuck up here and he and his men have kept to their camp, all the way on the other side of the hill. You might not even know how strange it is that I live there too. Really, I should be back in Rome with my aunt, that's what everyone says anyway, but father is prefect here – what little that means to the Celtic savages. Oh, I don't mean to be cruel, but they are savages, or at least that's what father always says. Sorry, I got distracted…I was talking about why I'm not in Rome, with my aunt learning how to be a proper wife and lady. Well, my mother died you see, did your mother die?"

Yes, one of them had anyway, he remembered that. Her face had been eaten by a wolf. He did not say this out loud, but he thought it hard and he hoped that some part of her understood, for she gave him a smile that spoke perhaps of their shared grief and understanding. Or maybe it was just a smile, he had lost the ability to tell one of those from the other.

"Yes, well my mother died and so there is only my aunt to teach me anything at all. But my father, so much did he love my mother that he could not bear to be parted with even just a small part of her – and so, when he received his orders to come here, he told my aunt flat out that I was to come too. And here I am."

She held her arms wide before her, and bowed ever so slightly to the shadow. The shadow, in a reflex he had considered long dead to him, bowed his head a little in return. This seemed to please the girl greatly, for she clapped her hands together, and hopped up and down on the spot. It was a strange reaction, but then the shadow supposed that the young always were very strange. It was the gift of the young, to be so strange to the old.

"But where are my manners, speaking of Rome when you do not know it. And besides I'm quite certain that you must be more interested not in why I'm here, in this land of savages, but why I'm here on your hill. Well, it was the soldiers you see. They've been here quite a while most of them, longer than my father or I, and so they've had plenty of time to hear the local legends and ghost stories. And la, did they love to tell them sitting round the campfire at night. Tales of monsters and kelpies that would drag a young maiden into her watery grave.

"I'm quite sure they were trying to scare me, but that is no easy feat, as my father and aunt could well tell you. And night after night, when they were done with marching and their drills, I came back to sit with them and hear their stories. And my favourite one, was the tale of the haunted stones of Uamh hill. That's what the local tribes call your hill. It was a story of a man who had died so long ago that those who looked upon him now would no longer call him of the race of man. Some said he died of heartbreak, some that it was a great storm that took his life, but most agree that hardly mattered at all. For it was not his life that had purpose, it was his death. For in death, he was set to guard that hill and the great treasure that was buried underneath it. They went on at length about the treasure, as men are so wont to do. But I was more interested in the man, in the ghost of Uamh hill.

"My father assured me it was just a story, intended to frighten young girls from wandering the wilds – I suppose Celtic tribes don't like their daughters wandering away from them anymore than Roman generals do. But I was determined to find out the truth, and so on a day I knew my father would be away from camp, I snuck away from my guards, and made my way up your hill.

"And low, upon the sight of you I knew I was right – for you see, I can see ghosts. So could my mother and aunt, that was why she was so determined to keep me with her, but I'm so glad she didn't succeed otherwise I'd never have met you."

And then from the folds of her cloak, she took a small package all wrapped up in a soft looking fabric. She unwrapped the parcel with some glee, and before him she held out what looked to be some kind of travelling biscuit.

"I knew I should bring something," said the girl then. "It's only polite when visiting the grave of someone to bring an offering. I didn't think you'd like a sacrifice of a sheep or a bull like Roman Gods or spirits do. There aren't many of those – spirits that is – just the great that wanted to see what their legacy was when they died. And they're never happy with it. But anyway, this is the stuff the soldiers eat – I couldn't find anything else on such short notice, and I knew that if I didn't go and see you now my father would have caught onto my plan and have stopped me for sure.

"But anyway, oh great spirit of the hill, I thank you for letting me into your grave, and your kingdom – and in repayment I shall sacrifice half of this biscuit to you."

And with that, she snapped it in two, placed one half on the ground directly before him – and the other in her mouth. Then she smiled, gave another little bow, and then almost in a blink she was gone. Maybe she was magic, or a delusion of his own, and had vanished as such delusions will do. No, there was his half biscuit still sitting forever untouched on the ground before him, she had been real then. She had just run off while he had been looking down at the biscuit.

It was a strange thing to have happened for sure, and yet as he reached out to the biscuit to pass his hand ineffectually through it, the shadow suddenly felt more, more like a man, than he had in over a thousand years. So, he couldn't say that it hadn't been a pleasant thing either.

And he wondered, in the slow way of shadows on the ground, whether he would ever see the girl again.

He did. In fact, he saw her many times.

Every day, when the sun grew to the same spot in the sky she would come. She would come with packages of fruit, and meat, and grains smashed into different biscuits. And always before eating any of them, she would break a piece off so that in a small way the shadow could join her. She would come with stories of other ghosts she had heard tales of, and some that she had seen. She never explained how she could see them; he had just assumed at the time that it was a gift that she had been born with.

It would never even have occurred to him that someone could gain such a gift by falling out of window. Though to be fair that could have equally been because he hadn't known what a window was then, still didn't really. I mean why would someone deliberate cut holes in their cave? But this was an argument he would have with another person, another Other much later. Julian would never get him to see the good of windows, and really, he was the wrong person to have even tried.

The thought of that woman, of Alison lying on the ground so helpless after Julian had so obviously pushed her from the window – brought his mind back to the girl. The first girl who could see ghosts like himself. And to that terrible day, that awful day when she hadn't come to the circle when the sun was highest in the sky. She hadn't come to the circle at all that day – he remembered waiting. He remembered sitting on that hill, just in front of the stones and waiting for a girl that was probably not going to come that day, if she ever came again at all.

And just for a moment, when that truth had dawned on him, just as the sun was setting, the shadow had cried. Not because he feared for the girl, or because he loved her as close as her father might have – although he did, on both accounts – but because without the hope of that bright young face in his world, he was alone. Alone to sit, and become nothing, nothing but the shadow again.

Because the truth was, with each visit she had made to him, the shadow had begun to wake up. Begun to remember how to smile, and laugh and think. Begun to remember flashes from his life, his life before he had been nothing but this. He had even begun to remember what his name had been. He had been holding the knowledge, this small delicate piece of knowledge, close to his chest. Had been practicing making the sounds with his unpractised mouth, when he had been alone. He'd intended on the day that she never showed up, on saying that word, that name to her.

And now perhaps he never would.

It was a pitiful state to be in when he heard her cry. It was undoubtedly her, the girl, Rowena, and yet he had never before heard any such noise coming out of her mouth. It was a wail, a wail of such sorrow and heartbreak that for a moment he thought that she had been struck down by something. Maybe a giant animal of some kind, he was beginning to remember those.

She appeared in a wave of purple skirts and a red cloak just over the ridge of his hill, and then she fell in a crumpled heap before him. For a moment she stayed there, sobbing, weeping, making no sound that could be taken for coherent communication. And then she looked up at him, her eyes red from the tears that still filled them and she said one sentence, one sentence that ripped the heart the shadow had not known he still possessed straight from his chest.

"I'm to go back to Rome."

Rome.

The city of her birth.

A city in a land far away from this one, a land that was always hot – at least in her stories to him. A land where he could never go, stuck as he was on this scrap of land for his entire eternal existence.

He would never see her again. And at this thought the shadow did something that he had believed he would never do again. He began to weep. Tears formed in his red eyes, and fell down his cheeks as if they were the rain from the sky. He was sobbing now, his whole face wet from tears that should no longer have been possible.

The girl sat up and reached one of her hands out to him then, though she could not have laid it on him even if she had tried.

"Oh don't weep, my dear friend. For we shall see each other again one day. I know it, maybe…maybe this is only temporary. Only a short trip home, for father to recover from his time here and then come the winter we shall be back again. Fighting off the savages, winning back the land for civilisation."

Then tears began to run down her own cheeks, and she cut her words off with a shuddering sob of her own.

"No…no…I know that's a lie. We shall be forever parted, like siblings cut too early from their mother's belly and thrown into the dust for the wolves to eat. But we are not Romulus and Remus my friend, there is no mother wolf to suckle us while we regain our strength. We are forever parted. My father will never return to this shore, not if he is given any choice and our family is so powerful in Rome that no one will dare force him again. My uncle has become the emperor, and wishes for my father to be at his side again.

"Oh, if only I could bring something of yours with me, my friend. Something so that when I am an old woman, I can look at and remember my time in this wild land, and the friend I made on the hill of Umah."

It was at that moment, when those silly words had left her mouth, that the shadow…that Rogh had heard it. Had heard the noise, the great roar in his ears. He could feel its light upon his face, even though he knew it was still underground. And a thought occurred to him then, a very stupid thought in hindsight. He smiled at her, turned and shuffled quickly, on hands and knees over towards the middle of the great stone circle in which he made his home now.

In dazed astonishment she followed him with her eyes. In the middle of the circle he stopped, and kneeling on the ground, he plunged his arms through the earth. Deep under it, until he felt the hot pulse against his ghost hands. He shouldn't have been able to lift it, for as a spirit he could touch nothing anymore, not as a living man would understand it. And yet as he lifted his arms from within the earth, the stone that had been nestled there for so many years, centuries now came with him. It was as if it was rising through its own power.

The girl had followed him into the circle, and stood beside his shoulder looking down at the stone – well at the half stone – that now lay on the grass for anyone to see. And Rogh for the first time in over a century, opened his mouth and spoke.

"You take now. Remember me when you old."

She bent and took the stone in her hand, it seemed to glow a blue colour then, as if showing its own pleasure at being touched by a mortal's hand once again.

She smiled then, and maybe if he had not been dead she would have hugged him.

But he was dead, and this…this is where the memory ended.

It faded to black as his memory seeped away from his grasp. He did not remember what happened after that, he hoped it was not the last time he had seen her. Surely it could not have been for the stone had eventually returned to him, but he couldn't give the specifics of how anymore. Not with another time, another place already gripping his mind, gripping his soul.

He let his eyes close and hoped that it was the present calling him this time, and not just more of the past.

And then he opened his eyes to the great blue sky above him. For a second he would not let himself look away from it, because he was afraid...afraid...that when he looked down he wouldn't see the smiling face of young Pat Butcher, but something worse...something older. And then a voice, as sharp as it had been the last time Robin had been here cried out then.

"Boy! Don't fall behind, and if you drop that pack on your back and damage my furs again, I will skin you myself."

The Wanderer, young and whole, not an Arkenstone in sight. How far back in his memory had Robin fallen this time?

Walking, that's what they were doing, walking. Robin had forgotten how much he and the Wanderer had walked in the days before Mahal's folk. Sometimes they would walk for entire weeks and see nothing but each other. The land was still broken back then, it was a grey blur to Robin, thrust back into his adolescence again by the play of a tricky memory. They weren't anywhere near the great forest, not now anyway, that was another year away yet. So there weren't even trees to break up the dull grey of the land around them.

It was enough to make a person go mad.

Robin and the Wanderer walked and walked, and walked and walked. They walked all day, all night, they didn't even stop to sleep. For food the Wanderer chewed on the dried meat he had still carried from the Family's stores. Robin munched on the berries he had grabbed from bushes along the way. The Wanderer didn't allow them to stop to eat or catch anything more substantial than that.

They still had their water-skins, filled from the last stream they had pas, but that was two weeks ago now - and the water was beginning to taste stale. If they didn't find someone soon, they would die. Had traveling with the Wanderer always been so? He could no longer remember. And then, as if by a magic that could only really be explained by a poor memory, they were suddenly surrounded by people.

People of the Family.

Cousins, they had never even met before.

They were traveling too, though not for any kind of profit. A ground shudder had destroyed their old cave, and they were trying to find a new one before winter set in fully. The ground shuddered a lot back then, Robin remembered that much. It still wasn't used to being ground at all.

The Wanderer had rejoiced at the sight of them, and had set his pack down with the rest of the people who had for a time, made this flat scrap of land their camp. The first time in weeks either of the two wanderers had felt the weight lift from their shoulders.

The Wanderer had then set about ingratiating himself with the cousins' leader, a man named Brun. Robin had dared not to get close enough to the two imposing men to hear what they said, so he found himself instead watching their shapes melting into the crowd of cousins.

He remembered he had lingered, unsure, by the packs until one too many irritated looks by boys having to pass him to get to their own packs, caused him to wander away from there. He didn't know how he had ended up walking around the women's section of the camp. Just that one moment in the memory he was there by the packs, and then he was somewhere else. Women rolled out furs and bedrolls settling small children down upon them. Or if they had grown beyond the age of motherhood, then they lay upon them themselves. Resting their aching bones, in this short time of stillness.

Ro could relate. He wished that he could do that, that he had a bedroll he could lay on the ground and rest upon. But the Wanderer had made him abandon it a few weeks back, so he could fit in more of their stock in his pack.

His back ached from lying on nothing but the ground; but he dare not complain out loud even when the Wanderer was not in earshot. The man was still in this camp after all, he would eventually find out that Robin...that Rogh had been moaning about him, and he would make the boy regret it. It was just simpler to keep his mouth shut, his bruises would certainly appreciate the reprieve.

It was the smell, the aromatic taste of wine and roasted meat in the back of his throat, that drew him to the edge of the woman's section of this little camp. That drew him towards the cluster of women, all making cooing noises. The kind most members of the Family would make towards a new arrival.

He found himself peering over the shoulders of the slightly bent over women of the Family, expecting to see a baby. Maybe, a few moon cycles old at most, still young enough that its verv existence was still a bit novel. After all children who were two winters old were still just as cute, but nobody cooed or made a fuss over them. They weren't a new thing anymore, a special little creature that had yet to prove it could last one winter, let alone two. After your second winter you were just another, vaguely boring, member of the tribe. You even got your proper name and everything.

However , a baby was not who he saw then.

It was a girl. Young yes, maybe less than six winters old - still a child, but not a baby. Not someone who would have warranted all this fuss.

She was sitting on a pregnant woman's lap staring at the others around her with open fascination. She was a strange looking child granted, with yellow hair and far darker skin than many in the family possessed. There was also something about her face, it was far flatter than it should have been. The nose barely existent in the middle of her face, and there didn't seem to be a single sign of a brow ridge at all. Was that why they were all crowded round her? Was she deformed? Some people were, but Rogh had always been told that it was rude to point at those people, and certainly never crowded round them.

And then the girl looked right at Rogh, and smiled wide, an unsettling thing to look at with that flat face of hers. Her forehead was far too round to be a normal birth. And then she was speaking, speaking words that sounded like complete nonsense to the young trader.

Suddenly the women too took notice of Rogh standing behind them, and they made frantic signs for him to go away. It was the language of the traveller, that quick, almost dance like sign language. People that were between homes, or travelling for trade as he did, did not like to talk. At least when they past other members of the Family, so every child of their people knew the language, knew how to recognise it.

But even if he hadn't, the unfriendly glares would have clued him in. Enough to know, that as a boy, as a youth, almost a man, and only a cousin to boot, he was not welcomed in this part of the camp. That it was scandalous he wondered here at all. It was easy enough to ignore him when he was just walking by, but to have stopped and stared. That was beyond rude, it was nearly an affront.

He was certain that they would have grabbed him then, maybe beat him around the head, or slapped him across the face - they certainly looked angry enough to do it. And maybe they would have done too, if the pregnant woman, taking the still chattering girl off her lap and sitting her gently on the ground beside herself, hadn't reached out to him then with one hand. With one hand, which held a small, delicately made cake.

Cake was the only word to describe the small, deeply brown disc that she held out to him then. He would not have used it at the time, although he has been told that modern cakes are sweet and he remembered this disc of dried berries being very sweet. So that was the word that slotted neatly into the memory now.

He remembered reaching out to take the offered...cake...but the woman stopped him by raising her other hand in the simple sign of stop. Rogh complied, he was only a visitor here, and did not wish to anger the women even more than he clearly already had.

She then made the sign for 'Trade' over the brown disc in her other palm, and Rogh for a second didn't understand, and then his eyes widened and he smiled, just a little. Not wide enough to threaten but to show them that he had heard, and that he understood. He could go and find his pack, but his stomach hurt and that would take too long. So instead he reached into his pouch and took out the only thing that he carried with him at all times, besides his sister's feather and no amount of hunger would get him to part with that.

It was a sling that one of his father's had made for him many winters ago now, when he had been no more than a child of three. A bit too young to understand the import of the weapon, in hindsight. He handed it to the woman then, with nary a thought. It must have once meant a lot to him, but no more, the hunger had over rode that. All he could think of then as he traded the weapon of his father, one of the men that had loved him as a parent should, as the wandering father never would, was the thought of the cake. The cake that would soon be in his belly. That would soon make it feel whole again, make him whole again.

The woman handed the longed for cake over and took the sling, smiling in thanks - before handing the weapon to the little girl almost without thought. It startled both Rogh and the other women around them, it even seemed to startle the pregnant woman herself. It was not the done thing, for women to have hunting weapons. Not amongst the Family at any case. The little girl just smiled and took the sling, running it through her hand, and twirling it about her head like it was a toy, instead of the weapon Rogh had used it as.

It was fine, really he should have made himself a new one already anyway. He needed a longer cord for his longer arms. He would still miss that toy, but it was just another part of home that was gone from him now. Their trade finished, the woman introduced herself properly at last, pressing her hand to her chest and saying in a clear, and crisp voice.

"Iza."

Rogh repeated the gesture and said in his own clearest voice.

"Rogh."

The other women dispersed, not bothering to introduce themselves to Rogh. Rogh knew he should leave too, that his business here was over. He was just about to, really, he should go and find the Wanderer and make sure the man had not tried to leave him behind... again.

It was the sound of the girl's voice ringing clear in the silence that had lingered in the absence of the other women, that stopped him.

"Ayla."

She was repeating the thumping gesture both Rogh and Iza had used.

"Ayla."

For a moment Rogh blinked, not entirely understanding. In fact it was only when she repeated the word for a third time that he realised that she was saying her name. He smiled at it, it almost sounded like a Family name but not quite. There was something a bit different about it, something quite... other. Maybe it was just how she was saying it.

He made the sign for hello. She repeated it, her hand signals clumsy and slow but understandable. He then said the name she had stated was hers and she smiled at him. She opened her mouth, likely to say something else incomprehensible, but was interrupted by the bark of a wolf-dog running by.

The smile dropped from her face, and she huddled against Iza, terrified. It was strange, she acted like she'd never seen a dog before. But the capture and taming of wolves had been a trade within the Family for generations now.

As the woman began to comfort the girl, the...the cro magnum child named Ayla. The first of the Others he would meet, the memory began to fail and fade. Until both woman and child were gone and only the sound, the sound of the wolf-dog barking in the distance remained.

The sound remains even when he stands back in Button House, in front of the small man with with the glass on his eyes, and the hair on his lip.

"Mate, are you okay? You seemed lost there for a moment."

Is this another memory, what time is it? Pat has died so later than the eighties, but what of the later arrivals. Julian, Alison, Mike? Have they come yet, or are they just pictures in his head. Dreams he used to have when he was a much younger man than he is now.

They are no longer standing in the garden anymore. Time has moved on since Pat first asked him about the Others.

The sound of the wolf-dog is still there though. No not a wolf-dog at all. Just a dog, one of the neighbour's bitches barking from the distance. He can see the old man now, the old snob is leading his pack out of the door of Button House. A young woman is waving him off, it is Alison. And she is real, as is her husband who stands beside her, making a funny face at the retreating back of their neighbour.

Good, he is no longer trapped in a memory anymore.

"Robin" says Pat, a worried tone lacing his words. "Are you sure you're okay?"

And Robin turns then and looks down at the earnest young ghost. The smile that creeps across his ancient face feels real enough to him.

"Yes, me okay, Pat. Me just think me ready to talk about them now."

"Them? Who do you mean?" Says the scoutmaster.

"The Others. Others like you. Cro mug nums. You ask when you first die if I met many, me not ready to answer then. But now, me ready, me okay to talk if you still want listen."

The delighted smile on the small man's face is almost worth the pain of the memories.

"Oh yes that would be wonderful, we can talk about it in history club. The others are going to be so excited."

Robin doubts very much they will be, but he doesn't say so to Pat, why crush that hope if the younger ghost can still hold onto it?

Pat leaves him then, leaves Robin to ponder the memories he has at last clawed his way out of. The girl hadn't known what a dog was, but the people on the tv said that it was the Others who had domesticated dogs. It had felt wrong to Robin when he had heard the little woman on the screen say it, but he didn't know why. Now he remembers, it had felt wrong because it was a lie. And he wonders now, what else of the Others so called history is just another lie. Modern Others, modern humans of the 21st century claim that King Arthur and Merlin are just legends, and that the Raven king is just an old folk tale that got a bit out of hand.

But Robin remembers them both.

Maybe, the cavemen concludes as he walks slowly back to Button House, history is just another word for lying.