Paying the Piper, one of Simon's

 szczęśliwego Nowego Roku, Happy New Year, Felice Anno Nuovo,
boldog új évet

let's hope it will be a better one than last ... but that the winged hussars keep arriving which to us was the bright spot of last year.

Here's one of Simon's to kick off: a humorous one to start the year

Paying the Piper

Eric Clatterthwaite was a Druid, he had declared himself as such on his census form so it must be true. From the time he was a teenager he knew that there was something greater than the world he could see around him and that he was destined to discover it.

 

Eric was not good at science or mathematics at school so it was not a scientific discovery he was looking for. If his future discovery wasn't temporal it must therefore be spiritual. Eric went looking for the correct spiritual doctrine that would fulfil his destiny. After some investigation Eric decided that the Abrahamic religions were too stuffy, Buddhist philosophy made his head ache and he could never remember the multiplicity of Hindu gods. By a process of elimination Eric's destiny would be among one sect or other of Pagans.

 

Further investigation brought Eric to the conclusion that Wicca was too weird, as well as the disappointment that 'skyclad' rituals didn't actually mean naked, and that Satanists frankly frightened him. Despairing, Eric returned once more to his search, mostly using Wikipedia. Stumbling upon pictures of summer solstice celebrations at Stonehenge, Eric discovered Druidism. Missing the fact that the so-called 'Druids' were Victorian revivals based on little more than wishful thinking, Eric decided that as the Romans had suppressed them in the first century AD meant there was more to them than met the eye. Eric was destined to be a Druid!

 

With the aid of the internet Eric found the Druidic circle nearest to him and promptly joined. The leader of the circle could see that Eric was enthusiastic, and his willingness to pay the, somewhat expensive membership fee clinched the issue.

 

Eric was tall, fairly good looking, and whatever qualities he lacked, he was brimming over with self-belief. This gave him a fair amount of charisma, and before long some members of the circle were looking to Eric, rather than the current leader of the group for spiritual inspiration. Eric had always had vivid dreams, and using these he was able to create rather impressive rituals. This led to a profound disagreement, read screaming confrontation, with the leader of the circle. Subsequently Eric left the circle, which didn’t bother the leader, accompanied by several others, which did; particularly as they were mostly the more attractive female members of the group. This schism was not particularly noteworthy and rated no more than a couple of lines in the local pagan newsletter.

 

Eric, with the self-bestowed title of Master Oakwood, was now leader of his own circle. The new circle needed a place to conduct their rituals, as the woodland grove they had used earlier was the private property of the leader of their former group. The rather cramped garden belonging to one of Eric's devotees was not really suitable, having giggling children belonging to the neighbour on one side, and the barbeque belonging to the neighbours on the other.

 

Eric spent much of his free time on rambles through the local countryside searching for a new place of worship. Eric rather liked the countryside which was something of an advantage for a druid. One morning when confronted by a thick patch of brambles at the end of a rather overgrown path the rising sun glinted off something shiny that intrigued Eric. Wielding the secateurs that he had taken to carrying on his rambles, Eric battled his way to a small depression in some rather neglected woodland. Unknown to Eric the woodland was neglected as its ownership was the subject of a legal wrangle between a wealthy farmer, a dot-com millionaire who had bought a nearby mansion and the local district council.

 

What had caught Eric's attention was a standing stone, about three feet high and greyish-blue in colour and with a fairly smooth surface which had reflected the sunlight. Eric knew that he had found his sacred grove and was one step closer to his destiny. Eric imagined that the stone had been here since before the druids had been suppressed by the Romans and thereafter neglected. In fact the stone had originally been placed here as part of an ornamental folly long since demolished, built at the same time as the Palladian house currently owned by the dot-com millionaire. The grove had only been abandoned since the 1940s when the house was taken over by a government department and the last surviving member of the owning family had died without issue over the skies of Berlin. What neither Eric nor the original builders had realised, was that the stone was a Welsh sarson stone from the same quarry that provided the sarson stones for Stonehenge.

 

Eric and his followers surreptitiously cleared a path to the grove to make it possible to enter only with some difficulty to discourage the curious. Eric started conducting rituals here guided by his increasingly vivid dreams. Any locals who saw the group clearing vegetation assumed that the ownership of the land had been determined and the newly confirmed owner was having the undergrowth removed. The three parties involved in the litigation all had other, more pressing concerns, and left the matter in the hands of the lawyers. And as is well known, the wheels of justice grind exceeding small as well as exceeding slow.

 

The matter came to a head on the summer solstice when Eric had devised a particularly intricate ritual. When the ritual came to a climax Eric suddenly found himself somewhere … else. He could see the grove and his followers but as though through a filmy veil. The only thing that was the same in both places was the sarson stone, which now appeared to be faintly glowing. Eric saw that someone was, not approaching but becoming more solid. This person was dressed in green robes, with green tinged skin and blond-green hair and was beautiful but androgynous in aspect. Eric was overjoyed, his destiny was here, and he was about to meet it. To Eric's consternation, the figure of his destiny seemed angry.

 

The figure spoke to Eric in a language he didn't understand. If Eric had done more extensive research on the true history of the Druids, using sources other than Wikipedia, he might have recognised the words as early Celtic. The figure touched his, her or it's, Eric still wasn't sure, hand to Eric's forehead.

Simultaneously, Eric had a blinding headache and heard the newcomer speak in English.

 

"You're late!"

 

"Wh … what?", Was all the reply  Eric could muster.

 

"Where is the sacrifice? I have been waiting for two thousand of your years for the sacrifice, where is it?" Said the green clad figure. "I've watched inept fools tantalise me by offering sacrifices that I couldn't take as they didn't use the proper ritual. The others have laughed in my face! Now one of you primitives finally gets the ritual right and I turn up in anticipation only to find that they DON'T HAVE THE SACRIFICE!"

 

"Two thousand years? That … that would be ancient Romans. They suppressed the Druids and knowledge of the ritual was lost. I've rediscovered it, me Master Oakwood." Announced Eric, with all the dignity he could muster. "But I … I don't know anything about a sacrifice." He concluded, somewhat pathetically, rather ruining the effect of his previous speech.

 

"I suppose you'll have to do then." Said the newcomer, grabbing Eric's robe and pulling.

 

Eric's followers meanwhile, were mightily impressed, and not a little frightened, to see a filmy veil appear between them and Eric, or Master Oakwood as they called him.. They never saw the other figure, or heard any of the conversation between the pair. So when Eric and the veil vanished they fled with one accord.

 

The local police were rather confused by the account of Eric's disappearance, and when the most lucid of Eric's followers explained this with the phrase: " He went away, but he didn't seem to go anywhere.", the entire group were arrested on the grounds of being under the influence of … something. On investigating, the police found; no dead Eric, no live Eric, no blood, no signs of a struggle, although many signs of panicked departure and nothing suspicious of any kind. The blood test results having found no traces of prohibited substances the group were released. A missing person report was filed, but Eric being over 21, not suffering from any physical illness, nor any at least officially diagnosed mental illness and no sign of foul play, the report was marked; no further action.

 

Eric Clatterthwaite reappeared, seven years later to the day. He was not a day older and still wore the same robes. Eric caused a great deal of consternation by his appearance right in the middle of a solstice party hosted by the dot-com millionaire who had won his case and thought the stone looked good as picturesque backdrop. As Eric stumbled into a catering table bringing a large quantity of very expensive food and drink crashing to the ground, the millionaire had him arrested for criminal damage and being poor at a rich persons party.

 

When the police arrived to collect him, Eric, clearly in shock, could at the time only repeat, over and over, "They didn't even want me as a sacrifice."