The Lowland

they might end up on the map of the region they pause to study.
    The trip is a honeymoon, the man’s first, though he was married once before. A few days ago, across the same ocean, in America, the couple stood to exchange their vows on the grounds of a small red-and-white church in Rhode Island that the man has admired for many years, its spire rising over Narragansett Bay.
    The couple’s union was witnessed by a group of friends and family. The man has gained two sons, a second daughter in addition to his own. There are seven grandchildren. Flung far apart, occasionally thrust together, they will know each other in a limited way. Still, it is a point of origin, a looking forward late in life.
    The years the couple have together are a shared conclusion to lives separately built, separately lived. There is no use wondering what might have happened if the man had met her in his forties, or in his twenties. He would not have married her then.
    The next day when they step out of the house they encounter a group bidding an unknown villager farewell, mourners in dark clothing spreading down the sloping street. For a moment it is as if they, too, are part of the funeral. There is no sense of its boundaries, where it begins or ends, whom it grieves. Then they pass, respectfully, out of its shadow.
    If their grandchildren were along, they would take them by cable car to see the dolphins and whales that swim off Dursey Island. Instead they devote their days to walking. Hand in hand, wearing bulky sweaters they’ve bought to ward off the slight autumn chill.
    They stop when they tire, to admire the views, to sit and eat biscuits, pieces of cheese. In tide pools with rocks that form chambers and grottoes, they discover heaps of flat gray pebbles, perforated shells that have worn away to hard white rings. The man gathers a handful, thinking they will make a nice necklace for his granddaughter in Rhode Island, strung through a bit of yarn. He imagines placing it on her head, so that it adorns her like a crown.
    They come across certain stones that are of interest, that they follow signs to see. Crude pillars tucked away off minor roads. An Ogham stone, inscribed with names, in a farmer’s field. A solitary boulder, said to be the incarnation of a woman with powers of enchantment, aslant on a bluff.
    Late one day they trek through a soggy field to reach a group of stones set into a valley, appearing random but deliberately arrayed, facing one another on windswept land. Some are shorter than the couple’s heights, others taller. Wider at the bottom, appearing whittled at the top. Lacking grace but sacred, worn white in spots with age. One cannot imagine moving them, but their positions have been carefully considered, each stone laboriously transported, grouped by human hands.
    His wife explains that they date to the Bronze Age, that their purpose was religious, perhaps funerary or commemorative. How some of them may have been positioned in relation to the earth’s motion around the sun. For centuries people have traveled long distances to touch them, to stand before them and receive their blessing. Some leave a trace of themselves behind.
    He sees hair bands, frail chains, lockets, heaped at the base of certain stones. Twigs tied together, bits of thread. Personal offerings, neglected trinkets of faith. He knows nothing of this ancient archeology, these enduring beliefs. So much of the world he is still ignorant of.
    He notices clumps of taller growth sprouting throughout the green field, like marsh grass at low tide. He sees the rocky brown faces of the surrounding hills, the bay’s calm surface below.
    The man thinks of another stone in a distant country close at hand. A simple tablet, like a road marker, bearing his brother’s name. Its surroundings slowly sullied, the watery place where it once stood now indifferent to the seasons, converted to more practical means. For years his mother had been a faithful pilgrim to that shrine, offering flowers to her son, until she was unable to visit, until even that form of tribute was denied.
    On ancient ground that is new to him, in a secluded ruin’s open embrace, his shoes are caked with mud. He looks up and sees the brooding gray sky stretching over the earth. The ceaseless movement of the atmosphere, low clouds drifting for miles.
    Amid the gray, an incongruous band of daytime blue. To the west, a pink sun already begins its descent. The effect is