Read Online The Pictish Child by Jane Yolen - Free Book Online Page A

first display. In a glass case mounted on the wall there were about eight pieces of worked silver jewelry, not too dissimilar from what Ninia wore. One was identified as a silver mount for a blast horn, another as a silver hair pin. The rest were brooches and rings. All of the silver was covered in designs of Celtic knotwork, as well as with dragon heads and lion heads and birds with long, improbable beaks.
    The second display consisted of pieces of gritty, coarse pottery in an oatmeal color that Jennifer thought was not very pretty at all.
    In the final display case were three largish stones, each about the size of a chair back. The first was covered with the same swirling designs that had decorated Bridei’s chest and arms. The second was crowded with animal drawings, mostly of bulls, though there was something that looked like a man on a horse as well. But the third …
    Ninia started jabbering again.
    â€œGran, look!” Jennifer pointed to the third stone, which had a single snake and bird. “It’s her sign. Ninia’s!”
    Gran read the placard below the stone aloud. “‘Found at Campbell’s farm, south Fairburn, 1957. Considered a Class III stone, period after A.D. 800. Both the eagle and the snake are thought to be wisdom signs.’”
    â€œIf she’s so wise,” Jennifer groused, “why can’t she speak English?” She was embarrassed the moment the complaint had left her mouth.
    â€œHush!” Gran said. “No need to sound like that silly dog. Besides, the stone gives us a possible date.”
    â€œWhy should we need one?”
    But Gran’s answer was interrupted by Ninia, who could not stop gibbering at the stone. She tried to touch it and her hand hit the glass. She tried a second time, only a little too hard, and an alarm went off.
    The woman in the sweater and tartan skirt came rushing in. “Here!” she said. “Don’t be touching that.”
    Jennifer dragged Ninia away from the glass and stood in front of her. “I’m sorry,” she said. “It won’t happen again.”
    Meanwhile Molly and Peter, with the dog at their heels, came running in at the sound of the alarm.
    â€œJeez, Jen, what did you guys do?” Peter asked.
    â€œNothing,” Jennifer said. “Ninia was just a little overexcited. There’s a stone here with her … clan pictures on it.”
    â€œSnake and bird?” asked Molly.
    Jennifer nodded. “Supposed to be wisdom signs. What’s in your room?”
    â€œJust photographs,” Peter said. “Of old stones.”
    â€œThose are Pictish stones,” the woman said in a voice full of disgust.
    â€œDid ye read what the experts said about them?” asked Gran.
    Peter looked surprised. “Were we supposed to?”
    â€œThe lass canna read, nor can I,” the dog added.
    â€œI can, too, read,” Molly said. “Only it was in hard writing.”
    â€œShe means cursive,” Jennifer explained.
    But Gran had already gone past the children and into the second room and was bending over, reading the legend under one of the photographs.
    â€œOch—I have been such a fool!” she cried out. Then she straightened and turned to the children. “How could I have forgotten the history?”
    The children and the dog rushed over to see what she was talking about. She was standing before a greatly enlarged and grainy photograph of a very ornate stone. “Look!”
    They looked, and Ninia was the first to respond. She fell to her knees and began beating her chest with her right fist and keening.
    It was an awful sound. Molly put her hands to her ears and so almost missed Jennifer’s reading the placard aloud.
    â€œâ€˜Sueno’s Stone,’” Jennifer read, “‘which means “Sven’s Stone,” is the largest Pictish sculptured stone yet discovered. It lies outside of the old Burghead fortress. Twenty