The Stonemason's Yard – Part 1: Dry Stone

"No mortar," said Rhiannon.

"The plans say mortar."

"The plans are wrong."

Tamsin glared at the stonemason across the wreck of the wall. The granite lay in a heap on the Cornish clifftop, grey and mossy, tumbled by a winter storm. Beyond it, the Atlantic heaved against the rocks, white-capped and noisy. Gulls shrieked on the wind.

She was thirty-four, a restoration architect, brisk, in a waxed jacket and sensible boots, with a tablet under one arm. Rhiannon was thirty-one, broad-shouldered, with cropped dark hair, a weathered face and hands like shovels, in a battered leather apron. She lifted a stone the size of a loaf, turned it over, and set it in the wall with a satisfying thunk.

"Dry stone," she said. "It's been standing three hundred years. Mortar cracks. This flexes."

"It's a heritage site."

"Then be heritage."

Tamsin opened her mouth, closed it. She watched Rhiannon work. The mason picked each stone with a slow, appraising eye, held it, turned it, felt its weight in her palms. She seemed to listen to the granite. Each stone found its place with a soft knock, as if it had been waiting.

"How do you know where it goes?"

"I don't," said Rhiannon. "It tells me."

"That's not an engineering principle."

"It's the only one that works."

By the third day, Tamsin was holding stones for her. By the fifth, she was lifting. Her palms blistered. Her back ached. She hadn't felt so alive in years. In the evenings, they sat on the half-built wall with bread and cheese, watching the sun go down in a blaze of orange over the sea. The wind smelled of salt and thrift.

"Can I ask you something?" said Tamsin.

"Yes."

"Why did you become a mason?"

"Because everything else disappears," said Rhiannon. "Stone stays."

Tamsin looked at her for a long moment. "Green?" she said, a lichen.

"Green," said Rhiannon, smiling slowly. "Very green. Pass the next one."

Continue the story: Part 2 – Keystone.