*
PC 963 Kraas turned and walked head-long into the sea breeze.
Her hair flicked in the wind like rampant flames.
“You know, I can’t help feeling we’ve missed a trick with this one.”
“It’s mentioned in the book,” replied Jaw-Dark pensively, “and in any case, it’s a pleasant enough spot.” He paused and bent down to look through a large eye-shaped ‘blow-hole’ in the promontory.
“What’s that?” said Kraas.
“Well, that depends…” said Jaw-Dark.
“That depends upon what?”
“…Upon your perspective,” finished Jaw-Dark.
“Nothing is ever straightforward with you is it?”
“The Irish name for this and other similar landscape features is Poll na Seantuinne.”
“Which means?”
“‘Hole of the Old Wave’.”
Just then the sea crashed beneath the promontory and the foaming waves, in the mouth of the sea cavern, a hundred feet below could be clearly seen through the ‘chasm-hole’.
“Seems an apt description,” said Kraas, “if a tad unnerving.” Her gaze followed the slow drag of the tide and then lifted to the sky where wisps of grey cloud scudded on the wind, “in the beginning,” she said, “everything was chasm and chaos.”
“There is though another interpretation.”
“Which is?”
“Poll na Sean Tiene means ‘Hole of the Old Fire’.”
“Okay, I can see where that might fit in with some of their concerns. Especially with all this baleful eye stuff.”
“Personally though I prefer the third alternative…”
“Ever the storyteller,” smiled Kraas, “Well, I’m waiting!”
“Poll na Seantuine, is the ‘Hole of the Old Woman.”
Kraas’ smile turned to a grimace, “Well, I wouldn’t go shouting that particular preference from the cliff tops if I were you,” she said through the grimace, and then added more seriously, “so which one is it?”
“Unfortunately for us and also quite possibly for them too, it is more than likely that it is all three of them.”
*
Lands of Exile:
KITH ‘N’ KIN
Stuart France & Sue Vincent
The Beeley Stone, ‘liberated’ from the churchyard at Bakewell, stands proudly in the centre of its village green once more. While the locals enjoy the fruits of its restoration, Ben, who had led the daring raid against authority, still languishes in jail.
Don and Wen, arrested and released without explanation in Ireland, now plot an erratic course through the wild places of Wales, while Jaw-Dark and Kraas, seeking the legendary stone of Fergus Mac Roy, have been separated in the most uncanny of circumstances…
As the darkness closes around them, the Black Shade haunts the moors above Beeley and, in the shadowy rooms of the old tower, an ancient and even stranger story begins to unfold…
Stuart France 
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