Guilt Trip Read Online Free PDF Page A

water eventually
flows over the cliff, the minerals get deposited as flowstone, building up into
this smooth, stone-like overhang. Just look at that vertical rippling. It
almost looks corrugated. Beautiful!”
    And he was right: it was sort of beautiful. But it was eerie too.
    Just below the overhang, about seven meters
up, a wire had been strung all the way across, like a washing line, though it
was placed exactly where it would get dripped on most. And on this washing line
was pegged a row of random items which appeared to have been carved out of
stone: a top hat, a kettle, a tennis racket… They looked to me like a weird
display of voodoo offerings - a sacrifice to the witch of the well.
    “They’re not really stone,” Dad said. “They’re
just objects covered in deposits which, over time, build up and make them look like stone.”
    He started fiddling with his camera but
then swore irritably as a big group of people appeared at the top of the steps.
He’d wanted the place to himself so that he could get the best shots without
interruption. I left him to it, opening a bag of crisps and wandering off to
look at the information board nearby.
    And there I found a drawing and information
about the witch, supposed to have lived there centuries ago, turning her
enemies to stone, and leaving a trace of her magic in the waters when she left.
It was the usual kind of tale you would expect to hear in a mysterious place
like this. Our ancestors trying to understand the world around them; finding
supernatural explanations for nature’s bizarre ways.
    I wondered how they’d have explained my
recent bouts of déjà vu…
    By now, the other visitors had reached the
well and were milling about, getting in Dad’s way, even attempting to chat to
him, until he gave up, disappearing up the steps to try to get a better shot of
the overhang from up there, in relative peace.
    I sat down on a bench and watched the
crowd. They seemed to be some kind of old folks’ club on a day out. All bobble
hats and hiking boots and passing round of boiled sweets. Then a rather self-important
man, a ridiculous red bow tie sticking out above his cagoule, stood up on a
rock, and raised his clipboard in the air, directing the others to assemble
round him.
    They did as they were told, and he began to
lecture them in pompous, dramatic tones, like an old-fashioned actor. He began
by explaining about the petrifying effect of the water, and how people were
sometimes given permission to leave objects on the line to be ‘turned to
stone’. Then he gave the old explanation for this ‘magic’- that the well had
once been associated with a witch, giving a few dates and details which weren’t
on the noticeboard.
    But then he went further, offering a second
story.
    “Some sources suggest that originally the
well was not called the Changing Wellat all,” he said, emphasising the name
by making inverted commas in the air with his fingers, “but the Changeling Well, involving not a witch,
but a changeling.”
    I sat up a bit straighter, listening to
him.
    “A changeling was of course believed to be an imperfect and thus unwanted faery
baby who had been left to be raised by unsuspecting humans in exchange for the
theft of their own perfect son or
daughter. A secret, underhand swap by the faery world.
    “There have been many examples of such
stories through history, used by communities to explain the presence of a child
with a disability or a mental disorder. In other words, if a child did not fit
in in some way, if he was ‘different’, then perhaps he was literally a reject
from another world. A changeling.”
    There was a lot of muttering and discussion
in the crowd at this. I was shocked too. People in the past seemed so ignorant,
so cruel, so ready to label others as outsiders.
    And then a wave of heat engulfed my cheeks
as I remembered how I’d treated the woman in the shop that morning: I’d
labelled her a ‘nutter’ and joked that she was