The Skin Map Read Online Free

line.”
    “Precisely.” His great-grandfather smiled. “I knew you’d understand.”
    “I can’t say I do.”
    “By methods yet to be explained, we have travelled, you and I. Crossed from one world, one dimension, to another via a ley line.”
    “Stane Way,” surmised Kit, beginning to grasp the smallest part of what the old fellow was telling him. “The ley line was the alley?”
    “Was and is.” The old man smiled triumphantly. “Stane—from the old Saxon word for stone—is literally the Stone Way, named for the row of standing stones that in a former age marked out the path. The stones are gone now, but the ley is still there.”
    Kit took another swallow and, fortified by the ale, attempted a rejoinder. “All right. Assuming for argument’s sake that what you’re saying is in some cockeyed way true : how is it that such a monumental discovery has gone completely unnoticed by any reputable representatives of the scientific community?”
    “But it isn’t unnoticed at all,” replied the elder gentleman. “People have known about this since—”
    “The Stone Age, yes, so you said. But if it’s been around so long, how has it been kept a secret?”
    “It hasn’t been kept a secret by anyone. It is so very ancient that man in his headlong rush to modernity and progress has simply forgotten. It passed from science into superstition, you might say, so now it is more a matter of belief. That is to say, some people believe in ley lines, and some don’t.”
    “I’m thinking most don’t.”
    “Quite.” The old man glanced up as Molly appeared with a wooden plate heaped with slices of brown bread and a few chunks of pale yellow cheese. “Thank you, my dear.” He took the plate and offered it to his great-grandson. “Here, get some of this down you. It will restore the inner man.”
    “Ta,” said Kit, taking up a slice of bread and a chunk of crumbly cheese. “You were saying?”
    “Consider the pyramids, Cosimo. Marvellous achievement—one of the most impressive architectural feats in the history of the world. Have you seen them? No? You should one day. Stupendous accomplishment. It would be an heroic undertaking to build such structures with cranes, earthmovers, and the kind of industrial hydraulics available today. To contemplate erecting them with the technology available to the ancient Egyptians would be unimaginable, would it not?”
    “I suppose.” Kit shrugged. “What’s the point?”
    “The point, dear boy, is that they are there ! Though no one remembers how they were built, though the methods of their construction, once considered commonplace, have been lost to time, the pyramids exist for all the world to see. It’s the same with ley lines—completely dead and forgotten like the people who once marked them and used them—until they were rediscovered in the modern era. Although, strictly speaking, the leys have been rediscovered many times. The latest discoverer was Alfred Watkins.”
    “Who?”
    “Old Alf was a photographer back in the day—quite a good one, actually. Nice chap. Had an eye for landscape. Travelled around on horseback in the early days of the camera, taking photographs of the brooding moors and misty mountains, that sort of thing. Helped enormously with his discovery,” explained the old man, biting off a bit of cheese. “He made a detailed survey of ley lines and published a book about them.”
    “Okay. Whatever,” said Kit. “But I fail to see what any of this has to do with me.”
    “Ah, yes, I was coming to that, young Cosimo.”
    “And that’s another thing,” protested the younger man. “You keep calling me Cosimo .”
    “Cosimo Christopher Livingstone—isn’t that your name?”
    “As it happens. But I prefer to go by Kit.”
    “Diminutive of Christopher. Of course.”
    “I don’t know about you, but where I went to school anybody walking around with a name like Cosimo was just asking to get his head dunked in the