Main admits he toppled the entire stone circle trying to recalibrate the sun's alignment.
A bird runs without its head. Around here, that is normal enough to have a day named after it, which is a pretty quick warning that the scene has stepped into druid country. The stranger sees an omen. The young druid corrects him, courteously, then introduces himself as Main Moabert Arthur, son of Athramel, a name beyond description. The bird panic fades, and Arthur starts talking about his first solstice. Everyone else had awe, wonder, mead, singing, dancing, Maeve's beauty, and a wicker man to keep them busy. Arthur had irritation. The sacred line between sun and trilithon was meant to land perfectly. To him, it was off by several notches. Nobody else seemed bothered. He briefly tests the obvious excuses: bad standing place, bad eyesight, some ordinary human mistake. Then the next solstice makes the problem harder to wave away. Duach, his mentor, is useless here. The old man's eyes sound so tired they can barely tell limestone from sandstone, a harsh note for the fellow in charge of a celestial calendar. So Arthur measures. At the sun's peak, the heelstone throws a shadow into the heart of the henge. Arthur scratches where it falls into a bluestone. He does it again, cycle after cycle. The scratches drift. Doubt becomes a habit. The comedy keeps tugging the giant claim back down to ground level: maybe the count is wrong, maybe the stones are wrong, or maybe the sun has moved. Arthur sounds less like a prophet than a man annoyed enough to keep receipts. What begins with chicken nonsense turns into a neat little panic about astronomy, faith, and the awful possibility that the sacred calendar is crooked.
