Peter Kerry - The Star Riders and the Mystery of the Fairy Circles

Now the two of them, unimpressed by the rain and storm, were still in their hiding place and watched the three boys through the living room window as they sat there on the sofa with their hot chocolate wrapped in towels and being cared for by Tom's mother.

Peter's and John's parents had allowed them to stay with Tom. Both of them lived only a few houses away, but the storm had become so bad that not even the cats dared to go outside.

The thunderstorm lasted all night. After that, everything would change for the children.

The next morning the sun had conquered the clouds again and burned the earth. It was getting late for everyone on this noisy night. Now it was too late for Peter and John to go home and get new clothes to wear. Their clothes were virtually freshly washed by the storm.

Time was of the essence, there were only 10 minutes left until the bus was due to leave the school to take the children to the museum, which was hosting a traveling exhibition of some sort of history. Peter and Tom got bored, that was more John's area of expertise, who had always been interested in history, but also in legends and myths.

Armed with sandwiches and bags of orange juice, which Tom's mother had hastily handed them, Tom's father drove the three of them to school. Her class teacher was standing agitated at the bus door. Tom's father had to apologize a thousand times for being late. Meanwhile Peter, John and Tom slipped past her onto the bus and took their seats amidst the excited children from their own class and their classmates who were talking, screaming, fighting. It was just something special to make a day trip, even if it went to a boring museum. Still better than having to sit in the even more boring school.

As soon as they arrived at the museum, the children pushed out of the bus in a great tumult. The two class teachers had a hard time putting things in order. Then it went through showroom after showroom, each with clothing, household items and hand tools from all centuries.

Peter and Tom were already bored in the second museum room, while John was really enthusiastic about these historical things. "What could they tell, could they talk?" he thought to himself.

"Oh is that boring" Peter said with a good yawn.

"But really! Not a single weapon,” Tom added, bored.

"But just look at all the great stuff, here the washtub and there the royal toilet chair from the middle ages“ John replied all excited.

"Great," said Tom, "then I know where I can go to the toilet right away."

All three of them giggled, their teacher standing near them and looking down at them with a punishing look, she must have heard Tom's words.

"Well, this is getting to be too much for me," said Peter, "let's disappear secretly and look around for weapons ourselves, there must be some around here somewhere, after all it's a museum."

Tom jumped in right away, they had to nudge John three times in the side before he agreed.

In the throng of children, it was easy for the three to slip away unnoticed. They crept through room after room, always careful not to be picked up by a museum attendant or even get caught in the clutches of their teacher. But the oh so boring exhibition actually seemed to run through the entire huge museum complex.

They grew farther and farther away from the other children. When they had combed everything, only the basement remained. Here, too, the weapons the three had so longed for could not be found.

Arriving in the last room of the basement, a chain blocked their way at the other end with a sign saying “No entry – only for museum staff”.

"That's it then," sighed Tom, "nothing with guns."

"What a bummer," said Peter disappointed, "but as long as our teacher didn't notice anything, it was worth it a little bit."

Meanwhile, John had also studied all the exhibits in this room extensively and had arrived in front of the forbidden passage that led to the museum archives.

"Hey, come here quickly," he called to Peter and Tom, "there's another room here to the left of the blocked passage that you can get in."

Peter and Tom were with John in a flash. You could only see the entrance to this room if you got directly in front of the prohibition sign. Now they were standing in front of this very last exhibition room in the museum. Only the flickering of a few candles along the walls of this room was visible. The three of them could only guess what was inside. It was a spooky atmosphere and they got goosebumps just thinking about walking into that room.

"Look" whispered Peter, "over the entrance it says 'Albert Bowlegs Collection'. Who is Albert Bowlegs?

John and Tom only gave a few shrugs in reply.

Cautiously, the three walked into the room, pressed tightly together. Peter and Tom pushed John forward to their middle. "You're the history expert," Tom whispered.

There they stood in the middle of the room, their eyes wide with tense excitement. In front of them, on a small pedestal, lay open an old thick book with characters beautifully decorated. Between the text were wonderful colored drawings of cavalry battles. Along the wall behind the dais was a table on which three magnificent short swords gleamed, blades pointing downward, in the dim candlelight. They excitedly approached the long-sought weapons, which were made in a style similar to Roman short swords. But they had to be younger.

"It must be Damascus steel, the way the blades shine," John said in a tone of knowledge, "and the hilts are gold. But those huge stones at the ends of the handles are definitely made of glass. There are hardly any gemstones of this size and they certainly would not have been mounted on sword hilts.”

"How right you are, my boy," came a deep, commanding but gentle voice from a dark corner of the room.

With a loud yell, Peter, Tom and John spun around.

"Who's there?" Peter asked in an anxious voice.

A figure in a jet-black monk's habit that seemed to swallow up all light stepped a few steps out of the darkness towards them and slipped the hood off its head. The three looked into the eyes of an old white-haired man with a long full beard and the lines of many years on his face.

"I'm called Albert Bowlegs, my friends," he said and the corners of his mouth and his eyes formed into a happy smile as he looked at the three boys. Peter, John and Tom were immediately drawn to this old man's aura.

"What are you doing here?" asked Tom.

"That, my dear boy," answered the old man, "I should actually have to ask you. After all, you are the first to stray into this room to look at my collection.”

"She's not exactly big either," Peter remarked.

"And fake swords with glass stones, too," added John.

"The size is not what counts," Albert Bowlegs remarked, "what matters is the content, the meaning of the pieces. I've been on the road for three decades now, from museum to museum throughout Germany. No curator wanted to exhibit my collection. I could only persuade them with money and even then I was only assigned the last room in the farthest corner. But life has taught me to be patient.”

"What content, what meaning?" asked John.

“Now my friends, let me tell you a little story. This book here on the pedestal is The Book of Prophecies, recorded around the year 500 AD by a much wiser man than myself. He traveled all over the world and collected ancient prophecies from the local people, which had been passed down orally from generation to generation. This book is his life's work, the collected knowledge about future events in the world. On these two pages you will see the prophecy of the Star Riders, found in all cultures in one form or another. In this book he summarized the parallels that could be found in the various traditions.”