Three from the Stones Read online

  The hands, as gently as they held him, seemed to tear at his flesh. With each step his body was jostled against the body of his conveyor, and Beyan, in his darkness, imagined his skin was being grated away.

  Still he moaned, though his voice had been exhausted from a screech to a whimper.

  “If I had known....I didn’t know....If I had known....I wish I’d known....Why couldn’t I have known...?”

  He felt himself lowered and laid onto some bed. Then footsteps into the distance, and the closing of a door.

  He lay and writhed for a long spell in a dark fire.

  By the time he slept he had long since ceased thinking, discerning, resisting, exerting any effort, expressing any desire, acknowledging any possibility.

  After a long while — he did not know how long — he was awakened by a sound. He opened his eyes. At the touch of air their ache turned again to burning. But he could discern light, and in the light a form moving. A form he could interpret as bearing the shape of a human. It made some movements here and there, producing the sound of some clinking and thumps.

  A warmth and a fragrance reached Beyan from where the figure stood. And with them came a thought — the first coherent thought he’d had in what seemed like several ages of darkness. The thought of nuts and honey. Prunes. Sesame. And freshly baked bread.

  Chapter XXIX

  Thirty or so stools, and who can keep track the ones newly left or newly filled?

  Around them, slow and sweeping, with sideways twists to left and right, the grown one’s gown. And up, suspended in its folds, the mask, sheer and white, like a tooth, a thin crack across it like a strand of hair.

  A pause at the wall, and a gloved hand rising, perusing, one finger outstretched. The brick found, grasped, taken, and the voice, like water, from far inside the wall:

  Night a black stream. And stars the stones it washes.

  Seld, immersed, swam from star to star.

  Looking back, thought, “Which the one whence I came? All look alike.”

  And, facing forward, “Which the one I seek

  to reach, and mount, and rest my weary limbs? All look alike.”

  But he swam still, supposing he would find

  what he would find.

  He swam and swam, but of the stars none grew bigger. He reached out

  and found he could grasp them, their size indeed was so.

  No larger than salt crystals.

  As through sand he let his fingers flit and flirt with the little lights.

  Took of them a pinch, and swallowed.

  To feed him, to fortify him for the long swim ahead.

  The stars, if not his respite, were his strength.

  Outside, school ended, marbles clacked on the street stones. Bouncing, finding grooves, butting, slowing. Little ones on sticky hands dropped down to peer at angles and advantages. The light mist around them seemed to hold them as they stood, as they moved.

  “Greens get the pickings,” said Brell.

  “It’s only fair,” said Fert.

  “Then last dibs for onesies,” said Dala.

  And with that, let us leave them, our friends to their play.

  Or stay, if you like. But I — I will go. For one world in which to dwell is not enough. And there remain voices to unleash from other stones.

  But return I shall. And should you chance to find me you may walk with me a while, if you will.

  And if you will not — then pause, and look, at least, my way.