Orphans of Stone: HomeComing: A Curious Middle Grade Fantasy

by Rae Craig

  Focused on the waterfall, her eyes swam with unshed tears.

  “Here’s the Grotto, Tomas. Now you’ll get that foot soak I promised.” Menja emerged out of the entrance, followed by Tomas, his black leg braces scraping the granite on both sides. Harriet blinked away her tears.

  With an enthusiastic: “You didn’t use all the hot water, did you?” Tomas grinned at Harriet as if he was welcoming her into his special place. He sat to remove his braces.

  Menja headed out. “You guys have fun. I’m going to visit Rosa.”

  Tomas’s legs were skinny but otherwise looked normal. He grabbed his knees and swung his legs into the water. “I could keep the braces on, but then they’d be all wet and that wouldn’t feel good.”

  He moved his legs a little in the water, so he was not completely paralyzed. She put on her shoes, not knowing what to say.

  “Everyone is curious about my legs.” He said. “It’s better to get that out of the way.”

  He turned to Harriet. “I was born with Spina Bifida. My spinal cord wasn’t covered properly by my backbone, but I can move my legs a little and go to the bathroom like everybody else.”

  Harriet looked at the braces collapsed into two piles of black filaments. Why didn’t he wear them all the time?

  “Oh. The braces are for when I move around in a small space, like here and at the Rose garden. They work by amplifying nerve signals and that makes them too tiring to wear all the time.”

  “Here they are, Dana.” Ella’s voice echoed from above, as she led the way down from Dana’s house on the path between the boulders. She looked down at them. “Harriet! Someone gave us roses and lilacs and hydrangeas!”

  Dana followed, nodding each time Ella looked back at him. When they reached the pool, he watched Tomas pulling on his web-like braces as if they were extra long socks. Ella, in contrast, didn’t stop for a second, but pushed and prodded them to hurry out the entrance and cross the road. In the garden, plants in pots clustered next to a silver and black wheelchair, sleek and built for speed, but dented and scratched with rough use.

  “This is Racer.” Tomas rested his hand on the chair’s low back as if he introduced an old friend. He turned and grabbed pruners from a pile of tools, “Where do I start?” clicking the blades in time to his words.

  Ella stood amid the pots. “I noticed stuff sitting by the road and when I got close I saw plants. Lots of plants.”

  Harriet said. “How do we get the money to pay for them?”

  Dana explained. “Two visitors came this morning. First, Herman Maas woke us up banging on the door. He said his great grandfather helped Great Grandma Rose with her garden and these plants are a gift. And then Seth Scyld stopped by.” Dana pointed.

  Ella whooped and ran to the folly, tilting up a flat stone. “He sells these at Market. I love them!”

  Harriet read the old-fashioned letters chiseled into the smooth stone “The New Rose Garden.”

  Dana handed her a bucket of soapy water with a scrub brush floating on top. “Seth said that his family did the original stonework in the garden.”

  Harriet climbed the folly remembering how she had sat on the folly’s built in seat eating a sandwich when she had suddenly become the mason as he set the seat’s stones into place. Now she knew he must have been Seth Skyld’s great grandfather.

  Dana climbed up on the opposite side.

  Ella finally answered Tomas. “We haven’t cut down the thicket over next to the creek canyon yet. You do that and I’ll put the plants around the garden and see what looks good where.”

  After days of scrubbing down the folly, only the top still needed to be washed. Dana and Harriet clung to opposite sides of the pyramid shaped grey stone at the top, feeling connected to the cloudless sky above them. Harriet scrubbed, reliving her memory of the mason’s hands fitting that stone. Since then she climbed all over the folly, with no tingles at all.

  Harriet dumped water over the top grey stone, balancing herself against the folly. “It’s a shame this top stone doesn’t have any rose crystals.”

  Dana balanced on the other side. “I wonder…. rest your palm flat on the stone.”

  She set the empty bucket next to her and did what he asked, the wet stone warming under her hand. The breeze blew her hair back and she lifted her face to catch the sun. Tingling ran up her arm, followed by a quick burst of heat. Intense pain sliced through her palm, making her pull away with a sharp cry. Dana looked at her in alarm; this was not what he had expected.

  “I’m cut again!” She stuck out her hand and Dana grasped her wrist, turning it for her to see. The skin was intact and healthy, but with a rosy glow along the scar. Harriet announced. “That’s enough of that.” She shook him off and climbed down to fill her bucket for the last rinse.

  Dana joined her at the garden tap. “That top stone is special.”

  She nodded. “I could see the top of the folly from the rockfall.”

  They filled their buckets and walked back. She was curious. “Why is it special?”

  He took a while to answer and she figured he was done talking about it. As they finished the last rinse, balanced to either side of the top stone, he gazed at her. “Put one palm on the stone, the one that wasn’t cut, and I’ll put mine on too.”

  Harriet wasn’t sure about the wisdom of that plan.

  Her skin met the cool, wet stone, warming it under her palm. A smooth floating feeling spread from her chest out to her fingers and toes, her palm vibrating with the stone. The sky around her darkened as if storm clouds completely hid the sun.

  The world went black.

  She sits at a table set with blue and white china plates. Behind her in the cozy room, a leather chair with a newspaper draped over one arm, still holds her heat. In the middle of the table the lily of the valley bottle holds the place of honor. Pleasure for the gift fills her thoughts. A beloved voice calls out from the kitchen.

  But when she opened her mouth to answer, she was back on the folly, flailing her arms to keep from falling backward. Dana captured her wrists from the other side and drew her forward until her chest rested against the wet stone.

  She clung there, closing her eyes to concentrate on being Harriet. Her cheek resting on the cool wetness, she opened her eyes to watch Ella dig a planting hole and Tomas intently watch Dana from over by the creek.

  Dana’s bicolored eyes drilled into her brown. “All I felt the other day was tingling.” From the tone of his voice, this time was very different and he would like to know why. It was too much to think about. Without saying a word, she broke eye contact and climbed down, still shaky.

  Ella looked up from her digging. “The folly sparkles.”

  Tomas came over to admire their work. As Dana came around the other side of the folly, Tomas called out. “Watcher, where do I put these trees? I’ve heard you have a cart.”

  Dana looked at Tomas, considering the new nickname.

  Tomas turned and scrambled up the folly, making Harriet huff out a sigh of alarm. He looked down at her. “Is there a problem?”

  She didn’t know what to say. The folly didn’t seem like a friend right now.

  Dana spoke up. “It’s those braces. Why don’t you wear them all the time?”

  Tomas explained that the flexible graphite reflected and multiplied energy from his own slight muscle movements and that was very tiring.

  Harriet held her breath. Tomas climbed to the top, holding on to that tip-top stone to look around the valley. What would happen? Nothing happened. She had probably imagined the whole thing; maybe her concussion from a year ago was making her see things.

  Ella grabbed a stick to draw a garden plan in the dirt and pointed. “That’s where the roses will go and the lilacs will go around the outside because they’ll get really big.” She turned around to survey the garden, obviously planning like mad in her head. “I wish we could put the stones back up.”

  Tomas wiped his wet hands on his shorts. “What do you mean, back up?”<
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  But Harriet knew the blue-eyed girl was right and didn’t know why she hadn’t figured it out herself.

  Ella plopped a hydrangea into her freshly dug hole and scooped dirt over the roots. “That was just a dream I had last night. Shining stones stood in a circle around something really important. I’ve been thinking about it ever since. This would be a lovely garden with the standing stones and the folly, all clean and sparkling. It’s probably silly though.”

  Dana asked. “How would we lift them?”

  Tomas stepped up onto one of the reclining stones. “I’m sure with the right equipment we could do it.” He was ready to start right now.

  Harriet fixed her eyes on him. “We’re not ready for that yet.” He had been working with them for one day and she was sure he would take over the whole thing if given half a chance.

  They walked around discussing where the plants would go. As Tomas had cleared away the thicket, stone benches emerged along the creek. The water rushed through the canyon behind them as they sat to admire their work. Rosa and Dr. Menja brought them lemonade and cookies, taking theirs back to the porch. Dana, Ella and Harriet told Tomas all about Helen Hoier’s concert tonight, but they did not share the strange experience they had when they played the focusing music. They would watch Tomas and see what happened.

  Harriet’s thoughts slid away from the conversation.

  Tomorrow. A year without Clarence. She gathered a bubble of silence around her. Since May Day she had lived life without her twin, like he had asked her to.

  She missed him.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Grandma’s Concert

  After supper, Harriet took the short cut through the pine grove behind Bryn’s house, her new drum bouncing in its bag against her hip. As she wound her way between the trees, wind sighed through the reaching branches. Early for Grandma’s concert, she would drop off the bent iron nails she had forgotten to take this morning. Mom’s new rocking chairs had a star shaped pattern of nails decorating the backrest and they needed to be finished before HomeComing.

  Harriet stopped when she got close to the forge’s open back door. Peering between the branches she watched Fread limp through the front of the building pushing her wreck of a bike and carrying its broken seat. Her pants knees were torn and her ponytail pulled to the side.

  Bryn stepped away from the hearth, tipped her face guard back and held her finger up to Fread. She came out the back door and pulled an apple green bike from the shed, pushing it into the forge right at Fread.

  Fread dropped her bike with a clatter and stumbled back. “I’m not allowed! I can’t take it!” She pleaded. “Please. Please. Give it to somebody else.”

  Bryn’s shoulders sagged while Fread frantically scrambled to pick up her bike and reattach the seat. The smith leaned the green bike against the wall and went over to help.

  Quietly walking around to the front, Harriet heard Bryn call out as Fread fled on foot. “Come back after Helen’s concert. I’ll have it fixed by then.” She looked up from the bike and glared at Harriet. “You were certainly right about Fread needing a bike, but not so much about taking it.” She pushed the wreck out the back so she would be close to her supplies in the shed.

  When Harriet clinked her bag of nails onto the anvil, Bryn snapped. “I’ll get to those in the morning.” She held her hands out to the pitiful bike. “Now I’ve got one hour to make this bike functional without letting it look the least bit different.”

  A pine needle had worked itself into Harriet’s shoe, stabbing her in the heel. As she sat on the bench with her stockinged foot in her hand, Harriet paused.

  A few days ago Mom had called to Harriet from the car. “I’m going to the cheese factory, so I’ll drop you off at Theo’s. Put your bike in the back.”

  Harriet was relieved to return Theo’s drum without a scratch. She had imagined Theo Laird’s reaction if she had returned it damaged. “My drum is stretched out and scratched! You don’t have the gift!”

  Since her first barding lesson, Harriet had lived inside the bards only twice and that had not been with Theo. Once on the rockfall when she had lived with Har-ot at the moment of discovery and once in the Grotto when she had become Ownlee.

  She did not want to live someone else’s life, but, she did want to learn to tell stories the exciting way Theo did, except she did not want to lose her own self in the process.

  Last week in the shadowy garage, a finger plink on her new drum had produced a ringing beat. Before attaching the crosspieces, she moved them around until her hand would fit comfortably inside the back of the drum.

  With no stool to stand on, she strode to the middle of the garage, placed her feet together, and stood straight and tall. With the beater in her right hand, she tucked the drum between her left arm and chest.

  “BEAT----beat--beat. BEAT----beat--beat.

  BEAT----beat--beat.”

  Maybe because she made the drum herself or maybe because the design suited her perfectly, resonation rang through her open mind. She followed the rhythm waves down memory paths that led to her twin: Clarence smiled at her over pieces of broken pottery, Clarence explained why their teacher would never understand her creative way of solving math problems, Clarence washed the encrusted dirt off the lily of the valley bottle under Threda Mac’s garden faucet.

  No! That hadn’t happened!

  She warily set the drum on the workbench and backed away.

  Harriet practiced on her drum everyday, would Clarence get mixed up in her memories every time she beat this drum? If he did, how could she play in front of everyone at Grandma’s?

  Harriet plucked the pine needle from her sock, retied her shoe and slung the drumbag over her shoulder. It was time to get to Grandma’s concert.

  Everyone already sat in the living room. She had expected to sit between Dana and Ella, the same as last week, but Tomas had taken that spot, looking comfortably at home. Since all the other seats were taken, Harriet dragged a chair in from the kitchen and sat next to Grandma.

  Grandma said. “Let’s practice your dance music.” She looked at Tomas. “Do you know it?”

  “Mom taught me the rhythm and told me there’d be other music I’d learn here.” He turned to face a smug looking Stevie who had claimed the entire sofa for her own. “You’re Stevie. Pottery’s one of my choices for worklearners and I have some questions for you.”

  Stevie ran her eyes from the wheelchair up to Tomas’s face with relish. “There’s no way you can work in the kilns, crip---” She glanced at Grandma. “-----boy, but you can clean up after us when we’re done working. Mom will love that.” She smiled with lizard-like sweetness.

  Harriet recognized that look. Stevie knew something she could use to hurt Tomas.

  This week they really had practiced the music. May had shown Harriet a new way to hold her beater so she could get up the speed for the lively dance.

  Harriet’s new drum sounded exactly right, with no disturbing memories. They finished up by playing the music one more time, everyone but Tomas knowing the focusing music would be next.

  An expectant silence, like waiting for thunder after lightening, crackled between them as they shifted in their seats. Tomas studied their faces. Stevie grunted in disgust, grabbed her psaltery and stomped out.

  Without Harriet’s conscious decision, she beat the solid underlying rhythm, playing alone in the watching room, but just when you thought that rhythm would go on forever, a surprising syncopated twist rose up, danced with itself, and settled back into the dream-like undercurrent of a beat. The music flowed out of her as if alive.

  A pause and everyone joined in. Dana and Jordy’s recorders poured out a rich melody that climbed to the twist and swirled back down, while Ella’s bow glided out a wide open tune that danced over the top.

  Tomas settled his drum under his arm and beat the same mesmerizing rhythm as Harriet and Fread. No hesitation, no beginner’s stumbling, and he had not even heard it before.

 
With each repetition they became more a part of the music, merging with the beauty they created. Harriet’s awareness of her physical self faded away, replaced by waves of music carrying her toward something greater than herself. Like a river with many separate currents flowing side by side, Harriet felt Dana, Ella, and suddenly Tomas alongside her, relentlessly moving closer to the thrilling but frightening goal of the music.

  Ahead of them, she sensed a constriction too small for the waves to enter, yet the river of music flowed through with ease. But Harriet would not fit; none of them would! Only she had the power to halt this irresistible river of music before they were destroyed.

  She became its master. She silenced her drum.

  Quiet. No movement from her beater or anyone else’s instrument.

  She had protected her friends. The friends she had thought she did not want, but now were part of her. Even that annoying Tomas.

  Jordy jumped straight up out of his chair. “Brownies! I need brownies and milk!”

  Grandma smiled. “And you will have them.”

  Gathered around the kitchen table, they could not eat enough brownies and Grandma had to open a second bottle of milk. Harriet thought Jordy had been rude to just demand brownies, but the rich chewy goodness brought them back to the here and now in quick fashion. They laughed about how wonderful their dance music would be at HomeComing.

  Dana said, “Maybe we’ll be good enough so the people will dance without covering their ears.”

  Ella added. “Yeah, but they’ll probably need ear plugs to stop the pain.”

  Tomas, however, did not join the fun. He sat with his drum in his lap, chomping down brownie after brownie, finishing up by chugging down two glasses of milk. After that, his face smoothed out from the concentrated tightness he had worn since the focusing music stopped.