“You needn’t worry about snakes,” she assured me. “They’ll be going to sleep for the winter, and unless we step on one we’re fine.”
I could look straight up at the sky from this open spot, to watch sailing clouds and the tops of swaying hemlocks. Only the cliff stood absolutely still as it had done for eons of time, and the contrasting effect was a little dizzying.
“Sit down, Lynn,” Jilly invited, and gestured toward a flat rock within her magic circle. “I love to come here because it’s so quiet. The Singing Stones are up on top of that cliff, and sometimes the sound drifts right over these trees. Here no one tells me what to do, or says what I ought to think. I never even showed this place to my mother, because I think she’d be afraid here. Are you afraid, Lynn?”
“I think there’s a good magic here,” I told her quietly.
“Maybe. I’m not always sure. Aunt Vivian doesn’t like the Stones, but Uncle Julian says they’re sacred.”
We were both quiet, sensing the mystery that seemed to rise around us. The sun was still high enough for its shining warmth to touch us over the treetops, and there was a heavenly scent of evergreen branches in the golden light. In an hour or so the sun would drop below the tops of the trees, and then this would be a cold and perhaps a much too secret place. I wondered about Jilly coming here when no one knew where she’d gone.
“I like it best in summer,” Jilly told me. “If there are snakes, I think they know me now. Uncle Julian says if I put a white light around me then nothing can hurt me. Like the song you let me dance to, Lynn.”
This was an idea I tried to convey to the children I worked with. Sometimes, when they could accept and believe, they grew stronger and their own bodies fought the inner attackers. Medicine was just beginning to understand that more than drugs was needed when it came to healing. One reason why I’d needed a vacation so badly was because my own faith had been weakening. Though perhaps it would never be strong enough to guard me against snakes. I suspected that Meryl would have a fit if she knew where Jilly came.
“My father—before his accident—said I shouldn’t come here any more,” Jilly confided. “Not until he fixed what’s up there.” She pointed and I looked up the cliff to where a huge boulder seemed to balance on the rim. “Dad said that rains had washed out the earth up there, so that rock had become teetery. He was afraid it might roll down and land right in this place.”
“And did he fix it?”
She shook her head, her dark braids falling over her shoulders. “He hasn’t come back here since he was hurt, and I think he’s forgotten about it. But I couldn’t give up my secret place, Lynn!”
I looked uneasily up at the rock that seemed poised on the bare edge of the cliff, ready to leap off into space.
“Is there a way to get up there?” I asked. “Maybe we could loosen the earth around it some more, and let it tumble down.”
“Maybe.” She sounded doubtful.
At least I would speak to Julian about this so the danger could be removed.
“I want to show you my special treasure, Lynn.” Jilly knelt beside a pile of rocks near the edge of the clearing and reached in with her hand. When she brought it out, she held a small wooden box wrapped in plastic. From the box she took a suede pouch with a yellow silk drawstring and sat down before me, holding it lovingly in both hands.
“Not even Uncle Julian knows about this.” She held the pouch to her cheek, her eyes shining, and I knew that a very special honor was being paid to me.
As she loosened the yellow cord and opened the mouth of the pouch, the contents spilled out on the ground. A handful of polished pebbles like the ones I’d seen in Julian’s basket lay there, though these seemed larger and finer.
“I bought them for myself,” she told me. “There are crystal and gem stores in Charlottesville, so I could pick out the stones I liked best. They really are nice ones.”
“I can see that, Jilly. Tell me what they say to you.”
“I’ve read about what each stone means, but I don’t care about that. I know they have special secrets that they only tell me.”
“Which one is your favorite?”
“I’m not sure. Sometimes one, sometimes another. Would you like to hold any of them?”
I considered carefully while she watched me, and then pointed to a softly colored pink stone, a little larger than the others. “This is rose quartz, isn’t it?”
She looked pleased. “I love that one too. It helps my heart—I mean like a valentine. So people will love me. Though that’s silly, isn’t it? I don’t carry it around with me anymore.”
“I don’t think it’s silly. Stones have their own energies, I suppose, and they can be symbols. Sometimes what we believe in we can make happen.” I heard my own words in surprise. When had I made what I most wanted happen? I could help others, but hardly ever myself, it seemed.
“You keep that one,” she said, holding it out to me. “For protection.”
“Protection?”
“Because some people don’t love you, Lynn. Like they don’t love me. People who are afraid.”
I wanted to ask what “people” she meant, but I mustn’t break this spell between us. I took the rose quartz and held its cool, flowing energy in my hand. “Thank you, Jilly. But I don’t want to break up your collection.”
“I can get another.” She indicated a chunk of turquoise-colored rock. “That’s turquesite, but you don’t need that because you have a real piece of turquoise.” Next she picked up a long blue stone with gray markings. “I’m not sure about this one. It might be agate, or perhaps it’s sodalite. Uncle Julian says the Egyptians used sodalite a lot instead of lapis lazuli, because they look alike. For me, it’s a stone that tells me that I can do what I need to do.”
“What is it you need to do, Jilly?”
She raised her head and looked at me directly. “I need to make him well.”
I wanted to put my arms around her, and I felt tears come into my eyes. Yet I wasn’t sure of my own healing energy toward her at the moment. There was too much of a warring inside me, and if I touched her she might sense it.
“Perhaps your father has already started on the way back to his own healing. Perhaps you can help him now.”
“Not if my mother comes. Carla says she’s coming, and I can’t wait to see her. But she always makes my father worse—though I know she doesn’t mean to. He changes when she comes.”
“How does he change, Jilly?”
Overhead a cloud hid the sun, and suddenly this little opening among the trees seemed a colder, darker, more sinister place. Jilly’s face had clouded and I knew she wouldn’t answer me, torn between her adoration for Oriana and her more earthbound love for her father.
She’d just put the bright stones back into their pouch when I caught some movement that was not sunlight or a stirring branch. There seemed a slight shifting of shadow far above us—up where the boulder was poised, its granite darkness stark against the sky. I stared upward, suddenly sensing what was to come, yet unable to move.
Then to my horror, the rock itself moved, as though it turned a tiny bit on its own base. For an instant I was sharply aware of details around us—the pink stone in my hand, growing hot as if in warning, hemlock branches over our heads quivering with a motion that was not the wind. Jilly seemed like a figurine frozen in time.
Then the world exploded, roaring and crashing with sound as the boulder loosened its hold on the earth and came hurtling down. There was only time for me to fling my arms around Jilly and hurl us both under the hemlocks, rolling out of the path as the huge rock pounded down the cliff, bouncing whenever it struck and coming to rest in the center of the cleared space we had occupied a moment before.
Even then, there was no quiet. The rock seemed to shiver in sunlight, still trembling from its own shattering descent, while little rivulets of red earth streamed from its sides. Bits of stone that had broken off on the way down rolled along behind the parent rock, scattering li
ke buckshot across trees and clearing. And for a few moments red earth seemed to float in the air in a fine powder as the rock settled.
Jilly lay beneath me and I could feel her breath on my cheek. Our hands and faces were scratched by branches, but that was all. Miraculously, we were alive—when so easily we might not have been.
Beside us, the boulder had become inert, completely blocking the way by which we had come to this place. Now branches hid the empty spot far above where the rock had stood on the edge of the cliff.
I rolled off Jilly and she sat up. “I saved my stones!” she whispered, as though there might be some threatening presence to hear. I wondered if there might really be such a presence up there on the cliff, waiting to see how badly we were hurt—even if we were dead. The feeling was so strong in me that I couldn’t discard it. There’d been nothing to cause that rock to move at this particular time. Had there?
“I know another way out.” Jilly was still whispering, as though she held the same terrible suspicion. “I was going to take you out that way anyhow.”
She tucked the pouch of stones into the pocket of her jacket and thrust herself further under the hemlock branches. I crawled after her into a tight, rocky passage piercing the cliff. Ahead lay a black tunnel with only a glimmer of light at the end. As we crawled, the floor rose at a slight angle.
“It’s only a little way, and then we can stand up,” Jilly told me as we crept out into a wide, echoing cavern.
Walls of bare rock rose around us, with a distant spot of light showing at an opening high up the wall at the far end of the cave. For a few moments we stood very still in a dim cathedral hush. Then I became aware of a sound nearby—a low whistling that came from a wide black slit in the cave wall. Wind seemed to flow across us and sweep upward toward the patch of open air far above.
Jilly listened, smiling. “Uncle Julian says that whistling is what makes the Stones sing. The wind comes through a sort of funnel that opens on the cliff, and then rushes up to where the Stones are waiting. I’m not sure he’s right.”
She went over to the slit and held up her hand.
“The wind can be strong here. Once I tried to go through into the mountain when the air was quiet. But when I crawled in a little way the passage got too narrow—though I could see light opening ahead on the cliff. I had a sort of feeling that something was waiting in there.”
I hated to think of Jilly playing alone in this eerie place—where anything might happen.
“I want to show you the Singing Stones, Lynn, if you’re brave enough.”
“What do you mean—brave enough?”
She stood beside me, small and very brave in her own right as she pointed toward the high opening to the light. “The only way out is up there by a sort of path along the wall of the cave. Uncle Julian said it was made by natural erosion. I think somebody carved a place for human feet along the rock wall. When we go up, don’t look down, Lynn—you must only look ahead. And I do know how brave you are.”
Less certain of that, I followed as she started up what looked like the sheer rock face. However, there really were indentations in the rock suitable for the placing of one foot after another, so a pathway was evident, wide enough to support us. The drop on my right grew frightening as we climbed higher, but there were crevices on the left that offered a handhold so I could cling to the wall and steady myself. Jilly moved ahead with more confidence, since this route was familiar to her, though it alarmed me all over again to think that she might come to play in this cave without anyone knowing she was here.
Wind whistled past as we climbed, the sound changing as air rushed out of the opening above, and now I could detect more clearly the “singing” that I’d heard from Stephen’s house. It seemed a ghostly, unearthly sound, not altogether sweet. As we reached the top the narrow opening led us out onto the cliff, with the wind rising strongly out of the cave behind us.
“You can see the little old men out there,” Jilly whispered again, as though someone might hear. “They’re the stones that sing.”
I could indeed see what she meant. A tight formation of black rocks four or five feet high circled before the opening into the mountain. They did look oddly like a cluster of little old men in black capes and pointed hats, gathered together and all leaning in one direction, as though they ran from the wind. Air surged from the tunnel and hummed among the standing rocks, making a sound that varied with the force that blew out of the earth.
Jilly quoted her favorite source again. “Uncle Julian says that some of the stone up here was softer and it eroded away more than the rest. Though that took millions of years. There was water, maybe from a glacier. But I think the Stones really were little old men, frozen here by a spell. So when they sing they’re really calling for help.”
The way the Stones leaned away from the cave—as though fleeing from some power in the earth—gave me a sense that, as Jilly said, they had been caught and frozen in ages past, and would stand here forever. Even as I listened, the wind from the cave rose in strength and the “voices” became shriller, as if in terror.
I shivered at what now seemed a tormented sound. “It’s too bad we can’t free them,” I said to Jilly.
“Maybe when the wind stops blowing they are free. What if they can move around up here in the dark? If they really did something wicked when they were alive, maybe it’s better to let them be. Lynn, your cheek is bleeding.”
I put my hand to my face and felt wetness. “It’s nothing.” I couldn’t worry about a scratch—all I wanted was to escape from this strange, rather fearful place. A sense of darkness was suddenly all around me—as though some part of me knew that something terrible had occurred up here.
“How do we get back, Jilly?” I asked.
“First, there’s something I need to do,” Jilly said. As I watched, she walked to where the leading stone pointed away from us, and knelt at its foot. Then she took out the piece of sodalite and pressed it into the earth behind the rock. The Stones were grouped irregularly in their circle, as though they’d crowded together in their effort to escape from whatever pursued them. Seemingly by chance, a small, protected space had been left in the middle of the rough circle. One by one, Jilly placed a pebble from her collection at the base of each rock.
“There are nine old men,” she told me. “Counting the rose quartz I gave you, I’d collected ten. So it’s just right.”
When she had finished, she stood up with an air of satisfaction and looked back at the leaning Stones. After a last burst that resulted in a wild singing, the wind died away to a faint breeze, and now the voices were a whisper of sound, scarcely to be heard at all.
“Why did you place your pebbles as you did?” I asked.
“Because my stones are good, and they’ll keep the black ones from ever doing anything bad again.” She put the empty pouch away in a pocket and stood looking about sadly. “This is where my Grandpa Larry died, you know. Maybe the Singing Stones killed him.”
I stared at her, startled. “Larry Asche died here? But I thought he had a heart attack?”
“He did. Only, why did it happen up here—unless they”—she looked over her shoulder—“frightened him?”
“Was he here alone?”
“I suppose so. But he told everyone where he was going, so they found him while he was still alive. By that time he couldn’t talk. Aunt Meryl told me he was very frightened about something. And he died a few days later.”
Jilly spoke matter-of-factly, as though of something distant and not really a part of her life.
“Do you remember your grandfather?”
“Not really. I guess I was pretty little when he died.”
“I knew him quite well for the short time I lived here in Virginia. I liked him a lot. I knew he had trouble with his heart—even before your house was built. So I suppose if he climbed up through the cave the way we came just now, it might have been too much for him.”
“Oh, he wouldn’t have come that way. There�
�s a path down behind this cliff that’s much easier—an opposite way from the farm. It’s the way we can use to go back. Not everybody knows about the cave. Uncle Julian found it after he married Aunt Vivian and came to live here. He told me that he followed the sound of the Singing Stones and came up the way we did just now. I wish I could have known my grandfather when I was older. I never knew my grandmother at all. Though Dad has told me about both of them.”
I brushed pine needles and red earth from my jeans, not trusting myself to comment on what she’d told me about Larry’s death. I ought to reassure her and tell her that the Stones weren’t really old men who could harm anyone. But right now I didn’t want to raise my voice—lest they hear me! This cliff top was not a sane and reasonable place.
“Let’s go back, Jilly. Since you know the way, you lead and I’ll follow.”
She took my hand kindly—reassuring me. “It’s all right, Lynn. They can’t hurt us in daylight. I think they only come alive at night.”
She started along the cliff path, but in spite of my eagerness to get away, I stopped her. “Just a minute, Jilly. There’s one thing I’d like to check.”
A little way ahead on top of the cliff, a red crater opened in the earth—the spot where the boulder had stood before it rolled out into space. From the edge I could look down upon the little clearing among the hemlocks far below, where the big rock had landed. Beyond the ridge along which we’d walked from the house to reach the clearing, I could look down among faraway trees to another, larger clearing, where the gray house of the farm stood. From that spot I had looked up here to this very cliff.
Now I walked around the space of red earth carefully, searching for any sort of evidence. Almost at once I found markings that seemed clear. Imbedded in the earth around the boulder, where it had rested, were several fresh cuts that might have been made by a spade. The rock had not been loosened merely by wind and rain—a human hand had encouraged its final plunge over the cliff’s edge. But whoever had wielded the spade was long gone and the rough grass held no footprints that I could make out.
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