Stones

by William Bell

  “They’re gaining on you!” I shouted. “Drop your pack!”

  I tripped on a root and slammed into a tree at the side of the path. I fell to my knees, paralyzed and gasping.

  Without slowing down, Raphaella shrugged off her pack and let it slide from her shoulders. But as it fell it caught her heel. She pitched headlong to the ground and cried out, arms and legs flying as she rolled like a tossed doll down the slope and, with a splash, came to rest in the creek.

  In an instant her pursuers were upon her. They encircled her to prevent escape, and each one, holding a stone in his two hands, raised it above his head. Unable to breathe or rise to my feet, I watched helplessly. It was as if, in that instant, we had all fallen back through time. A woman surrounded by violent men about to stone her to death and obliterate what they feared — her knowledge, her strength, her independence and a nameless quality, a something that they could never know or possess.

  “No!” I shouted uselessly. “No, don’t!”

  Raphaella did not cringe. She struggled onto all fours, then rose to her knees. Her shirt was torn, her hair a tangle of small sticks and leaves, her forehead scraped.

  “Witch!”

  In one quick motion, she took her ankh in one hand, pulled it over her head, dipped it into the creek and held it up. “By the power of water, I command you,” she said through clenched teeth.

  A few of the men looked at one another and shuffled their feet, as if gathering strength.

  “By the power of water, I command you!” Raphaella repeated, her voice stronger.

  She bent and clutched a handful of damp dirt and held it out. “By the power of earth, I command you!”

  As one, the men stepped back, lowering their arms.

  Able to draw breath by then, I freed myself from the backpack and ran to Raphaella, breaking into the circle of men. They fell back in an uneven line at the edge of the stream. The stench was overpowering.

  Raphaella rose slowly to her feet and, still holding her ankh in one hand, stepping carefully backward, pushed me across the creek. Her face was a mask of determination.

  “Do you still have your matches?” she whispered, panting.

  I dug the book of paper matches from my pocket.

  “Get ready,” she said. Then, to the men, “By the power of air, I command you!”

  I caught on. Opening the paper cover, I twisted a match from the book and pressed the head against the strike strip.

  “By the power of fire, I command you! Go!”

  My hand jerked. The tiny match burst into flame, sending off a sulphurous little cloud of black smoke. Dropping their stones, the men ran, dispersing like blown mist into the trees.

  chapter

  Breath rasping in and out with the aftershock of fear, I began to brush away the bits of wood and leaves from Raphaella’s hair, willing myself not to think about what I had just witnessed. I pried the ankh from her grip and hung it around her neck.

  “Are you all right?” I asked.

  She straightened her soaking-wet clothing and touched the now bleeding scrape on her forehead. “I think so. What about you?”

  “I’ll have a few bruises tomorrow. I thought we were in for it.”

  “Me, too.”

  “Wait here.”

  To give myself time to think, I crossed the creek and walked back up the path, retrieving the box and our two backpacks. I helped Raphaella into her pack, handed her the box, and slipped into mine.

  “That was incredible,” I said, shaking my head. “How did you know what to do?”

  “I didn’t. I was in the creek, soaking wet, and the idea just slipped into my mind. The four elements, water, earth, air and fire.

  “You had them completely under your control.”

  “Not really. The important thing is that they believed I had some sort of power.”

  “Well,” I said, looking around the darkening forest, “it seemed to work.”

  “I don’t think I’ve ever been so terrified.”

  I took her hand, which was trembling almost as much as mine. “Let’s go,” I said.

  2

  By the time we got to the rail fence on the edge of the churchyard, a light rain had begun to fall. We retrieved our raincoats and a shovel from the van.

  Nothing marked Jubal’s grave, but I had seen Hannah kneeling there, so I knew exactly where it was. The sod was as tough as leather, but beneath it the earth was easy to dig. I went down about three feet, placed the box in the hole, and looked at Raphaella.

  “No. There’s nothing we can say,” she assured me.

  I buried the box and replaced the sod, stamping it into place firmly. The air warmed up noticeably. The grave was almost invisible. In a week, no one would be able to tell that someone had been digging there.

  “Well,” I said, “they’re together again.”

  Dirty and wet and sore, we headed toward the van. As we crossed the grassy churchyard, Raphaella put her arm around my shoulders.

  “You know what?”

  “What?” I asked.

  “You are a good man, Garnet Havelock.”

  chapter

  With school behind us, Raphaella and I were suddenly confronted with our futures. I had settled on what I wanted to do long before, and my plans to apprentice to Norbert Armstrong in Hillsdale were still firm. I was looking forward to it.

  But with Raphaella, it was a different story. She was at loose ends. She had no plans for university or college because, with all the pressure from her mother, she hadn’t applied. She liked working in the theatre, but it wasn’t really a career option, especially as far as her mother was concerned. She could keep at it as a volunteer in community shows. She didn’t mind working in the Demeter, she said; she even liked it.

  “But I can’t see myself growing old there, either,” she told me the day after we buried Hannah. “Oh, it’s a mess. I can’t separate what I really want from the temptation to spite Mother.”

  We had taken the aluminum fishing boat that Dad kept at a family friend’s boathouse and putted out to Horseshoe Island, lowered the anchor, and gone swimming. Afterwards we lay side by side on the bottom of the boat, looking up into a painfully blue sky, and talked as the lake gently rocked us.

  “As long as we’re together, I don’t care what I do,” Raphaella mused.

  “But someone as smart and talented as you,” I began, and stopped. I sat up and looked down into her eyes. “Look, I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with working in a store, especially if it’s yours, and you’re interested in it. I’m doing that now, and so is my father. And,” I added carefully, “I’m not trying to butt in where I don’t belong. All I’m saying is, I’d hate to see you trapped into something you’ll end up hating. I think you’re right to take your time and think things over.”

  Raphaella closed her eyes. “Trapped is the word, all right. I feel like I’ve been trapped all my life. It’s as if …” She opened her eyes. “Well, suppose there’s this room, and you really like it, you like being in it. But somebody says to you, ‘You must live in this room. There’s no choice. And you can never live anywhere else.’ Even if you like the room, you’d feel resentful. See what I mean?”

  I didn’t, not exactly, but I nodded anyway.

  “You’d always wonder, Why can’t I go into other rooms? What are they like? Maybe they’re better than this. Maybe this room only seems nice because I’ve never had the chance to try other ones. I sound demented, don’t I?”

  “No, I understand what you’re saying,” I replied, catching on. “What bugs you is not having the choice. It’s wondering, if you could choose, what would you really want?”

  “Exactly. No wonder I love you. You’re smart, too. And you look pretty good in that bathing suit.”

  “You want to change the subject,” I said.

  “Yeah. There’s something you should know.”

  As if she had opened a door in herself that had been closed for so long the hinges creaked and t
he wood groaned, she told me.

  2

  “I’ve been afraid to tell you these things for a lot of reasons,” Raphaella began. “At first, I didn’t want you to laugh at me. I’ve had enough of that in my life to last a century. Later, I was afraid you’d dump me. No, don’t say it. You think you wouldn’t have, but don’t be so sure. I’m not blaming you; I’m just saying. Now I’m confident about us. Especially after that night in the woods.

  “I want to tell this right. You know I’m not … that I’m unusual. My grandmother — on Mother’s side — was also, well, I guess the modern word is psychic. She could feel things, as if she were a string on a musical instrument that vibrated is sympathy with her surroundings. I was very young — I can’t remember how young — when it first happened to me. I recall being terrified. But Gram taught me not to fear the gift, and finally to appreciate and treasure it.

  “Mother says that, in our family, the gift skips a generation. She doesn’t have it, but I have. I can’t give up my gift or ignore it. I know that. And I don’t want to. Denying it would destroy me. It’s part of what I am, more than the shape of my nose or my shoe size or this mark on my face. But I’m certain now that I don’t have to give it up. Being with you doesn’t mean I have to deny what’s part of me. And I know you wouldn’t expect me to. That’s what I’ve told Mother, what I tried to make her understand. You don’t take away from me; you add to me.

  “But being different isn’t the only thing I’ve hidden all my life.

  “You asked me once about my father and I ignored your question. I know, it’s not the only question I’ve dodged or ignored, so don’t give me that look. The truth is that, other than in the biological sense of the word, I don’t have a father.

  “I come from Edmonton originally, but I don’t remember it because Mother and I left there when I was five. And I don’t recollect much about my father.

  “He was a lawyer in a big firm, and he was away from home a lot of the time. He’d come home late. I’d already be in bed and he’d come into my room and kiss me good night. Then one night he didn’t come home at all. Suddenly, it was horrible around our house, with a dark atmosphere of doom and secrecy and disgrace, my mother crying all the time and Gram trying to comfort her. I didn’t know what was going on, why things had changed so fast.

  “Slowly, I gathered that I was losing my father because he had done something bad, he had made our lives dirty, but I was too young to take it all in. It was as if fate had come by one day and turned out all the lights.

  “It happened at a Christmas party at his firm. He came on to a woman who worked there. She claimed he wouldn’t take no for an answer. He forced her. It sounds so cliché when I talk about it, something you’d see in a second-rate TV movie. A couple of people at an office Christmas party who had too much to drink.

  “My father claimed she was willing. He was found guilty anyway. The thing was, my mother told me later, when I was old enough to understand better, she would have supported him, believed him, but, during the trial, a lot of stuff came out. Stuff about his life. He had a couple of girlfriends on the side. He’d been unfaithful for years.

  “That’s what destroyed my mother. The humiliation. Finding out in a public courtroom, in front of people. Like I said, she could have held up under the trial, stood behind him, but when the other stuff came out, she broke.

  “So we moved away, and my father is never, ever mentioned. I don’t miss him. All that was a long time ago. I’m glad I have no feeling for him, because if I did it would probably be hate, and I don’t want to feel like that about anybody. I’ve seen what it does to my mother.

  “I don’t know how you get over something like that, the betrayal and the debasement. It made my mother bitter, and it turned her against men. She has no use for males. That’s why she gets so unreasonable with me. She’s kept me away from boys all my life. You scare the wits out of her, because she knows how I feel about you. If she had her way, I’d be a nun, and we aren’t even Catholic. I understand how she feels, but the decisions she’s made should apply to her life, not mine. That’s what I told her that day we had the big fight. It’s over now for me. I have to live my own life, and you’re a part of it. You’re the biggest part.

  “I’m glad I told you this, Garnet. I’m tired of carrying secrets on my back. I want to lay my burden down.”

  chapter

  Raphaella’s story explained a lot: her mother’s opposition to the two of us being together and her claim that it wasn’t personal; Raphaella’s reluctance to share a big part of her life. And especially the men at Hannah’s — the way they looked at her, as if she was Hannah come back to life.

  As for her gift, as she called it, well, I had been aware of that for a long time. Her remarkable ability to sense and interpret things was something I was used to. As I slipped my hand over hers, I remembered that day in English class, the debate about love at first sight, and for the first time I wondered, How much had Raphaella known about me that day that I didn’t know about myself?

  “Hannah’s murderers sensed your gift,” I said. “That’s why they went after you. They thought you were like her, and they were right.”

  “I guess so.”

  “I wonder why Hannah didn’t do something to fend them off, the way you did.”

  “From what you told me, they caught her by surprise and she had no chance to think or defend herself.”

  “No, she didn’t,” I said, recalling the kicked-in door, the terrified woman dragged outside and stoned. “She was a helper and a healer, skilled and knowledgeable, like you, and because of her knowledge they killed her.”

  I thought of my mother and the assault on her by the militia — I had told Raphaella about it — and once again I realized how much danger Mom had been in. Those men could have killed her. And they would have gone home at the end of the day telling each other and themselves that they had done the right thing.

  2

  “It’s your deal, Gareth.”

  “Okey-dokey.”

  While Mom added up the score, my father began to show off, shuffling the deck like a Las Vegas pit boss — until a few cards burst into the air and fluttered to the floor. He started again.

  “What’s the score, Mrs. Havelock?” Raphaella asked, smirking my way.

  “Don’t tell her,” I said. “She’ll only rub it in.”

  Raphaella had come over for dinner. Wearing a T-shirt with “Democracy: Use It Or Lose It” printed across the front in white letters, she had arrived on the front verandah carrying a package of sesame seed crackers, a small bouquet of flowers and a box of rosehip tea. It was a hot day, so we had eaten our salad and cold-cuts out on the patio. Dad and I had washed and dried the dishes — we lost the toss — while Mom and Raphaella set up the card table.

  Raphaella and I were still learning the basics of bridge. To balance the skill level, she and Mom played against Dad and me. Mom played a conservative, calculated game. Dad took risks, playing with passion and energy. Raphaella and I stumbled along, trying not to make mistakes.

  “Couldn’t we switch to crazy eights?” I asked as Dad dealt our hands.

  “Don’t worry, podnah,” he said, sorting his cards. “We’ve got ‘em right where we want ‘em.”

  “Then how come they’re winning?”

  “They’re falling into our trap,” he said.

  “Before the bidding starts, your father has something for you,” Mom announced.

  Beaming, Dad slipped a small envelope across the table.

  I gave Mom an enquiring glance. She raised her eyebrows but said nothing. Inside was a flimsy slip of paper.

  “It’s a receipt from, let me see, The Book Bindery,” I read. “I don’t get it, Dad.”

  “Read on.”

  In the space under “Description of item” someone had written, “Maitland Diary.”

  I handed the slip to Raphaella. Mom put down her cards and said, “The diary is being rebound. It should be ready in a few
weeks.”

  “Then it’s yours,” Dad concluded. “The bookbinder will preserve what’s left of the original cover and replace the missing part. It will be a refurbished artifact for Olde Gold’s refurbisher.”

  “Dad, I … I don’t know what to say.”

  “I saw you reading it that night in the shop,” he said. “You got so involved you let your pizza get cold.” He turned to Raphaella. “Can you imagine how interesting that diary must have been to make this guy forget his dinner?”

  Raphaella looked me in the eye and smiled. “I think so,” she said.

  “Dad, Mom, I can’t tell you how much this means.”

  My father waved off my words. “Take it easy,” he said. “It’s just a book, right?” And picking up his cards he added, “Let’s play this hand. Your bid, Raphaella.”

  Raphaella fanned her cards, hesitated and, with a gleam in her eye, asked, “Um, can I bid two no trumps?”

  I groaned. “Pass.”

  “Six no trumps,” Mom responded.

  “Pass,” from my father.

  “Seven no trumps,” Raphaella said.

  I led one of my thirteen useless cards and Mom began to lay down her hand, neatly arranging the rows on the green felt.

  Raphaella nervously fingered her cards. I could tell she was reviewing what she’d learned about playing a hand.

  “Take your time,” Mom assured her. “And be careful.”

  “And no shenanigans,” Dad put in.

  Raphaella looked at me, then turned to my father.

  “Shenanigans?” she said.

  3

  A few days passed before we got around to driving out to the Third Concession. Neither Raphaella nor I was anxious to return there, but we had left our equipment behind when we ran from the men.