by David Goff
Three from the Stones
By David Goff
Copyright 2016 David Goff
Principal Characters
Our Heroes:
Lhiar
Rhoneh
Beyan
Children:
Fert
Lehlan
Parah, et al.
Others:
The Tomtoads
The Teacher
The Voice in the Wall
The Voice in the Night
The Voice of the Maddened, et al.
Chapter I
Who doesn’t love to walk those damp streets alone? In each cobblestone a sound, trapped deep, like a flame asleep in wood, until the clogs of your feet stepping, striking, release it —
ngkock—
Ngkock!
A full, sleek orb of a sound. A sound on a path that journeys by you — a little sun. Or like a round, unruptured egg yolk — soft and shining. Trailing no mess, leaking not a drop of itself. Bright and proud and whole while heard, and then — wholly gone.
Ngkock…! Ngkock…! Ngkock…! Down through the city, walk the road, the walls about you high and all at every angle. A forest of stone. High enough, almost, to forget that they end somewhere, up there. That a sky hangs over them.
And through this stone forest roads wind.
Walk toward City Center, down from these tenement blocks that tower over the Crude Stream. Later we will spend some time up there, for it is there, in this tenement-maze, that three of our heroes live. But for now walk on, keep walking on. A moment more — you turn and look back — already those tenement towers have passed out of view, eclipsed by turn after turn taken, by wall after wall rising, like tree after tree.
Ngkock…! Ngkock…! Ngkock…!
Make your way, step after step, and maybe, all of a sudden, another step sounds faintly, from up ahead, to join your own. (Ngk-kock!) Look up and there, at the next corner, you spy a figure standing, garbed in coats and hood, wrapped in the slowly shifting vapor, framed amid the stones of streets and walls.
So this one too, out strolling, has chosen to take this road.
So.
You spy each other. You owe each other: a single steady glance. A moment’s halt. Peering, two figures, in mutual regard.
Then break — one of you will turn away, will find a different road. The other one of you will stay the course.
Walking, walking, and everywhere the dignity of grey wet stones. Nearing City Center a gentle rumble sounds from the hall. On approaching further you find that it is not mere noise but voices — words, in fact. For children are assembled there, engaged in the day’s lesson, learning their duties and their privileges, and the ways of the world. And it is there, in their midst, that we will first enter this, our story.
So ready yourself — if you’ve doubts, it’s time to choose! If you will walk with me, then see this with your eyes, make calm your racing thoughts, unplug your ears —
Let us enter. For we begin!
And we start, as every morning, with the sound of children singing.
Chapter II
Knock two times, three,
And peek the fourth
A fairy liver! Fairy liver!
Seedlings in the soil sown
Shot up their shoots through peat and loam
To wander where the winds moan.
While on its rise one struck a stone
And parting round, like water’s foam,
It caught it, brought it, as its own,
A fairy liver! Fairy liver!
From the day it first did enter
Still the stone at the tree’s center.
What else was it meant for?
Burgeoning the bark about it
Bears that secret shape enshrouded,
Should you ever doubt it:
Knock two times, three,
And peek the fourth!
Long, slow, dusting round the children’s stools, with sideways twists to left and right, the trailing purple gown of a grown one. Arms crossed, hands gloved, head bent. Face masked — white and sheer like a tooth. Attentive to the little ones and their learning. Should that gloved hand tap upon your shoulder—oh-oh! something must be amiss! Something, it seems, could be done better! Look to your others with a pleading look. Someone will see what’s wrong, and right it. No child wants a second tap too soon!
No child but for Lhiar, who could care not a bit about learning, or grown ones, or his own great unhappiness. Lhiar, who came to class only to wreak bedlam. Who groaned and squirmed, and made noise, and so was perpetually ignored. Whom, like a broken flower stem, no tap or prod from any hand could ever hope to right, but could only send arcing from one extreme to one extreme. He would savage the songs that they sang. He would wrest things — papers, cakes — from his others’ grasp, and tear them up. Then sit and weep. Like a hot spell of weather his others endured him. And pity was their shade and their sweat.
Little ones sing
Grown ones bring!
Little ones grow
Grown ones know!
Joy is the toy the little employ
Pride is the guide the grown ones bide!
Sweeping and long, inch by inch, slow like creeping daylight, the grown one’s gown around the stools, over the marble tiles, dusting, swirling. Head, atop draped shoulders, tilted toward the little ones in quiet attentiveness. At the wall a pause: one gloved hand rose to brick H338 — with finger and thumb, gently pulled, until the brick, removed, rested in the clutch of the hand. And from deep inside the wall a voice, like water, tumbled forward, out from where the brick had been plucked:
Barthen, Silversmith,
worked so fine and slender a needle
that he threaded the beads of water,
sewed a gown,
and with it covered himself.
At noon the hot sun beat down
and the water beads
rose from earth to air,
and with them
Barthen, Silversmith.
He rose
and he reached
the Sun’s round door.
Bowed his head, stepped through.
One step.
So hot, the door’s curtain
burned his body pure, without flaw.
Ever since then he can crouch
in the black of night’s filth
and yet remain pristine —
crouch and ever toil,
hammer, working
and reworking the moon.
The brick replaced, the voice plugged, the little ones leaned forward, swallowed, breathed deep, opened their mouths, ready to repeat the tale they’d heard. But before they could utter a single sound:
“Eat the moon with a spoon! Get sick and die!” screamed Lhiar, and he slapped his hands on the marble floor, and lifted one foot high as his head, and slammed it down.
Slow, circling, gently twisting left then right, advancing, dusting, the grown one’s gown around the little ones on their stools.
The little ones swallowed a second time, breathed once more, let a silence stretch four seconds, five, until it was this gentle silence, and not Lhiar’s outburst, that ranked first among their memories. Then, in unison:
“Barthen, Silversmith, worked so fine and slender…”
Chapter III
Lhiar rushed home as few do. Rush, and you’ll feel the air’s resistance — the vapor will press doubly upon you, matting a film of water to the front of your person. Better, most deem, to amble gently, and wear the air about you like the thinnest veil. And yet Lhiar ran, and a film grew the full length of his front. And beneath that film of mist a second one surged, a film of sweat that equally encased him.
He stopped and tilted back his
head, mouth open, to face the sky. On his tongue he felt the vapor’s tingle. He opened his eyes, and needed blink to ward off the tickle of the settling mist. Blink, blink, and open: way high up, above him and above the buildings, the jets of steam shooting into the sky, visible only as a wavering of the light in the air. And behind that web of steam the sun itself waved, and strained, and glimmered, like a coin at the bottom of a shallow pool.
Lhiar sat down. He felt the damp of the ground in the seat of his pants. He grabbed at a stone protruding from the pavement, but it was cemented in like all the others, and would not be moved. Still, Lhiar squeezed it with his fingers, and pulled, his hand turning red and white from exertion. Letting go at last he sent his arm, in rage, soaring into the air — then with a fast and heavy blow he struck it down again upon the road. A fist it was, at first — a weapon it had been — but in an instant lay transformed: bent fingers on the stones.
Chapter IV
Every night Rhoneh dreamed. And, but for during his Days in Adversity, he resided while awake entirely in his mind, elaborating on his dreams.
His hands knew the contents of his wardrobe. His fingers knew the place and function of his buttonholes. His feet knew the street stones, and his hips the six turns from his home to his studio. His chest knew to breathe, his ears knew to notice. His whole body he had trained to operate without him. For during each waking hour he dwelt only inward, elaborating on his dreams.
Dreams carpeted him like a world’s seas. And he rocked on them a fisherman. Paddling, luring, waiting, garnering. He rocked and waited, line strung around his toe. Patient. Awaiting what would come. For each day yawned wide open and bright before him.
The deep fury of dreams rose up, leagues and leagues; up from the ocean’s floor, from far down, swelled and pounded. Yet, by the time it reached him at last, it came only as the lapping of little waves against the side of his boat. Gentle and magical. Or it appeared in the shape of those few fishes willing to rise in the water’s surge, up, up, to the hook of his line, to be taken by him. Fishes whose marvelous forms were a testament to the strange shaping power of the ocean’s deep.
And as such a fisherman might, only when stirred by some sudden mood or premonition, look from the gentle lapping of the waters upward, upward, to that great, black expanse of space and stars beyond his world — glimpse it, and grapple with it — face its inevitable relevance to his own small life and meaning — just so, only once or twice a week, would something unusual enough occur in the world outside Rhoneh that a dim presence would wander forward from the back of his eyes, peering outward from his mind’s oceans to interpret the deep, unbearable space beyond.
The rest of the time he resided entirely inward, elaborating on his dreams.
A dream: A great mountain rose up in front of him, forested. Spiral paths running up its slopes, among them jutting humps of earth. On the far side of the ridge a lower, meandering plateau, dark and gravelly — gnarly bushes shot up like genies from the pores between the stones. The whole of it a continent, a realm.
Rhoneh entered the dream and immediately knew this realm in its entirety — yet, as in waking life, he could not all at once summon the whole of that knowledge. He could only wander in that world. And the things that he found there would remind him that he knew them.
Traversing the wooded slope he came to a lodge perched on tall, dark columns. He knew he had been there before. On entering he sensed that there was something therein which he desired, something he needed to obtain — and yet he found not a living soul inside the house who could show it to him.
He walked throughout. And the sunlight lit the rooms in patches, partitioned them with a jagged geometry into areas of corn-gold and brown. The shadow of a pine tree wobbled over the floorboards.
Rhoneh opened drawers, looked in crawlspaces. He knew what he was seeking, but he could not name or picture it. He searched and waited for it to appear to him. In some of the rooms, in fact, there were people sitting, standing, watching him. Rhoneh saw them — and yet to him they were not quite “people”, not animate souls, but objects only. Shadows that wobbled. They did not have that effect on him which people usually have on people: the assuredness that one is being taken into account.
Rhoneh continued to walk and to look. And he ceased to differentiate among the visible, physical objects he saw and the other phenomena he was experiencing: moods, intentions, worries, memories, notions. All of them rose before his eyes, and he saw them. As much as he saw the corn-gold floorboards. As much as he saw the shadow that wobbled. Each of them, all of them, presented themselves.
And he began to link them together — to link not just words to words to make sentences, as was the custom, but also words to symbols, symbols to feelings, moods to images. Braiding long strings together, strings of nonsense — and yet they were not nonsense, not truly, for although he could not say aloud, with his tongue, what it was that they meant, still his mind could hold them, and handle them. Could inquire into them. And, as his mind handled them, all that he found before him had weight. And they had depth behind their opacity.
He sorted through them all. Tried to observe them without thinking too hard about them, because his thoughts would seek to explain them — and, with that, everything would begin to disintegrate. A butcher making his cuts, a child peeling and parceling an orange — so does “thought” slice and splay, and find its meaning in the knife-strokes, to the damage of the thing it strikes. But give “thought” something it cannot penetrate — a cast-iron sphere, a diamond brick — and the knife will glance across it and slip aside. It will try and try, but will glide only, and slip, and grow dull. Many will throw the diamond into the ocean, and keep the knife.
But Rhoneh did not think. He did not peel or parcel. Yes, with all that he saw before him his mind did wander and wrestle — and yet these phenomena remained unnamed and impenetrable. They kept their own form. He did not partition them, but received them, grappled with them as with rubber blocks. Unbreakable, immutable. Only to be felt and handled.
Searching through them, and breathing patience. Gliding through this house, on this wooded slope, in this dream. Inquiring, inquiring…
…until, disappointed, he found himself in the dream no more, but on his side, in his bed, in his room. Awake in the vast world that existed outside himself. The cool air’s texture chafing his eyes.
He sat up and looked around his bedroom. The walls, the door, the closet, all exactly as he had last seen them, hours and hours prior, when he had lain down to sleep. Standing, he immediately turned his attention away from them, away from all the objects of the room. And he immersed himself in the impressions that still remained with him from the dream just moments before.
What was it, exactly, that he had wanted? Or, rather, how had he wanted it? For even in the dream, while he was searching, he had not known what it was exactly that he sought — yet there, in that house, he had known exactly how to want it. Now, awake and disgruntled, he had lost even the knowledge of that.
So he started to experiment with different desires. Tried to remember how it had felt, that feeling in the dream. It had not been the desire one has for physical pleasure, or for companionship, or for rest and relief. It was altogether different. It would take some time to find it. As one might weed through old trunks in an attic, he sat down inside his feelings and searched among all that he found there. Sorted through them, cross-legged, his cheek resting on his fist. Examined each of the feelings he found, until finally, as if he had read the right caption on a photograph, or played the right note on a keyboard, he felt a joyful surge of recognition.
He was desiring with the right desire. He knew where to begin.
And so, thus oriented, he returned to the dream’s realm, to the house on the wooded slope. Desiring, inquiring, opening drawers, leafing through heaps.
At first, though, he found there only normal things, things from his waking life. His combs, his shoes, knives, stones, buttons.
Things.
His mind was fidgeting. In the same way that his body might pick at scabs, suck on cankers, tongue them. His mind reinforcing the violence which those objects inflicted on his senses everyday. Combs and buttons, and more combs and buttons, everyday, like scabs on the sight of his eyes. And even now, at the frontier of his dreams, where marvelous depths and fishes awaited him, he could not flee those scabs, could only pick at them, perpetuate them. Open a drawer and there they were, the shoes, the buttons. Things. The wounds and burdens of his waking life.
He started over. He concentrated. Listened again to the sound of his desire. Looked at its shape. Immersed himself in it, oriented himself. And returned once more to the house on the wooded slope.
He entered. He walked. Desire propelled him. The walls on both sides drifted past like brooks and clouds. Rooms and hallways swallowed him. He moved over the patchy light on the floorboards, passing windows that glowed white and soft, each one holding silhouettes of trees. And as rooms glided by, words rose. Words that strung and clumped themselves together without discrimination. They came to him, and he handled them like physical objects: like smooth, washed stones that one feels with one’s fingers and plays with in one’s mouth. Rolling, sucking, tonguing, tossing, groping them. Feeling their shape. Tasting their story.
And he knew that one of them, eventually, would be what he was seeking. One of these words that came to him in this shadowy house with the corn-gold glow — one of them would feel and taste just right — and he would know. And once he knew it, that one word, that smooth washed stone that felt and tasted just so — once he knew it, he would swallow it down into himself, to rest in the deep of his core.
But he had to test them all carefully first, because he had to be certain.
So he spent time with each that came to him. Each of these word-stones. He found the pores and grooves upon them. Learned their nature.
Their salt he tasted on his tongue, savory, and felt the soft, fine texture of their pores. All the while he hungered for the right one, wanted to find it and swallow it and be sated. But still, simply in his testing and tasting of them all, the flavor of each one gave him a certain satisfaction all its own. It was partial, incomplete. But it was a satisfaction, nonetheless.
With each one he wondered: Is this the one sought? Is this the special stone? For some moments he tasted it, and then he set it aside. No, not quite. No, it wasn’t really it at all.