Weird Tales, Volume 350

by Norman Spinrad

  The men remounted. “He is not worth burying,” the big man said to my mother.

  “I want my sons,” my mother said. Behind the big man, my eldest brother shook his head wildly. Ever the farmer, my dear Hans. Get the wolf away, then see to regathering the lambs.

  The big man tilted his head and sighed a sad sigh. “And I want a good bottle of wine and a night alone with you, but there are some things that must wait, aren't there? Battle first, pleasure second. You will have your sons — what's left of them anyway — when we have warriors on the throne instead of scholars. Blood will out. The land needs blood and we will feed it.”

  “Give me my boys!” my mother shouted, but her voice was drowned by the thunder of hoofs. My mother knelt to the ground, laying my father's body on the grass and kissing his forehead, then his eyes, then his mouth. She looked back into the garden, at the stone that was me, and nodded. She went into the house and returned with a white cloth. My mother was a poet and a scholar's assistant, and while she had no gift with magic, she knew a thing or two about remedies. She laid the cloth over my stone body. Immediately, I stood, myself again, still in my night gown. My tears, however, remained as stones. I gathered them into my pocket.

  My mother regarded me. “He did this?” she asked.

  “Yes,” I said, thinking, why on earth would I do this to myself?Though I said nothing. I knew a thing or two about my mother. Like when to keep my mouth closed.

  “Your father,” she said, “is an idiot.” She nodded curtly to herself, as though putting an end to the matter, and then began to weep. Her tears surged and poured to the ground, leaving a large, damp stain on the ground. I did not cry. My heart was heavy within me, as though it had not transformed, as though it remained stone. I clutched at my stone tears instead, and grieved as a stone grieves — a silent, unmoving weight.

  Together, we carried my father into the house and buried him the next day.

  When my mother married my father, she was a fraction of his age, a child, practically. My mother was a poet, celebrated before she could walk. She made verses in her cradle, and coaxed stanzas into song as she could grip a lute. Her words pierced souls, her phrasing dazzled the ear. Her voice was astonishing and pure. People gathered from every country, kingdom and tribe to listen to the voice of the child poet. Regardless of language or creed, people understood and were moved to tears. When the King, Emperor, High Priest and Lord Executioner of her nation began to feel that her work had become too political, he banned poetry, and after poetry he banned singing, and when that wasn't enough he banned the exposure to books by children under the age of fourteen. After that, he signed the execution order of one Aline Beringar, my mother.

  Thanks to a network of underground scholars and writers and revolutionaries, my mother was spirited away and hidden in the great library at my father's house, where she was given a new name and occupation. She catalogued his books, kept careful track of items acquired, loaned and borrowed, and took charge of his correspondence, which, alas, was in a dreadful state. She planted a garden and harvested and preserved, laying meals on the table that sustained my father in a way that he had never been sustained before, making him feel strong, satiated and utterly satisfied. She was a sweet thing, my mother, lovely of face, but whose goodness was so genuine and natural that beauty could never pollute it, and my father loved her in the way that he felt he ought — protective, paternal, like a beloved uncle. And though he knew he would miss her desperately would she ever to go, he knew it was right and proper for lovely young maidens to find suitable husbands and thus he kept himself aware of single men who might be worthy suitors for his beloved Aline. The trouble was, they all were too dim, or too self-centered, or too imbecilic, or too utterly, utterly wicked. He told himself that he would continue to look, but he knew it would be a long, long time before the right one came along.

  My mother, meanwhile, had other plans.

  Each day, after her duties in the library had been completed, she went into the woods and sang verses to the trees. As she sang, she removed her shoes and laid the pads of her feet on the soft and welcoming moss on the forest floor. In truth, she missed having an audience. She missed their faces, their looks of pleasure and joy and epiphany and love. She missed that moment when someone's view had changed — an alteration invisible to most, but my mother saw it. When she sang to the trees, they enjoyed it. She could feel their pleasure in her feet. She sang of the cruelties of the warrior king that continued to ravage the land that was once her home. She sang the old songs of a peasantry that gathered together to move the hands of princes, and thus alter their place in history. She sang songs of an old scholar whose face looked like love.

  One day, my father, restless in his study, left the house for a walk. As he wandered through the wood, he heard a voice that he thought at first was a bird, and then thought it was an angel. He listened to a story of a maiden far from home who loved a man that couldn't see her. He wept for that poor, invisible maiden. He removed his shoes to listen better. With his bare feet upon the cool moss, he caught sight of my mother, her face flushed with singing, her black hair unbound and falling like water down her strong back, pooling over the length of her skirts.

  This was a magic that had no remedy. They were married by the end of the week.

  My brothers were born within the year. Hans, an hour older and twice as big, had the broad feet, broad hands and broad back of a farmer. As he grew, he tended the animals (all of which were sleek and fat under his hands) and coaxed food from the ground in ways that my mother never could. Stephen, whose large, gray eyes grew larger every year with reading, until, owl-like, he could see in the dark, was drawn to my father's library from the time he was able to walk. By the time he was two, he was reading texts. By the time he was ten he was drafting exegeses and opinions which, not once but four times, had been labeled heretical. My father beamed with pride. But neither had my father's other gifts.

  I had those. Small, underdeveloped, sickly me.

  Despite my size, or perhaps because of it, I was a miracle. Five times after my brothers were born, my mother's waist began to swell with twins, and five times the twins were lost before they ever quickened in her womb. After my parents had given up any hope of new children, they went out into the field after the boys were asleep to commiserate and comfort. My mother whispered verses to the grass and to the stars. My father transformed rocks into singing birds, birds into angels. He wound flowers in her hair and tried desperately to please her. In the darkness they sighed and sorrowed, kissed and groaned, and in so doing conceived me. A singleton. And I lived.

  Though I was scrawny, blue and squalling, my parents loved me and my brothers doted on me.

  A poet, sang my mother.

  A magician, whispered my father.

  Hans brought pumpkins and corn and dried flowers into the nursery. He told me stories of the ducks and cows and goats. Stephen read me treatises and theses and ream upon ream of dusty parchment. My mother wrote verses on the walls, on the floors and ceilings too. And when she ran out of room, she traced verses on my skin, across my forehead, and on the soles of my feet. My father conjured — at first pretty things that might please a child: a flower from a bead, a yellow bird from a half-gnawed cracker. Later, he showed me the spinning world, the revolution of the moon, the burning sun in a multitude of burning suns.

  When I was three, I traced a verse into the silky mud of the spring fields and the seedlings began to sing. People gathered on the road before my father bustled out of his study to shut them up.

  When I was five, I began to tell a story to a child in the village about a duck with a woman's face, only to see a duck with a woman's face swimming in the pond. My mother hastily shooed both daughter and duck home for a quick lesson on subtlety.

  When I was six and a half, soldiers arrived when I was playing in the yard, demanding to know where my father's loyalties lay. I barely noticed the soldiers, but focused my attention on the pile of brightly color
ed pebbles next to the garden. I found that all matter is the same matter, which is to say that all things on earth come from the same spark. I found that a pebble could be the same as a butterfly, which could be the same as a toad. It all depended on how you looked at it. I picked up a small stone. It was red and green, and felt cool with a pleasing heft in my hand. Then I looked at it again. It was a butterfly, red, green, cool, light, and gone.

  The men talking to my father raised their voices until they were shouting. I barely noticed, but marveled at the butterflies coming thick and fast from the rapidly diminishing pile of stones. I didn't notice the thunder of boots. For all I know, the stones may have tried to warn me, but I couldn't hear them. Not yet anyway.

  “Am I to assume,” the soldier said, “that she inherited her father's capabilities?” The butterflies rose and scattered. I scrambled to my feet and hid my hands behind my back and hung my head. Like all children, I knew how to look remorseful, even when I did not know yet what I had done.

  “No,” my father said quickly, bending down to pick me up. I heard his bones crack and groan under my weight. “None of my children are endowed. My son raises butterflies for pollination. She's a naughty girl to lure them with sugar. We've spoken to her about this, and yet she continues — Aline!” He called to my mother. “Aline!” His voice spiked in panic, and without knowing why, I started to cry.

  “Interesting,” the soldier said. “Interesting.”

  That night, we gathered the possessions we needed and all the books we could carry into the cart, harnessed the mules, tethered the milk-goats, and tearfully left everything else behind. A few of my father's friends were able to smuggle out a few more books and the rest of the animals, but the last we heard, the soldiers came back and burned our beautiful library to the ground.

  After that, I was forbidden to work magic. Or poetry. They were both too dangerous.

  The ground was thick and heavy with the remains of winter and the promises of spring. My mother and I took turns digging, and though we were both strong, the sheer weight of each shovel full made our muscles stretch and clench until it seemed they would rip off. As we got deeper, the weight in my chest became more pronounced. Each time I leaned in, it was harder to pull myself out. Even my mother noticed it.

  “How is it possible?” she asked. I shrugged. I had no idea. I did not tell her that when I laid my hand on my chest I could not feel the beating of my heart. It was a silent as any stone.

  After anointing my father with human tears (my mother's) and a stone tear (mine), we laid him down and covered him over. In a month, my mother would plant an apple tree over the spot where he lay. In a year, she would harvest apples that tasted like honey and wine, that led people to poetry, to love, to holy truth. People said that apple tree would stand at that spot for a hundred years. I have no way of knowing if it would or not, but I still like to believe it to be true.

  By mid afternoon, I packed my rucksack with a day's water and wine and meat, belted my father's sword around my hips and slid sheathed daggers into my boots. My mother blocked the door.

  “You're not going.” She said this without conviction.

  “I am,” I said, and kissed her on her cheek. I had to stand on tip toe. At fifteen, one would think that I would have reached her height, but I hadn't grown in three years, and remained stuck below her chin.

  “You're an idiot, too,” she said, with a curt nod that again settled the matter.

  I shrugged. “Maybe,” I said.

  I went outside. Warriors, as a rule, are easy to follow. They leave a wide, trampled swath that can be seen from the ground as well as the air. Crows gathered along their trail, followed by sparrows, followed by doves. Their horses and cart wheels dug deeply into the soft, impressionable spring ground. I bent down to touch the hoof prints. The mud shimmered in the trampled grass. It smelled like life. And death. Which side I would be on at the end of the day I did not know, nor did I care.

  My mother came out of the door, her eyes and nose red rimmed and raw. “Wait,” she said. “Take this.” She held my father's staff. I held up my hands.

  “I can't,” I said. “He never taught me how to use it.”

  She shrugged. “No one taught him either. Anyway, perhaps it won't matter. If they think you can use it, perhaps that's enough.” And with that, she tied it to my rucksack, kissed me on each eye and my mouth and ran into the house. Inside the house, she whispered poetry, quietly, constantly, under her breath. As I walked, then ran, down the warriors. track, I could still hear her. At every turn, I heard poetry. And even though she has been gone for years now, I hear it still.

  On the first night, I slept in the communal barn of six peasant farmers whose farms pinwheeled out of a central cluster of small houses. Each family had sons taken — one lost all six. Eight of the boys — and they were boys — had struggled and yelled and were relieved of their tongues. One grandmother gathered the tongues to bury them properly, and after doing so had lain down and died. I asked them to show me the spot where the boys had been cut, and they showed me eight bloody spots on the ground. I bent down, scraped up the bloody dirt and kept it in the sack with my stone tears.

  In the morning, the farmers arrived with bread and milk. They squatted on the ground as I ate in silence.

  Finally, a farmer with a ginger-colored beard sprinkled pleasingly with silver, spoke. “The staff you carry,” he said. “It's his staff.”

  I nodded. “Yes,” I said.

  “So he is dead.”

  “Yes.”

  “So all is lost.”

  “Yes,” I said. But the stones in my sack began to hum impatiently. “Or not,” I said. “Miracles happen.” I shrugged, hoping it would look convincing.

  The farmer nodded and went into the barn, coming back with a horse, a chestnut gelding, who had clearly seen better days, but honestly would be better than nothing. He lashed on a saddle as well as a bow and quiver. “For the event of a miracle,” he said. “A scholar king was bad enough. A warrior king is worse for farmers. How can we farm without sons?” He pointed to the staff with his chin. “Do you know how to use it?

  “No,” I said, blushing in shame.

  “Well, it isn't doing you a bit of good on your back. Hold it in your hands. That's what he used to do.”

  I untied the staff and held it in both hands. It vibrated slightly, but seemed otherwise silent. I lifted it up, and, like my father, plunged it to the ground. It sang in my bones, in the ground, in the sky, and in my cold, stone heart. I heard the sky, land, rock and water all speaking with the same voice. And it was my voice.

  “I need an army,” I said, and whether I said this to the farmer or the sky or the very stones, I do not know. My voice came from the soles of my feet. It was dark and cool like moss, or poetry, or love songs. “An army,” I said again, and the staff hummed and itched in my hands. I didn't wait for an answer, but instead scrambled onto the saddle and clucked the horse into a gallop.

  They say that the first kings were farmers. Which is to say, the first farmers were kings. Queens too, if the stories can be believed. When I was young, I did not believe the stories — many of them were forbidden to me anyway, as my parents worried that poetry might leak, unbidden, into my mouth, and then where would we be? I learned to ignore, to keep us safe, and to unbelieve when the believing was impolitic.

  Still.

  There was a story — don't ask me how I know it. I could not tell you. What I know is this: Eight days before my mother was secreted out of her country, she earned the ire of the warrior king with a story. She was gathering apples. All the girls in the town were gathering apples. It was part of an old, time-honored (which is to say, most people had long since forgotten what it meant) tradition of sending the unmarried girls into the orchards to fill basket full of apples which would be pressed and fermented until the whole town was drunk on sweetness and wine and harvest, and ripe girls gathering ripe fruit to their fragrant chests, smooth and heavy and delicious. At
some point in the festivities, my mother, her basket and apron spilling over with firm and soft and rotting fruit, leaned against the side of the barn, russet leaves clinging to her hair, alfalfa hanging from her skirt and she told a story. The story of the Stone Queen. It is the only story I know.

  There once was a queen who was a farmer. And while all queens were farmers and all farmers were queens, this was the First Queen, and the First Farmer. Where she stepped, grain sprouted and ripened, its tender stalks weighted down. Where she laid down, ewes lambed and heifers calved and mares produced fouls with eyes like stars. The queen was a good queen, generous and fair. She gathered seed and shared with those who had nothing. She encouraged the migration of winged insects and birds and under her hands, her lands grew rich with food and animal and children.

  The queen had two husbands which she kept in two houses. One husband was a scholar whose need for books was so insatiable that the queen ordered eight barns constructed for the housing and preservation of his books. Every day the queen brought him gifts of bread and cheese and skins of wine, and every day the scholar would read to her or engage her mind in the intricacies of mathematics or cosmology or grammar. It was a good marriage and a good life and they both were happy.

  The second husband was a warrior, whose need for horses and weaponry were so insatiable that she constructed eight barns just to house them all. Each day the warrior husband rode off in search of conquest and adventure, and each day he came home, bloodied and breathless and she gave him gifts of bread and cheese and skins of wine. He accepted her gifts gratefully and told her stories of honor and valor and good war. It was a good marriage and they both were happy.