by Guy Antibes
“I’m Princess Restella, daughter to the king of Valetan. You possess the Moonstone and I would have it.” She put out her hand and the old woman fainted dead away.
~
Lotto tunelessly hummed to himself as he searched through the wood. Sometimes he would find what the old lady wanted and put that in the basket and other times, he would harvest whatever caught his fancy. He liked to eat mushrooms, but he would have wait for the old lady to pluck his collection. He’d been sick enough times eating the wrong ones.
The sky began to darken as the light from the sun began to yellow and then turn orange. He didn’t want to be stuck in the wood after dark, so he loped towards the village and stew dinner with the old lady. He could feel his mouth water at the thought.
He bolted from the forest into the old lady’s yard and pulled up short, seeing all of the horses and men. He watched from a distance and dropped the herbs and flowers when he saw the old lady collapse in the arms of one of the men. Lotto noticed a young woman standing yelling at the men. She had on velvety brown riding clothes and a fancy hat. The men wore uniforms. No one in the village had clothes like that. He wondered if the people came from across the sea like the lord and lady that the old woman had told him about.
He saw them carrying Jessie inside the cottage. “Leave her alone!” Lotto became angry and yelled. “She’s supposed to fix me my dinner tonight!” He walked up to the little crowd at the door, but then backed off when he looked at their serious faces. When he could sense that these men wouldn’t put up with his antics, he began to shake a bit with fear.
The young woman drew away from him and batted the air in front of her nose and made a face. “Who are you?”
“Lotto is my name. I live in the back of the old lady’s house. What have you done to her?” He looked closer at his landlady and saw that she still breathed. At least they hadn’t killed her.
“Make the witch comfortable,” the young lady said. The men immediately heeded her words. The girl must be someone important to be able to order all of these men about. He looked towards the village in the twilight to see a group of village folk inch their way towards the cottage. They must be interested in the young woman.
The old lady’s cottage couldn’t hold all of them, so most of the guards stood outside of the cottage refusing to answer the villagers’ questions. Lotto didn’t know if he had any questions or not. He wanted his dinner and these people were getting in the way.
They laid Jessie out on the settee. The man dressed in black looked at the jars and vials on the shelves and pulled one out, taking out the big cork and smelled. He blinked his eyes and screwed up his face, but brought the jar and waved it in front of the old lady’s nose. She blinked and made a sour face like the man did and sat up. She looked across the room and gave Lotto the most sorrowful look. It looked like he might not get dinner tonight.
“Where is the Moonstone?” the young woman said.
“It’s not mine to give,” the old lady said.
“Then who can give it to me? Someone who has power. That’s what my wizard told me. Who else in the village has power?”
The old lady looked at Lotto and pointed at him. Why would she do that? Lotto had less power, less strength, less brains than anyone else in the village. He’d been reminded of it often enough by the rest of the youth in Heron’s Pond.
“He has it.” She shook her head. “Sorry, Lotto. This is our kingdom’s princess. She’s a daughter of the King and I must tell her the truth.”
The man in black nodded his head. “Right.”
The old lady gave him a dirty look. “You’re no princess, you insect.” She turned her face away and looked into the princess’s eyes.
Lotto felt his knees wobble when the princess stepped up to him and put out her hand and said, “I want the stone.”
A feeling like he’d never had came over Lotto. How could she take away his treasure just because she wanted it? It didn’t seem fair to him. “It’s mine. I found it and it flashed for me.”
The princess’s mouth dropped open. “You have power?”
Lotto shrugged. “Not me.” He pulled out the gem. It faintly glowed in the darkness as it lay on the tattered scrap of silk. Lotto picked it up and could feel something trickle into him from the stone. “If you leave the old lady alone so we can have dinner, then I’ll give it to you.”
The princess stared at him and then at the old lady. “He really will give it to me?”
A look of defeat crossed the old lady’s face. “He’s the village half-wit. If he values his dinner more than the gem, then he certainly will.”
The princess turned back to Lotto, who still held out the stone. The old lady said it right; dinner would sit in his stomach a lot better than the old stone. He did like the feel of it in his palm, though. His stomach reminded him of his hunger and that gave him the little shove that he needed to make a decision. “Here it is. Just leave us alone.”
She stretched out her arm to pluck it from his hand and as she touched it, a brilliant light filled the room and seemed to fill Lotto’s body. Both the princess and Lotto collapsed on the floor.
~~~
CHAPTER THREE
~
RESTELLA WOKE UP A INSTANT LATER. The Moonstone had rolled on the floor, but she quickly snatched it up. It no longer glowed. “What happened to me?” she said, looking at the woman called Jessie. Restella put her hand to her head. Her mind felt a bit unsettled.
The old woman rose a bit unsteadily to her feet and sat at her kitchen table, looking down at Lotto, still passed out on her floor. “I’m not sure. You both glowed when you grabbed the stone out of the boy’s hand. I don’t know how or why it happened. It just did. I’m just a healer woman with a touch of the power, Princess Restella.”
The stone had shrunk down to the size of a good-sized grape. Restella had been sure it was much larger. “This is still the stone?” She looked up at the man in black, who nodded as he helped her up. She pulled out the purse at her waist and put the gem inside and then looked at the unconscious half-wit and the witch. With the purse still open, she took out a few gold coins and laid them on the table.
The feeling of guilt was an uncommon one for her, but the witch had fainted when she announced herself and she had no idea what happened to the boy or, indeed, what happened to her. Somehow she felt linked with the half-wit and that quite unnerved her. How could that be? The Moonstone’s magic? She couldn’t wait to get away from here, the site of such a strange occurrence, and back to Beckondale Castle. Fessano would have the answers. She took a deep breath and realized that she felt stronger. Perhaps the flash had made her weak and her body had recovered.
The men backed away from her. Restella kept her chin from dropping. She’d grown a little taller! The Moonstone had done its magic and she couldn’t repress a smile. Her fantasy had come true.
She grinned. “Back to Beckondale!” Restella strode out of the house and mounted her horse and rode back through the village, barely waiting for those who traveled with her to do likewise
~
Everything looked hazy and darker than daylight should be, but Lotto watched a tableau unfold before his eyes. A dream! He rode through a land that seemed cast in a different color. He observed the inside of a coach with a man and a woman.
The man was tall and looked rich, wearing fine clothes. His wife seemed tall, too. Lotto somehow knew them to be wed. She dressed in a dark blue filmy material. He’d never seen a dress like that before. It draped around her as if she had wrapped herself in the cloth. He thought of the rag that covered the jewel.
The man’s coat was dark wool, but thin. He wore a shirt that looked too big and pants that looked too loose tucked into black boots with high heels.
Lotto had seen those boots before, but he couldn’t remember where. Just as he had finished that thought, he felt the sway of a boat on the ocean. He had never even heard of an ocean before, but he looked out at the endless water. He couldn’t see tr
ees or mountains or anything. Heron’s Pond seemed like spittle in the dust compared to this. The man and the woman stood at the railing looking out at the sea. She turned to her husband and Lotto realized that she had a large stomach—very large, and then it dawned on him that she had a baby inside of her tummy. The man put his arm around his wife to reassure her about something. Lotto couldn’t hear any of their words, just the wind singing in the ropes of the boat, but somehow they communicated by just looking at each other.
He looked up at the sky and then turned his eyes back to the man and the woman. Suddenly, they were on land and had just boarded a coach. The town that they rode through was so big. Houses faced out to the ocean climbed up the hills. The boat stood rocking against wooden sidewalks that led out into the sea for a hundred paces or so.
Lotto blinked as he found himself riding with the man and the woman in the coach. They didn’t know he sat with them as they rode up in the mountains and he felt the chill of cold weather as they reached the top of a pass.
On one side, he could see the ocean, looking blue until it spilled over the edge of the world. Looking in the opposite direction, Lotto saw hills filled with tall pointy trees and patches of land and the roofs of villages dotting the lands below.
The carriage rocked, reminding Lotto of the boat. It stopped suddenly in the midst of the forest. The husband and wife grabbed at their heads as if in great pain. The woman bit her lower lip and clutched her stomach and then wailed. The man pulled out a long curved sword. He didn’t feel their pain, but he shared in their sense of alarm as the man jumped out of the carriage.
Now looking down from above, Lotto could see the two drivers and a big blond man fighting alongside the husband as his wife screamed from inside the coach. The husband squinted as if he could barely see, but fought bravely. One of the coachmen had died along with most of the attackers.
The husband and the blond man beat the men off and continued on their way leaving all of the bodies behind. The husband and wife looked distraught and both of them clutched their heads again, cringing in agony as they climbed into the coach. The woman continued to wail. Lotto couldn’t see inside, but he suddenly heard the crying of a baby and the husband commanded the driver to stop. He screamed and Lotto knew somehow that the woman had died.
The coach took off again and Lotto could see another group of attackers riding towards them. The road ran alongside Heron’s Pond. The husband switched boots and swords with the big blond man, who ran off, holding tightly to a bundle wrapped in brightly colored cloth. The husband stood his ground, fighting. His actions didn’t have the same energy as before. There were too many for him and Lotto couldn’t bear to watch his death.
His focus turned on the man who had helped in the fight, who took off the other man’s boots at the edge of Heron’s Pond and stuffed the baby’s wrappings into one of the boots and threw them into the center of the pond. He passed the old lady’s cottage, but a different woman stood at the door, yelling, as the man pulled something white from the old lady’s clothesline and wrapped up the baby. He left the bundle on the steps of the inn and fled out of town, the opposite way he came, running in his stockinged feet, still holding the husband’s weapons.
~
Lotto felt the rocking of the boat again and opened his eyes to see the old lady shaking him awake. Day had come to Heron’s Pond as he slept.
“I dreamed, Jessie. I saw a man and wife fleeing from another land. I know they were my parents. My mother died giving birth to me and my father died fighting attackers. I was put on the stoop at the inn. That piece of silk was from one of my mother’s dresses that they used to wrap me up when I was born and the boots were my father’s. They possessed the Moonstone and now I’ve yielded up my inheritance to the princess for a nice dinner.” Lotto put his hand to his face as he began to weep. “What have I done?”
“You called me Jessie!” the old lady said. “Your speech has changed. I can see the light of intelligence in your eyes. The Moonstone changed your mind and has made you grow, for certain!” Her eyes drifted out of Lotto’s focus.
Lotto did feel more aware of his surroundings. His mind felt like it emerged from an ancient, hidden place. “I’ll get the herbs and mushrooms that I dropped last night.” He had to get out of Jessie’s cottage and think. The basket of his forest harvest lay where he dropped it. Picking it up, he looked around him. The names of the herbs came to his tongue. He looked in the basket and recognized the mushrooms that were edible and those that weren’t. Everything that Jessie had taught him must have been tucked into his mind, not coming out until the Moonstone unlocked his mind.
His lean-to even looked different. He wondered how he could have lived there. Whatever had changed his mind had given him a different perspective. Lotto sat in front of his meager dwelling and realized that his old life had slipped away with the Moonstone. He looked south and could sense the direction that the princess took. South. The Moonstone had linked them in some way.
He shook his head and searched for one of the boots. He remembered that the boots in the dream had the same odd style buckle. Lotto searched his mind for more information from his dream. He could remember most of it, but other than what he had seen, the dream gave him no further information.
~
Jessie’s back was to him, stirring a pot of stew. He’d get his dinner after all, but a little late. Three gold pieces lay on the old lady’s table. “For the Moonstone?” he asked.
He heard a sob. Jessie turned around and rushed into his arms. “Forgive me, Lotto. I never knew. I never knew until this evening who you are. Your parents must have been of noble birth and here you are living in the mud outside my door. Please forgive me.”
Lotto put his hand on her head and stroked the iron gray hair. “I knew no better. I was happy, although I won’t be now, living like that. I’m changed. I can tell that I speak better and think better. Look here. I sorted out the mushrooms, like you did. All that you taught me is still in here,” he tapped his head, “I remembered it, but my mind tucked it somewhere I couldn’t find and now everything is unlocked.”
She looked up at him, taking his face in her hands. “Noble Lotto. You realize that you’ve lived little better than an animal? I could have taken you in.”
He shook his head. “No. I thought more like an animal. I can see that now, but I survived. The Moonstone has changed me. I don’t know what I’ll do. Even yesterday, I ate a rotten apple along with the worm inside and felt it a treat. I can’t do that now.”
“You can fix your lean-to up and eat with me. With those three coins, you are set up for at least a year, although you might find it difficult to exchange those here in Heron’s Pond. Those might well be the only golden coins in the village.”
~
Lotto spent the night curled up on Jessie’s settee. He woke up in the morning and gasped. His clothes bound and pinched. He stood up as Jessie came in from her bedroom in the back of the cottage.
She put her hands to her mouth. “You’ve grown even more in the last day. What shall we do?”
He looked at his arms poking out of his sleeves. “I’ve grown in the night. I’m the size of a man.”
“You’re the size that you should be at eighteen years old. The power of the Moonstone has restored your mind and now your body. I’m sure you can no longer stay in my cottage. Let me fix the breakfast. You go out and chop some wood. You’ll have to sleep in your lean-to tonight.” Jessie looked at Lotto with concern.
He left confused and deflated. His re-birth as a real person didn’t start the way he expected. He chopped the wood, marveling at his new strength. He had to be careful as the old axe bounced around a lot more. Lotto had no desire to chop his way back down to his former diminutive size. At least he could laugh at his thoughts.
Bringing in a load of firewood, he knocked on the door first. Jessie opened the door for him.
“I’m so sorry. You must imagine my shock at seeing you the way you are this morning. Sit
down for breakfast and let’s talk.
Breakfast! Jessie had never invited him for breakfast before. He generally got her leavings, but this morning he received the fresh hot stuff. “This is marvelous!” Lotto said with his mouthful. His mouth had rarely been full of good food before and this made two real meals in a row.
Jessie laughed for the first time. “I have enough savings to break one of those coins down. We’re going into the village this morning and buy you some new clothes. You will have to wash first. That means you and those rags you currently wear.”
After breakfast, Lotto walked down to Heron’s Pond and didn’t see anyone about, so he stripped and swam through the water, rubbing the dirt off of him. He rubbed at his hair and then he scrubbed his clothes on a rock and set them out to dry in the morning sun. He lay down by the rock and let the sun warm his body as he drifted off to sleep.
He woke to giggling. Three of the village girls stood some paces off laughing and pointing. Lotto grabbed his clothes and put them on, being careful enough not to rip them. He walked up to them, now in a more decent state. “Is that better?”
“No!” one of the girls blurted out to the laughter of the others. They ran past him and on further along the banks of the pond. “Who are you?”
They didn’t recognize him? All three of their names came into his mind.
“I’m Lotto and you are Daisy, Hester and Rena.”
Shock came to their faces. “You’re not Lotto, but how did you know our names?” They all blushed. “Don’t tell our parents that we saw you all naked.” That brought out more giggling.
He pursed his lips and looked at them hurry away, looking back from time to time. He could feel complications arising from his new shape and new awareness. He shared his experience with Jessie, who couldn’t help but laugh at his predicament.
“You go from the village half-wit, a tiny imp of a person, to a strapping young man. No wonder the girls looked at you in wonder. Twenty-five years ago I’d be mooning along with them. Let’s get some decent clothes and some new bedding for your lean-to and see how you fare during the rest of the summer.”