The Stone of Destiny

by Jim Ware

  “‘There was little need,’ said Fionn. ‘What is it you want of me?’

  “She smiled. ‘The love of your son Oisin,’ she said.

  “Oisin was standing spellbound at his father’s side, dumbstruck and overwhelmed at the sight of the maiden’s unearthly beauty. She turned to him and said, ‘Will you come with me, Oisin, to my father’s country?’ Then she began to sing:

  Delightful is that land beyond all dreams,

  There all the year the fruit is on the tree.

  Nor pain nor sickness knows the dweller there,

  Death nor decay come near him never more.

  “The young man never hesitated. Without so much as a glance at his father, he took the girl’s hand and swung up into the saddle behind her. Then, as the Fianna watched, Niamh of the Golden Hair shook the bridle, wheeled the horse about, and dashed away with her love, down the ringing glade and through the parting mists. It was the last time Fionn ever saw his son alive on earth.

  “As for Niamh and Oisin, they rode till they came to the western ocean, where the white horse sprang lightly into the air and went racing over the surface of the sea, his silver shoes skimming the foaming tips of the restless waves. Through sun and shower they sped, beneath rainbows and over clouds, past rocks that shone in the rain like glittering jewels. Time and times and half a time they journeyed until Oisin no longer knew if he were waking or in a dream. At last there came a breach in the eternal mists through which they glimpsed a distant vision: a green island under a blazing sun at the edge of a blue horizon.

  “Thus they came to the land of Tir-Na-nOg, where they received a royal welcome. There they were wed, and there Niamh’s father the king feasted them in his high hall a full three weeks to the sounds of harps and pipes and drums. They spent their days hunting in the greenwood and swimming in the surf and the sparkling streams. At night they dined on fresh fruits and slept in a bower of twining branches underneath the winking stars. At all times their hearts were filled to overflowing with pleasures and amusements of every imaginable kind.

  “Oisin soon came to see that Niamh had spoken the truth: So great were the joys and delights of that land, so complete the satisfaction of his every need and want, that he nearly forgot Ireland and his father and the Fianna. Nearly, but not quite. For in the silent midnight watches, softly glimmering reminders of home often stole into his secret thoughts. At such times his heart came close to breaking with the pain of its longings.

  “At last he asked his bride for leave to visit the land of his birth. ‘It is not long I will stay,’ he promised, gazing into her deep green eyes. ‘Just long enough to greet my father and assure him that I am well.’

  “At first she would not hear of it; but when he did not relent, but persisted in his pleadings, she reluctantly granted his wish. ‘Take my horse,’ she said then in a sorrowful voice. ‘The white steed knows the way to carry you over the sea to Eire. But heed this warning: Whatever you do, you must never alight from off his back. For the instant your foot touches the soil of that world, you will be lost to me and I to you forever.’

  “So he gave her his word and mounted the horse, and once again crossed the mystic ocean. Time and times and half a time he rode, until the horse touched down on the shores of the Emerald Isle, his hoofs striking silver fire from the gray rocks. From the western coast they sped like the wind until they came into the regions of Kildare. But when they reached the Hill of Allen, where Fionn’s hall used to stand, Oisin could only stare in fear and wonder. There was nothing left of the place as he had known it. The walls, the court, the sheds and stables, every last vestige of the great house was entirely gone. Only furze and clumps of course grass could he see growing on the hilltop.

  “Then terror gripped him and he fled until he came to the eastern ocean. On a hill overlooking the sea he came upon a group of farmers—oddly small and feeble men, he thought—who were struggling to clear a boulder from their field. Being a poet, a nobleman, and a gentleman as well, he rode straight up to them and offered his aid; but they, seeing what they took for a mighty warrior or an angel from heaven looking down at them from the horse’s back, moved away from the stone and regarded him uneasily from a distance.

  “‘What ails you?’ said Oisin, setting his hand to the rock. ‘It is no difficult task to move such a stone.’ Then with one great thrust of his arm he sent the boulder rolling down the hill. But such was the force of that mighty heave that the girth of the saddle burst and he was pitched headlong to the ground. As soon as he touched Irish soil his youth and beauty departed, so that when the farmers, seeing him in distress, came to raise him up, they found him a white-bearded, decrepit old man with barely the strength to stand on his own two feet. The fairy horse was nowhere to be seen.

  ‘“What is this?’ cried Oisin, staring down at his hands, now withered and scarred with age. ‘What has happened to me? Where is my father, Fionn MacCumhail? Where are his men, the Fianna, and the high hall of the Hill of Allen?’

  “‘Now you’re raving, old man!’ they exclaimed, backing away from him with awe in their faces. ‘Either that, or you’ve been entirely bewitched! Fionn MacCumhail has been dead these three hundred years—if any such person ever lived at all!’”

  Moira fell silent. Then she looked at Eny with glowing eyes and said, “So you see what a fortunate young lady you’ve been. You’re one of a chosen few. To have spent weeks and weeks in the Sidhe only to return safe and sound the very same afternoon—well, that’s an experience not many people can claim to have had!”

  Morgan jumped to his feet with a gasp of exasperation. “That doesn’t make any sense at all: Anybody can claim anything. If she’d come home gray-haired and looking like an old woman it would be obvious that something weird was going on. But she’s no different! How do you know she’s not just making up excuses?”

  Eny glared at him. There was a look in both her eyes, brown and blue, that reminded him of a wounded deer he’d once seen out on the Point. He winced and glanced away. Moira smiled a patient, knowing smile and opened her mouth as if she were about to speak. But just at that moment the front door opened and in walked George, two big bunches of keys jingling at his belt.

  “So here you are!” he exploded good-naturedly, whisking off his cap and mopping his forehead with a red bandanna. “I’ve been hunting everywhere for you two!”

  “I’m sorry, Dad,” said Eny, leaping up and throwing her arms around him.

  George’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. He stared at his wife wide-eyed across the top of his daughter’s head. “It’s all right, mi hija,” he stammered, gently peeling her off and holding her by the shoulders at arm’s length. “I wasn’t coming after you with a stick or anything!”

  “You didn’t call the police, did you?”

  “No, no! Nothing like that! I figured you and Morgan were together all along. Into some kind of mischief maybe,” he added with a wink, “but no real serious trouble.” Then, frowning deeply, he wrinkled up his forehead and shot another glance at Moira. “What’s this all about?”

  Moira got up and took Eny by the hand. “Nothing, George,” she said briefly. “She’s just glad to see you, that’s all. She’s had a busy day. We can talk about it later. Right now I think I’d better help her into bed.”

  George looked bewildered. “Bed? At this hour?”

  “Shush, George.” Moira scowled, turning to escort Eny from the room. “Can’t men understand anything?”

  George turned to Morgan as Moira and Eny disappeared down the hallway. “Do you understand?” he said.

  Morgan just laughed. “Mrs. A really takes her stories seriously, doesn’t she?” he said. He knew how things went between George and Moira, and he had no desire to get drawn into one of their squabbles.

  “Stories?” said George. “So that’s it! She’s been telling stories again and doesn’t want me to kn
ow! Oh yes, she’s very serious about them. Those pagan myths and fables!”

  “Do you believe your stories? Like the one about the Stone of Compostela?”

  George shoved the red bandanna into his back pocket and eyed him closely. “What’s your point?”

  Morgan opened the front door and put his hand on the screen latch. Then he looked back at George.

  “I went to the Mission today,” he said. “I was looking for it. I remembered what you said about the little chapel in Spain—how they kept the miraculous pillow stone under the altar. So I sneaked inside the basilica and hid until nobody else was around. Then I got up on the chancel and looked underneath the table.”

  For once George appeared to have been stunned speechless. His mouth dropped open and there was an expression of dull incredulity on his honest face. At the same time a faint light, as of a hope that hardly dared to hope, glimmered in his dark brown eyes.

  “It’s not there,” Morgan concluded, shouldering the door open and pushing his way out into the darkness. “There’s nothing there. Nothing at all. Nothing but a big square hole.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Elixir Vitae

  That night Morgan tossed and turned for what felt like hours. Try as he might, he could not force down the insistent patter of his heart. Faces whirled before his mind’s eye. Voices sounded in his ears: This is the high altar.… I have come a long way to find you.… You are seeking the Stone.… Somewhere nearby … in the church, perhaps … under the altar…

  The clouds above Santa Piedra parted, and crazy trapezoids of yellow moonlight fell slanting through the window, splaying themselves rudely across the calico squares of his quilt. He squeezed his eyes shut and burrowed under the covers until sleep and darkness took him.

  Gradually the moonlight faded. A thick mist streamed in through the open casement, collecting in luminous pools at the foot of the bed. He found himself rising and wading through it, stumbling over wet grass and cold gravel, down past the lights of the spiraling Ferris wheel to the endless, sunless sea.

  At the corner of Front Street a woman stepped from a darkened doorway with a naked baby on her arm. She spoke his name and laid a hand on his shoulder, but he averted his gaze and walked on. Finding his bike at the foot of a vine-covered wall, he mounted it and rode away.

  Through the night he sped, up a hill and down an ancient Roman road bordered on either side by megaliths of lichen-covered granite. Straight along this course he flew while fairies zipped past on dragonfly wings and lean wolves slunk from shadow to shadow in pursuit of little red-hooded girls. Between the megaliths shimmered the shop fronts, and in every shop window burned a pair of green eyes. One of the shop doors opened and a bald little man rushed out, frantically waving his arms. Glancing back, Morgan saw that the megaliths had sprouted arms and legs and were thundering after him over the slippery flagstones. He gritted his teeth and pedaled harder.

  Ahead loomed a forest of cylindrical columns like the pillars of a vast Greek temple. Each was engraved with the name of one of King Arthur’s knights: Sir Sagramore, Sir Gawain, Sir Gareth, Sir Gaheris, Sir Percival. In the space between the last two pillars, which bore the names Sir Galahad and Siege Perilous, Morgan caught sight of a fleeting glimmer of gold: the Holy Grail. He leaned forward and threw himself into the chase.

  On and on he pedaled, past the docks and pier, past the barking sea lions, past the taunting henchmen of Baxter Knowles. At last he found himself wheeling to a stop before the star-studded, candle-lit chancel of a high-arched cathedral. Above his head a gilded crucifix twisted and turned in the thunder-charged air. Beyond it bright angels ascended and descended upon the rungs of a golden ladder. He dropped the bike and leaped up the altar steps.

  Where the altar should have been there stood a rough wooden door labeled Room 247. Presently it swung wide and out hopped a huge black crow. After the crow came a slender nurse in dark green scrubs. Her green eyes sparkled in her long, oval face. “You can come in now, young man,” she said.

  He followed her into the room. On a long wooden bench lay the form of his mother, pale as a ghost, thin as the night wind, stiff as a straight dried reed. Her eyes were closed, her jaw set, and she was wrapped from toe to chin in a gauzy white shroud. Morgan reached out to caress her hair, but the nurse gripped him hard by the elbow. From a shelf above his head she pulled down a big canvas sack, ripped it open with her scarlet nails, and dumped its entire contents—a coarse powder the color of blood—over the motionless figure.

  “Elixir Vitae!” intoned the nurse, waving her hands in the air like a sorceress casting a spell. “Elixir of Life! Elixir of Life!”

  The doctor—a short, slight, balding man with a long crooked nose—came in and laid a clammy palm on Morgan’s forehead. “No fever,” he murmured, checking his watch. “No pulse. Nothing but a hole. A big square hole.” Then, with a wink, he drew Morgan’s face down next to his own and whispered, “You’d best get out of this, young mister!”

  Suddenly the door crashed in and a burly, round-headed orderly clattered into the room pushing a wobbly, lopsided gurney. His one eye flared fiercely as he seized Morgan by the shoulder, but the nurse waved him aside.

  “Prepare the athanor!” she shouted.

  Releasing Morgan, the orderly swept the shrouded figure from the bench to the gurney. Then out of the room he exploded, weaving and banging his way down the echoing hallway at a frenetic pace. Morgan followed, shouting and calling after his mother.

  At the far end of the corridor burned a pulsing red light. Into that lurid glare the hulking orderly drove his fragile cargo, recklessly bouncing the stretcher from one side of the white-walled passage to the other. Morgan’s legs were aching, his face streaming with sweat. At every step the light grew harsher and the heat more oppressive. At length the hallway opened into a reverberating hall of stout red brick. At its further end, like the maw of a beast, gaped a smoke-blackened arch, and within the arch roared a tempest of flame and red-hot coals. Beside it stood the nurse, calmly rotating a small golden crucible in her hand.

  “Now into the crucible!” she cried. “Into the athanor and the purifying flame!”

  Out of the blackness swooped a huge crow with a pair of gigantic tongs in its talons. “Calcination!” rasped the crow. “Dissolution! Distillation!”

  As Morgan watched in disbelief, the orderly grabbed his mother’s body and stuffed it into the little gold cup in the nurse’s hand. Then the crow, flapping and hovering just above the nurse’s head, gripped the crucible in the tongs and flew with it like a bat out of hell straight into the raging fire.

  “No!” screamed Morgan, pounding the orderly’s broad chest with tightly clenched fists. He fell to his knees, weeping uncontrollably and pressing his forehead to the floor. But a hand seized him by the collar and jerked him to his feet.

  “Look now!” commanded the voice of the green-eyed nurse. “Look into the flames and tell me what you see!”

  He dried his eyes on his sleeve and peered into the heart of the athanor. At first he saw nothing but a blinding white blaze like the sun shining in its strength. But then a window opened in the midst of the flames and a figure emerged: a golden-haired maiden on a tall white horse. So stunning was the loveliness of her face that he thought she might be an angel from heaven. Her eyes were like stars, her cheeks like roses, and there was an aura as of a golden halo above her head.

  “Mother!” he cried. “I see my mother! It’s me, Mom! Morgan! I’m here!”

  She rode straight up to him, smiling like the sunrise. “Will you come with me, Morgan, to my Father’s country?” she said.

  Then came a din of thunder and a flash of lightning. The next thing he knew he was tumbling backward, falling helplessly through empty space. Down, down like a rock he plummeted, but soon the velocity of his descent began to diminish. Then slower and slower he
fell until it seemed to him that he was a bit of thistledown spiraling earthward in a light summer breeze. At last his head came to rest against something soft, like a pillow. Fearful of what he might find, he opened his eyes and rubbed them with his knuckles. Trembling and panting, his forehead damp with sweat, he sat bolt upright in bed and looked at the clock.

  It was 4:53 a.m.

  “You may go in now, young man,” said the nurse.

  Fingering the flask in his jacket pocket, Morgan crossed the hall and approached the door to his mother’s room. He was about to go in when he heard the faint sounds of singing. Very far away they seemed, as if they were coming from the next floor, or perhaps from a room at the other end of the corridor. Gently he pushed the door open and stuck his head inside.

  His mother was sitting up in bed with two pillows at her head. Her eyes were shut, and her blue-veined hands were lying still in her lap. The voice he had heard was hers, and the words she was singing were these:

  Thy bountiful care what tongue can recite?

  It breathes in the air, it shines in the light;

  It streams from the hills, it descends to the plain,

  And sweetly distills in the dew and the rain.

  He knew at first sight that she had grown worse since his last visit. Her hair, or what was left of it, floated nebulously about her head like a cloud of white filament. Her face was drawn, her skin transparent, and all her limbs looked brittle enough to break at a single touch. Pitifully small, pale, and bloodless she appeared in the midst of the bright bouquets and potted plants that surrounded her bed, the most prominent of which was a young ficus tree that stood just at her elbow, green and glowing, with a small white card dangling from its branches: Get well, from George and Moira.

  For a moment he stood there listening to her singing. Then he stepped softly inside, trying not to disturb or interrupt her, but the door creaked and clicked behind him, and her eyes popped open at once.