Time of the Stones

by Fred Rothganger

  She snapped, “Get that thing out of my face!”

  He said, “Spirit of the Stone, Kantisto summons you to heal Tondra.”

  “What’s wrong with her?”

  “Ancient spirit, you know.”

  “I don’t know anything. Bring her here and let me see.”

  Kantisto stared at her in confusion.

  Meanwhile, a number of enterprising villagers in the crowd went to fetch Tondra. They returned carrying an emaciated old woman slung in a blanket and placed her at the base of the Stone.

  Susan knelt next to Tondra and studied her for a few minutes. The woman had numerous small lumps and yellowish skin. She struggled to breathe. Susan spoke heavy words, “Tondra is beyond the help of any magic you or I have. Sing any song. Dance any dance. I will dance with you and wish her soul a painless journey.”

  “Why?”

  “She has only a few days to live. The kind of magic that can help her takes many years to create, perhaps more than a lifetime.”

  “Then teach me how to make this magic.”

  Susan shook her head. “Some magic is too powerful. It could be turned to great evil. I will not teach it until I see that humans are ready.”

  Kantisto went away scowling. Tondra’s friends took her back to her tent to make her as comfortable as possible.

  Near evening the women of the village built a fire at the center of the camp. When a sufficient bed of coals was burning, they cooked the evening meal: several game animals the men killed that day, along with vegetables the woman had gathered in the forest.

  The whole village assembled after sunset and ate together. They built up the blaze and sang. The words of the songs lit a fire in Susan as well. They felt deep and ancient, yet they were composed many centuries after any song she knew.

  Then came storytime. Kantisto rose to speak, but everyone called for “Antikva”. He sat down with teeth bared and brows pressed into a hard ridge.

  Susan stood in the center of the Stone and raised her voice. “Long ago, on the land where you now live, the Ancients built a mighty civilization. The name they called this place has passed from your language, the name of their time long forgotten.”

  The villagers watched with rapt attention. This was their story, the story of their ancestors. It had been told and sung for many generations.

  “I knew the Ancients and walked among them. I saw it with my own eyes. The Ancients had great power. They could fly, talk face-to-face with someone on the other side of the Earth, cure dread diseases. With knowledge they forced the Earth to feed billions of people. They hurtled sleds into the sky, and walked on the moon!

  “They found the remains of plants long dead, buried deep in the ground, and burned them. But for all their wisdom the Ancients were foolish. Rather than build a world that could sustain their children, they created tools that only worked as long as they had fuel to burn.

  “As their numbers grew, so did their tools. They burned fuel faster and faster, doing ever more wondrous things, until one day it was gone. But the Ancients had come to depend on their tools for everything. They could no longer go into the forest and find food like you do.

  “Many people starved, and those who survived fought over the scraps. They threw terrible weapons at each other and burned the Earth. At the end, when all hope was lost, the wisest came together in secret. They used the last of their power to forge the Stones, so their children would not forget.”

  A hush rustled across the group. Alechjo blurted, “Stones? You mean there are others like this?”

  “There are seven Stones around the Earth, served by seven sisters. Each one has the power to remake the world, but what it becomes is in your hands. You can choose destruction as your ancestors did, or you can create the world they dreamed of.” Susan trembled with fervor. “This is the dawn of a new age. Let the human spirit rise from the ashes and soar again!”

  * * *

  Night turned instantly to day. Susan still stood where she had lingered next to the fire. Now old men were sitting there in a small circle, watching her materialize. Another day without proper rest. She felt vaguely grumpy and imagined a headache, if that were possible.

  “Good morning, Antikva,” Pliajo said and gestured toward an empty place in front of the Stone.

  She studied how to sit in her gown with some measure of dignity. She carefully settled on her knees, with her butt on her ankles.

  The elders discussed the business of the village. Fairly quickly, the topic of their new situation came up. One of the men suggested, “Now that we have met Antikva, we should settle here.”

  Another said, “Settle! That is what other bands in the Basin have done, and look what became of them. They are enslaved to their plows and fields, always building for the Big Man.” He gestured at the steep slopes around them. “Where do you suppose we could find space to plant a field here?”

  “But Antikva must know a way.” They all looked at her.

  “As I told you last night, the Ancients used massive tools and vast amounts of fuel for agriculture. It would take many years to prepare such things, and they would not work well here. The flood plain is a better place for that.”

  “Then perhaps there is a way to gather more food. When children come, there will not be enough for everyone.”

  Susan contemplated this. “I can offer one piece of magic, a way to have fewer children.”

  They all shifted in their places and exchanged awkward glances with each other. Apparently this was a forbidden subject. Or perhaps they surmised that she wanted them to have less sex ... a woman telling a bunch of men what to do with themselves, probably not appropriate in this culture. Susan stared at the ground and wished she hadn’t said anything.

  Pliajo coughed and shifted the topic. The conversation gradually wandered to mundane issues and gossip about the lives of various people, always with a note of fatherly concern.

  Susan caught herself nodding off to sleep. She tried to cover it with a posture of deep thought. It gradually became apparent that this meeting never ended. The elders sat and talked from dawn to dusk, every day. And she was the only female privileged to join the conversation.

  She stared off at the children playing chase between the tents. If only she could be out there running too! A few of them came crashing around the corner. The elders shooed them away with harsh words. The children wandered off, looking over their shoulders at her with wide-eyed wonder.

  Susan stood. “My friends, thank you for the honor of sitting among you, but I fear the Ancients would not approve. They put me here to share knowledge. Could you send your children for a few hours each morning? And anyone else who wishes to learn.”

  The men turned to each other and discussed the proposal with renewed vigor.

  Susan took the opportunity to wander away. On the other side of the Stone, a group of women was visible between the tents, working on some craft together.

  Susan tapped a menu on the console and switched to volumetric projection. The red outline of the Stone vanished into a solid object, much like it appeared to people in the real world. The only thing missing was the rippling sea of color on each triangular face.

  Now a red circle surrounded the base about 2 meters out. She went to the side nearest the women and stepped in. Her image shimmered in the air, dim compared to daylight. She waved for attention.

  A young woman looked up and noticed. She bounded over and said, “Hi, I’m Revi!” The other women followed.

  “What are you working on, Revi?”

  “We’re making clothes from the skins of animals.”

  “Could you do it right here, where I can watch you? I want to learn.”

  Several of the women craned their necks around and looked at the ring old men on the other side of the Stone. One said, “They don’t approve of us being near when they are discussing great matters.”

  Susan smirked. “I have a plan to clear them out. It’s already in motion.”

  * * *

&nb
sp; When storytime came that evening, everyone called for Antikva again.

  She stood in place. “Tonight I will tell you how the Earth was born from a star. In the beginning the Creator made only a single element, named One. He breathed into One the fire of creation and said, ‘Go forth and join together.’

  “So the Ones spread across the whole Universe. In places the force of falling brought them together in great balls called stars. Within the stars, One joined with One to make a new element, named Two. Each time they joined, they released some fire of creation, which became light. Then Two joined with Two to make Four and more light.

  “The stars grew old and shattered by their own fires. In the blink of an eye the elements joined many times over, making Thirteen and Eighty-four and all the others. The elements spread across the Universe and formed new stars. Then those stars grew old and shattered. Eventually a new star was born with many different elements around it. These became its children.

  “They fell into small balls, but they were too cold to release the fire of creation. Instead they danced with each other by the force of lightning. One, Six, Eight, Nine and others joined together to create life. From life came mind, and from mind came the human soul.

  “Even now the dance of life continues inside you. Each one of you is the most precious thing in all the Universe. For though it came before you and will continue after you are gone, during that brief moment in between, your soul gives the Universe meaning.”

  The group sat silent for several minutes. Then Kantisto stood to tell the next story. It was an old favorite about the spirits of Earth and Water battling each other. Somehow it didn’t thrill the audience like it used to.

  Susan lingered happily by the fire, listening to other stories and songs gradually fade into drowsiness. The low-power warning startled her awake. She excused herself and ran to the old farmhouse. She barely sat on the bed before dawn came bursting through the window.

  From the Stone wafted the cackle of young children, excited and full of energy. Class time! She moaned and forced herself to keep going.

  Children of all ages surrounded the Stone, from barely walking to early puberty. They laughed and cheered when she materialized. A small handful of the mothers shepherded the younger ones, for which Susan felt supremely grateful.

  Alechjo sat there too, with a dopey lovesick smile. Susan blushed.

  It was an impossible crowd to teach. How to provide material for so many different levels? She had pieced together that some people in the River towns knew how to read and write. It was considered a specialty skill, not something crucial for everyday life.

  She would have to improvise. It would be cruel to scramble their logical young minds with the absurdities of Ancient English spelling. Better to start with a clean phonetic alphabet. She covered the front face of the Stone with a whiteboard, traced the first letter and pronounced its sound for the class.

  A few hours later she thanked the children for coming and dismissed them to play. Near the other side of the Stone, the circle of women sat doing leatherwork. She waved and called them over.

  They gathered around with their knives, cutting boards and stacks of leather.

  She said, “Could you all sit facing the Stone? I can only see what it sees.”

  The women worked many hours. Sometimes Susan pointed at something and asked a question.

  Revi explained, “This is for a girl who has never been with a man ... This is for a married woman ... Elders get a special mark on the collar ...”

  Around mid-afternoon Susan started dozing off. She stood and said, “Please excuse me. I can’t go another day without sleep.”

  Revi said, “Don’t you sleep at night?”

  “I’m unconscious, but that is not the same as sleep.”

  Revi stared back without comprehension.

  “I’ll go rest now. I am not to be disturbed by anyone, for any reason.” Susan walked toward the old farmhouse. As she passed the console an idea struck: What she really needed was a ‘Do not disturb’ sign. A written message would be useless. Perhaps something iconic, a picture of a stick figure lying in bed with ‘ZZzz’ above it. That wouldn’t work. Their bedding was different, and they didn’t know the sound Z makes ... yet. Maybe a tent with its flap closed.

  The Stone could see tents of the village at various angles. She told the console to assume they were all the same and make a 3D model. She brought a miniature version into existence at the center of the Stone, then went and told the leatherworkers, “This small tent is a sign that I’m sleeping. I’ll take it away when I’m ready for visitors again.”

  The women nodded.

  Susan trotted off merrily. Rest at last! She climbed the stairs to the attic room and collapsed into bed with Anand’s picture clutched to her bosom. The Ancients had compressed her need for sleep down to a couple of hours each day, just enough for a mind to do the necessary housekeeping. Sleep came quickly, and with it the dreams ...

  * * *

  She stood on a vast empty plain beneath a starless sky. The last glow of sunset lingered on the horizon. The plain was smooth as glass, no perceptible texture, not even a pebble. Not the faintest vibration moved in the air or in the ground, the most profound silence she had ever known.

  As if through an infinite mirror, her reflection stood nearby. Its lips moved and a billion voices spoke in unison, a sound enormous and complex like rushing water speaking. It thundered across the landscape from every direction with overwhelming power:

  I created you, and I will destroy you.

  There was no malice in it, nor any sympathy, merely a dispassionate statement of fact.

  Susan looked past the image and saw all the wonders of civilization arrayed under spots of light. The great achievements of humankind filled her with pleasure: pyramids, canals, towering monuments, abundant food, medicine, computers, the global communication network ...

  The reflection looked in the opposite direction, her face filled with revulsion and despair. Susan could not turn to see, nor could she hear anything, but knew intuitively: for every great monument there were the groans of those whose labor was exploited, for every cure a biological weapon, for every mobile device a cesspool of toxic waste.

  They reached out and touched fingers. Their bodies swirled around each other like two colors of Play-Doh and grew into a giant tree, so large that its canopy covered the whole plain. Susan formed the living exterior, supporting all the weight. Her opposite formed the dead interior, rotting from the inside out. The voices spoke again, and Susan found herself speaking along:

  Our greatest strength is also our greatest weakness.

  The tree vanished. Susan walked among an immense throng, millions of people moving in unison like an amoeba on a microscope slide. Invisible forces held them together. No one could leave the group or go in their own direction.

  They approached a cliff. People ahead of her screamed in terror as they plunged to their deaths. She desperately wanted to turn back, but the connections that bound them to each other carried her inexorably forward. She spread her arms wide and leaned back against those behind, trying to stanch the flow of people.

  Those in front fell away, and she found herself staring at the edge. Her feet skidded along the ground until there was no ground left and she dropped straight down. With lightning-fast reflexes she caught the edge with one hand. Looking down she saw a vast flock of people flying past, accelerating on the long fall.

  She caught one of them with her free hand. They stared desperately into each other’s eyes as they dangled there. Then the shuffle of feet pushed her fingers off the edge and they plummeted. From below came the sound of bodies smacking hard surface. The ground rose up at terrifying speed.

  She was on hands and knees, looking down at the dark textureless surface. Dead silence. All the humans were gone. She raised her head to the vast empty plain beneath the starless sky and saw the same expression of horror on the face of her opposite.

  You can’t save them al
l. Neither can I destroy them all. A few always survive to repeat the cycle again.

  No, the cycle ends here. I will destroy you.

  Then you must destroy yourself.

  * * *

  Susan woke feeling much better, but not entirely in good spirits. That old nightmare had returned, after so many years. Perhaps it was merely stress and sleep deprivation. She climbed down the stairs and returned to the Stone in time for the evening meal.

  As usual they called for a story from Antikva. When she finished, everyone waited for Kantisto to stand and talk. The wait grew uncomfortably long, and people started calling his name. Alechjo lit a torch and ran to check the shaman’s tent. On return he announced, “Some of Kantisto’s things are gone.”

  Susan asked, “Should you look for him? What if he needs our help?”

  Pliajo shook his head. “Sometimes Kantisto goes on dream walks without telling anyone. He could be gone for days, even weeks.”

  * * *

  Susan dismissed her students and rushed over to the sewing circle. The women were already arranged in a convenient crescent facing the Stone, most of them cutting or fitting pieces together. Revi was staring off with a dreamy look on her face.

  Susan followed the point of Revi’s eyes and caught them tracking Alechjo as he left. Susan knelt next to her and whispered, “You like him, don’t you?”

  Revi nodded, clinging to the last glimpse of Alechjo. “He never looks at me anymore. The sun in the sky blinds him to the small fire.”

  Susan bowed her head. “I’m sorry.” How to put these two together? It seemed more impossible than any mission she had ever attempted. “I want you to come to class tomorrow.”

  Revi locked eyes with Susan and nodded. No more explanation was needed. The two girls exchanged wicked grins.

  * * *

  Susan materialized before the class wearing the traditional garb of a married woman. It fit much looser than the white gown, particularly around the waist. A thick braid bound her hair back and hung to her knees. A stripe of ash across her forehead indicated a widow in mourning. She could have passed for a native, except for her dark skin and red hair.