FIVE

This one's pretty long, but there's a lot of dialogue.

FIVE

 

Without warning the stone man has walked into the outskirts of a medium-sized village.  He sees a small farmhouse, wooden shingles replacing half the tight roof thatching and smoke trickling from the stubby brick chimney.  Beyond it there is a large barn, with a small pasture with sheep and goats grazing on the sweet plains grass.  Even further back, just visible on the horizon, is the jut and swoop of the village proper.  The farmhouse he stands before appears to be the only farmstead this side of the village.  The stone man pauses before the fence that wraps around the house and its small garden, unsure of his next step.  There may be kind, helpful people inside willing to help Annabelle and to overlook his appearance to do so, but the people within may also be meek and afraid, or selfish, and would, at best, merely turn them away, and at worst cause them harm. 

In his arms the young girl moans gently, and begins shivering so violently he almost drops her.  It is decided then: he gathers her more firmly in his arms and pushes his fears and hesitations aside; this small, defenseless being needs him, and for reasons he can’t explain that is all that matters.

He steps easily over the weathered slats of the fence and approaches the battered red door.  He stands in front of it, confused for a moment how best to go about asking for help.

Knock, a voice whispers in his head.  Eerie though the sudden knowledge is, as soon as he hears it he knows it is correct: he will knock, introduce himself calmly, and ask for help for Annabelle.  He shifts the girl into the crook of his left arm and raises his right fist cautiously, then rapped his knuckles on the peeling red door before he could second-guess himself. 

The stone man’s knuckles have barely grazed the weather-smoothed planks of the front door when it swings open slowly, seemingly of its own volition.  For a moment the stone man’s heart sinks; perhaps this little farm is abandoned or worse, ransacked.  But then he sees two glittering points in the darkness beyond the door which resolve into two storm-grey eyes.  The eyes are bright and vivid, and unusually vibrant in comparison to the wizened face they are set in.  Wrinkles form an intricate roadmap of years and experience around her eyes and through her cheeks and forehead; her skin is loose and hanging, sagging comfortably on her collar.  Her clothing is modest and grey and threadbare, much like the woman herself.  He hair is snowy soft and pulled into a tight chignon at the nape of her neck.  Despite being several heads shorter than the stone man, she manages to look down her hooked nose at him.

“Answer truly,”  the old woman asks, her voice deep and rasping but strong, “be you friend or foe?”

“Friend.  Please, she needs help,” he responds, gesturing to Annabelle.

The old woman opens the door further and nods curtly.  The stone man breathes a sigh of relief at the woman’s fearlessness and squeezes through the door and into her home.

Once inside the roof presses down on his head and shoulders uncomfortably, even though he is bent nearly in half.  The room is dark, all the heavy curtains pulled tightly shut against the grey day.

“Put her on the sofa by the fire,” the old woman says, going around now and tugging open the curtains.  The stone man could have sworn that the room had been pitch-black, with no hint of fire or lamp-flame, but sure enough a small fire is burning invitingly in the grate (and is it his imagination, or is he able to stand a bit straighter now?).  As the woman throws open the curtain dingy light trickles through the dirty window panes and reveals details about the one-room farmhouse. 

The couch beside the fire is covered in a faded green linen, with an equally faded brown wool blanket thrown over the back.  Tenderly, carefully, the stone man places Annabelle on the sofa and places the blanket over her trembling form, wrapping and tucking her in.  The small girl is still unconscious, and the stone man begins to worry that something is very wrong with her.  He smoothes the sweat-damp hair away from her pale face, using the lightest touch her can, and hoping his stoneskin is not too rough. 

He turns from Annabelle to look at the old woman, who is bent over a pot hanging in the kitchen fire (another fire he had missed, or one recently kindled while he was busy with Annabelle?).  The kitchen, like the rest of the house, is open and part of the one large, main room.  A worn silverwood table laden with bundles and bunches of herbs and unused cast iron pots and pans  is situated next to a large sagging bed covered in a faded quilt, which stands right next to the only partition in the room, a curtained-off area behind which is most likely a lavatory.  Everything in the house is faded and old, with a decided impression of being musty and covered in dust, including the houses’ inhabitant. 

“Have a seat in the armchair,” the old woman says then, closing the pot and turning to the herbs piled on her table, “the soup’s almost ready.  I don’t know if you eat, but the girl could use some food.”

The stone man turns, certain there is no chair there�"especially not one large enough to support him�"but sure enough, across the sofa Annabelle lies on there is a massive arm chair, covered in cracked brown leather and with thick, sturdy legs.  The stone man is confused, but he walks (again he finds he able to stand straighter�"almost completely upright, even) over the chair and settles himself carefully.  The chair holds, though it protests loudly at his weight.

“I’ve invited you into my home, stranger,” the old woman says, grabbing two large wooden bowls off of a shelf and ladling the steaming soup into them, “And now it is time you answered some questions.”  She pulls a stool over beside the sofa and settles into it carefully, handing one of the bowls to the stone man.

He shakes his head, refusing it, “I don’t eat,” he explains.

The woman holds it out insistently, “You may not need to eat, but the food will not hurt, and may do a bit of good besides,” she says, leveling a stern gaze at him.  He takes the bowl, thanking her, and takes a sip.  To his amazement, he finds that he can taste, vaguely, in a way which is not exactly tasting as a human would know it, but which tells him that the soup is warm, and good. 

“It’s good, thank you.”

“You’re welcome, stone man.  If you wish, you may have more when you finish.  Now,” she says, placing the other bowl on a side table beside the sofa and turning to Annabelle, touching her ring fingers to Annabelle’s temples and closing her eyes, “there is the matter of who you are and what you are doing here.” 

The stone man takes another sip if the soup.  He feels a soft goldness spreading from his mouth down into his throat and chest and trickling into his limbs�"warmth, the he knows eerily.  “I don’t know who I am,” he says slowly, watching Annabelle anxiously.  “I awoke in a room at the top of a tower, everything around me dead and burned.  I don’t know my name, or where I came from, or anything except what has happened to me since I’ve been awake.”

The old woman nods, beginning to rub Annabelle’s temples now.  “And after you awoke, what happened?”

The stone man sits a moment and thinks, sipping his soup and reveling in his new feeling of warm.  Slowly he begins to also be aware of a distant feeling of cold, half-lingering in his extremities and hovering outside the reach of the fire.  “I was called to a battle,” he says at last, remembering.  “There were magi and rock monsters setting fire to the town, destroying it and killing all the people.  One of the magi, a woman, almost took me.  But I resisted and managed to kill her and escape.  While I was running from them, from the other magi and the rock giants and the army, I found Annabelle and I helped her.”  He is silent once more, seeing in his mind the struggle with the lone rock giant and the feel of its liquid gold heart running over his fist and through his fingers.  “I helped her,” he murmurs, “but in the end I could not help her enough, and so I came here hoping for more help, for better help for her.”

The old woman nods again, looking over at the stone man and meeting his gaze firmly.  “You have a very strange story, stone man.  Strange, but not unbelievable.”  On the sofa, Annabelle stirs and moans.  The stone man’s heart leaps to hear it, and he watches her anxiously for additional signs of life.  “My name is Malaara,” the old woman continues, “and you and Annabelle are welcome to stay here for as long as you need.  You may have guessed that I don’t get many visitors.  You will be safe here, and no one will find you.”

“Thank you for all of you help and kindness, Malaara.  I don’t know what I would have done without it.”

Malaara waves her hand in dismissal, otherwise intent upon Annabelle’s limp form.  “You may have done me a far better turn than I you, Stone Man.  Do you know who this girl is?”

The Stone Man’s brows draw together in confusion.  “You mean Annabelle?”

Malaara nods, pulling a long chain necklace from beneath the bodice of her dress and slipping it over her neck.  The fine silver chain glints mesmerizingly in the firelight, tinkling like tiny bells as she loops it around her wrist, making it into a loose bracelet.   “Yes, but do you know who Annabelle is, what she stands for?  Do you know how precious your charge is?”

The Stone Man looks at Annabelle, deeply confused now.  “No?  Malaara, to me she is just a little girl.  What are you trying to tell me?”

Malaara fixes one sharp iron-colored eyes on the Stone Man’s: “Then you truly have no idea who she is?”  The Stone Man shakes his head.  Malaara stares at him for nearly minute, searching his face, and deeper.

At last she gives a firm nod, turning back the prone child.  “Tell me Stone Man, do you know anything about our country of Cillure?”

The Stone Man shakes his head again, then realizes the old woman cannot see him.  “No, I know nothing but what has happened since I awoke.”

“Well then I suppose I’ll need to tell you.  Cillure is perhaps not the largest country, but we are strong and rich, and for that we must always  be vigilant against attack.  Our neighbors would think to seize our treasures for themselves to grow fatter and wealthier�"fools, all of them.  But to the south the country of Ba’Thell and her barbaric warrior-tribes have hated and coveted what’s ours the most. 

“There was a time when our two lands were close allies, sharing everything from crops, to families, to wars.  But sooner or later politics always get in the way.  When one archduke died and another took his place centuries ago a new boundary was drawn that encroached on Ba’Thell land and a battalion of men were sent out to enforce it.  It was…bloody, to say the least, and the Ba’Thell have never forgiven us for it, though the land has long since been returned and the archduke responsible’s line removed from power. 

“That one act of greed set in motion a series of other, more heinous actions that have served to make our two lands great enemies.  Our current archduke, Sir Rothamn, has long suspected that he and his family were in danger of yet another Ba’Thell attack.  Most disagreed and called him paranoid, but Sir Rothamn knew better than to trust their pompous assuredness and consulted an old sorceress.  She saw with her gift what he had known in his heart: the Ba’Thell were indeed gathering for an attack to try and take Cillure once and for all, and his daughter Arabelle was in the most danger. 

“Aggreived though he was to part with her, the archduke knew that for her sake as well as for the safety of Cillure he would need to hide her and send her away.  The sorceress wiped the girl’s mind of her memories�"precious few in a mind of two years�"and secreted her away to a barren couple she had previously consulted with many miles away from Nessire, the capital city�"Garrethe, I believe it was called. 

“Now let us see how clever you are:  the village of Garrethe was small and incapable of a hardy defense, was it not?”  The Stone Man nods.  “And did it seem like a probable place for a hostile military power to cause the thorough and systematic destruction you saw there?”  The Stone Man shakes his head no, a coldness slithering its way up his spine.  “So then why would they bother to spend the time and resources on obliterating such a place?”

The Stone Man feels as though the world is falling away from him as he puts the pieces together and sees the grim picture Malaara has painted.

“The village was Garrethe.  The Ba’Thell discovered where the Archduke’s daughter was and tore the town apart to find her.”  He is silent for a moment, mulling over the information.  Then his gaze whips over to the unconscious girl before him.  “Annabelle,” he murmurs, sliding his gaze over to meet the old woman’s steely eyes.  “Annabelle is Arabelle?”

Malaara holds his gaze, nodding.  “If I am not mistaken�"and I rarely am�"then she is the Archduke’s estranged daughter, miraculously rescued from certain death at the hands of the Ba’Thell.  If they had killed her, all Cillure would have fallen with her.”  Malaara turns her head to look down at Annabelle’s limp form.  She tucks a wisp of dark chestnut hair behind Annabelle’s ear, her hand pausing  before probing gently along the neckline of Annabelle’s dirty blue sweater.  Eventually her fingertips brush against whatever they had been searching for, and a large blue stone slips out of the top of Annabelle’s sweater and comes to rest in Annabelle’s hand, curled gently against her cheek.

“Well then…her survival was not so miraculous after all…” Malaara whispers, all but forgetting the Stone Man in her fixation upon the indigo gem before her.

The stone is the deep blue of a summer sky on the verge of night, and so smooth and round and gleaming it seems almost liquid.  It is the wrong shade of blue to be a sapphire and too rich in color to be mere glass.  Roughly the size of a quail’s egg, it sits comfortably in Annabelle’s cupping palm.  The stone absorbs the light around it, only to refine it and send it shining back out from its depths; to say it glows however would be incorrect�"it is power giving the impression of light, rather than actual phosphorescence.  The stone hangs from a delicate gold chain, though from where he sits the Stone Man cannot see where the stone attaches to it, for it seems to be without any sort of setting. 

“She is the true heir, Stone Man; this gem marks her.  You no doubt see its power, but know not what it is,” she says, awakening from her stupor to address the Stone Man.  He shakes his head, realizing as he does so just how intensely he had been focusing on the cerulean gem. 

Malaara settles more deeply into her seat and smooths the fabric of her skirt over her bony knees, folding her hands and settling them primly into her lap.  “The story of this stone is something of a legend, almost too fantastic to be true.  But true it is, and this ancient gem is where we get our name from, and though most are oblivious to it, is where our power and wealth have come from as well.  The Cillure Stone is ancient and possesses a great power like nothing else on earth�""