Silver

a novel excerpt

Chapters 1-3

~1~

Beneath the hot afternoon sun, the hillside is quiet, the grassy slope littered with stones, gray and smooth, some planted partially into the earth, others plopped onto the surface as if they might roll off at any moment. Deep below, the Old Ones live. The Stone People are nocturnal and wary. They live long, long lives—so long the passing of seasons, centuries, even eons go unnoticed unless something happens to disturb their peaceful natures.

The Stone People also have long memories. They remember a time when they were revered and consulted by other Earth inhabitants on matters of great importance. Josia still remembers when his broad, flat surface was a place of prayer, and the stony hillside a great cathedral of the night. How well he remembers the songs and celebrations, the gatherings of both Human and Animal around his stone family. He still bears the imprint of their tears. They knew his special strength and understood he was designed to carry great burdens.    Josia belongs to both families, embedded and surface Stone, and is considered wise, although not with the wisdom of the Old Ones living still beneath the surface of the world. No surface Stone can speak without first consulting the old embedded ones. It is law.

The Stone People are a patient lot. They measure their days by the cycles of the moon. The full moon is their morning, and the slim stick moon their night. On their calendar, a human month counts as a single day, and a year is one week. Their energy is densely packed and only under the full moon does this density loosen enough for them to emerge to dance, sing and share stories beneath the glowing orb. Not in a million years did Josia expect to fall in love. It is the nature of Stone People that they are love; they do not fall in love.

In such a long life, there was little Josia didn’t understand about the creatures that passed by or landed on his surface to sun themselves on his grainy back. Mostly he was content to be an anchor to the fleeting lives of others. The Old Ones may have been able to warn him of what was to come, but they resisted, knowing as only they could, that Josia’s heart was destined to perform a great action in the ways of the world.

~2~

It began one night when the moon was full bright above the earth. Josia heard the squall of an infant and, instead of joining his brethren in the chanting and dancing, he abandoned the festivities and took his spirit down to the edge of one of the villages. There he found a simple cabin, the land around it cleared and tidy, and down a winding path was a pretty pond, its surface still as glass. The crying infant wailed again.

As he neared the cabin, he saw a pale white spirit-light lift from the surface of the pond, flicker and dance a moment and then, like a silver swarm, it flew into the cabin. Curious, he approached and looked through one of the windows. A man and woman were bent over a newborn babe, washing its body which was still slick with birthing fluids and blood. Josia saw the flickering spirit light hover a moment above and then slide into the newborn’s body. At that moment, the infant opened her eyes and Josia’s life was changed forever.

He stayed the whole night, watching the young family with something like pain stabbing his spirit. In those moments, of looking at the infant girl, Josia, for the very first time, yearned to have arms to hold her, fingers to stroke the soft down of her cheek, a lap on which to rest her tiny body. Never, in the millennia of his existence, had he desired to be human. The very idea rather shocked him. Generally he had watched their comings and goings (so quickly lived, these human lives) with something like pity.

When dawn approached, it was almost a relief to retreat again into dense, unmoving matter. Josia had always been a mindful stone, and he knew it would do no good to bemoan his fate, so instead he turned his attention to the Grandmothers and Grandfathers deep below the surface of the earth and took his sustenance there. He listened to the low hum of song and conversation shared by the Old Ones and it soothed his despondency as he felt his energy, his life, merge more deeply within.

~3~

Clara forgot the birth pangs the moment her husband placed the infant in her arms. It was as if a difficult journey was now over and they had returned home once again. “Oh, Richard, she’s so beautiful. Look at her tiny hands; her fingers are so small they couldn’t hold so much as a pebble.”

Richard took the tiny hands in his and spread the fingers and, with a wet, warm cloth, washed each one gingerly. To his wife he said, “I’m rather afraid of her, my love. She is so fragile.” To his tiny daughter he said, “Hello, little one. Welcome to the world.” The infant, as if responding to her father’s voice, opened her eyes for the first time.

Clara gasped and whispered, “Oh Richard, look at her eyes. They are as silver as the moon. Do you think she is blind?” A shard of fear jabbed Richard, but when the girl turned and gazed straight into his eyes, the fear fled and he saw only stars and moon, lakes and rivers, the sun reflecting from a high window. “No, she is not blind. She sees, my love. She sees.”

Richard and Clara named their newborn daughter ‘Silver’ for the odd color of her eyes.

© 2006, Jamie Lee