Of Stones and Stars
Chapter 5: A Sentence Served
In the days that followed I was reminded of what time was; a piece of wax that’s dripping on a termite that’s choking on a splinter. No, wait… That doesn’t even make sense. That’s not a thought of my own and I’m certain that the stones, strange though they may be, are at least logical in their statements.
Time was dragging its feet to move along and I was stuck crawling along at the pace the hours dictated.
The first day wasn’t so bad, really. I just sat on my bed, read a bit, and stared at the stones. They spoke to me in their language of imagery and emotions, and I came to know the many secrets they would tell as though they were secrets of my own.
I could see that they were trying to track the locations of the lost stones, searching however they searched, but were unable to come up with anything more than a few vague directions.
My parents seemed to avoid me during those days. I’m sure it was easy enough to avoid me when I was confined to my room, but they rarely came up to speak to me save for a few times a day. It was almost like solitary confinement; except that Lizzie kept popping in to annoy me.
Lizzie was a sweet little girl, really; but there was something intensely irritating about her cheerful presence amidst all my gloom. I did my best to drop hints that she should leave me alone, applying cold-shoulder techniques and sending her on fools errands. She didn’t seem to get it, though; so eventually I had to just come out with it and tell her that she was annoying me and needed to leave me alone.
She seemed very hurt by these words, but they were effective. I know what you’re thinking, siblings often say worse than “you’re annoying me, leave me alone” but not Lizzie and I, we’d always got along nicely. Plus my tone was especially sinister when I said it.
That was the first day. The second day did not go quite so well.
I began feeling confined, more so than before. The stones began applying pressure, telling me that I needed to get out of the house so they could search more thoroughly for their cousins. I explained that I could not do so, but they insisted that the only thing keeping me in my room was my willingness to obey. I couldn’t exactly argue with their point, but I remained in my room for the rest of the day while they became more and more agitated.
By the end of the second night I was beginning to descend into the depths of madness. As I lay awake in bed that night I started to seriously consider disobeying my parents and escaping the house, even for a few minutes in the hopes that it would be enough to partially appease the star stones.
When I finally fell into the normally comforting embrace of slumber, I was confronted with two angry stars in the sky. The blue showed its negative feelings through showing me images of failure and loneliness. The black showed me images of my loved ones in pain and in death. To say that my dreams that night were uncomfortable would be like saying that the sun was a little warm.
The next day I convinced my mother to allow me outside. The lawn needed cut, after all; and why should she or dad have to do it when I was there all day? The stones rejoiced as I exited the house in the early hours of the afternoon.
I went into the garage and filled the mower up with gasoline, and checked the oil. Then I pulled it out into the yard and primed it before starting it up. It was one of those self-propelling push mowers, which meant that there was no pushing involved; I just held down the lever and walked behind it. The most work I had to do was during the turns.
I could feel the stones satisfaction with my actions and sensed their frantic search for the other stars. They seemed to converse somewhere in my head, but their thoughts (or language, or whatever it had been) was entirely too alien for me to understand. They were so involved in their excited chatter that my mind became overloaded with the back and forth between them and I had trouble concentrating on the task at hand; mowing the lawn.
It became a serious task just to hold down the lever and walk in a straight line. At one point I nearly fell off the curb and onto the street; and at that moment I shut down the mower and put a hand on either side of my head. I cried out to the heavens in frustration. In my head I screamed at them, telling them to “just shut up!!!”
They seemed not to hear me and so I reminded them that I was their vessel, and if they wanted me for a vessel they needed to make sure that I could function properly. That seemed to work well enough and they quieted down a bit, but just in case it hadn’t I also threatened to drop them in the sewers where no one but the rats would find them. That last threat seemed to shut them up entirely.
My mother came outside to ask what all shouting had been about, and I had to make something up about tripping over a root and scraping my knee a bit; which hadn’t happened at all. She seemed satisfied by this lie and told me to keep it down before turning around and walking back into the house.
As I started the mower back up I realized that I was going to have to produce a scrape of some sort on my leg before I went back inside. Shaking my head at the folly of my lie, I finished the lawn up and wheeled the mower back into the garage. It was too bad the black stone hadn’t helped me with my fabrication; it was so much better at telling lies than I was.
In the garage, I knelt down and moved my leg against the rough cement floor, scraping up my knee and producing a series of small cuts and scratches. It was painful, but not nearly as painful as what the black stone emitted; and I was able to bear the pain without so much as an intake of breath. I had become one with pain and the term no longer held any meaning to me.
My visualizing a walk back into the house, I let the stones know that I was finished outside and that their time out there was limited. They flashed a plea for me to stay out there a while longer and I conceded to their wishes; taking my time in emptying the bag of grass clippings.
Eventually I was able to stall no more and I made my way back inside. My mother thanked me for taking care of the lawn and the mower and fed me lunch; a peanut butter and banana sandwich on toast accompanied by a glass of milk.
After eating I climbed the stairs to return to my prison where I immersed myself in a science fiction novel; content for the moment to be left alone by the stones who conversed in a low hum at the back of my mind.
That night as I slept the blue stone spoke to me. I walked into the dream expecting to encounter both the black and the blue, but the black stone was no where to be seen.
“I have bonded with you longer and was able to reach a deeper recess of your mind,” the blue star in the sky explained to me as it shone its cold radiance down on me. “I must speak with you in private tonight.”
It went on to show me the silver crown affixed with five stones. The blue stone sat in the center and the black stone sat to the far right. Between the black and blue was a red stone, and on the other side was green and white on the far left. This was the first time I was able to see the missing stones and I marveled at the lack of brilliance to their colors.
“You will see their brilliance when we find them. Until then, your mind will not understand,” it told me.
“There is a balance,” it said, “and I am the axis of that balance. The ‘black’ stone is the essence of evil and the ‘white’ is the essence of good.” The star said the colors as though it were speaking to a child who barely understood what colors were. “I was able to trace a hint of the red stone today when you were out in the open air. I don’t believe the other ‘stone’ found it.”
“So where is it?” I asked.
“Quite a ways off,” it replied. “But it does not matter. The next stone we get cannot be ‘red’ or the scale will be tipped to the side of evil and you will be tainted more so than you already have been. We need to seek out the ‘white’ stone for true balance. If not the ‘white’ then at least the ‘green’.”
I shook my head in confusion.
“You have already begun to feel the influence of the black stone,” it said. “You have been successful in battle and you have become deceitful. If we cannot obtain a stone that represents good, then all is lost and you will succumb to the whims of evil. Do you understand now?”
I nodded, still not entirely sure about everything it was saying but understanding enough to know that I had to resist the red stone if I should encounter it.
“I will help you to resist it if we should come to that point,” the blue star reassured me. “For now I will continue to block the black’s beacon. I have thus far managed to convince him that the walls of your home are breaking up the signal, but I don’t know how long it will believe my lies. That I have managed to deceive the embodiment of deceit for so long is a tremendous achievement.”
“Okay,” I said, not knowing what else to say.
And then the scenery changed and I found myself at the peak of a tall mountain. There was no snow like there would be at the peak of a true mountain, but instead it was covered with green grass and a single solitary tree. Above me, shining down from above was the blue stone and a hole in the sky that radiated darkness.
The blue and black spoke to me long in the night, but having spoken to the blue star I began to pick up on the lies it told in order to confuse the black.
***************************************************
The next day was uneventful save for the mounting apprehension within caused by the black stones overwhelmingly strong desire to leave the house and start moving until it can locate the other stones. The blue stone seemed much more patient and calm, perhaps by its nature, but occasionally it would pressure me to exit the home; likely to appease the black stone and to shut it up for even a few moments.
I began offering to do nearly everything that I could in order to be outside. I got the paper, I got the mail. When it rained I rushed outside and told my mom that she had left the windows down in the car. Each time I did so the black stone became calm for a bit and concentrated on locating other stones.
On Sunday, while I was bringing in the newspaper, the black stone announced that it had picked up on a distant signal. I cringed inwardly. It could only have been the red stone that blue had hinted at.
I promised that I would head out in the direction of the new stone tomorrow instead of heading for school. The stones seemed satisfied with this. But I had no intention in doing so.
In the days that followed I was reminded of what time was; a piece of wax that’s dripping on a termite that’s choking on a splinter. No, wait… That doesn’t even make sense. That’s not a thought of my own and I’m certain that the stones, strange though they may be, are at least logical in their statements.
Time was dragging its feet to move along and I was stuck crawling along at the pace the hours dictated.
The first day wasn’t so bad, really. I just sat on my bed, read a bit, and stared at the stones. They spoke to me in their language of imagery and emotions, and I came to know the many secrets they would tell as though they were secrets of my own.
I could see that they were trying to track the locations of the lost stones, searching however they searched, but were unable to come up with anything more than a few vague directions.
My parents seemed to avoid me during those days. I’m sure it was easy enough to avoid me when I was confined to my room, but they rarely came up to speak to me save for a few times a day. It was almost like solitary confinement; except that Lizzie kept popping in to annoy me.
Lizzie was a sweet little girl, really; but there was something intensely irritating about her cheerful presence amidst all my gloom. I did my best to drop hints that she should leave me alone, applying cold-shoulder techniques and sending her on fools errands. She didn’t seem to get it, though; so eventually I had to just come out with it and tell her that she was annoying me and needed to leave me alone.
She seemed very hurt by these words, but they were effective. I know what you’re thinking, siblings often say worse than “you’re annoying me, leave me alone” but not Lizzie and I, we’d always got along nicely. Plus my tone was especially sinister when I said it.
That was the first day. The second day did not go quite so well.
I began feeling confined, more so than before. The stones began applying pressure, telling me that I needed to get out of the house so they could search more thoroughly for their cousins. I explained that I could not do so, but they insisted that the only thing keeping me in my room was my willingness to obey. I couldn’t exactly argue with their point, but I remained in my room for the rest of the day while they became more and more agitated.
By the end of the second night I was beginning to descend into the depths of madness. As I lay awake in bed that night I started to seriously consider disobeying my parents and escaping the house, even for a few minutes in the hopes that it would be enough to partially appease the star stones.
When I finally fell into the normally comforting embrace of slumber, I was confronted with two angry stars in the sky. The blue showed its negative feelings through showing me images of failure and loneliness. The black showed me images of my loved ones in pain and in death. To say that my dreams that night were uncomfortable would be like saying that the sun was a little warm.
The next day I convinced my mother to allow me outside. The lawn needed cut, after all; and why should she or dad have to do it when I was there all day? The stones rejoiced as I exited the house in the early hours of the afternoon.
I went into the garage and filled the mower up with gasoline, and checked the oil. Then I pulled it out into the yard and primed it before starting it up. It was one of those self-propelling push mowers, which meant that there was no pushing involved; I just held down the lever and walked behind it. The most work I had to do was during the turns.
I could feel the stones satisfaction with my actions and sensed their frantic search for the other stars. They seemed to converse somewhere in my head, but their thoughts (or language, or whatever it had been) was entirely too alien for me to understand. They were so involved in their excited chatter that my mind became overloaded with the back and forth between them and I had trouble concentrating on the task at hand; mowing the lawn.
It became a serious task just to hold down the lever and walk in a straight line. At one point I nearly fell off the curb and onto the street; and at that moment I shut down the mower and put a hand on either side of my head. I cried out to the heavens in frustration. In my head I screamed at them, telling them to “just shut up!!!”
They seemed not to hear me and so I reminded them that I was their vessel, and if they wanted me for a vessel they needed to make sure that I could function properly. That seemed to work well enough and they quieted down a bit, but just in case it hadn’t I also threatened to drop them in the sewers where no one but the rats would find them. That last threat seemed to shut them up entirely.
My mother came outside to ask what all shouting had been about, and I had to make something up about tripping over a root and scraping my knee a bit; which hadn’t happened at all. She seemed satisfied by this lie and told me to keep it down before turning around and walking back into the house.
As I started the mower back up I realized that I was going to have to produce a scrape of some sort on my leg before I went back inside. Shaking my head at the folly of my lie, I finished the lawn up and wheeled the mower back into the garage. It was too bad the black stone hadn’t helped me with my fabrication; it was so much better at telling lies than I was.
In the garage, I knelt down and moved my leg against the rough cement floor, scraping up my knee and producing a series of small cuts and scratches. It was painful, but not nearly as painful as what the black stone emitted; and I was able to bear the pain without so much as an intake of breath. I had become one with pain and the term no longer held any meaning to me.
My visualizing a walk back into the house, I let the stones know that I was finished outside and that their time out there was limited. They flashed a plea for me to stay out there a while longer and I conceded to their wishes; taking my time in emptying the bag of grass clippings.
Eventually I was able to stall no more and I made my way back inside. My mother thanked me for taking care of the lawn and the mower and fed me lunch; a peanut butter and banana sandwich on toast accompanied by a glass of milk.
After eating I climbed the stairs to return to my prison where I immersed myself in a science fiction novel; content for the moment to be left alone by the stones who conversed in a low hum at the back of my mind.
That night as I slept the blue stone spoke to me. I walked into the dream expecting to encounter both the black and the blue, but the black stone was no where to be seen.
“I have bonded with you longer and was able to reach a deeper recess of your mind,” the blue star in the sky explained to me as it shone its cold radiance down on me. “I must speak with you in private tonight.”
It went on to show me the silver crown affixed with five stones. The blue stone sat in the center and the black stone sat to the far right. Between the black and blue was a red stone, and on the other side was green and white on the far left. This was the first time I was able to see the missing stones and I marveled at the lack of brilliance to their colors.
“You will see their brilliance when we find them. Until then, your mind will not understand,” it told me.
“There is a balance,” it said, “and I am the axis of that balance. The ‘black’ stone is the essence of evil and the ‘white’ is the essence of good.” The star said the colors as though it were speaking to a child who barely understood what colors were. “I was able to trace a hint of the red stone today when you were out in the open air. I don’t believe the other ‘stone’ found it.”
“So where is it?” I asked.
“Quite a ways off,” it replied. “But it does not matter. The next stone we get cannot be ‘red’ or the scale will be tipped to the side of evil and you will be tainted more so than you already have been. We need to seek out the ‘white’ stone for true balance. If not the ‘white’ then at least the ‘green’.”
I shook my head in confusion.
“You have already begun to feel the influence of the black stone,” it said. “You have been successful in battle and you have become deceitful. If we cannot obtain a stone that represents good, then all is lost and you will succumb to the whims of evil. Do you understand now?”
I nodded, still not entirely sure about everything it was saying but understanding enough to know that I had to resist the red stone if I should encounter it.
“I will help you to resist it if we should come to that point,” the blue star reassured me. “For now I will continue to block the black’s beacon. I have thus far managed to convince him that the walls of your home are breaking up the signal, but I don’t know how long it will believe my lies. That I have managed to deceive the embodiment of deceit for so long is a tremendous achievement.”
“Okay,” I said, not knowing what else to say.
And then the scenery changed and I found myself at the peak of a tall mountain. There was no snow like there would be at the peak of a true mountain, but instead it was covered with green grass and a single solitary tree. Above me, shining down from above was the blue stone and a hole in the sky that radiated darkness.
The blue and black spoke to me long in the night, but having spoken to the blue star I began to pick up on the lies it told in order to confuse the black.
***************************************************
The next day was uneventful save for the mounting apprehension within caused by the black stones overwhelmingly strong desire to leave the house and start moving until it can locate the other stones. The blue stone seemed much more patient and calm, perhaps by its nature, but occasionally it would pressure me to exit the home; likely to appease the black stone and to shut it up for even a few moments.
I began offering to do nearly everything that I could in order to be outside. I got the paper, I got the mail. When it rained I rushed outside and told my mom that she had left the windows down in the car. Each time I did so the black stone became calm for a bit and concentrated on locating other stones.
On Sunday, while I was bringing in the newspaper, the black stone announced that it had picked up on a distant signal. I cringed inwardly. It could only have been the red stone that blue had hinted at.
I promised that I would head out in the direction of the new stone tomorrow instead of heading for school. The stones seemed satisfied with this. But I had no intention in doing so.
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