The Crying Stone
Mario Milosevic
Published by Green Snake Publishing at Smashwords
Copyright (c) 2012 by Mario Milosevic
Cover image copyright (c) by Kim Antieau
All rights reserved. Used by permission.
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The Crying Stone
Mario Milosevic
THE WORST PART for me has always been the limited vision. I can’t look where I want; I’m always focused on one spot.
That, and the phantom limbs. I miss movement.
You might think I shouldn’t miss any of that, and you’re probably right. After all, I’m a stone gargoyle. I shouldn’t see anything anyway. And I can’t be expected to move things, especially not my own limbs since I don’t have any.
And touch. I shouldn’t be able to experience touch. Rocks don’t have that ability, so I should accept my situation.
But I don’t.
I miss all those things.
EVEN THOUGH I don’t see with crystal clarity and panoramic vision what’s in front of me, I know what’s there. I’m on an old university building. It used to be where the alchemists worked their transformation spells back in the day. Then it became a residence hall. And more recently it’s been turned into a building of lecture halls. I know all that.
In front me, a courtyard with other university buildings. The center holds a tower with bells that ring periodically to mark the hours. They have done so for centuries.
The courtyard is covered with bricks. People’s shoes clip-clop over them constantly. It is a sound I have grown accustomed to.
Trees dot the courtyard here and there. People who come to me talk about the trees. They kick at leaves in the fall when they’re standing in front of me with their questions. In the spring they talk about the blossoms. How beautiful they are.
The sun rises to my left and arcs in front of me and sets to my right.
In winter I hear the shivers of the people and their boot squeaks on the snow.
Sometimes the courtyard is filled with students. Other times, between terms, it’s empty. The deserted feeling is awful but comfortable.
I’m permanently fixed in a place of learning and knowledge. You’d think that would mean something, that I would have wisdom.
But there are gaps in anyone’s knowledge. There are deficiencies in all wisdoms.
I know where I am. I know what I am.
What I don’t know is why I am.
WHEN THE OLD guy first came to me, he supported himself with canes. Later he rolled up in a wheelchair. It’s not that he thought I could cure him. He knew that wasn’t part of my legend. It was just that he was sick. And he wanted an answer to a very specific question. I listened. I always do.
DO YOU CARE how all this started? I wasn’t born a gargoyle. Few people are. I’ll tell you, though, you standing in front of me asking questions. I’ll give you the low down. The scoop. The big story.
Why? Because I don’t have anything better to do.
I’ve told the story many times. I tell the story constantly. None of you hear it. I have this hope, perhaps unfounded, that my voice might snake into your unconscious. Or it might drift on the ether and land on your ear. Or your brain. Maybe your heart. That’s what I hope for. That’s what sustains me, even though I have no evidence any of it ever happens.
So I’ll tell you my story.
But before I get to that, I have a question for you: Why do you think a stone carving has any answers for you?
Good one, huh? Even if you heard me, you’d have no answer for that, I’m sure.
Who told you to come here? Still no answer.
No matter. I already know. It’s folk wisdom, isn’t it? Your grandmother told you about me. Or maybe your school chum. Or a professor told you the story about me as an illustration of unsupported superstition for your psychology class but you wanted to come here and see for yourself.
Oh, I would love to talk to you, even for a few moments. There’s all kinds of questions I want to ask the folks who come to me for answers.
And you don’t care, do you? This isn’t a conversation, is it?
You want to look at my face and read the signs: Does the boy you love love you back? Or will the child you are carrying be healthy? Should you invest in that start-up? Should you move? Should you take that new job offer. And so on.
The point is, you don’t spare a thought for me.
Well, why should you? I’m a rock.
BACK WHEN I came into the world, before I was a rock, the world was a mysterious place. People thought all kinds of fantastic things. They thought fire-breathing creatures lived in the mountains. They thought the planets were living beings. They were pretty sure people were the children of gods. They had this notion that natural disasters were punishments for bad thoughts.
Oh, the crazy beliefs we have. Or had. Maybe still have, judging from the respect I get.
So when crying babies began turning into stone, there was a widespread feeling that this was not all that peculiar.
That’s what I said: Infants who cried too much turned to stone.
You can believe it or not but that’s what happened.
It wasn’t anyone’s master plan or anything. Nothing sinister about it. Some of our scientists theorized that the Earth was passing through some kind of divine dust cloud that filtered down through the atmosphere and bathed the planet in this strange unseeable fog that transformed flesh into rock. Supposedly the salt in tears set it off. Adults who cried didn’t get turned to stone because they had developed a certain maturity that gave them resistance. Babies, on the other hand, were still developing. They were susceptible to the power of the fog.
Have you ever heard of anything so ridiculous? Our scientists were primitive in those days, though they thought they were the sharpest minds anywhere. But then, that’s an occupational hazard of scientists everywhere through all time. I don’t blame them.
It wasn’t a cosmic cloud that did this. It was the impure hearts of parents everywhere. First, they wanted their children to quiet down and didn’t care how it happened. Second, the stars aligned with the energy meridians of the molten magma under the surface of the Earth and these energetic inclinations coalesced into a swirling maelstrom of will and caused the dreams of parents everywhere to come true and thereby concocted a way to silence children by metamorphosing them into cooled magma.
How about that? Do you believe that one?
HERE’S THE THING: You can make up your own story. Myths are cheap. They come to you in your dreams every night. They bombard you during the day. You live in the mythic state, don’t you? You love your fantasies. That’s understandable. We all need our amusements.
Only my life isn’t a fantasy. I really am a rock and no one knows how that happened.
LISTEN TO ME, talking like you can hear me. It’s pathetic. But what else have I got?
HOW ARE YOU doing this fine day? I know you’re out there. All of you. I hear you whispering.
Not that I have ears. It’s the vibrations in the air. They go to the ground and propagate up the walls of this building and sweep over my rock face. That’s how I hear you.
Yes, the moss on my face and eyes tell you everything you need to know. Green means yes. Reddish means no. And gray, the one you dread, means get out of my face I can’t help you. Or, in more polite terms, the answer is not within my grasp.
But here’s a secret. Are you listening? It’s all a crock. I throw up colors at random. Just to amuse myself.
Don’t blame me. I didn’t ask for this life, but now that it’s mine, I have to amuse myself, just as you amuse yourselves. You know it’s true. You’re all about diversion, aren’t you? Life is too scary to take straight. You need the twisted visions.
HERE’S THE SECOND worst part: As bad as it is, I don’t want it to end.
A few years ago they were going to take this building down, and me with it. And why not? The walls were crumbling, the halls were sagging with age, the mortar was falling away bit by bit. A demolition was long overdue. Time to put up a new building. The university officials began to put the wheels into motion that would eventually crush the building and me.