M. Rose - The Secret Language of Stones

On one segment, I carved Jean Luc’s name and the numbers of his birth date: 18/8/1890 . And the date of the battle in which he died: 8/7/1918 .

Knowing his birthstone was a peridot, I looked through the assortment of stones I kept for the talismans. None of these were of the best quality. Because of what I do to them, occlusions don’t matter. I found a lovely rounded light lime-colored stone with a crack running through it, which made it ideal for my purposes.

Hawaiians believed peridots were the tears of the goddess Pele, quite apropos for a mourning jewel. Placing the stone in a metal bowl, I pounded it with a small iron hammer, shattering it into fragments and then into powder.

Next, I chased a chasm in the crystal, like a small stream, and filled it with the glittering green residue.

Placing that section aside, I picked up another slice of the crystal and began to carve the Egyptian hieroglyphs for immortality, youth, and victory.

I’d worked for two hours and was tired. Beneath my feet, Monsieur Orloff, Grigori, and Vanya were still meeting with their fellow Russians, trying to absorb and make sense of the fact that their beloved Nicholas had been shot dead. Did they find solace knowing he’d died honorably for his country? Did women like Madame Alouette find any solace knowing their sons had died for theirs?

I finished all the engravings. I knew I should stop, but something propelled me to keep going. I was eager to see how this talisman would turn out. I knew of this soldier. I had read his work. I felt a kinship to him, and I’d never experienced that before.

The next step was to add the personal memento. One by one, I placed four segments of the rock crystal egg into a vise to hold them steady. Removing Jean Luc’s dark brown lock of hair, I smoothed it out, separated the strands, then laid them down in the core. Then I added the rest of the segments one by one until I’d rebuilt the whole egg again.

Those last steps often took more than one attempt. I wanted the hair or other personal items to become part of the design-in this case, to lie symmetrically, forming a core, not just looking like hair encased in crystal. If the strands separated in the building process, I’d need to start all over. But that night everything turned out perfectly on the first try.

Taking a length of gold thread, I began to wrap the egg. Sometimes I left more crystal showing, other times less. With Jean Luc’s egg, I left more because the look of his hair against the rivers of peridot was so pleasing I wanted it to be visible.

Once all the threads encircled the orb like curving, twisting vines, tight and determined, sealing the treasure within, I picked up my soldering gun and went to work attaching the gold at several junctures, creating a tight meld. I loved how the hot metal fused the disparate threads, like lovers separated for too long finally coming together and not wanting to let go.

Finished, I cupped the orb and inspected it. As I’d expected, quiet prevailed. Although I could hear cries in the catacombs, without a living conduit, I’d never received specific communications from my charms. In order for me to hear the actual words the talisman carried, a mother, wife, lover, or daughter needed to put the locket around her neck. It was simply a piece of jewelry to me. An artifact until its owner’s love made it come alive and I heard the message it was meant to pass on.

But something quite different occurred that night. As I sat cradling Jean Luc’s crystal egg in my palm, I experienced a fluttering in my chest. A tremor of exertion. As if I were a cage and some creature with wings were making a herculean effort to break free.

My body began to shake, and one of my terrible headaches blossomed. I smelled apples, which didn’t surprise me, and something else that did… graphite and wood… I smelled the scent of paper.

Then, as if it were blowing in on a great wind from a distant place, I heard a grumbling noise. Dozens of distant voices? Birds screaming? I couldn’t be sure. Listening harder, I tried but failed to pull any one sound out of the mélange. Yet I sensed a force trying to impart information.

Impossible. I needed some headache powder and water. Or wine. The soldiers’ talismans had never before spoken to me alone. I had to be imagining these sounds in anticipation of the terrible words I would hear when I gave Madame Alouette the talisman and she put her own hands around it. Often the soldier’s last thoughts frightened or shocked me and left me disturbed for days. I told myself I must have been dreading that.

I mixed the headache powder in a tall glass of water and drank it. My equilibrium restored, I returned to my worktable and stared down at the crystal. All was quiet in the workshop and in my mind. But as soon as I picked up the talisman, the noises started again. I heard that same howling wind. Distant shouts. Or maybe a rush of water against rocks. None of it made any sense. All of it was deeply disturbing.

My fingers began to shake so badly I had to put the talisman down and clasp my hands together. Cold washed over me. And the wind that I’d only been hearing before seemed to actually be blowing past me.

What was happening? Had I been working too many nights? Hearing too many stories about dead soldiers? Or was I spending too many hours studying stones? My great-grandmother had warned me of this. Madness had descended upon some of the descendants of La Lune when they welcomed and embraced the talents she passed down.

The remedy I’d taken wasn’t helping. With my head pounding I wasn’t thinking clearly. The echoes and hums and crashes kept building. I’d never been in a hurricane, but I’d read about them. This must be what a storm of that magnitude sounded like. Wind that tore through trees and flowers. Upending objects, sending them flying. Destroying property, doing terrible damage.

Where…

One word flew out of the cacophony. I’d heard a word. But I was alone. Unless Monsieur had returned and was just outside?

“Hello?” I shouted out into the dark workshop.

No answer.

The storm continued to rage on inside my head. There must be an explanation for the word. Could it have been one of the Russians from Orloff’s meeting, lost on his way out? That had happened before. Was some anomaly making a word spoken in the outer hallway reverberate strangely?

“Is someone there?” I called out.

No answer. I needed to clean up and leave. Sleep would help. I would just put away my tools and then I could-

Where am I?

I heard it more clearly. A deep and dark raspy voice asking me for help.

“Hello?” I shouted. “Is anyone there?”

Where am I?

I heard pain accenting the distant words. Was he standing outside the store? Or was his voice traveling up from the underground chambers? Could he be hurt? Or was it a ploy? It might be one of the Russians, but just as likely a German spy pretending to be a lost Frenchman. Or it might be a thief, making sure the shop was empty before he stole from us.

From the table, I grabbed one of the long metal files with a point sharp enough to be a weapon. Creeping out of the workshop into the darkened hallway, ready to pounce or help depending on what I saw, I peered into the shadows, searching for a figure. But the hallway was empty. I checked the door to the staircase down to the basement below, but it was shut tight. The showroom was empty too.

Skulking down the hall and over to the entrance, I kept my back to the wall so no one hiding could attack me from behind.

The locked front door exhibited no evidence of an attempt to pry it open. Neither of the large windows on either side was broken.

Where am I?

Like the sound inside of a shell, the voice reverberated. I turned. My eyes, now totally adjusted to the dark, searched every corner. This had to be some strange echo coming up from a shaft in the mines I’d never been aware of before.