Storm and Stone

 
Waiting for the Storm
I wake early today, before first sun, and walk onto the deck.
The ocean calms me, and I forget myself as I watch the waves far below.

Another clear day.

Unusual weather for this time of year.
The season of violent lightning storms.

I find myself strangely disappointed with the clear weather.
A storm would fit better with the way I feel inside.

Shazira and I sleep in the same room, but I still avoid her half the day.
When I forget myself, I enjoy being with her.

But usually I’m a ghost, caught between worlds.
Haunted by the dead and the living.

My old life and Yagrin’s life both call to me.
I don’t fit in either one.
And I haven’t found a new life to take their place.

Shazira is kind and caring with me, trying to break me out of my confusion.
I sense her feelings.
Real and strong.

She wants me to be happy, and stay with her.

She is far more patient than I could be.
“Don’t try to force yourself to change, Yagrin,” she says.
“Just accept whatever happens, and discover who you are, and who you can become.”

“What if you don’t like who I am?” I respond, roughly.
“Or who I become?”

“You think too much,” she says, touching my hand.
“You’re exactly where you need to be.”
“Tomorrow will come, soon enough.”

“What about Tzina?” I ask.
“She’s miserable around me.”
“My presence reminds her that she’s lost her father to a ghost.”

“You’re still her father, Yagrin.”
“I’ve told her that you’re not like other travelers.”
“She trusts me, but she’s still confused.”

“Tzina knows that I’m not him, Shazira.”
“It’s that simple.”

“You’re wrong, Yagrin.”
“She’s drawn to you.”
“And not only because the body is the same.”

“She senses your spirt, and finds the one she loves.”
“And thinks that she’s betraying her father with that love.”

“And I can feel the love fighting within you to reach the surface.”
“You’re ready to love both of us, but you think that you don’t deserve it.”

Unable to face her, I walk away.

 
Chosen
I leave my sandals behind, leap over the railing, and fall into the wind.
Then I touch the web, and let it carry me.

It’s so easy to trust the embrace of the energy web.
Everything else seems uncertain.

I glide down to the beach, and look for the edge of the water.
The ocean is at low tide, and far away from the beach.

I walk out on the moist sand.
The sand moves a few feet ahead of me.
Something sparkles, and I pick it up.

It’s a dark blue stone.
Like the stones that Tzina used for the sculptures.

“You’ve found one,” says Tzina, excited.
Then she notices that it’s me, and turns to leave.

“Wait, Tzina,” I call.
“Tell me about the stone.”

“It’s just a stone,” she says, trying to end the conversation.

“No,” I answer.
“I saw your sculptures that change their shape.”
“They’re wonderful.”

There’s a hint of a smile.

I describe the one that’s my favorite.
It brightens and expands and thins.
When it’s about to disappear, it twists in on itself, and reshapes itself into a sparkling blue flower of stone.

She listens carefully as I describe the movements.
“That one’s also my favorite,” she says.
“I won a competition with it, about a year ago.”

“Oodah was so proud of me.”
“You were too busy to come.”
“Besides, you were never interested in my art.”

“Sorry,” she adds.
“Not you, it was my father.”

A silence spins between us.
And we look at each other.
I have an overwhelming desire to hold her, but I push it away.

“Are you my father?” she asks.

“Your mother thinks so,” I answer.

“How you can be someone else, and also be my father?”

“It sounds crazy,” I agree.

“Why did you come?” she asks, as the tears flow.

“I don’t know.”
“I reached out to touch another world, and found myself here.”

“And you can’t go back?”

“No.”

“Do you miss your family?”

“Sometimes I can’t bear it,” I admit.

“How many children do you have?

“I had seven, four boys and three girls.”

“Seven?!”
“I’m an only child.”
“I had a brother once, but he died.”

She stands straighter, and wipes away the tears.
“Are you my father?” she asks again.

“I don’t know, Tzina.”
“But sometimes I feel like you’re my daughter.”

“I’m tired of avoiding you,” she says, at last.
“Come help me look for the stones.”
“If you like my sculptures, you can’t be all bad.”

We walk farther from the shore.
“The ancients called them mindstones,” she says.
“And healers once used them to heal troubled minds.”

“But the art has been lost.”

“The stones are hard to find,” she tells me.
“They grow in the ocean, not far from the shore.”

“At low tide, sometimes the sand moves aside and reveals the stones.”

“The waves push the sand away?”

“No,” she answers.
“The stones reveal themselves when they are ready to be found.”
“And they choose who will find them.”

“Are they intelligent?”

She looks surprised.
“I think so, but no one knows for sure,” she answers.
“And most people think I’m a fool for saying it.”

“Anything is possible,” I tell her.

She looks thoughtful for a moment.
“Yes,” she agrees.

“How do you make the sculpture change?”

“I show the stone a series of transformations.”
“If the movements resonate with the stone, it remembers them, and repeats them.”

“What about the images of the alien landscapes?”
“How do you put those in the stones?”

She looks troubled.

“What images?” she asks.

“When I focus on one of your sculptures,” I tell her, “I find myself standing on an alien world.”

“No one but me has ever seen the images,” she says.
“I thought that I was going crazy.”

I describe one of the landscapes that I saw.

“Yes,” she says.
“That’s it.”

“Where do the images come from, Tzina?”

“My mind is full of these landscapes,” she says.
“They bothered me until I started making the sculptures.”

“I find a stone which suits the image.”
“And the stone absorbs the images.”
“After that, I only see the landscape when I focus on the stone.”

She takes my hand.
“But you’re the first one to see and feel these places other than me.”

 
Voice
“Take the stone that I’ve found,” I tell her.
“And use it to capture one of your landscapes.”

She holds it in her hand.
“It’s not for me,” she says.
“When I find a stone, I can feel what image belongs to it.”
“But with this stone I feel nothing.”

I take the stone back from her.
I see all my guilt as a small storm cloud that hovers over the sand.
Floating across the cloud I see my anguish for driving the old Yagrin from his life.
And my sorrow for leaving my family behind on Earth.

The stone glows, and the image is sucked into the stone.
I put the stone down on the sand.
The sand moves aside, forming a deep hole, and the stone is swallowed up.

“What did you do?” she asks, agitated.
“It’s bad luck to return a stone to the sea!”

“The stone absorbed my worst feelings, Tzina.”
“I don’t want anyone to experience that.”

“It’s not an ordinary stone that you can just throw away!”
“There are legends about the mindstones.”

“In the old times, when a stone was used up, it was transformed into air.”
“But the stone was never put back in the sea.”

“Why not?”

“Putting back the stone wakes an ancient creature called a Neyuk.”

“Is it true?” I ask her.
“Or just a legend?”

“I don’t know,” she says.
“But I’m scared.”
“We have to go.”

We start walking toward shore.

“How often do you hunt for the stones, Tzina.”

“When an image starts to bother me, I know that it’s time to find another stone.”

“I started to see a new landscape about a week ago.”
“And last night I had trouble sleeping.”

She starts to cry.
“I’ve never gone looking for a stone without finding one.”
“I don’t know what I’ll do without it.”

“Let me help you look for a stone, Tzina, and then we’ll go.”

She’s troubled but she agrees.
And we walk along the wet sand, parallel to the water.

“How did the stone help you?” she asks.

“I feel different,” I tell her.

I still have all my memories of Earth.
And I know that Yagrin once lived in this world without me.

But the guilt is gone.

“I was caught in a circle of guilt and depression, Tzina.”
“The stone didn’t take my memories or the love I had for my family, but it absorbed the guilt, and gave me peace.”

“Now I’m free to explore why I’m here.”
“What I need to feel, and what I need to do.”

We search for another 30 minutes, without finding a stone.
“I don’t think that a stone will show itself along this path,” she says.
“We have to go closer to the waves.”

We move a few feet closer.
And the ground begins to shake.

“We have to go now!” she says.
But then the sand by her feet moves aside, and uncovers the surface of another mindstone.
She tries to dig it up and lift it.

“It’s too big for me.”
“Can you help?”

I glide the stone out of the sand and into the air.
It’s seven feet tall, and leaves a huge hole behind in the sand.

“They shouldn’t be this big,” she says.
“Leave it.”

I ignore her request.
She needs the stone to calm her mind.
And as we walk toward the beach, I glide the stone through the air behind us.

“It makes me nervous,” she says.
“Let it go.”

The mindstone starts to vibrate and emit a strange, low tone.
And it drops to the sand.

The tone gets much louder, and a wall of sand rises around us forming a circle ten feet across.
I try to move the sand, or pick up the stone, but I can’t connect with the web.

“I can’t transform, ina!” she says.
“Fly us out of here.”

“I can’t touch the web’s power,” I tell her.

The stone changes shape into something that looks alive, and it moves toward us.

“Help me,” cries Tzina, holding onto me.

I push her behind me and stand facing the creature.
She buries her face in my back, puts her arms around me from behind, and holds me tightly.

Only one thought fills my mind:
“How do I protect my daughter without the energy web?”

I feel something.
A vibration that fills the whole world.

A sound of overwhelming power and presence.
All around us.

At first, I think it’s coming from the Neyuk.
Or part of the energy web.

But no.
It’s something else.

The energy web sustains the world.
And keeps it in balance.

But this is something deeper than the web itself.
A creative power that enables energy and matter to exist.

An image fills my mind.
I see a great circular wave of energy, fueled with that power, spreading outward like an explosion.
Shaking the earth, and shattering the sand and the stone.

My eyes return to the sand and the ocean.
The Neyuk is almost here.

I feel the vibration within me, and around me, for hundreds of feet in all directions.
I focus on that feeling, and let it grow stronger and stronger.

Then I push my image of the circular wave through the vibration.
And let it pass from my mind onto the sand.

A great sound rises out of my mouth, and forms a thin pillar of light that brightens the sand and the sky.
The ground shakes, and the pillar explodes, pushing a huge wave of energy in all directions.

The energy wave leaves Tzina and me untouched.
But the wall of sand is gone.

The stone shatters, and all but one piece are absorbed into the sand.
From the one remaining piece, a spinning blue wind rises into the sky and disappears.

“Take me home, ina,” cries Tzina.

I put the stone in her pouch.
Then I hold her tightly and take us home.

Tzina won’t let go of me when we get back to the Watchtower.
And she can’t stop crying.

I take her to Shazira.

“What did you do?” accuses Shazira, her heart full of shock and anger.

“Ina saved me, oodah,” says Tzina.
“He saved me.”

Shazira tries to take her from me, but she won’t let go.
I carry Tzina into the DreamRoom and Shazira follows.

I put her down in the middle of the bed, and Shazira and I lie next to her on each side.

I sing to Tzina.
The words are an ancient poem, but the tune is new, born in the moment.

“Do you know what you’re singing, Yagrin?” asks Shazira.

“Not really.”
“But I know that it’s an ancient poem about children that Yagrin once saw.”

“It’s a blessing,” says Shazira, “that the fathers would recite over their young children when the fathers were called away to war.”

I sing again.
And we stay like that until Tzina calms, and falls asleep.