“What are you saying,” I managed, standing and towering above the old man. “What do you insinuate with your words?” My fists were clenched; I could feel the nails of my fingers pressing deep into my palms.
He said nothing, merely watched me with his clouded eyes. Somewhere outside, a bird squawked; a child ran laughing along the street.
“I repeat: what are you saying?”
He waved his hand at the air as if my anger were nothing but a mosquito to be batted away. “Do not fight it, friend. Do not fight the stone.”
“Don't fight it?” I spat. “You ask me not to fight it?” At this, I whirled around and yanked the satchel from the floor and flung it onto the chair. “Perhaps you would like to fight it? Perhaps you would like to know its woe?” I made to unzip the bag, but he was upon me with a speed and agility that betrayed all his prior movements. His hands wrapped around mine, the leather of his skin covering my knuckles.
“No!” he hissed, his breath at my ear. “You must not. Do not tempt another.”
I found myself frozen. My fingers—pinched tight on the zip and ready to pull—remained unmoving. I looked at them, suddenly unable to recognise my own flesh. Somehow, the more I looked the less my hands were mine and instead began to merge with those of the man, all until they were the same. I blinked, my mind fogged by the heat, my vision starting to blur. Eventually, he let go, ours hands separating once more. He retreated back to his chair. My vision returned and I relaxed my grip, releasing the bag.
“Will you not take it?” I said, turning to face him. “Will you not remove me of this burden?”
He shook his head and smiled, the madness now gone from his eyes. He seemed lucid, different somehow, and as he spoke I felt the tidal pull of sleep threaten to take me in its arms.
“I will not,” he said. “I cannot. The burden is yours. Do you fail to see this truth? It has always been yours, this thing you carry, whether stone or rock or something more; it is only you that carry such. Others have felt its pull, others have succumbed to its need, but you have welded it to your heart and that action is yours alone. To give it to another would forfeit what you must fight and overcome. Wherever the stone rests, wherever it falls, that is only for you.”
My tongue, swollen by dehydration, felt thick and foreign, like a grub had wormed its way deep into my mouth. I tried to speak, yet no sound came from my lips. I fell back onto the chair, the one I had occupied for so many hours. My eyes closed, and from somewhere far away I thought I heard my own voice continue its solitary verse.
*
I awoke alone, my head feeling like it had been crushed in a vice. The man was nowhere to be seen. The tea had been cleared away and the books were gone from the table. A streetlamp cast its dirty light through the window to illuminate a small portion of the floor near my feet, but the room was otherwise in shadow. The only movement was that of a moth, attacking the glass pane with repeated idiocy.
“Are you here?” I asked, my voice hoarse. I stood, trying to make out the shapes that lined the walls, but they were too obscured in darkness to discern any detail.
“Old man?” I tried again, waiting for any response. Nothing. There was no one here. In the distance, I could see the doorway and the faint light of the street beyond. Without conscious effort, I picked up the satchel, then made for the exit, stumbling and knocking into the walls as I moved. The breeze that blew in from outside seemed to clear my mind as I approached, and I paused, turning to look back into the gloom. The room was a mess, littered with ancient and formless things—it looked nothing like it had earlier in the day. Turning around, I moved out into the night air.
For the rest of that evening I meandered through the narrow streets, the day's heat fading beneath the canopy of night. Everything was distant. The tan walls and brick floors, the deserted stalls and shuttered doors, all the laneways that led to places I would never even see. It all felt like a film set, something crafted only from veneer. Somewhere far behind, the old man’s shop faded until it was not even there. To those who saw me—those few others who walked under the sea of stars—I was merely a tourist who had lost his way.
By morning, men and women appeared once more, eager and keen to sell me their wares. I blanked them, staggering away and shouldering my satchel. Within it, there was a rock, a simple stone that, through a power I could not see and via actions entirely my own, had ruined everything. It had taken all I had known and held and loved, and my folly—to be preoccupied by that which does not even live—was to blind myself until it was too late.
*
At the beach, I sat down on the sand where Mara’s feet had once caressed the trillion scattered grains. Amongst the shells and weeds, wet and glistening in the sun, other rocks were strewn, their forms little different from the one I held in my hands. I looked at each in turn and then at the inert stone resting on my palm, seeing it for what it was: nothing. It was nothing. Just an object I once held too close to my heart. I clenched my fist around its strange geometry, uncaring of its sharp edge, then tossed it as far as I could. It sent up a brief splash, then was gone, taken by the water where it would remain forever so.
For the rest of that day I stayed there by the waves, a witness to the eternal and uncaring crash of the sea. The water crept and edged toward my body as the sun dipped out of the sky, and by moonlight I salted the sand with my endless tears.
Well, there it is. This was the concluding part to And it was lost.
(Previous parts here: Part 1 > Part 2 > Part 3 > Part 4 > Part 5 > Part 6)
I do not like writing endings. I struggle with them. I struggle with them in ways polar opposite to beginnings. This ending is a considerable flip to the one originally written when this story existed in another form. Previously… well, I won’t say, just that here I wanted to play more with what this is about: obsession and guilt and regret, themes that are, for whatever reason, somewhat recurrent.
As ever, your presence here is the ember that stokes the furnace.
“For the rest of that day I stayed there by the waves, a witness to the eternal and uncaring crash of the sea. The water crept and edged toward my body as the sun dipped out of the sky, and by moonlight I salted the sand with my endless tears.”
I know you don’t like endings, Nathan, but that’s a great last paragraph. As Nick said it’s so wonderfully evocative that I can clearly picture him sitting weeping on that sand as the waves roll in
Brilliantly done 👍🏼
Your last paragraph, an excellent grand finale! My clothes sticking uncomfortably, wet from the sand , but I’m unable to leave. Though most of us want the story to continue, the author has the final say. Or does he?
If this were a movie (and it should be) the last scene pans out across the endless waters then plunges down to the dark unknowns, a glint of reflection far below. Not even you , could find the power to destroy it.
I still say, a ‘flavor’ of Patrick Rothfuss in your writing. Just to prove my point, here is one example of PR’s ability to create a scene with words alone. Like someone else I know…
“The third silence was not an easy thing to notice. If you listened for an hour, you might begin to feel it in the wooden floor underfoot and in the rough, splintering barrels behind the bar. It was in the weight of the black stone hearth that held the heat of a long-dead fire. It was in the slow back and forth of a white linen cloth rubbing along the grain of the bar. and it was in the hands of the man who stood there, polishing a stretch of mahogany that already gleamed in the lamplight.”
Patrick Rothfuss ~The Name of the Wind.
(Makes you want to read it again).