Stone (1211 words)
Isobel closed her drowsy eyes and allowed the feel of the place to wash over her. The wind whistled against the still of the night, prickling her skin with every salt tinged breath, while the waves gently whispered as they caressed the shingle shore of the cove far below. In the distance, a boat called on the midnight tide, far out at the edge of the horizon. She gazed up at the moon, fat and round, hanging high in the midnight sky, obscured here and there by a few faint wisps of cloud that were slowly dragged along in the wake of the evening breeze. Inside, she could hear Mark clearing away the remains of their dinner and shortly he came out to join her on the porch. They stood, leaning upon the smooth wooden rail, sharing a companionable silence as they both took in the scene arrayed in front of them.
“I can see why you love this place” she said, breaking the silence.
“It is wonderfully peaceful out here” he replied. “I forget that when I’m at home.”
“Well, there’s always something, isn’t there? Work, friends, nights out.”
“True. Here, everything just seems to move at a slower pace.” he said, his voice sounding wistful as a smile played at his lips. “I’ve often wondered what it’d be like if we moved up here. Just you and me, and our little cottage by the sea.”
“Oh yes?” she laughed. “And do what with ourselves, exactly? Would you go out on the fishing boats? Braving the cold, North Sea, while I sit at home and raise your bairns?”
He smiled at that. “No, the sea isn’t for me. I would write, I expect. You would paint, of course, and the land would inspire us. By day we would walk the cliffs and thickets and fens, and by night we’d curl up in front of the fire and talk until sleep took us.”
“You always were a romantic.” she said, leaning over to plant a kiss on his cheek.
At length, the wind grew chillier, it’s whistles turning in to wails. They were about to retreat inside to the warmth of their fire, when Isobel spotted something down on the beach below. Making slow, wavering progress across the uneven shingle was a lone light in the darkness, it’s eerie orange glow bobbing along as if afloat.
“There’s something down there. Do you think it could be smugglers?” she asked.
“Maybe a hundred years ago” Mark replied, following Isobel’s pointing finger to the little circle of light below. “But not any more. It’s probably just old Jake.”
“Who’s he?”
“Hmmm? Oh, a lobster fisherman. He’s been living here as long as most can remember.”
“Fishing, at this hour?”
“No, the lobster pots would have gone out at dusk. He always walks the low tide shore under the full moon. It’s a rather sad story, to be honest.”
“Tell me?” she asked, failing to mask the obvious intrigue in her voice.
“Well, Jakes mother, and her father, and his father, and so on, were well regarded in these parts as ‘cunning folk’. They read fortunes, countered hexes and spells, provided charms and potions, that sort of thing. Jake learned some of it from his mother, so people say, but there was little call for her skills during those days, and none by the time Jake was grown. So he followed in his father’s footsteps and became a fisherman.”
The light was still now, and Isobel could make out the shape of the old man, hunched over a rock pool.
“Anyway, Jake got married not long after leaving school and taking up his father’s trade. By all accounts she was a wonderful girl, a natural painter as it happens. She loved to explore the countryside, while Jake worked the waves, and would always be there, ready to take care of him when he got home. But one evening, Jake returned from setting the lobster pots and his wife was nowhere to be found.”
“He went to the local constable and they soon roused a rescue party, who set out with torch and lantern, searching the village, the bay and the woods before, eventually, finding her delirious, face down in the field of long grass behind the church. Rushing her back to the village, under lamplight they could see what afflicted her. On her knee, just below the hem of the warm, summer dress she wore, a bite mark sat, angry and inflamed.”
“Jake’s face went pale as he stared down at his wife, her eyes rolling, unseeing, back into her head. The constable talked to him, telling him that they’d have to send out a call to the city hospital for anti-venom, but according to those there, Jake just stared, before turning and running out the door. A full moon sat high in the sky, and as Jake raced towards this very cove, he remembered words he had read in his mother’s books, about a special sort of stone, found only on moonlit nights.”
“Called sometimes a ‘Druid’s glass’, for it’s supposed magnifying qualities of mystical power, it is more commonly known as an ‘adder stone’ and was said to be able to cure all manner of venoms and poisons. It was for this stone which Jake now raced, but it was a stone which proved very difficult to find. Smooth and glassy, the stone must have a hole bored through the middle by the sea’s current, and when dropped into a pool of water, must float.”
“He didn’t ever find the stone, did he?” Isobel said.
“No, he did not. Jake returned home, soaked to the bone, fingers bloody and ragged from tearing through the shingle in search of this one, most lucky of stones, only to find his wife had already passed.”
“That’s awful.” Isobel replied sadly. “So why’s he still looking?”
“Well, some people say it’s a sign that he can’t cope, some that he lost part of his self when he lost her, and is stuck amid the clutches of that last night when he still held out some hope. I don’t agree.”
“Why not?”
“Because Jake copes just fine, and has done for more years now than he had ever spent with his wife. People assume he’s crazy, that he lost his marbles all those year ago, when perhaps this is his way of mourning her? And besides, don’t we all dwell on what might of been, from time to time?”
Down on the beach, Jake had set his lantern down, the light reflecting from the shallow rock pool’s water. With shaking hands, he raised the stone before his gaze, peering through the hole in the middle at the glowing form of the moon above. Then carefully, he bent down and rolled the small pebble from his palm and into the rock pool. It broke the surface with a faint plop, and Jake began to let out a sigh, punctuated by a whoop of delight as the stone resurfaced, pale blue and floating in the moonlit water. He snatched it up in his hand before bringing it reverently to his lips. With a kiss for good luck and a prayer cast, he sent the stone back into the sea.