The Firestone

A short story
by Angela Rega

Lola whispered a story to the Firestone; it was her own story, not one from Mater Rosa’s book.

My sister lay on her belly, leaning on her calloused elbows. She cupped her hands around her mouth and whispered her story to the Firestone. The Wood heard the story too. How do I know? Because like wind, her whispers fuelled the Firestone and the Wood around her, fuelled the Wood’s mad desire to crackle and hiss, to throw flames that danced and leaped, only to die little deaths in high-pitched squeals and snaps.

The Firestone was more stoic than the Wood; she could not spit out flames in excitement, or crackle and hiss. Besides, she was worried, worried that Mater Rosa would find out and stop Lola from finishing her story.

So the Firestone smouldered and glowed orange and red and emanated warmth, hoping that Lola would understand how much she enjoyed her story.

How the Firestone wanted to dance like the flames and crackle like the Wood! How she wanted to show Lola she loved her story, but the weight of the world kept her down. The Firestone held the burden of our family secret. Keeping it warm like a hen guards unhatched eggs.

Lola never got to finish her story; Mater Rosa didn’t let her. She dragged Lola away from the Firestone by her two long braids, and the Firestone, weeping smoke for she had no tears, was left with a longing to know more.

No one dares look up. No one dares look at Mater Rosa. She sits in our circle, staring at the Firestone, her transparent eyes never straying from the stone that has been glowing red all afternoon.

The Firestone. She is the heart of the family. And even though she is but stone, she has the power of incandescence. In the bitter cold of the harsh plains, where there is little comfort, it is the Firestone’s warmth and light that keeps blood moving through your veins. But our Firestone does more than keep blood warm and give light in the ebony black of that night; now she is the keeper of souls, as it’s written in The Book of Stories.

Mater Rosa sits at the head of the circle; her scaly hands clutch the large key that rests in her lap. Her hands have been that way for so long, her gnarled fingers have grown like roots around the key, flesh and metal becoming one.

Head down, I raise my eyes high enough to see that big key. My clouded eye squints from the light that reflects off that key. It is but a streak of blurred orange. Hunger always makes my mind drift to the different ways of stealing that key off fat Mater Rosa. But it is tied so tightly to her apron, no one is getting it off her—not even our little Turri’s nimble fingers could untie that great knot.

Mater Rosa breaks the silence. “Clorinda. Lift the Firestone.”

My stomach jumps—she is talking to me. My intestines flutter, and bile rises in my mouth. Not one of us has ever touched, ever lifted, the Firestone. Not one of us had ever dared. The closest anyone has gotten to her was Lola, but she only told her stories, stories that made the Firestone want to dance instead of weep.

Our Firestone sits, heavy; burdened with what lies underneath her. I have never seen her moved except after the last birth in this family. I remember our late mother lifting her slightly, enough to add to our secret, seven years ago when our little sister Turri was born.

“Pick it up!” Mater Rosa’s high-pitched shout penetrates like knitting needles inside my ears. Her icy transparent eyes don’t meet mine; they stay firmly on the Firestone at the hearth.

The Firestone is incandescent. I fear the burn from that glowing light, but remember the pain Mater Rosa can dish out if you disobey her.

I pick up the Firestone. She is heavy. I need to use both hands.

My palms begin to sting, then burn, then scald, and my skin starts to bubble. The Firestone sears my palms like a piece of meat. My hands let go. I drop her, put my hands between my thighs and rock from the pain. I know better than to make a sound.

Lola rushes to bring me a pail of water. I immerse my hands while she shoves a dirty cloth in my mouth to bite on and swallow the pain. Even through the pain of the burn, I still feel the gnawing pain of hunger. My thoughts go to little Turri, so thin now, so frail. Lola strokes my hair, her hand shaking. This wasn’t about me, and she knows it.

Hers is still to come.

Although she burned me, I had unburdened the Firestone of our secret.

Uncovered for the first time in seven years. Stringy secrets, dirty blood brown. Dried cords of umbilical flesh. Knotted on each one, a slip of what was once white cotton, and on each slip, a hand-lettered name.

“Shall we call the names of those present then?” Mater Rosa stands up on her fat ankles, points to the lettered tags, and calls out our names: “Turri, Clorinda, Lupe, and Mela.” She smirks, enjoying the torment. “Only four when there are five of you. . . .”

Turri, me, Lupe, and Mela. All tagged and tied underneath the weight of that Firestone from the day we arrived in this world. But one is missing. Then Lola starts to cry.

Her umbilical cord and tag are gone.

We all know from the The Book of Stories Mater Rosa reads from that having your cords under the family firestone at the hearth is what makes you a family. It is what binds you all together. You know each night as you rest your body in front of the fire, with the stone glowing heat and light, that you belong. You are one: to sit, to listen to The Book of Stories, and to share the warmth in the bitterness and survive.

Mater Rosa shows no reaction, just keeps staring at the shrivelled stringy flesh exposed at the hearth. “One of us is no longer welcome at this hearth,” she says. “One of us becomes dead to us all tonight.”

Turri’s right leg begins to tremble. She puts her hand down to control it, but it still shakes; she is so frail it makes no sound.

Mater Rosa now looks at Lola. “Get out of this house and never come back again.”

She seals the words by spitting at Lola. Her eyes reflect the Wood’s flames, the tendrils on her head are damp with anger.

“Don’t look, Turri,” I whisper as I try to hold her quivering leg, “or she’ll turn you to stone.”

Mater Rosa may have had the fervent belief of those who wrote the The Book of Stories, but we know she also has the power of the Medusa.

Lola cries silently and walks toward the door. We listen to the Wood spit, expiring flames into the air with hisses and whispers, and the Firestone glows and smoulders, flashing from red to orange. Now they will never hear the rest of Lola’s story and they are upset.

Lola turns around, takes a few steps to enter the circle, one last time, to kiss Turri’s tears away.

“DON’T!” Rosa’s voice is razor sharp. Lola and Turri jump. “Don’t you dare!” Mater Rosa’s eyes flash.

We are all crying now. Turri starts with the noise. Choking sounds with tears and snorting to get the snot back up her nose. I worry if Mater Rosa will strike Turri, but she sits very still, content. We hear Lola close the door behind her—we are too afraid to look up and see her for the last time.

Mater Rosa stands and walks to the cupboard. She bends so she can fit the key into the cupboard lock without untying it from her apron. She pulls out a loaf of bread to feed us.

And as she cuts that stale loaf with a blunt knife and passes the pieces around the circle, she reads us a tale from The Book of Stories. A tale about what happens to girls who break the rules. Girls who break the rules, worship in the fields, revere the Circles—how they would be better off dead.

Lupe feeds me my bread so I can keep my hands in the water. I’ve stopped crying now and where I felt the burns, there are blisters forming. Mater Rosa turns the page and then puts her ear to the page, as if it is whispering her a story. She tells me and my sisters that the blisters are a warning from the Firestone, in case I might follow in Lola’s footsteps.

The Firestone smoulders blue: She wants to speak, I know it. I can almost hear her whispering my name. Like she disagrees.

In the darkest black of the night, while I lie at the hearth, my hands throbbing, listening to Turri whimper in her sleep, I watch her glow blue until I doze off.

“Clorinda,” I hear her whisper, “do you know the rest of Lola’s story?” I open my eyes and try to stay awake, but the whisper fades away. I think the Firestone is sorry she burned me so. I fall asleep to dreams of Lola’s tear-streaked face and Turri’s charcoal eyes sunken into red sockets.

A week has gone by since Lola was exiled. Sleep has felt so uncomfortable without Lola’s warmth.

Lola was sweetness and smelled like boiled apples and cinnamon. She took the blame for many things—like Turri peeing herself when she was scared and my bad vision from my cloudy eye. Lola made beans and broth go a long way and hid bread in her skirts for us to eat when we were hungry. I still think of stealing that key to open the larder but with my blisters still healing, my hands hurt too much.

Turri has gotten thinner and thinner since Lola left, and I’m worried about her. I need the key. We need to eat more than stale bread; I can think of little else.

I see Mater Rosa’s figure sleep; a blurred, salmon-grey mound of flesh snoring in the darkness. She smells like sour milk and rancid cheese; her double chin makes her look like she has no neck; and tonight, tonight I secretly wish she would choke on one of her snores and die so I can get that key off her apron, open the cupboard and feed Turri, our little sister, feed myself and Lupe and Mela too.

“Clorinda,” Mela whispers to me in between Mater’s snores. Her sallow round face and black eyes make her appear more spectre than human. “Are you awake?”

“Yes.”

“I’m hungry.”

“Her snoring doesn’t help.”

“I miss Lola.”

“Me too,” I answer, sitting up. “Me too.”

“Clorinda, I’m worried.” Her eyes seem to widen and the shadows darken under her cheekbones. “I’m worried about Turri.”

I watch Turri’s little bird chest breathe in and out. She wheezes in her sleep. It scares me to see her so frail.

“What can we do?” I say. “She has us trapped. Without food we perish. Without heat from the Firestone we die. Without the Firestone, there are no stories, no family, no life. Our umbilical cords are under that Firestone—she holds our souls in her power. You’ve listened to the The Book of Stories—without the cords under a family firestone we are nothing, we are soulless, we perish.”

“Turri is so thin.” Mela strokes Turri’s forehead, and she stirs in her sleep. “I’m so hungry, I don’t care about our souls, Clorinda. I’m worried about our bellies . . . especially Turri’s.”

I lower my voice to a whisper so thin it almost sounds like the air itself. “I heard Lola telling the Firestone a story—her own story.”

“Her own story? What do you mean? Not from the The Book of Stories?”

I shake my head. “Her own story. Of the beauty of the Land before it was charred with lies from The Book of Stories. Of the beauty of the Circles. Of the memory of our real mother and that Rosa was, and still is, one of us. Our sister.”

Mela looks at me, her eyes like two dark coals. “That is why Lola was exiled, sent to die, isn’t it?”

The light changes in the room: it is the Firestone; she glows, incandescent. I’m sure I heard her hum.

“Wake up Turri and Lupe,” I say. I stand up and before I know it I feel stronger than ever before. I am at the Firestone. She feels sorry she burned me so; I know it. She is humming. I pick her up. She does not burn me anymore.

Turri watches, rubbing her eyes, her mouth wide open. She does not tremble.

“Take the cords, Mela.” My instruction is firm. Mela looks into my one good eye, my brown one, and sees my resolve. I resist the urge to rub my itching cloudy eye for fear I will break the moment and allow Mela to hesitate. “Let’s do it for Lola and for Turri.”

Mela closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. She grabs the cords in a tight fist and moves to shove them into her pocket, but they start to perish in the palm of her hands. “So strong in meaning, yet so weak in substance.” And with those whispered words, uttered like an incantation, Mela throws our umbilical cords into the flames. The Wood spits. Delighted, satiated, she gobbles them up; they die little deaths, exploding with hisses and jumping flames.

And unlike the stories we have been told at the hearth, around the Firestone, we do not burn; we do not writhe in agony and die amongst the flames. We are still alive, we are not burning, and with that realisation, we run.

We run like hounds and I smell a new odour exude from our skins. I recognise the scent of excitement. It smells like peanuts and vanilla. Even Turri smiles as the night wind whips long knotted bangs off her forehead. Lupe carries little Turri while we run; she is slung over Lupe’s right shoulder and bounces to the rhythm of our feet pounding the earth. Her cheeks have colour in them.

As we run, I think of Mater Rosa, still sleeping like the dead, clutching that larder key, dreaming of a time when she was not Mater, but a time when she was our sister.

We run until we reach the Circle beyond the plains. The grass lies flat, as if it, too, was singed by a large Firestone. The burnt grass is scratchy underneath the soles of our feet.

Turri’s eyes widen. None of us have ever seen a Circle—only Lola, and then she came home and started telling her own stories and was exiled. The air grows still as we stand and stare in awe at the majestic presence of ripe apple and walnut trees rising from the centre of the circle.

And then I scream. I howl like the hound I was when I ran. My howl is like cool water on my pain. The Firestone hums loudly now; I raise her up and smash her against the trunk of the thickest walnut tree. She crumbles, smokes, and softens to a charcoal powder. Freedom, I hear her whisper in my ear as she disintegrates.

There is more smoke and one last flame. A salamander leaps into the air and flashes orange like a market firework display. The Firestone exhales one last dragon breath, then she is just ash, and only her gentle happy hum remains.

And then Turri, standing in the centre of that Circle lifts her hands to the sky and starts to giggle. Giggles like air bubbles almost choke that fragile windpipe.

It is the first time.

And the stories told at the Firestone that kept us together and made us one, the stories that told us what would happen if we broke the rules, became unbelieving girls—better off dead—these stories reduce to ash and are scattered to the four Winds.

And the Firestone, she is happy now because she did get to hear the end of Lola’s story about what happens to girls who are non-believers in the The Book of Stories.

They survive.

Copyright © 2008 by Angela Rega