The Silent Strength of Stones (30 page)
Read The Silent Strength of Stones Online
Authors: Nina Kiriki Hoffman,Matt Stawicki
I could still see through most false or acquired images, though. I asked Evan why he had looked like a wolf to me, when Mom had still looked like Mom even when she thought she was disguised. “Think about it,” he had said.
The only reason I came up with was that somewhere deep inside, he really had the soul of a wolf. I remembered the flicker of him I had seen when Rory did the spell that made everyone look different and me look like a volcano. Wolf.
Willow stood a little distance from the bank. She was wearing her orange leotard/swimsuit this time. “I’m a fire sign, but I can do this water prayer anyway,” she said. “I’ll teach you, if you like.”
Then the sun edged up above the ridge and cast light across the lake. Willow lifted handfuls of water and held them toward the sun, singing. Her voice was beautiful—how could I not have noticed last time?—and I could almost understand what she was saying. It was about how water was in everything, and light was in everything, and earth, and sky, and she thanked everything that all things mingled to make a world where so many wonderful things happened. The water slid down her arms in slow motion, catching light against her skin, and then she was the song, everything together, sun, water, air, earth, sound, motion, and stillness; and she turned transparent; she became the prayer.
My breath caught inside me. I pressed my hands to the ground. I was conscious of earth under my feet, under my body, sun touching my face, water around my legs, air waiting to enter me. I let air in and repeated the only phrase I could remember from Willow’s song, the words foreign and not quite right as they crossed my tongue, but close enough, because everything flickered, and for an instant I felt all of everything flowing into and out of me and through me, as though my heart pumped earth and my lungs breathed fire, my bones carried water and my skin kissed air.
Then I settled back out of it, feeling heavy and cold as clay. The sun was pulling free of the treetops, and so bright I couldn’t stare at it anymore. Willow dropped back into sight, too, and turned to smile at me. “Not so hard,” she said.
I sat for a while just breathing deep, until I felt alive again.
“You okay, Nick?” She waded over and sat beside me, splashing water up with her feet.
“I’m okay. Evan said it was a woman’s mystery.”
“That’s because he’s too lazy to do proper devotions.”
I wiggled my toes in the muck. “If you can do that, why do you need to do anything else? It was fantastic.”
“You can’t stay there all the time,” she said, splashing harder. She kicked water at me and giggled. “Unless you’re some kind of religious fanatic or something, and just want to dissolve. I’d rather kiss you.”
We ended up in the water—under it some of the time. A moment came when we were just floating, our hands clasped. I stared up at the sky, indelible burning blue in the center, paler toward the edges; and at the hills rising from the lake, under cloaks of pointed pines that caught sun in the pale new green tips that ended their branches. Above us an eagle soared like a spinning thought, edging up and away, and my heart rose as though trying to fly, and then broke. This was as perfect a place and a moment as I could remember. If I could be here, why did I ever need to be anywhere else?
How could I ever leave this place?
Then I thought about what Willow had said about being inside of prayer. The moment moved past it. Other things happened. Even though I knew how to dissolve, I didn’t want to. There was still a world worth watching all around us.
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