The Crone's Stone

by S E Holmes

minor wrestle, he took possession of the remote and dialled it down. Damn! Now I really had to face the music. Smithy yawned loudly and stretched, cueing that I could not stall forever.

  “That was the best night’s rest I’ve had in ages! Well, after all the screaming and humming.” He smiled expectantly, waiting for me to explain said screaming and humming.

  “Six hours of sleep is hardly refreshing. Ten, maybe.” I took a large bite of Danish, although it proved a challenge to choose between the yummy custard and the boy. “Can’t talk, eating,” I mumbled through food, working to put off breaking the spell until necessary. As an added bonus I was free to discreetly gawk while he talked. I should have chosen a skimpier gown for him.

  “Well, I’ll tell you the rest of my story then, shall I?” Smithy looked guilt-ridden; it was plain even as he hid behind his coffee cup.

  “There’s more?” I gulped, hoping for a denial.

  The same misty expression I’d seen on several occasions lately scudded his features. “Promise you won’t get cranky?”

  “You used to say that every time you did something I wouldn’t like.”

  He visibly steeled himself. “My hours of waking have been getting longer and longer. I can’t sleep now for more than four hours at a stretch, sometimes fewer. But I don’t feel tired. In fact, I can’t burn off all the energy I have. And believe me, Bear, I give it a good crack! Today is the first time in months I haven’t been jumping out of my skin.” It was almost the only way he could wear less.

  “None of the parkour regulars can keep up with me anymore and I’ve gone through about five personal trainers. They all quit once they discovered they’re not fit or strong enough to coach me. One of them got real snippy when he couldn’t up my weights any higher, suggested I sign up for the Olympics.”

  He wasn’t boasting. He seemed as bewildered by this revelation as I was. “I work-out for hours and it doesn’t make a difference. I don’t get fatigued. I’ve never told anyone this, but I don’t need to use the studio winch on blocks of marble anymore. If I can get my arms around them, I can pick them up! And, if I hurt myself, I heal so fast it’s unnatural. Just like you do.”

  “Wow! I’m not angry. I’m impressed.”

  I truly was. And scared. Smithy scrutinised me, anticipating a comment. When I failed to speak, he beckoned me closer. He slid the robe from my shoulder and prised the padding from the injury, his fingers caressing my skin in delicious spirals. His face was close enough to mine that I could taste the powdered sugar on his breath.

  “Perfectly healed! Not a scratch.”

  He readjusted the robe and tossed the bandage into my bin by my dresser. The disappointment when he moved away was surprisingly intense. It was disconcerting how yearning for his touch dominated anything else, especially considering the creepiness invading my days evidently infected his too. He misinterpreted my frown.

  “That’s just the start of it. Be patient with me, Winnie. I’m better at sketching stuff than describing it with words. Telling you this is the hardest thing I’ve ever done.” He rifled his hair. “It probably started around the time you left, so slowly in the beginning I barely noticed. I know it sounds crazy, but I think it’s all connected. My tattoos began to fade and no amount of touch-up brought them back. The ink just failed to stick.” He shrugged. “And dye wouldn’t take to my hair anymore.”

  How could there be more? Hadn’t there been enough?

  “The first time I obliterated my parkour buddies on a run was the morning after I had the earliest vision of you. A year ago at school in Europe.” His eyes explored my face. Unable to digest his words, I remained stubbornly blank and he hurried on. “One night as I was falling asleep, this amazingly clear image of you leaving the grounds of an Austrian castle came to mind. I’ve never seen anyone more forlorn. I honestly thought about hopping on a plane and coming to take you home.”

  The pain of those memories stirred awake. After the first year of abject despair at boarding school, I accepted once and for all I was there until the end of my education. It took some time for my coping skills to kick in. In the here and now, I’d lost my appetite, even for cake, and placed the half-eaten Danish on the saucer in my lap.

  “Pathetic, huh?”

  “No!” He grabbed my hand, holding fast. “You had a special place when it got too much, the hassling and the bitchiness. The loneliness. That git Jenkins treating you as though you were mentally retrograde. What a muppet! If only he had a clue how you spent your free hours.”

  I clung to that aspect of his story because it was the only part I understood. I’d found my sanctuary through desperation. When the weather herded students indoors like so many cattle in a pen, outside of the Academy became my only escape. The sympathy etched on Smithy’s lovely face made me feel even more pitiful, no matter how much he denied it.

  “I’ve never seen anyone wear so many clothes!”

  “I detest the cold.”

  “You’d been hauled over the coals by your bungling principal for something.” He stared off, as though looking into my past. “You trundled from the school and headed up the mountain. I guessed it was the change of seasons, winter forming patches of snow on the ground and ice crystals hanging from the trees in the forest. It was rough going and I worried that you’d slip. But you never did.

  “It was the weirdest thing, Bear. It was so real! I could hear you breathing and smell the pine resin, hear the calls of migrating birds overhead, feel the frigid air on my skin. Or maybe I was feeling it on yours, who knows? I spent a lot of time thinking my drink was spiked at dinner. I can tell you what you were wearing, how your hair was, even name your perfume. It was like I was there with you! Booze dulled the reception, if that’s what you’d call it, so I stopped drinking in the months after.”

  I blinked in surprise – funny how this last titbit snared my focus, perhaps because everything else was too enormous and slippery to grasp. “You gave up drinking because of me?”

  “I gave up drinking for you.” He smiled tenderly and removed my neglected breakfast plate to my nightstand, tucking the sheets about me and getting comfortable on his side, his head propped on an elbow facing me.

  “You came to a rocky outcrop that sat high over the valley. The view was spectacular. It looked like a Christmas card, the little village below was all snow-covered roofs and flickering lights. It’s where you did most of your thinking, perched on that rock. Over time you brought a thermos and music with you, sometimes food or a book, and it seemed to me that finding your place signalled the turning point in your depression. What happened? Why did you change?”

  It felt odd to be the object of such interest. No one usually asked me questions about myself. I answered uncertainly, hoping I didn’t sound as self-absorbed as all those kids at the Academy who rattled on blindly, as if their yawn-worthy lives deserved the Nobel Prize for fascinating.

  “I decided not to be a victim. Bea says we belong to each other despite the miles between us. It’s true. I’ve always been loved and treated as special. I came to feel sorry for some of the kids around me, raised by a series of nannies. Their parents viewed them like trendy collectable trinkets or worse, runners in a boasting marathon. They were far more alone and alienated than me. All their acting out was just attention seeking, trying to fill the void.”

  “That’s big of you, Winnie. I saw those kids. A couple of them made Hannibal Lecter seem tame. That Mallory! What a hellhound. But watching you handle them …” He beamed, clutching my hand harder and bending to brush his lips across my knuckles. “Ingenious guerrilla warfare,” he murmured.

  My cheeks prickled and I knew they were the same shade as a stop sign. “I should have found better ways to deal with bullies than by retaliating with their own weapons.” I gently extracted my hand. “I’m the worst hypocrite.”

  His stubborn expression said he didn’t agree and he snatched my hand back. His eyes twinkled with respect and my blush deepened.

  “On weekends
you trekked by train or bus to libraries, museums, art galleries. I topped Art in the HSC because of the things you showed me. You shopped and went sightseeing, to obscure little places off the usual tourist maps. I got to travel Europe without even leaving my lounge room. The judge worried I had a neurological condition or a drug addiction. I could sit still for hours staring into space, watching you. He’d come home sometimes and I hadn’t even bothered to turn on the lights.”

  “So you’ve been stalking me?”

  He smiled. “Never even set foot in the same country as you. But you did have a stalker over there. You weren’t alone, Winnie. You were never alone.”

  “Oh, what?” I scoffed. It was easy for him to say, while he’d been over here in the sunshine with friends, family and the freedom to be who he was. I placed his hand over my heart, my tone mocking. “You were with me here, the whole time?”

  He laughed and scooted closer. “As much as I wanted to be, no. Not quite, anyway.” His face fell. “He was. I guess for the entire two years, shadowing you wherever you went. I was so envious that he got to be near you—”

  “What are you talking about? Who got to be near me?” Please, not that Seth character. He was a recent affliction.

  “Hugo. Sipping short black coffees and reading the Afrikaner, while you traipsed up and down Italian alleys. Up a