The Omen of Stones

by Casey L. Bond

  “You weren’t being modest when you said that stones obeyed you,” Sky noted quietly. “We can’t even budge them.”

  I slipped my thumb along the surface of the stone in my pocket, feeling each of the three holes. Three voids. Three sisters.

  It couldn’t be a coincidence.

  I’d always felt that something was missing from me. Now, I knew what it was. One hole represented my sisters. One was my mother. And the final piece missing was River. When he crashed violently into my life, he rooted himself in it. Now, I didn’t want him to leave it. Or me.

  A normal person in this situation would be fixated on her sisters and the mysterious circumstances that separated them. However, I couldn’t stop focusing on River and the fact that he would hold our mother’s bones and see what had befallen her. He would gift us with knowledge that very well might be a curse, and then leave soon afterward.

  I would miss him terribly.

  He was the only one who seemed to understand me.

  Even Lindey, despite having married a witch, and as much as she tried, just couldn’t grasp everything. She didn’t have magic. She saw it often, yet still looked baffled each time she saw something new.

  As happy as I was to learn I was a triplet and not alone in this world after all, the distance and separation we’d grown up in had divided us. We might be together now, but we had little in common, save for our shared origin stories. All abandoned. All found. All given what we needed in exchange for our magical protections.

  I asked the ward stones to allow our party passage and Lyric breathed a sigh of relief, her chest caving in dramatically. She grabbed the chalk in her pocket and started to write, but stopped with the first letter. “I forgot…,” she said sheepishly. “Omen, I wasn’t even aware of the effect your stones had on me until you released them for us.”

  They acted as though I should be proud, but a troubled feeling settled in my stomach. I offered Lyric a smile and told her not to apologize for writing to us if that’s what she wanted, or if she just forgot she could speak. I wasn’t sure how long Lyric had been forbidden from speaking, but writing her words seemed more natural than habit at this point. It might take months for her to undo what Edward had done.

  How could he be so cruel as to tell her she couldn’t speak? And what had he threatened to do if she disobeyed?

  “Who raised you?” I asked her.

  Sky’s eyes slid to us.

  Lyric cleared her throat again, fumbling with the chalk in her pocket the way I did my stone. “A couple who wanted children but were unable to bear them. They treated me as their own.”

  Sky rolled her eyes. I was sorry she didn’t have a similar experience with her own upbringing, but it wasn’t our fault who we’d been placed with.

  “What happened to them?” She mentioned them in the past tense, and it looked as though she lived alone.

  Lyric answered, “Fever took them two winters ago. They died in each other’s arms. I buried them both. It took hours to chip through the frozen earth.” She swallowed thickly.

  A look of guilt slid over Sky’s face, but it was gone before she deftly changed the subject, urging us forward. “Lead the way, Omen,” Sky said, pointing ahead. “I don’t know where I’m at or where I’m going.”

  She didn’t act like the ward magic bothered her, but then again, I couldn’t tell if anything did. Her strength was more than an act. She’d grown up on top of a mountain, where things were scarce and survival was hard. Sky was as fierce as the storms she called. I wondered if she was just as unforgiving when provoked.

  Sky walked nearer to River and nudged him with her elbow. “No one knows who you are?”

  “No one here but Omen, Lindey, and the two of you,” he replied, putting more space between them.

  Sky muttered that it was a good thing Founder Smith didn’t know. Lyric nodded sagely.

  As we walked, Sky pulled her hair back in a loose braid, tying the end with a piece of worn leather. She looked between him and me. “I can’t believe you killed his kidnappers. You don’t seem like the type to take a life. No offense,” she added a second later.

  “I’m the type to defend life,” I snapped. It wasn’t her business what I’d done, and I didn’t appreciate her second-hand judgment.

  She smiled. “I respect you for it. Just so you know.” Sky slowed her gait and fell in step with Lyric, behind me and River.

  Guilt marred River’s face and I was struck with a thought.

  “Didn’t you want me to kill them?”

  “I’m glad you did, I just worry that you’ll have to live with it,” he answered quietly, stuffing his hands in the pockets of his trousers.

  “I don’t regret it, River. It was the proudest moment of my life. For once, I wasn’t just making wards or arches or building fences. I was doing something worthwhile, something worth everything.” I would never regret saving him or protecting him. If I would have let those men go, who was to say they wouldn’t do the same thing to someone else, someone without anyone to help them? They were bad men willing to torture and kill, and I didn’t even want to know what else.

  As we topped a small hill, the village lay in the valley to our left. We headed right, toward mine and Lindey’s house. We somehow managed to avoid everyone, skirting around the fields. I could imagine Edward and Sebastian’s response to seeing me lead an entire group of strangers into the village. They were already suspicious of River. Once they saw up close who it was…what would they do then?

  Sky’s eyes perused every arch I’d erected. “Did you have help making these?”

  “No,” I answered.

  “Then how did they not cave in before you placed the center stone?”

  “I told them to hold their positions,” I replied. “Just the same as storms obey you, stones obey me.”

  Sky seemed to accept that explanation, but after a moment turned to Lyric. “Can you control people with your voice?”

  River turned to see her answer the question.

  Lyric glanced at each of us in turn, as if weighing whether or not to trust us with her secrets. She gripped the slate in her hand, inhaling sharply. “Yes, though I try not to use it when it isn’t absolutely necessary,” Lyric promised. “That’s why Founder Smith forbade me from speaking. He thought I was dangerous.”

  He wasn’t necessarily wrong.

  The thought was terrifying. She could make puppets out of anyone in earshot. But something about her demeanor told me she was being honest, that she wouldn’t abuse the gift she’d been given. I felt the same about Sky. She may be different, but she wasn’t cruel. I could feel it in my heart. And I would never tempt Fate in such a way. I was grateful for all he’d given me, and aware that he could just as easily take his blessings away.

  Our feet crunched the fine gravel along the trails.

  “The villages are all different, yet have the same feel,” Lyric whispered, as if someone might hear.

  I knew there was no one around. The moment we stepped inside the wards, I asked the stones to keep watch and tell me if anyone approached. They thrummed with awareness.

  “Maybe it’s because they were founded by the same man,” Sky tossed out.

  “It’s not simply the aesthetic,” I argued. “It’s the swirl of magic surrounding them. All of our magics.”

  Sky waved off my comment. “We only just came together.”

  River cleared his throat. “What if you hadn’t always been kept apart?”

  The possibilities were endless. We didn’t know why the villages felt the way they did, or how they’d come to be. We didn’t know what part we or our mother played in it all. Only she could tell us, and only River could speak for her.

  River nudged me, a corner of his lip curling into a delicious grin as he stared at our bare feet. “Why don’t any of you wear shoes?”

  “I hate
them,” we replied in unison.

  We laughed while River smiled and shook his head.

  “They cramp my toes,” Lyric explained demurely.

  “I like to feel the earth,” I told my sisters, though River already knew my reason.

  Sky agreed, adding, “Plus, they’re expensive in the North Village. I would have to work for a month to afford a pair, and I have to buy rations with my wages.”

  Rations?

  The question must have been painted on my face. “Founder Smith brings a wagon load of rations a few times a year. Nothing substantial grows that high up.”

  “Why would he establish a village on the mountaintop?” Lyric asked.

  Sky shrugged. I wasn’t sure why he’d done it, either. But one of us placed the piece within its puzzle.

  “Because it’s closest to the sky,” River said beneath his breath.

  River

  As we walked to their house, an uneasy feeling crept into my gut. I hoped Lindey had played no part in the death of Omen’s mother. She seemed so genuine, but if there was anything I’d learned from observing people in and around the palace, it was that people always managed to surprise you with what they were capable of doing and hiding.

  Omen pointed her house out to her sisters and before we knew it, we were standing in front of it. “Could I have a moment alone with her?” she asked. Of course everyone agreed. It was only right that Omen soften the blow as only she could. She stepped up onto the porch and pushed open the door. “Lindey?”

  The front window was open and the breeze toyed with the white curtains framed at either side.

  “Lindey?” Omen said again, louder this time. Sky waltzed up to the porch and entered the house. I saw her take in the wildflowers and herb bundles tacked to the walls, her fingers drifting over the edges of the warning provided by their mother.

  “She shouldn’t be in there,” Lyric whispered under her breath.

  Sky twirled in a circle, rejoining us on the front porch as Omen called out for Lindey from the back yard and exited the gate, walking back around to the front of the house. “I saw your fortune,” she admitted to Omen, honest about slipping inside. “I’m nosy.”

  Omen didn’t care about her sister poking around, or that she’d seen the note their mother left tucked in her blanket. Her worried eyes met mine. “She’s not here. What if she went to the river?” Omen croaked, clasping a shaky hand over her stomach.

  Did she feel as sick as I did? Did her sisters feel it too? Fate sent a foreboding dawn, and now this feeling of…unrest settled within my bones.

  Sky stepped up to the window and looked inside. “There’s nothing out of place?” she asked Omen.

  “Nothing,” Omen confirmed.

  “Should we wait here, or leave a note and head to the river?” Sky asked.

  Omen looked to me for an opinion. “She may be there, Omen. We told her we would check the flood level in the morning. Maybe she went looking for us.”

  Omen swallowed and nodded. “Let’s go see.”

  Sky closed the front door. Omen disappeared around back and returned with a shovel. “We’ll need this, too. Might as well dig before the Smiths find out what we’re doing.”

  I took the burden from her. No one should have to carry the tool that would unearth a loved one. We headed to the river to begin our gruesome task.

  There were no other souls loitering near the barns this time. And though I knew that East Village was spread wider than any other, it felt ominously vacant after not encountering anyone on the way. That feeling of emptiness coiled in my gut. Something was amiss.

  Sky was on edge. She set a fast pace, her eyes darting all around. As we passed the ewe barn, she slowed. “Does anyone else feel like we’re being watched?”

  Lyric affirmed her suspicion with an m-hmm. “I can conceal us,” she whispered.

  Sky stopped abruptly. “Then do it,” she said, throwing her hands up. “This place is making me shiver, and it’s warmer here than it’s ever been on the mountain.”

  As Lyric began to sing, the birds in the trees fell silent. The hay stopped rustling in the breeze that still swayed it. The sound of our footsteps disappeared. It was as if her words were a spell, wrapping us in a quiet, safe void and making us vanish from sight.

  She sang all the way to the river about a ship that sailed into a strange weather, of the fog at sea that blinded and the rocks that maimed the vessel. Of lives lost in the frothing waves and of the black depth that consumed them.

  Her voice was entrancing, but the words were tragic. They wormed into my mind like spiders through a windowsill. All I could see was the ship being swallowed by silver smoke and then overwhelmed with frigid sea water. Of men and women being tossed on the surface until they became exhausted and succumbed to the tempestuous sea, buried in a watery grave.

  We did not meet Lindey on the path. She did not greet us at the river’s edge.

  The water had finally receded into its bank, though it was still very high. Omen and I breathed a sigh of relief. We led Sky and Lyric, still humming, to the final resting place their mother had revealed, though my heart crumpled when I saw that the earth had been disturbed.

  Omen ran to the upturned soil, running her fingers through it, sifting every inch for a bone that may have hidden itself and been left behind. “Who would do this?” she shrieked. “They couldn’t have gotten every bone. There’s no way!”

  Sky and Lyric dropped to their knees, Lyric still singing. When Omen’s tears struck the soil, the earth shook. Sky’s hands stilled as she regarded her sister, while Lyric continued her haunting melody. Overhead, the brilliant blue sky was swallowed by a swirling thin, white cloud whose center began over their mother’s disturbed grave and spiraled out as far as the eye could see.

  “Someone took her,” Omen cursed, streaking mud across her cheek when she wiped away a tear.

  Sky gritted her teeth and fat droplets of rain began to splatter the ground.

  “No more rain!” Omen cried. “The river just receded.”

  She looked at me, anguish on her face. Did she think I would leave now that the water was down? She had to realize I couldn’t leave without helping her mother – without helping her – and making sure she was safe here. If I couldn’t ensure her safety, maybe she, Lindey, and her sisters would want to come back to Nautilus with me.

  Would she leave her home?

  I helped Omen to her feet and walked with her to the riverbank that struggled to contain its churning waters. She knelt in the mud and let the rushing water drag the dirt from her hands. Her sniffling slowed, then stopped. By the time she turned around to face the others, her tears had dried.

  Edward Smith’s smug face entered my mind.

  Whatever Smith had done here didn’t sit well with me. He kept the girls separate, but for what reason? And why was he pushing his son at Omen? Did he live in the East Village because Omen was stronger than her sisters?

  “When Edward Smith visited your villages, did his family travel with him?” I asked.

  Lyric shook her head.

  “I didn’t know he had a family,” Sky replied.

  “He’s married to a woman named Judith,” Omen explained. “They have a son who was born just after we were. His name is Sebastian.”

  “By your tone, I can tell he’s one of your favorite people,” Sky deadpanned with a grin.

  “I enjoy his company as much as I would a toothache,” Omen responded truthfully.

  “River?” Lyric said quietly, her eyes fixed on the disturbed soil. “Who else knows what you can do?”

  Omen went still. “No one should know.”

  In the shock of the situation, coupled with Omen’s anguish, I hadn’t thought through the implications. Someone exhumed her to prevent me from exposing them. Lyric was right. We stared at the earth where Illana’s bone
s had been just this morning, judging by the moist soil. I didn’t want to say it, but there was only one other person we’d told.

  “Lindey knows.”

  Omen shook her head. “She wouldn’t dig up a buried person. She didn’t know who my mother was, let alone where she was buried. And she doesn’t have anything to hide.”

  Yet…she never told Omen, in all the years she lived with her, about her past.

  “How do you know for sure, Omen?” Sky asked. “We only know what they’ve told us, and each of us were told a different version of the same story. The fact is that someone knew River’s power and realized that whatever he found if he held one of our mother’s bones would incriminate them. To prevent that, they removed the possibility of him unearthing our mother’s remains, as well as the truth.”

  “Would she have told Founder Smith?” Lyric asked.

  Omen pursed her lips. “Lindey would never tell them anything we told her in confidence.”

  But the evidence was undeniable. Omen and I told Lindey about my magic. We told her sisters as well, but they had been with us every moment since we found them. Unless Sebastian eavesdropped on us more often than we realized, she had something to do with it.

  The fact that she had disappeared also seemed incriminating.

  Lindey loved Omen. I could tell it was genuine. She felt like a mother to her.

  Maybe she took her in after Illana died. Maybe she decided she couldn’t raise triplets and gave the other girls to the Founder. Or maybe she just wanted to protect Omen from a more sinister truth that she knew about but had no part of.

  “Sebastian may have heard more than we realized,” Omen said before pinching her bottom lip.

  We knew he heard me teasing her about dancing with him, but I wasn’t convinced he’d eavesdropped on our other conversations, specifically the ones about my magic.

  Fate wasn’t stirring inside me.