Speaking In Tongues
Guided by Voices

Raphael Levchin

Idyll second
THE STONE OF THE STONE

Translated by M.Levchin and D.Levchin





He walked for many hours. Trees parted to let him go through, making a path in places, were there had been none, when they saw shine of the Stone on his chest. Just once he was attacked by a yellow birdfish, most ruthless and most stupid creature in the Forest. It was reduced to dust, when the Stone touched it's pulps. He had not even looked at it. He was tired. It's false that the people of their guild never became tired. Of course, not so quickly as mere mortals, but many times more tired. When he will take off the Stone... but he did not even want think about it now.
Bushes parted to the right and the left, and he went out to the Glade.
Cromlechs jutted up by it's perimeter and in the center raised half-destroyed nurag -- small copy of that one, First Tower.
He stepped close and touched the nurag's wall with the Stone. Wall let through and he stepped inside.
Stepped in -- and arrived at the beginning of his path. It had happened three times before, so he did not wonder. He knew that sooner or later he would win. Let Living In The Tower resist however much he could...
He went out to the Glade again and touched the Tower's wall with the Stone.
This time Living In The Tower stepped out to him, and he felt an unknown dread for the first time, because the power of the Stone is great, but not endless, and for each power there is some anti-power...
And Living In The Tower laughed, and his laugh was not merry, and he said that he should have thought about that earlier, and if he wanted to destroy him so badly, that's the way it must be. But because the Glade, and the Forest, and all this world and even he, Who Came, were created by him, Living In The Tower, it would all disappear with him.
"Are you ready?" he asked, and Who Came did not know what to say, he just touched the Stone. And Living In The Tower laughed shortly again and waved like heated air. And Who Came looked at himself, because he was not a coward, and saw that the something was happening to him. And they both looked at the Forest to see destruction of this world.
But the Forest just moved closer to the Glade, because trees are curious too and, unlike people and magicians, do not know the fear. And Living In The Tower and Who Came turned into stones, which were no different from other stones in the Glade, because when a magician destroys a world, what he created, for everybody, except this magician it doesn't mean sure disappearing of it.
.................................................................
And then I, the author, stepped out into the Glade and took the Stone from a stone, which was closer to edge. It did not change color, and this meant that stone's power was almost disappearing - young Stone would kill me on the spot, and this story would never be finished.
Truly, for touching an old Stone you have to pay one day, but you have to pay for everything. Well, we, the authors, know, how to avoid these payments, and become useful that way, so we really wondered, when an upturned account shows up.
And I brought the Stone to her, light of my breathing and air of my eyes, but, certainly, I did not give it to her, and did not even let her see it. I just kept it in my hand and asked her to make a wish quickly (it's hard to carry the Stone, if You aren't a magician, but I wished just one thing -- wish for me what I wish for you!)
However she -- and I could to expect that -- wished that I'd finish this story.
And I -- what could I do! -- finished it, and a lot of others, and got a Nobel Prize for them. (By that time inflation was so high that I could buy just two scoops of ice cream with this money. But good that I bought her favorite: strawberry.)
And payments came due in time, and I also became a stone. But it wasn't so frightening. I was many times more frightened, when at young age I prophesized that I would become a tree.
I'm happy now. When she is flying for her druntkens she rests on me. I'm trying to say something to her, and she understands my language, even though she cannot speak it. But, isn't that enough when you are understood?

And silence...