A Stone for the Box

Sayun’s hands ached. The morning had worn away while she sat in the pasture milking. She thought that surely by this time she would have been released from her punishment, as the sun mounted quickly and now spread its blazing rays over her skin. Truthfully, however, she did not resent these hours beneath the open sky; indeed she relished them, but she would have chosen to spend them in some other, more diverting manner.

It seemed to her a most amusing jest that the Council had thought to send her to the outside would be to her a form of discipline, for she had a great affection for wandering in the open, free of the stifling air below. Nevertheless, most of her kin would shudder at receiving treatment of the same kind. Her people rarely traveled above ground; the Orons dwelt in the earth, as they had for a millennia since The Reckoning. Only the bravest ventured out to provide sustenance for their community of a hundred.

Theirs was a small tribe, so she thought, though truthfully she knew little of other villages and how they fared. She knew not how many others like theirs lay interspersed throughout the whole of the vast mountain range that stretched further than her eyes could reach. Those who left their settlement of origin when it grew beyond the breadth of sustainability never returned.

She stopped her hands for a moment to massage the tension from them and take a mouthful of water. It had long lost its coolness since her mother had packed it for her in the early morn. She let the warmth of it rest atop her tongue, swirling it to soothe the sensation of dust in her mouth. How oppressive the heat was. She peeled gloves sticky with sweat from her hands. Always she donned these coverings, and this pair was losing its usefulness. She would soon have to ask her mother for fresh ones.

Shading her eyes against the sun, she looked out across the plain. Where she sat, the vegetation grew in sporadic patches. They colored the landscape a dusky brown, for in the heat of the season the grass itself lost its vibrant shades. Some distance away, a small thicket of pines grew densely together, and further still, the landscape blurred into an assemblage of mountain peaks that seemed without end. Other than the pines and surrounding undergrowth to which the trees came quickly to an end, little foliage grew in these mountains, and in the summer months the land seemed a vast scar upon the earth. It seemed a wonder that the wild cows continued to abide in this place, as though put there to sustain the Oron village beneath their feet. Sayun had little need even to chase after them. They came to her as though called.

She often wondered what lay beyond. Perhaps one day she would venture out and see.

At the thought, a bitter laugh escaped Sayun’s lips. Her mother would fall to the ground, could she but hear her daughter’s hidden thoughts. Orons did not leave the mountain. They abided in safety, far from the troubles of the world below, and have for a millennia. If others before her had removed from their refuge, the elders did not speak of them. Certainly Sayun did not believe they had ever welcomed such a one back into their fold. 

A memory arose unbidden, of a story told when she was a girl, told certainly to frighten little ones like her. The story had spoken of a young man who, growing weary of the dullness of their sheltered lives, had determined to leave the mountain upon coming of age at twenty. His family, unable to deter him, had accompanied him to the foot of the mountain, then dared to step no further. The mother had remained there, sitting upon a stone, for surely he would return once he had tasted the tribulations of the world. 

Return he did, before the passing of many days, but in the form of a hideous beast, his ears cut off and eyes plucked out. In an agony of spirits, the mother cried out to the immortal spirits for aid. The tears she shed at the horrid alteration of her son splashed across the stone upon which she sat, and in mercy the Immortals heard her cries and turned them to badgers, that darkness might trouble them no longer.

Or the story of the changeling girl that Sayun’s own father told her, whom the Fae tried to steal from the girl bed as she slept. The girl’s parents had ventured too close to the secret immortal doorway and angered them. They did such things when they wished to play tricks on mortals—exchanged one child with another who looked almost the same—with the eerie purple-grey eyes of changeling children, laughing when the child withered like rotted wood while the human child skipped merrily down eternal halls, with no memory of their life in the mortal realm.

This girl, however, was not fated to pass her lifetimes in the Other Lands. Her father found her missing, fought the immortals for his daughter’s return. Seeing his devotion, they granted him mercy, but left the girl misshapen—as a warning, they said.

Such a child was one of the few fortunate souls returned to the land of living men, but always, the Elven folk demanded a price be paid.

Many such stories passed from mouth to mouth among those who dwelt in the mountains. All Orons knew from their youth that to leave the mountain was to court death.

Sayun knew herself to be at more than the usual disadvantage, and though her heart may desire to see what lay beyond her sight, the lameness of her left leg was more a constraint than all the remonstrances of her anxious mother or horrors of her childhood tales together.

The roots of her people sank into the land they had called their own for generations past; they plunged deep into the heart of the earth. She must then content herself with these brief ventures and leave behind foolish thoughts.

Perspiration gathered at her brow. She wiped at it with her apron and as her hands fell to her lap, she looked at them wonderingly; she possessed the strength to wring sustenance from the udders of so great a creature, and yet was so lacking in the simple matter of mobility. How cruel was such a fate. Perhaps her mother spoke true; she could hardly be of use to anyone outside the community that had nurtured her, hidden away in a beautiful, albeit unexceptional refuge. And yet a mild hum reverberated through her core, drawing her out and stirring a longing that had taken hold within her before she knew the words to give it a name. It gathered strength with each sunrise—to see the world past the edge of the mountains, into unknown lands.

The sound of light footsteps striking the ground drew her eyes from the land beyond and to the familiar sight of Apyang running toward her. Odd, Sayun thought, as Apyang’s skirts billowed behind her, her dark hair caught in the light of the morning sun. Apyang never ran when she could walk, to best display the smooth sway of her maturing figure. Sayun saw the movement of her mouth as though speaking, but could hear nothing above an indistinct murmur from that distance. As her sister drew near, she knew it to be her name Apyang called. Sayun opened her mouth to speak when Apyang fell into her arms and nearly felled the both of them. Her breath came in a series of ragged pants.

“Sayun, you must come.”

“What’s happened?” Sayun searched Apyang’s face for signs of dismay, but saw none, only a sparkling excitement threaded with traces of fear. The family was well then. She wondered if something had happened to one of their neighbors, but idle gossip could not account for her sister pulling her from her duties. Even Apyang would not be so bold.

Apyang did not reply, only tugged at Sayun’s sleeves until she replaced the gloves on her hands and rose with difficulty to her feet. Together they lifted the pails of milk and started back toward the village. Apyang slowed her pace to accommodate her sister, who walked beside her at a hobbling gait. A rare show of consideration, thought Sayun. They crossed a rippling stream, slowed by the summer heat. As Sayun stepped with care over its stones, the water seemed to pause before her feet—a sign of the season, perhaps.

The entrances to the dwellings were unmarked, save by a single hawthorn tree, blending into the earth and foliage surrounding it. From a distance, no eye could have perceived the openings into a network of tunnels and small caverns hosting each family. Fortified by stone, these catacombs sheltered them from all eyes above the earth.

Together they entered, and Sayun knew whatever had transpired must have been no small thing, for she did not see her father who daily guarded the east doorway.  

Passing through, beyond the reach of daylight, Sayun’s eyes traversed over her surroundings in efforts to accustom her sight to the dark. Lamps hung from planks holding the ceiling above them, while some were set in hollows in the stone walls, small points of light that provided little relief to Sayun’s eyes, blinded from her hours in the sunlight. Slowly the sisters traveled the length of the tunnels to their own cave. As they walked, there seemed to Sayun a rumbling agitation in the air, a humming of activity that contrasted sharply with the slow, lazy flavor of their daily rhythms.

Upon reaching the doorway of their home, the sound of their mother’s agitated voice came to Sayun’s ears. “—should have sent them away immediately upon clapping eyes on them. Instead you allow them to come into our lands when you know full well such a thing has never occurred in the history of our people. Had you spared a thought for your wife and children, you would never have — oh, how my head aches. What would your own mother say if she could have lived to — Oh my dear girls, you will not believe what your papi has done. How shamefully he has treated us. Sayun, you look positively browned. I’ve always thought the Council too severe. How terrible to send you outside for so minor an offense. Yabu deserved to have her hair cut (I never liked her, feeble girl).”

Sayun did not respond. She was well accustomed to her mother’s fluster; she had passed nineteen years beneath the tyranny of well-meaning anxiety. The carpet of their home had worn thin from Hila’s frequent pacing, as she now did more vigorously than ever. Sayun often felt herself as frayed as that carpet.

She set the pails just inside the opening. She had just moved to shut the door when a small figure streaked toward her from one of the bedrooms, and she felt a tugging at her skirts. Nawi of five had come to join the fray while Apyang made a nook for herself on her favored chair with her head propped on her hands, as though watching the unfolding of a most amusing drama.

“Yuni, Yuni! Mami says the world is ending, and we will soon have no food to eat, and we will have no place to live. Is it true, Yuni?”

Sayun flushed with annoyance. “No, darling, that won’t happen,” she said, pulling the boy into her lap as she settled onto the floor. To speak of fears in hushed voices was one thing, but to inflict such uncertainties upon the colorful mind of her young brother seemed an unforgivable indiscretion. She cast a look of vexation and remonstrance toward her mother, but Hila never would attend to what she did not wish to see, and continued as though uninterrupted by their entrance.

“What use is it to be gatekeeper if you cannot do as you are told, and keep people out? So simple a task that the village asks of you, and you cannot do even that. Centuries our family has lived here, and you have led — you may as well have invited them in for tea (that’s just what you did, I suppose). However could you—”

“Will someone please enlighten me to what has happened? Someone with sense?” Sayun said loudly. Must she listen to the story through her mother’s winding words?

“Sayun, you forget your place,” her father said quietly, and her face reddened once more at the reprimand.

Apyang perhaps read the tension in her sister’s face, for she sobered and spoke quickly before their mother could begin again. “A family of foreigners has found us, seeking refuge. Papi heard their tale and allowed them entrance. They had fled from the colonies below, from, from, Lee-ohs?” Her tone lilted upwards in a question as she glanced at her father for confirmation.

Rudao’s nature opposed his wife’s in every way; he was a man soft-spoken with few words. Sayun often wondered how they had come to love one another; perhaps her father’s reticence just suited Hila’s loquacity. How strange, the workings of affection. He nodded. “Lyos.” 

Lyos. The name bid secret fantasies arise in Sayun’s mind. She knew it to be one of the lands below, indeed the largest nation nearest to their mountains. A thrill rushed through her. She had heard Lyos spoken of always with a hush, as though even the mention of the outside lands boded ill. For once Hila’s histrionics did not seem so very excessive. Sayun stretched her thoughts through the recesses of her memory, but could not call to mind any time a foreigner had entered an Oron village.

“Why do they come to us? Surely this shows they are in desperate straits,” Sayun said, more to herself than her family.

“We are in dire straits!” Hila exclaimed. “Has it not occurred to you that if they have come to us for aid, then knowledge of our people and way of life exists still in the outside world, and we are no longer safe? If they should return to their own country, if they should spread word of our continued existence..” Her voice rose and the sound of it scraped against Sayun’s’s nerves until she thought she would go mad. “Your papi is sure to lose his position now, for bringing this peril upon us,” Hila wailed. “They will send him to perform Outside duties.”

“It may not come to that,” Rudao said.

“And to happen so close to the Festival, oh what a terrible omen this is! What ill tidings! What disaster! Oh, to have seen this doom in my time — oh, such catastrophe as we have not seen, not seen since the Reckoning—”

“That is enough.” And all the family perceived the tone of warning that had entered Rudao’s voice. Tears had formed in Nawi’s eyes and he clung to Sayun’s arms. Apyang too, seemed troubled, and a quiver had started in her lower lip.

Hila fell silent.

Sayun’s father stood. “In ancient days, our people never turned away a weary traveler. If refugees have come upon our threshold, then the outside world will surely not tarry far behind. The time has passed for us to hide our faces from the wider world. I am overdue at the Council. Wait here for my return and do not wander.”

His eyes traveled over the faces of his wife and his three children, lingering an instant longer on Sayun’s, and she knew his last message to be for her.

She nodded, and he swept from the home, leaving silence at his heels.