The Field of Stones Read online

Table of Contents

  The Field of Stones

  Beginning

  About the author

  Other works: a novel

  My site

  Acknowledgements

  Notes

  Copyright 2015 by Frank M Sheldon. All Rights reserved. All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. FOS-50525

  The Field of Stones

  by Frank M Sheldon

  For Alan

  Home is the sailor, home from the sea,

  And the hunter home from the hill.

  — Robert Louis Stevenson

  Beginning . . .

  I awoke from a dreamless sleep lying in the field of stones. I had no idea how I got there, but I had always been there, and there was never a time when I was not there.

  I lay for a while looking up at an unbroken pale blue sky. There were never any clouds, just the same featureless expanse over my head as it had been for all my todays. How many, I cannot say. Far more than I could count, more than the stones about me, and they were unnumbered.

  Whenever I awoke, the sun was already high in the East. Every day that I can remember, I watched the sun move across the sky toward the West, but I was always asleep against my will before the sun moved any further toward the far horizon. Neither did I ever remember going to sleep. For a long while, I had tried everything to stay awake, but nothing I did succeeded. The same was true for trying to wake up earlier than usual. Nothing helped, nothing made a difference. I had given up trying long ago.

  It used to be that when awake, it was as if I was waiting. I shuffled about, keeping a lookout for whatever must surely be coming to relieve me, or at least to tell me what was going on, and what I should do, but that never happened. Nothing changed.

  I tired of waiting, I tired of doing nothing. I tired of thinking, I tired of wondering, I tired of trying to understand. I was tired, and yet a vague restlessness was never far away. Today, whether from restlessness or giving up completely, my mind seemed to come to a stop. Everything stopped. I stopped and waited. Then even waiting stopped.

  Without knowing why, I began to move the stones for the first time.

  I had no real intention, just to move them was enough. Maybe to clear some away to see what might lie underneath. They did not go down far. There were only two or three layers, never more. They were all sizes, from small to large, but even the biggest I could still move. I move them away, piled them up and found sand underneath. I picked some up and let it slip through my fingers. Looking close, I could see the grains of sand that were left stuck in the palm of my hand. Each grain, a tiny stone.

  I did nothing for the rest of the day.

  A few days later, I began to move stones again. As I moved them, I began to wonder. Could I do anything with the stones? Without thinking, I began to make a wall and worked on it for days. Then it occurred to me. A wall. A wall for what? A wall seemed pointless. A wall was pointless.

  I stopped moving stones.

  Back to my old ways, I sat or stood or lay down. Now, at least, I could lie on the smooth bare sand. That was something, and perhaps enough.

  I lay on my back and stared up at the sky, but always my eyes came back to the stones. As always, they were impossible to ignore for long in spite of having lived with them for as long as I remember. I gazed up again and squinted my eyes to a hairline. For no real reason, I brought my hands up with my thumbs and forefingers touching each other making a circle to frame the sun. As I brought them down, I looked at the shape. A wall could be curved. Curved all the way round until it came back on itself like my fingers. If I built it high enough, it would give me another place to be. I could be inside and free from the unrelenting view of the field of stones.

  I began piling up stones, and as I piled them, I brought the line around and around until finally a stone came up against where I had begun. As I picked up the next stone, a relatively round one came into my hands. I looked at it and, in an instant, I saw that the wall could not only be round on the sides, it would go up and be round on top. A wall on all sides in every direction. On top, it would still have to be made of stones. They were all I had.

  I made a model with the smallest stones to see if it would support itself. It took a while, but when I got it right, the weight of the stones falling towards each other balanced their opposites. If I extended the principle and created a ring of these stones all leaning to the center and balancing against one another, it should work. I marveled at the thought. I marveled that I could have such a thought.

  I began to use much more care in how I placed stones. Instead of just piling them on top of each other, I started puzzling them together and fitting them one with the other until I found the best match. Sometimes I could only do a few in one waking period as finding the right one was not always easy.

  Each day was followed by another, and the walls of the structure grew up to my chest. By this time, I had begun curving them in slightly. For a while, this had not been a problem as I had steadily improved my skill at fitting the stones together. Now it became clear that even with perfect skill, I would not be able to continue in this way. The stones would fall into the center. I stopped.

  Days went by until on one of them I awoke with the answer. I could not both hold up the wall as it curved in and work on it at the same time, so I would simply make another “me.” I would pile up stones inside the structure to support the top parts as I built it. I would only have to use enough stones to support the center. My hope was that once done, I would be able to remove all the supporting stone, and the shelter would stand on its own. This would take time, but that was something, along with stones, I seemed to have in limitless supply.

  As the work of fitting stones with one another moved toward the center, it became less a matter of lifting, and more a matter of care. Sometimes it would take as long as three days to place one stone. A few times, I even had to go back and remove some, yet the day had now come when the last center stone at the center of the top was to be placed. It being the easiest to find of them all somehow did not surprise me. It fit perfectly.

  I slept outside on the bare earth I had uncovered while searching for the right stones. When I awoke, the sun was already high in the East. My head seemed more clear than usual, and I took this for a sign.

  Today the task was to begin carefully removing the stones that made up the temporary support. I found that it was not hard, just work. It took only a day. The structure did not collapse.

  Inside, the space was high enough that I could easily stand in the center without danger of bumping my head. I stood for a while facing the door in the empty space, then turned to face the wall. I could look and not have to see the endless field of stones. I still saw the stones of the wall, but it was different now. I could count them.

  I lay down inside on my side and gazed out of the doorway. The last things I saw before sleep fell upon me was the shadow of my little shelter being cast east by the westering sun.

  The next day, I walked out a way and looked up at the top of what I had built. It seemed strong, but I did not know how strong. One way to find out was to go up. This was something I had done while building it, of course, but I had done the top part lying flat on my front and with the supporting stones underneath still in place. I had never stood up and concentrated my weight in one place. After a long while, I decided it was better to have a mishap while anticipating it, rather than being caught inside unaware if it was weak and came crashing down.

  During the building, I had made some stone footholds as construction moved higher. They were narrow, but it was no real effort to climb. I moved slowly and detected no movement in the structure. When I reached the ve
ry top, I stood up to test my weight all in one place. The stones under my feet seemed as steady as when I had stood on them on the ground.

  I looked towards the East in the direction that the sun began the day. Beneath the pale blueness, the field of stones stretched out to the featureless gray horizon. I slowly turned toward the West and stopped. I had to stop. I saw something.

  Out on the horizon so close to the edge that it almost seemed to be floating, something was there. I could barely see it. A faint smudge of a dot. Something. I could not tell what it was, but it was there. Something was there.

  I watched for a long time and detected no movement, no change. Finally I went down and entered the shelter. I must have slept soon after, because I was still there when I awoke. The sun, as usual, was high in the East. The sky was still blue. Yet, the world had changed. Before, there had only been here. No matter where I went, it was always “here.” Now, with the faint soft point on the horizon, there was also a “there.” I wanted for the first time to be somewhere else because, for the first time, there was somewhere else to be.

  I would go there.

  Almost immediately, I saw a problem. I could only see the point on the horizon from the top of the structure. How would I know I was still going in the right direction when