story tellers stone

                                                    StoryTeller’s  Stone 


    It happened when I was around about five or six. When it was time, grandpa pulled me off to one side and said, “I have wasted my gift from the stone, passed down to me from ages old.” I made excuses, failed to try, and once or twice, I even lied. I let everything else come first and nearly let my gift die.” He shifted himself forward in his old wicker seat, then showed me his hands. They were huge,and wrinkled with lots of spots. He took a deep and ragged breath, and said to me with a tear welling up in his eye, “I’ve spent my life working hard each and every day. Of all the things these hands have wrought, not one thing, will stay for long. Stories, my boy, just the one’s that last, are what you will have to tell, and you must learn this fast.
  My time left here is short, so sit there still and listen to me well.”Grandpa said he remembered it well, just like yesterday. He touched me, held me in his arms, and he knew where the stone would next lay. At least that is what he told me.
    Grandpa called it his gift from the muse. He told me to always watch it close, and use it well,or else it would find another ear to whisper in. He described it to me as small, a tiny pebble made of light. Grandpa told me the stone would let my eyes see anything they wished for. He told me about the muse, how it came to him in a dream. How it had taken him to places he had only dreamed. How it had warned him, if he let the magic go unused; it would grow all dark and stale. I was only a child then, my eye sight was still better than most. I could see something
glowing in grandpa’s chest. It shone with the twinkle of a little star, a bright glowing thing under
his skin right above his heart. I could hear his words, but I feared I would never understand. The pictures he sent into my mind, oh, but they were grand. When  the words sprang to life, finally I could see it all, my grandpa’s joy and strife. 
      Soon after that he began writing like a man possessed. While I watched his skin and bones turn frail. He would sit and talk to me for hours, and I would never
make a sound. I like it best when I would rest, and his machine would be singing to me. I loved the click, tic, tac and all the others sounds his typewriter had.
    He made me swear an oath to keep his secret safe. I know now that he meant for me to tell you when he passed.
        In the fall of, 1969, Grandpa  called me to his room one last final time. When I arrived he bade me close the door. I stepped in close to here him whisper slow, his eyes watching only the
floor.
      He told me of the sights I’d see, the things I’d feel and taste. He told to keep hold of youth, with it’s subtle style and grace. He coughed hard then, a wheezing air starved bout. I was scared,
I watched him close, Grandpa’s glow was gone. We knew his end was near.
      He reached his hand into his cheek and revealed to me the stone that would shape my life for years. I guess the tales he told, left me expecting more. The stone in grandpa’s wrinkled palm lacked the sparkle, the shine I had seen in him before.
    A tiny graying ember, I feared would crumble at my touch. I took the stone from him, it’s weight a warm surprise. He motioned for me to swallow the stone. While my eyes welled up with tears. The tiny ebbing stone still warm, but cooling fast. A sad, proud, somber testament of the full, strong life about to pass.
    Grandpa urged, “Don’t dawdle now, A stone can’t breath raw air.”  He told me I should hurry
now, if I was brave enough to take one last dare. Proud, foolish soul I was at the ripe old age of five.
    Grandpa, his eyes gone dark, still had one more surprise. He looked at me and in a voice sounding sad and all alone, he said. “The stone never meant any harm, it’s only trying to keep warm. Now hurry up boy and swallow the thing before both of us are dead.”  I placed the stone upon my tongue. It warmed me from inside. I felt the glow begin. A tiny spark to light the fires of ancient imagining locked down deep within my mind. I looked again at this solid, giant of a man now merely flesh and bone. His last request was a simple one, to fetch my father to the door.I will remember it well, this solemn, joyful affair,the first tale my stone ever told. I hope to always make him proud. I will make this stone shine like gold. I will faithfully keep my promise to him, by writing till I mold.