Where Stone Birds Sing

Where Stone Birds Sing

When the stone heads spoke inside the bone-dry cave, it did not trouble Dembe. He always listened to stones. But their words scared him: the choice between his future and past. “Join us. They will need you: those yet unborn.” Their voices rasped like pestles and crashed like scree rattling down Old Dengai’s slopes. Alone, Dembe squatted on his haunches and listened. 

Each slightly shrunken head had an alcove carved generations ago from soft, sandy rock. Dembe’s tallow candle didn’t light the eldest of them deep inside, but he knew they looked just like the heads by the entrance. Once dipped in stone, a head would never changed again.

“A bridge from past to future. Last to hear; first to speak.” A single head spoke now: Sedai, the healing woman that only elders remembered clearly. Her long, bushy hair splayed out stiffly in her alcove, frozen in grey stone. Those pallid and desiccated lips never moved—that would only deepen the cracks in her shadowed cheeks. Most people feared this cave, but Dembe heard how Sedai’s medicines saved even people chewed open by hyenas.

Other, older wisdom dwelled here too: great spirit-women, even-handed kings, and prophets who saw when the moon would swallow the sun. They knew what awaited their people if none remained to speak to stones. “Climb Old Dengai. Kneel by the blood-pool. Join us.”

Dembe wetted his lips, waited, swallowed against his dry throat. These stone-washed heads held the greatest minds of his whole village’s ancestors. How could he refuse them? Lose their knowledge—their history? And yet to picture his own face like that—boiled and shrunken and slated grey—that did scare him. As did the pain, both Kanoni’s and his own. Dembe spoke the words the heads wanted to hear and left the cave. His heart weighed like a stone already.

Inside the privacy of the reeds, Dembe purified himself with sweet bark and ash from Old Dengai, still thinking. The grey mixture clumped on his skin and burned. This much could be washed away with river water. Not so for the boiling water of the blood-pool—the water that turned flesh to stone. The rushes parted and Kanoni’s wide eyes startled him. “You are going up the mountain?” Her voice trembled. 

“I must climb.” Dembe rose dripping from the mud and ran a damp finger down the curve of her jaw. His other hand traced the line of her breast over her heart and settled lightly on that belly, swollen with life. Somehow, he already knew his child would be a boy. And that he would not be able to hear the stones. His son’s smile or his grandfathers’ wisdom. If he did not choose which to see, time and human memory would choose for him. “Just to look.”

Kanoni’s eyes clenched shut so she would not see his tears. “You will come back?”

So Dembe gave more nodding words before marching up the shattered slopes of Old Dengai. He wove upwards between the grey and frozen rivers of stone that had dribbled from the old mountain’s wounds. All the while, his past and future bickered and bit, rival songbirds in spring. He wondered if they would end frozen in stone too. For there were many birds lying on the shores of the blood-lake. Nothing ever ate them—not even hyenas would try. After falling into the blood-lake, the birds became husks of feathery stone with sunken glass eyes too detailed, too horrible, to be crafted by human hands. Yet Dembe still heard them singing. Only he did, nowadays. 

The water of the blood-lake churned thickly before his bare feet. The red looked paler than true blood, but considering the color and what happened to those who entered, what other name would it have? Grey shapes littered the murky bottom: twisted talons and reaching hands. Even now a small fruit bat struggled out of the thick water—its lower half boiled and dead. A gentle red wave washed over the creature, darkening the fur and lining its wings with slate. Before the sun moved in the sky the animal was stone—cold and grey, its death-terror forever carved on its head. 

Dembe gave another dry swallow as he kneeled by the bat. Slowly, gently, he set its now-heavy form aside on the black sand. He didn’t want his son to see him like that. But he needed his son to know why he’d done it. To tell him of the stones. He tied back his hair, as was custom. Normally, a family member would accompany him to sever and retrieve the head. But Dembe felt he had a special duty—a past and future both. 

The lapping red burned his kneecaps. Already the skin there was hardening. On instinct, Dembe jumped back. He thought of the baby inside Kanoni, of the babies he would sire in turn, of their needs. Their history. His life was a bridge. A bridge of stone to last generations. Dembe did not hold his breath as he bent his head into the blood-lake, but he did weep. He inhaled the seething mixture in deep hiccups. The burning bitterness of a thousand peppers roared into his throat and settled into his eyes. He forced himself still. For a time, pain was all he knew.

The sun moved and the blood set. As the burning died into the cool stillness of a cave in winter, They rose to their feet. Stone rivulets dripped down Their bare chest. Eyes of stone no longer saw, but Their ears still heard the stone birds sing. Knowing the way by heart, They walked back down the face of Old Dengai. 

When They stepped into the soft, goat-picked dirt of the village, They felt the hush fall over everyone. Kanoni sobbed at Their half-stone form, but They heard the echo of grandchildren’s laughter off the rocks and cliffs that held the village. The people gathered round. Then, through cracked and grey lips, the stones spoke.