A Single Stone Read Free Page A

savouring.
    There was little movement below, with most of the village and its fields shrouded by the surrounding trees. The tops of the tallest buildings were visible, along with the spindly ventilation pipes that protruded from each house. When the winter snows fell, these would allow them fresh air, at least for a time. They put Jena in mind of the reeds that clustered along the banks of the spring; she couldn’t help imagining creatures hidden below the water, mouths pressed hopefully to the ends.
    Although the valley looked peaceful from here, the old wounds were still there. Remnants of the time they called Rockfall were everywhere, ugly outcrops of stone dotting the ground like tumours. There was no way to repair such assaults on the earth – the way the ground had split itself open as if it were being carved by an invisible knife. These things could not be undone but the passage of time had softened the transgressions of the past: the deep green moss coating the low ridges that radiated through the forest from the base of the mountain; the tangle of ivy covering the massive boulders that had shaken loose all those years ago. From here, you could set history aside and see it as nothing but beautiful.
    That was, if you didn’t turn towards the Gash, the jagged wound in the mountain’s side where everything had ended. Everyone knew the story of Rockfall. It was a tale that had shaped their lives, whose aftermath they lived every day.
    Before Rockfall, their world had been outside. People lived on the plain that sloped away from the mountain, a narrow band of undulating land that lay between it and the edge of the island. Back then, the valley was just a place people came to from elsewhere. Though the ring of mountains formed an almost-closed circle, there had been a way through, a single point where the stony hands tapered down to form a natural passage. Every day, people walked through the place they called the Pass, coming here to pick herbs and berries or trap the landbirds that favoured the shelter of the forest. Or to spread out a blanket and eat lunch in the shade by the spring that bubbled up from the valley floor.
    People did other things here too, things that seemed beyond imagining now. Men worked side by side to split open the mountain. They blasted holes big enough to stand in, then swarmed inside with shovels and pickaxes. They hacked at the rock, taking whatever they wanted – some things simply because they were shiny or pleasing to the eye. The mountain’s deepest secrets were shaped into baubles and trinkets; the translucent blue of the mica dotted earlobes and hung in windows.
    The Gash was not the only place their ancestors had wronged the mountain, but it was where the rock fought back. Where it finally said
enough
. It opened its throat and swallowed their world, and them with it. Of those digging, only a handful survived. And did so to find themselves trapped, along with everyone else who had come to the valley that day. When the rocks finally stopped falling, the Pass had closed; what had been sheer walls on either side were collapsed upon each other in a tight jumble of stone. Those in the valley were encircled by rock, utterly enclosed, the mountain soaring above and around them, its treasures sealed deep once more, beyond reach.
    Mother Berta’s grandson, Luka, said she had a necklace with a mica pendant, a teardrop of luminous blue stone that had been passed down to her. That she kept it in a chest, snug between layers of heavy fabric.
    Jena had scoffed when he told her. When the snow grew too deep for chimneys and hopeful reeds, mica was the only fuel the village could safely burn. It was the difference between life and death and there was little enough to spare. None among them would hoard a trinket while others froze.
    A shiver ran through her. How terrible that first winter must have been. The Rockfall survivors could not have anticipated how deep the snow would fall – that the