Stone Voice Rising Read online

  Stone Voice Rising

  C. Lee Tocci

  Laurel Canyon Publishing

  North Hollywood, California

  This is a work of fiction.

  Names, characters and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead,

  is entirely coincidental.

  Special Thanks to:

  My editor, Kathy Dawson

  My agent, Kathleen Anderson

  And very special thanks, ( and every kind of love)

  To my parents,

  Ruth Carnes Tocci and Valentino Tocci

  For their never-ending support and encouragement

  even when I did really stupid things.

  Copyright © 2009 Cynthia Tocci

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN: 978-09786530-7-1

  LCCN: TX0006972082

  This book is dedicated to the memory of

  Miss Judy Wiggin, my fourth and fifth grade teacher,

  who taught me the magic of words.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One - The Infant Stone Voice

  Chapter Two - Stopover

  Chapter Three - The Runaway

  Chapter Four - The Road

  Chapter Five - The Institute

  Chapter Six - Incident at Lambert Oasis

  Chapter Seven - Popokelli

  Chapter Eight - The Passing of the Stone Voice

  Chapter Nine - Milestones

  Five Years Later

  Chapter Ten - The Lost Years

  Chapter Eleven - Trouble in Naircott City

  Chapter Twelve - Grey Feather

  Chapter Thirteen - The Broken Child

  Chapter Fourteen - The Last Supper

  Chapter Fifteen - The Midnight Pledge

  Chapter Sixteen - The Trail of Stones

  Chapter Seventeen - And From The Ashes

  Chapter Eighteen - Dreams

  Chapter Nineteen - Puddle Town

  Chapter Twenty - The Hunters

  Chapter Twenty One - The Hunted

  Chapter Twenty Two - Mesa del Tío

  Chapter Twenty Three - The Father’s Table

  Chapter Twenty Four - Adios de Tío

  Chapter Twenty Five - Into the Nether Rock

  Chapter Twenty Six - The Stone Cage

  Chapter Twenty Seven - Molly Coppertop

  Chapter Twenty Eight - The Renegades of the Nether Rock

  Chapter Twenty Nine - The Council of the Nether Rock

  Chapter Thirty - Escape from the Nether Rock

  Chapter Thirty One - The Battle of the Nether Rock

  Chapter Thirty Two - The Dream of the Wanderer

  Chapter Thirty Three - Retreat from Tai-Kwee

  Chapter Thirty Four - Occurrence in the Valley of the Wind Dancers

  Chapter Thirty Five - Little Pine

  Chapter Thirty Six - The Demons of Malagua

  Chapter Thirty Seven - The Horsemaster

  Chapter Thirty Eight - The Grotto of the Chee-Tola

  Chapter Thirty Nine - Copper Herald

  Chapter Forty - The Canyon Del Muerte

  Chapter Forty One - The Dell of Bocarbolee

  Chapter Forty Two - Flight from Flame

  Chapter Forty Three - Passage through Cow Town

  Chapter Forty Four - Sanctuary of the Morning Star

  Chapter Forty Five - The Noose Tightens

  Chapter Forty Six - Dry Creek Crossing

  Chapter Forty Seven - The New Wave

  Chapter Forty Eight - Sienna Shadows

  Chapter Forty Nine - The Attack of the B’Ricas

  Chapter Fifty - The Wrath of Syxx

  Chapter Fifty One - The Valley of Kiva

  Chapter One

  The Infant Stone Voice

  As usual, Lilibit woke that morning before the sunrise.

  Not as usual, however, she stayed in bed, staring at the ceiling.

  She had no choice, it would have to be the Temper Tantrum.

  This was not a decision she made lightly. She had tried Logic. Reasoning. Charm. Humor. Cajoling. Whining. Insolence. And Bribery. She was now Desperate. It would have to be the Temper Tantrum. And she knew that to get her way, this could not be a normal temper tantrum. This would be a Gut Stone Tantrum.

  It would not be pretty.

  She lay in her bed making her plans, plotting her strategy, planning her war.

  The opening volley of this battle was fired the night before when the Stranger arrived and the Aunties sent her to bed. Even though she wasn’t a bit tired.

  Creeping back to the top of the stairs, she had lain on the floor. She peeked out between the rails and watched the whispered conversation of the grownups below. In her hand she clutched, Tosh, the nosy stone.

  Only Lilibit knew that beneath Tosh’s façade of mottled grey stone there hid a yellow crystal center of vanadinite. And Tosh had another secret. He liked to eavesdrop. So when Lilibit pressed Tosh to her ear, she heard her Aunties and the Stranger as if she were sitting between them.

  The Stranger was tall and stern looking. His skin was dark and his hair was darker. It hung in a thick black braid down his back. His pants were made of brown rawhide pulled tight over thighs that looked more like two tree trunks than legs. A tan leather shirt stretched over his barrel chest and a forest green cloak hung from his shoulders. His hands rested on a tall gnarled staff, its knobby surface worn from untold years of use, but Lilibit didn’t think he used it to walk. He was strong, she could tell, the whole house buzzed from his presence.

  He smelled of leather and pine trees and grass after the rain. His name was Keotak-se, but to Lilibit he looked more like the big oak that grew in their backyard so when she talked about him to her stones, she called him Mr. Tree.

  He stood looking down at the Aunties as they sat in the parlor. “We can wait no longer.” His voice was low and deep. Tosh quivered in her ear. “We must leave tomorrow.”

  Auntie Shalla nodded sadly, but Auntie Wolla put up a proper fight.

  “She’s too young, Keotak-se! She’s not even seven!” Auntie Wolla’s voice chirped with distress. “And she’s so small for her age!”

  Auntie Shalla patted Auntie Wolla’s arm as she looked at Mr. Tree. “I, too thought we would keep her here until she was twelve. That was the decision of the council when you first brought her to us. Since the death of her parents, we have been the only family she has known. Does the council think it wise to move her again before she is the proper age to send a child to Kiva?”

  Lilibit pricked up her ears. The Aunties never talked about her parents. Whenever Lilibit would ask, all the Aunties would say was “a big brown bird left you on the front porch.” And they would never tell her anything more, no matter how many times she asked.

  Lilibit didn’t think the Aunties were her real aunts. Their hair was black like hers, but their skin was dark brown and tanned, like Mr. Tree’s. Lilibit’s skin was like pale honey. And her eyes were different too. The Aunties’ eyes were round, like almost everyone else in the neighborhood, but Lilibit’s eyes were slanted, like she was laughing all the time, even when she wasn’t.

  She pressed Tosh hard against her ear and hoped that, maybe this time, the grownups might let something slip.

  “Her voice grows strong,” Mr. Tree rumbled. “Even from her hearth, the Flame Voice can hear her speaking to the stones.”

  This startled the Aunties. After a quick glance at each other, they looked up the stairs toward Lilibit’s bedroom, but they could not see Lilibit as she hugged the floor, safely hidden in the darkness on the landing.

  “If the Flame Voice can hear her, then so can the Enemy. They seek her day and night. She is
young, it is true. But the time has come for her to be moved to Kiva.” He turned to look at the top of the stairs. Lilibit didn’t think he saw her, yet his eyes seemed to look directly into hers.

  “Where she will be safe?” asked Auntie Shalla.

  “Where she will be safer.” His voice offered no promises. “Where she can be trained to protect herself.”

  For a long time it was quiet in the parlor. Auntie Wolla sniffed a few times, yet it was Auntie Shalla who finally spoke.

  “There are things we must see to before we leave. If tomorrow we were all to disappear from Hazeltown at the same time, it would be noticed.”

  Mr. Tree nodded. “This is true. She and I will leave tomorrow. You two can follow when your tasks here are completed.”

  The Aunties quickly looked at each other and then back to Mr. Tree, concern shared on their faces.

  “Perhaps Wolla should accompany you, Keotak-se,” said Auntie Shalla, “to help look after the child.”

  “No.” Mr. Tree did not encourage discussion. “We will travel faster if it just the two of us.”

  “But---” started Auntie Wolla.

  “No.” His eyes narrowed as he glanced between the two women. “For the love of the Stone, women. I have lived ten centuries. I have fought against the hordes of the headless dreads, have faced the assassin Chee-tola. I have traveled through the Labyrinth of the Flame. I am the last of the True Stone Warriors. I think I can handle a six year old child.”

  The looks on the Aunties’ faces echoed Lilibit’s words.

  “We’ll see about that,” she whispered to the stones as she crawled silently from the landing back to her bed.

  Chapter Two

  Stopover

  “What do you call it when a pair of crows crash into each other?”

  From the backseat, Todd turned away from the window, ignoring the large black bird that followed the car.

  “A two caw accident!” With a rawk, the bird answered its own riddle.

  Todd bit back a snort of laughter. Crows always told really stupid jokes, but they still made him laugh. “That’s so lame!” he whispered.

  “Stop talking to the birds, Todd,” said Ms. Burbank from the front seat.

  Todd slouched deeper on the vinyl bench. Looking up, he saw the caseworker’s eyes in the rearview mirror as if she were peering through a floating window from another dimension.

  “Yes, ma’am.” Todd turned his shoulder against the window and away from the bird beyond.

  “You’re a big boy now. You’re eight years old.” Ms. Burbank’s voice was not unkind. “You’re much too old for those sorts of pretending games. That’s what caused all that bother at the last home where we placed you.”

  Bother? Mrs. Jenson thought he was an extraterrestrial spy and made him wear tinfoil on his head whenever he left his bedroom. Mrs. Jenson read the National Enquirer. Todd folded his arms across his chest and stared at his sneakers.

  I bet if I had curly blond hair instead of straight black hair, thought Todd, Mrs. Jenson wouldn’t have kicked me out. Maybe if I had blue eyes and freckles instead of brown eyes and brown skin, I could have stayed.

  Maybe if I didn’t talk to birds...

  “We’re lucky there’s an opening at Dalton Point,” Ms. Burbank interrupted Todd’s thoughts. “It’s up in the mountains and you’ll have a bedroom all to yourself.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “But you need to behave yourself. No more nonsense about talking birds, do you understand?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  The car turned off the quiet residential street onto a long gravel driveway. As it wound its way up the mountain, Todd noticed that the houses and even the telephone poles disappeared. Barren canyon walls, broken by rocky glens rose alongside the narrow road. Todd straightened and looked out of the window. It had been a long time since he’d been in a place with so few people.

  They rode in silence up the half-mile long driveway, the car slowing as it got to the last bend. It rolled to a stop and Todd saw six kids, four boys and two girls, wearing jeans and tee shirts. They stood in a line, their arms crossed over their chests and glared at him. Something nasty started to rise from his stomach into his throat. He swallowed hard, pushing it back down as he opened the car door. The paper bag with all his clothes spilled onto the gravel as he stepped out.

  The tallest boy broke formation and bent to pick up a large duffel bag before walking toward the car.

  Todd put out his hand to greet him but, without a word, the taller boy elbowed him hard. As Todd stumbled, the boy pushed past and climbed into the backseat. He glared straight ahead, ignoring everyone.

  “Come along, Todd,” Ms. Burbank’s hand touched Todd’s shoulder lightly. “We’ll get you settled in.”

  Todd turned to see the remaining five children staring at him without a hint of a smile or welcome. Ms. Burbank bent to whisper into Todd’s ear.

  “Remember,” she hissed, “no talking birds.”

  Todd gritted his teeth and nodded his head as he followed Ms. Burbank into the house.

  Chapter Three

  The Runaway

  The room was rosy with the light of early dawn as Lilibit crawled under her bed to pull out her tatty pink bib overalls. Her closet brimmed with starchy dresses and lacy pinafores, but she always wore the same pink bib overalls, the one with the eight pockets.

  The talky stones always went in the top left pocket. Tosh went in the top left pocket too, not because he was a talky stone, but because he liked to listen. The quiet stones went into the top right pocket. They didn’t say much, but Lilibit always kept an ear open, because when one of the quiet stones spoke, it was usually pretty important. Frando stayed in her left hand pocket by himself, partly because he was too big to share a pocket and partly because he was a bit of bully and did not get along well with the other stones.

  They were still working on that issue.

  Veranda and Winnie (“the Girls”) lived in her right hand pocket. These were Lilibit’s favorites; two egg-shaped quartz stones polished smooth by countless decades of ocean waves. They reminded her of the Aunties. They were a little bit bossy, but they could do lots of special things and sometimes they remembered stuff that Lilibit forgot. The bottom two pockets on the legs she kept empty in case she found any new stones during her travels. Lilibit considered back pockets pretty stupid since they weren’t any good for storing stones in, not even pebbles because they hurt when you sat down. Lilibit couldn’t figure out how anyone ever used back pockets.

  Grownups were weird.

  Lilibit’s bare feet made no sound as she pattered across the gleaming hardwood floors in the pre-dawn glow. Her purple panda backpack hung heavily on her shoulders and the weight of its contents pressed hard against the small of her back. As usual, the kitchen was sweet with the smells of drying herbs, fresh bread and homemade cheese. Lilibit’s giggled as she packed her provisions for the mission. She didn’t waste a thought on any possible punishment. The Auntie’s never got angry. They just tutted and huffed and fussed. And Lilibit knew she could always cajole them out of their miffs.

  The soft green smell of the morning dew met her as she walked out the back door from the kitchen. She wiggled her bare toes in the mud and grass and stopped to pat Caddock, the massive mottled boulder that guarded the backyard.

  “I’m off to have an adventure, Caddock,” Lilibit whispered to the stone. “I don’t know when I’ll be back, but if I find any friends for you, I’ll bring them.”

  The rock buzzed briefly in response.

  “Oh Caddock, don’t be silly!” Lilibit giggled and patted it farewell before climbing over the back fence and dropping onto the path beyond.

  Lilibit knew exactly where she wanted to go. In the east, her mountain, the one that looked misty and blue in the morning, called to her, as it had for months. She did not know how long it would take her to walk to her misty blue mountain, but she knew that’s where she wanted to go. She made up a song
about her stones and their Mother and she sang it as she pattered along the path through the woods.

  The grass, it is so cold,

  My feet, they are so hot,

  The Stones, they warm my toes,

  The Earth, it warms my heart;

  Though I’m all by myself,

  I’m never all alone.

  For deep inside my pockets,

  I’ve always got my stones.

  The song may not have sounded very good to grownups, but deep under her toes, the Earth hummed along.

  The path opened out on Willow Creek Road. She trotted down the street and, with a sigh, paused before the Lin Su house.

  Now, as far as grownups in the neighborhood were concerned, the Lin Sus’ house was very grand and impressive.

  Lilibit was not impressed.

  As far as the grownups were concerned, the Lin Sus’ yard was a major disappointment. Lilibit was not disappointed, but she was disturbed. When the Lin Sus purchased the house a year ago, they’d torn up the luxurious green lawn, and replaced it with an “architect-designed” rock garden. The neighbors might sniff and roll their eyes at the “foreignness” of the landscaping, but what bothered Lilibit was the large grey stone they placed near one of the bedroom windows. The stone, a twisted and contorted lump of pumice, was more than half Lilibit’s height, but, like a sponge, was so riddled with airholes, it weighed no more than a few pounds.

  Four times now, Lilibit walked by the house and heard the stone screaming. Four times now, she dragged the stone away from the window, as far from the house as she could manage. Then, gathering soothing stones from here and there amidst the rock garden and adding several from her knapsack, she made a circle of friends around the screaming stone.

  Today the stone was back under the bedroom window. From inside, Lilibit heard a baby crying as he echoed the pain of the screaming stone.

  Lilibit veered off course to rescue the stone. Again.