Castings 02 - Deep Water by Pamela Freeman

Author:Pamela Freeman
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Orbit
Published: 2010-04-14T17:06:07+00:00

Auroch’s Story

I NEVER WANTED IT. When I were a nipper and my mam told me the stories about stonemakers who were chosen to find a new stone, I thought, I hope that don’t happen to me. A new stone coming into the pouch means the world’s going to change, because the stones and the world reflect each other, although which is the reflection I’ve never figured. I wondered, sometimes, how stonecasters could walk around so easy with the world hanging at their waist.

Changing the world seemed too big a thing for me. Too scary. So. I were right there. Maybe it picked me because I didn’t want it. That’s likely. That’s how the gods work. Or maybe I was just the only one nearby. There’s only three of us stonemakers living, after all. It runs in families, like with my mam and me, and somehow it only goes to one or two in a generation.

Stonemaking’s not all I do. Stones can’t be bought or sold, only given. Just as well. A good stonemaker might make twenty sets, their whole life, and Travelers aren’t the richest customers, so you’d never make a living.

I’m a chimney-maker by trade. You might think that any builder can make a chimney, but once you get more than one fireplace on the flue it’s an expert job, and the best builders know it, and bring me in for that part of the job.

Turvite’s got so big we are half Settled now, me and Cricket and Grass, our daughter. Winters here, summers on the Road. It’s in the summer that I find the stones. Up north, mostly, because the northerners like chimneys made of river stones, and I go collecting. River stones are good for about half the casting stones. They carry the changing elements: Birth, Death, Chaos, Travel, Growth. They whistle and sing and hum to me as I handle the larger chimney stones, and I slip them into my pocket as gently as a bird lays moss in her nest.

The rest I find as I go. The harsh stones call strongly: Murder, Betrayal, Anger. A good Jealousy stone is the loudest of all. The last one I found fairly shouted at me from the side of a track way up near Mitchen, a flint in a field of chalk.

I don’t like finding the harsh stones. The cry they make in my mind is as nasty as their meaning, and I get a headache for days afterward.

Now the puzzling thing about stones is that they don’t all like each other. Each new stone has to pick its set, and some of them are very choosy. I had three sets building at the time this happened. Two almost done, waiting for a couple of stones. One of those needed only the blank stone. Another one just started, with only three in it; the ones that always come first when a set starts: Birth, Death, Rebirth. The blank stone is always last, and that tells you the set is complete, even if it doesn’t have every single stone you know exists.

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