The House of Sunken Stones

Amongst the honeysuckles and butterfly weeds dotting the vast green meadows, there stood a house of stone that could hardly be called a home. Nonetheless, it was a home— at least, to the young stonemason, who considered it so.

Perhaps it may have been the natural tendency of a creator who so naturally develops a special partiality towards his own creations, just as a sweet child who proclaims their very own potpourri of dried rose petals and crushed leaves as a magical healing potion, or the tender mother who believes that her plain gaunt-looking son is a fair handsome prince.

But even an ample amount of generous appraisal can never transform a gecko into a mighty dragon, nor a kitten into a majestic lion. Still, the young stonemason’s house remained an uninhabitable house. Its sinking walls hardly held the structure intact, and it looked as if it was a hair's breadth away from entirely collapsing and being swallowed by the firm grounds of the Earth.

Its holes and cracks were no longer restorable, while its foundation had long been due. How rickety and ruined it was, that even the homeless fox squirrels seeking a cold night’s rest shunned it, favoring the dark grimy hollows of the gnarled trees in its stead. Surely, if the poor house possessed a soul of its own, it would be one that has grown weary and tired.

However, the present is often an unreliable indicator. It does not disclose the entire history of an object nor a person, and it is merely but a mirror of the changing times. As such, it should be a staggering revelation to the reader that the house wasn’t always a dilapidated mess of engineering monstrosities, and in truth, it was only a series of misfortunate events that led to its current unsightly state.

Rather, the unhomely house wasn’t always unhomely. Before, it was an ordinary house, though not exceptionally remarkable of its own build. And the ordinary house wasn’t always an ordinary house. Long ago, it was only an unsuspecting plot of land fixed upon the grassfields. And this plot of land happened to be come upon by the young stonemason, who nevertheless wasn’t always a stonemason.

He was once but a plain unpolished boy who had been born into a lineage of exceptionally gifted artisans. His father, a wealthy mastermason who built splendid cathedrals and towers that reached the skies, had personally trained and taught him the craft of stone, along with his seven other brothers.

And once the principles of stonework were engraved in both their hands and hearts, he gathered his sons by the fireplace in the sitting room. All eight circled him around as he sat on the throne of his velvety Chesterfield armchair. And so, he commanded them, ”Go set forth and build your very own houses of stone. Soon, our legacy shall spread as the best stonemasons across the entire lands.”

Upon hearing this, the young stonemason disembarked with only a knapsack of a few selected belongings, a mind that stored all his father’s endowed knowledge, and a pair of leather boots that were to take him to faraway places. He set out north, while his first brother set out east of north, and the second set out east, and another set out south of east and so on.

He journeyed both by foot and wheel, and both through land and sea. And on the seventh day of his star-guided expedition, he had reached a lively settlement framed by the greenest meadows on all sides. Its backdrop was a range of ice-cap mountains and not too far, was a sparkling blue river that infinitely stretched.

He felt that this place should be his new home. The villagers all merrily welcomed his arrival in the plaza, feeding him with barely wine and coating him with fine wool. Even the lord that ruled over the domain had stepped out of his castle. He was a mighty and generous lord that offered a prized possession for the right price.

The lord asked the boy, “What is it that you seek?”

”I seek for a land upon which I shall build my home,” the young stonemason professed.

”And what is it that you have to offer?”

“Something that I shall present to you very soon.”

To this, the lord replied, “Very well, I shall look forward to it.”

And after a week has transpired, the young stonemason appeared before the lord’s doorsteps with an exquisitely carved statue made of polished stone. It was a life-sized replica of the lord, complete with all the intricate details of his noble physiognomy— each curve can be smoothly traced by a finger and the lines were precisely etched with an eye of precision. Very pleased was the delighted receiver of this gift, that he had offered the young stonemason any land of his choice, as long as it was unmanned and did not yield any gold nor diamonds.

And so, the young stonemason quietly settled on the outskirts of the town, where nature was his only neighbor and the sweet whistles of crested canaries his only music. Amongst the endless curves of the meadows, he began plotting and marking the basic silhouette of the house on top of a gentle slope teeming with wildflowers. Then, he managed to dig a trench and fill them with quarried rocks from a nearby river. Spring passed like a gentle breeze and by then, he was finished with the groundwork.

__

On one sunny afternoon, a fascinated farmer happened to come across the site. He was grazing his horned piebald cattle when the young stonemason caught his eye. He tied the animal to a nearby tree and sprinted across the meadows toward the boy.

”Good day! Whatever is this curious thing that occupies your hands? A princess’s castle? A tower of a legendary wizard? Perhaps the enclosed lairs of a good-natured witch?”

”It is but a cottage, a humble adobe I will so gladly call my home,” the young stonemason answered.

”Wonderful!” exclaimed the farmer.

”I have toiled day and night, collecting stones from the riverbed. But alas, the foundation is done and I will shortly begin on the construction of its walls.”

Upon hearing this, the farmer’s face darkened and his bright smile was cast away. ”A rriver? By chance, you don’t mean the river that curves like a serpent and rhythmically flows as a dreamy lullaby?”

”Why, yes! It is indeed the river that curves like a serpent and rhythmically flows as a dreamy lullaby. It is only half a mile north.”

”Terrible choice!” The farmer cried. He continued, “That river is cursed and damned. Ten years ago, it flooded the embankments and the surrounding plains, an unfortunate crisis which has stolen my dear children from my arms. And it is bound to do so again, whenever the blue comet makes its centennial orbit and reminds the river goddess of her dead lover’s eyes.”

Finally, he ended the tragic tale with a stern warning, “I had willfully neglected the legend, only to end up in deep sorrow and regret. Do not choose to commit the same mistake!”

But the young stonemason only replied with an apathetic laugh, “Worry not, for the troubles you speak of are to come in another ninety years. And by that time, I shall no longer be around to be even bothered with.” He added, “Besides, I have already gone so far. It would be a disgrace to my worn-out hands and aching back if I should waste my previous efforts.”

The farmer’s face drooped and he turned his back from the boy. ”Be it so,” he softly whispered. And thus, he dejectedly went on his way back home, drawing the leash of the cattle on his hand.

The young stonemason did not concern himself any minute longer with the ominous remarks of the newly met stranger. He dismissed it as nonsense and carried on with his work and by the end of the year, he had erected four sturdy walls assembled from limestones. He secured the gaps with the mortar he prepared from wet clay.

In a timely fashion, a second visitor arrives and his entrance was declared by the clip-clopping of hooves. A wheeled ox-cart carrying a dozen wooden beams stops by the foot of the hill and a flat-faced young man with auburn hair alights from the box seat.

“The news of a recent settler has reached my ears and how delighted I was to hear that it was none other but a fellow artisan. A master of stone and a master of wood: are we not elemental brothers born from mother nature’s womb? It is only natural that I should offer my assistance. I believe that these items will be greatly favorable to your endeavors,” he explained as his stubby fingers signalled towards the pile of wooden beams on the transport.

The young stonemason was gratefully overjoyed, “However shall I repay you?”

”Your honorable and good acquaintance will suffice,” the woodworker assured.

Surely enough, the wooden beams were a favorable addition to the house which was slowly taking its shape under the mason’s skilled hands. Now, the only lacking part was a roof to shield him from the downpour of the heaven’s wrath— her pouring tears of rain and glaring rays of sunlight. For this matter, the young stonemason forged a vast dome. He crowned the cottage with a canopy of overlapping slates.

“At last!” the stonemason exhaled in relief as he triumphantly beheld his finished creation.

For a short while, the stonemason was able to relish the warmth of his newly found home. But not longer than a month has passed when the wooden beams began to crack and split under the weight of the roof. The four heavy walls also began caving in.

He carefully inspected the joists and found out that most were infected with tiny beetles that left trails of powdery dust. ”Dear heavens!” he vehemently blurted out upon his troublesome findings. A haunting realization soon daunts him: nothing is free and he has been tricked by the woodworker!

In fact, the woodworker was propelled by a surge of jealousy and greatly feared that the villagers would soon prefer the boy’s stonehouses over his log cottages, thus endangering his occupation. Therefore, he sought to thwart the stonemason’s great plans— he could never allow the boy’s talents and expertise to come to light! And how unluckily did the forces of evil soon prosper, because the news soon spread pertaining to the house of crumbling stone and its sloppy workmanship.

Scarcely had the poor stonemason recovered from the betrayal when he woke up to another confounding predicament. The soil had turned increasingly wet and the house was sinking. Suddenly, he recalled the farmer and his far-fetched tale. Though initially doubtful of the story, he had no choice but to go to the river and inspect. And sure enough, it was indeed the river’s doing.

”Mighty river, why have you forsaken me?” he pleaded in distress.

The river responded, “You have scraped out my insides and robbed me of my stones. At first, I reluctantly allowed such atrocities because I thought that I had made a friend out of you— your visits I looked forward to and sometimes, you’d even sing me a hymn or two. But it was all a deception! How swiftly you departed, leaving me alone after you were done using me.”

”I apologize! How shall I make it up to you and soothe your suffering?”

”Nothing I should think of. Leave me be and time shall do its own course of healing wounds,” the river firmly decided. Instantly, all the ripples ceased and the waters remained still as if it was an unliving creature that did not breathe. Despite the young stonemason’s appeals, the river remained placid and did not utter a single word.

—

The flood was now knee-deep, yet the stonemason did not budge an inch away from the house. He remained caged inside its crumbling walls, for he was busy patching up every hole and bailing the muddy water out— a routine he had developed and flawlessly executed every single day for about a year.

The exhausting practice had reached his limits and stolen the vigor away from his youthful countenance. He has grown old and unrecognizable— an unkempt beard dangled from his hollow face and his tired eyes were framed with dark circles underneath.

When the concerned lord came to pay him a visit, he was unable to discern the once spirited face he had formerly met from the lifeless creature that answered him at the door. He was but a shell of his former glory.

“My child, you must leave at once. There is no reason for you to stay: doing so only prolongs your pain!” the lord once began after seeing his horrible living conditions.

The stonemason refutes, “But there is plenty of reason I should remain. I do not wish to abandon the fruits of my hard labor— for the last three years I have dedicated my heart and soul to this house, even sacrificing my youth in the process.”

“Believe me I can fix this,” he added as his hands were fiddling with an open wound on the roof. It had began violently raining and the water gushed in the breaks, leaving him drenched.

“You are no better than a trapped ghoul that dwells in a haunted mansion. Except nothing really constraints you: you are only a prisoner of your own mind.” The lord added, “It is not always that the captain should go down with the ship. It is perfectly alright to abandon a sinking vessel,” And he once departed from the house.

The lord’s words echoed in the stonemason’s head. Until that night, it reverberated like the buzzing of a striped bee. And when he fell asleep pondering about it, the stonemason was wistfully carried back to an early spring’s memory in the form of a dream. He once found himself seated on the foot of a bed beside his mother who bore a gentle countenance and the grace of a wisteria in bloom that same season. Her delicate hands were occupied in arranging the precious commodities belonging to a mahogany-finish jewelry box.

Originally, the young boy had never loved ordinary stone: he was more interested in his mother’s jewels. Unlike the dull stones his father was working on, the jewels shone brightly as precious angels stored in his mother’s treasure box. Inside its velvet finish, there laid an array of amethyst, freshwater pearls, rubies, amber, and rough diamonds. When given the chance to behold pieces from the collection in his tiny hands, he stared at them for long periods of time with a gleam in his eyes that matched that of the precious gems.

Once, he even drew an amateur sketch of a crystal palace made of marble, diamonds, and colored glass. He ventured to impress both his craftsman father and mother alike. Proudly, he displayed his work— only to be met by ridicule.

“Foolish child! Such houses do not exist,” his father angrily cried.

—

Pitter-pat. Pitter-pat. The stonemason awoke to the drops of rainwater hitting his face. The leaks on the roof were once again reappearing.

“This won’t do,” he muttered to himself.

But instead of attending to the repairs, he simply gathered his knapsack and set out of the house and vowed to never return. The path he sought was long and winding, and even he did not know where he was being whisked away to. But he did know in his heart, that for once in his life, he steered away and retracted from the footsteps of his blood predecessors, heading in every direction, east, west, south— but never north as he was intended to.

He thought, I could build a thousand stone houses, but it would never truly become a home for home is where the heart is, and mine was never set in plain old stone.

When the dark night enveloped the skies, he stopped and rested at the foot of a tree.

I was worried that I would become homeless once I left my house. But now that I lay on my back with the wind gently caressing my hair as I watched the stars across the dome above, I realized it isn’t so bad after all. It is a thousand times better than restlessly sleeping under a roof I fear could collapse at any moment.

Slowly he drifted away. And when the dawn broke, he once awoke and set out to build a crystal palace made of the finest marble, diamonds, and colored glass.