stone heart 2

Ted dressed and was sitting on the edge of the bed when she came back, which was something. She had a habit of picking the idiot—everybody was avoiding, from the party, nobody wanted to go to, bringing him home—and find it impossible to get rid of him. The chain and locket was sitting outside his shirt and she couldn’t help staring at it.

But she nipped around his feet and went to open the blinds, open the window and let in a little fresh air.

‘You’re wondering…’ he started to say.

She spoke briskly. ‘Aye, you’re right. Wondering when you were thinking about leaving.’

He ran his fingers through his hair and fussed it back into shape and took a deep breath before standing up and yawning.

‘Skedaddle,’ the tip of her tongue ran over the corner of her lips. The remote from the telly was on the unit and she picked it up and pointed it at the screen to stop her hands from shaking. The telly blared, it needed tuned in and always came on at full volume. Some crappy cookery programme was on. Very nice people bitching about other very nice people’s attempt at creating a three-course meal. She glanced at him to check if the sound had disturbed him in the way it had before. 

‘Right then,’ he stood boyish in dark shirt and narrow trousers, at stark odds with fuzzy wings and dire medieval warnings about angels of doom. ‘Don’t suppose I get a hug before I go?’

He took a few steps around the bed and leaned in towards her. She let herself be cuddled, tugged his shirt out of his trousers. Felt the skin on his back, smooth as a child’s as they danced small steps, finding the right balance to say goodbye. His hips and hands were a throbbing in her ears, a catch in her throat. His eyes locked on her and his lips pillows that rested gently on her mouth. They fell like shades across the unmade bed and fucked loudly enough to drown out the telly.

She was conscious of the thing around his neck bouncing and hitting against his chest, sometimes brushing against the skin of her back. When they lay back in her bed facing each other she reached out and held it gently.

She embroidered her seriousness with a high peel of laughter. ‘This thing makes you fuck like a school boy?’

‘Aye, among other things.’ He placed his hand between her breasts, the heel of it over her heart. ‘It can give you anything you like. Fame, untold wealth, houses, servants, like Prestor John,  a world to rule, even the loveliness of Cleopatra, but only of the counterfeit kind, for when the spell breaks all turns to dust and to dust we must return.’

‘Dearie me,’ she let go of the amulet and snuggled into his side. ‘You ask a daft question and you get a daft answer.’

He peeled away from her, leaning on an elbow. ‘I’m not asking you to believe me. I’m wanting you to try it for yourself. Taste and see, if the fruit is good?’

‘You’re beginning to talk like a bit of a fanny, noo.’ She tickled him and laughed at him, though his face remained serious. ‘Taste and see, whit is it, have you swallowed a poetry book, while I was sleeping?’

‘Of sorts. I see you’re scared and you have good reason to be.’

She clawed at his shoulder, but in a playful manner. ‘Gie me that thing then and I’ll put it on. I’m not scared of anything, apart from getting any fatter.’

He lifted the chain over his head, the pouch falling into his cupped hand.

Tipping his hand, he let her feel the weight of it in her palm. She put it on, the leather pouch dangled over her bare breasts making her feel risqué and rather daring, but no different.

‘Whit do I dae noo? Ask to fly or something?’ She shrugged. ‘Would I be a witch, with a broomstick, I’ve always fancied that malarkey.’

‘You’d be queen of the witches, if you’d a mind to.’ He shook his head and sighed, looking over at rain falling on the window panes. ‘No need for a broomstick. That’s stupid people adding in things, so they can make sense of what they see. Witches don’t need broomsticks any more than witches need wands and a pokey hat.’

‘Jesus, you keep saying stuff. I mean, I really like you.’ She fluttered her eyelashes. ‘But why can’t you be normal and talk like you did before?’

‘Wish I could, but there’s no such thing as normal.’ He stroked the soft skin on her breast and nudged the chain of the amulet. ‘Separation from the stone causes the kind of pain you’d feel as if somebody set you on fire. Once it was used that way, the holder of the stone shorn of it as a way of torture so cruel even the Inquisition could not think of anything better.’

She frowned. ‘You in pain the noo?’

‘No,’ he shook his head. ‘Nothing like it can be. Believe me, if you lose the stone, there’s nothing, absolutely nothing, you’d not do to get it back.’

She pinched the links on the chain and lifted it over her head, handing it to him, ‘Here, I don’t want it.’

He held it and his face hardened. ‘Here’s the rub. I do want it. But I can no longer keep it. There’s a peculiarity about the stone. The price of ownership always doubles for every wish you have fulfilled. And you must pay in blood – your own blood. And if you die while in ownership of the stone, the twin demons that inhabit the stone, Gog and Magog take your soul straight to hell.’  

‘Wow!’ She held her hands up in the classic pose of surrender. ‘I admit I like you, but not that much. I’m gonnae get up, have a hot bath, and some breakfast. And I’m talking the full works here, ham, eggs, sausages, beans, potato scones.’ She kneaded the back of her neck. ‘You’re welcome to join me.’ She waved a finger and shook her head, ‘I meant for breakfast.’ The looked at him and smiled, correcting herself again. ‘Well, maybe for a bath too…but dae us both a favour and no more talk of Goggy-Moggy and such stuff, and we’ll get on just fine.’ She shrugged, ‘Deal?’

‘No deal,’ he rubbed the amulet. ‘Ask yourself one question. How come we ended up on a date together?’

She looked around and reached over for her red silk robe with a yellow rose embossed on the back, it was wedged in beside the bed and cabinet. Pulling it over, sitting on the edge of the bed with her back to him she put it on, trying not to cry. ‘Don’t flatter yourself pal,’ her tone had a hard edge. ‘Was there nothing you like about me?’  

He pulled on his Y-fronts, stumbling and almost falling. ‘You’re looking at the world in the wrong way.’ Reached for his shirt, lying on the floor at window side of the bed.

‘How am I supposed to see it?’ she snorted. ‘I’m some kind of dog, you’re doing a massive favour by taking on a date?’

‘You don’t understand anything do you?’ He’d his trouser on, but not his socks, his shirt unbuttoned and he’d lifted the shoulders of the cord so the pendant settled just so on his chest. I asked the stone to find me someone that secretly cut themselves and was fecund so that I could impregnate her with twins, so she could bring the souls of Gog and Magog into the world for the apocalypse to take place.’

‘You’re batty!’

‘Em,’ he nodded in agreement. ‘And you cut yourself, don’t you?’

Her head dropped her hair falling over her face. ‘Yeh,’ she whispered. ‘Only sometimes, very, very rarely, when things get a bit much for me.’

‘I understand.’ He sidled up and sat on the bed beside her. Flinging an arm over her shoulder and pulling her in tighter.  ‘Really, I do. I cut myself too. But the difference between me and you is I get something out of it.’

She looked sideways at him through her hair, feeling the warmth of his hand on her shoulder. ‘I get something out of it too, smart-alec, I feel better about myself.’

He stroked her thigh. ‘I must tell you then. I am old and death is almost upon me. I fear Gog and Magog for each time your wish is fulfilled the shadow of the demons passes through you. They will surely drag me to hell, whether I live or die, but I’d like a little time to prepare myself apart from them. But they are jealous Gods, they will not let me go unless someone stands in my place.’

‘You mean me?’

‘I’ve no more blood. I’m all bled out.

A sob escaped his mouth. But he quickly composed himself. Ducking his neck he took off the amulet and held it in his hand. His left thigh pressed against her leg.

She watched him wave his right hand over the pouch, before undoing the draw strings and taking the stone out.

She was surprised because it was blue and flinty. It seemed no different from thousands of others she could have picked up on a beach without really looking. She bit back on a smile and tried to keep on a serious face.

He passed her the piece of blue flint.

‘Thanks,’ she couldn’t help giggling. ‘That’s awful nice.’  

He fiddled with his collar and pulled out a gold hat-pin. ‘If you feed the stone with a drop of your blood, you must say the words, “Gog and Magog...” and tell them what you desire and they will do your bidding.’

She took the pin from him to humour him. Made a fist and jabbed sideways, at the crest of the thumb. She lifted her elbow and squeezed her thumb letting a drip of blood fall onto the stone.

He jerked her hand away and the stone fell onto the floor. ‘Jesus,’ she said. ‘I’ll never find it noo, with all that junk.’

An ashtray, coke tins, plastic yellow pencil sharpener in the shape of a love-heart and a bottle of red wine lay a askew with hankies and socks and other detritus under the bed. He was already scrambling on his knees, howling.

He calmed a bit when he found the stone, holding it out, an offering in the palm of his hand. ‘I must warn you now, by oath, if you say the words and ask for a wish it will be granted. But I will no longer be keeper of the stone. You will. And the weight will feel a heavy yoke on your neck and heavier on your soul…You understand?’

‘Aye,’ she grabbed the stone off him. ‘Gie me it. I wish I could lose some weight. I wish I was a size 12.’

She glanced down at her massive boobs and her chunky thighs and shook her head laughing, feeling like an idiot. He’d really got her going. She looked at him now with renewed admiration. There was no magic, but he was a magician, making her believe, for a second in all that guff.

He did not share in her good humour. ‘No, you must say the words just as I told them to you. “Gog and Magog” …’

‘Right,’ she said. ‘Gog and Magog, I wish, I wish, I was a size 12’.

She finished saying the words and her breasts that she was always wedging in with her chunky arms disappeared, in their place was the tits of an adolescent and her arms and legs were like a young girls. She bounced up, better to get a look at herself in the mirror she kept behind the set of drawers she kept her oversize clothes in