The Hunger Stone

It was the worst drought that we had known in living memory.

Da’s harvest was dead on the stalk, and he’d harvested it early solely for what little fodder he could salvage. Our village wasn’t rich enough for cows, but everyone was eyeing the goats. If any showed signs of sickness, they were immediately slaughtered and eaten.

The chickens were long gone. Any who still had eggs they’d saved were viewed with great suspicion, even though we knew how long they can keep on the rat shelf.

Ma was crying again. She had been whispering to Da about which ones to sell, and she was looking at my pretty sisters first – and it would send her into floods of tears again. If only they weren’t salty, we could water our fields for a week with them.

I’d been sent home when they closed the university. We’d gotten something approximating a meal whilst in session, but now? I starved with the rest, though I’d likely be one of the last survivors. It was bleak.

Peter had been sent home with me. Our village had been so proud, sending not one, but two, scholars to University. The thought of the parties that sent us off made me salivate.

The baby wanted a cuddle, and I didn’t have the heart to say no. Ma’s milk had dried up a month ago. We still had a milch goat, but the other was just a lingering aroma in the stew pot.

The baby finally drifted off to fitful sleep when I dribbled a few drops of goat milk into its poor mouth. Last time I visited, that tiny mouth had been like a little rosebud. Now, it was a dried, wrinkled raisin. I handed the poor thing back to Ma, who looked old, so old.

I got restless. I didn’t want to sit here, watching my family die by inches.

“I’m going out,” I murmured, and slipped outside.

As always, I went down to the river.

Peter was already there, also as always.

We stared in shock at the river. I had never seen it so low. There were muddy puddles where the village folk were scooping water, but it was a river of rocks. A merciless sun beat down, when it really shouldn’t. It was late October. We should all be out in the fields, beginning to reap wheat. Not... this. A harvest of dust.

Peter’s eyes were sad.

“Cecily died last night,” he said, matter-of-factly.

I sat on a rock with a thump. His sister.

He ground tears into his cheeks with the back of his hand. “Da hasn’t gotten out of bed in two days, and Joseph’s got the sunken eyes. Ma sold Henry and Lisabeth to the Baron, and you know how he likes to play with young ones. But at least they’ll be alive, she says.”

I shuddered.

“How are yourn doing?”

Funny how one goes back to the dialect, being home. “Not good. Ma’s thinking of selling Mary, and maybe Judith.”

“I think I would rather die.”

“Watching the rest die doesn’t seem much better, I don't know.”

“I do. I’ve seen what happens to the unripe bodies, boys too. It’s horrible.”

“Your studies are weird.”

“And over. The village can’t afford to send either of us back, and I don’t think the village will last the winter. Even if the Baron let the kids come back, rebuild with his castoffs, what we know as life is done.”

I stared at the river. “As the river goes, so do we.”

“Ever the philosopher.” He sighed, pointed his nose at the largest rock in the river. “The hunger stone. You can read it. Want to visit?”

I nodded. We sat up, dusting ourselves off. There was dust everywhere, under the drooping trees.

Any other time, this was a boat ride to the river’s middle, and the rock that stood as sentinel and warning. I knew there were lines and words scribed on it during drought, our granthers talked about seeing some. So we stepped and scrambled a bit, cupping and drinking a bit of water here and there from the clearer pools, knowing we were courting a nasty disease if we chose wrong. It didn’t seem to matter, in light of our predicament.

The shadowy side showed the lines, and the carvings.

Peter pointed to the topmost. “1417. Water your fields, if you wish to live.”

I read the second one. “MDCLXVI. Um, that’s 1666. If you see me, weep.”

Peter was on the third. “1681. If you see me, dig a grave.”

And the fourth, and last. “1616. All you love will die.”

“Ugh, that’s grim. Thank goodness there are no more.”

I squinted. “No, there’s one, right at the water level.” I got closer, trying to read the words. There was a longer script than the others. “Is this Latin?”

“Let me see.” My Latin was better, but Peter has always been more eager to try, so I let him. He traced the letters, and I wrote them out on a piece of slate, with another rock used as a stylus: LEGE ET MORI SED OMNIA ALIA VIVA O FLVMINE INVNDATIONE! CREO QVOD DICO. We stared at my scribble.

As a rough translation, it would mean, “Read and die, but all else lives. O river, flood! I say what I mean.” That last part is how Roman magic spells finish, kind of like how “fiat” is used today.

“Bad Latin.”

“And remember, those V’s are actually U’s.”

“Yes, I think I can recall,” I said dryly. How else was I supposed to say it?

“I’m going to speak it. What have I got to lose?”

I pointed to the MORI. “We’re in the middle of a river. If you wish to die, by all means, but I don’t want to be stuck with you here when the river floods. As low as it is, that’s a lot of flooding. But, I’m a man of science. I don’t think it’ll work.”

“So?” Peter’s eyes were strange. Haunted, mad. “I saw my sibs dragged off screaming. I’d rather not see another buried tonight. So run, or stay, if you’re so learned. But I’m speaking.”

And he snatched the slate from me, and shouted, “Lege et moria sed omnia alia-!”

I was quite skeptical, but my feet believed. They turned and fled.

As I ran, slipping on smooth stones and dust with an occasional splash in a puddle, and I heard the chant end. And nothing happened. I would have turned back, but my feet were having none of it, and kept running as best they could.

I heard Peter scream, “WHY DIDN’T IT WORK?” to the sky, and some muttered curses. I presume he was studying the slate, rolling some phrases around.

My head was pounding, my heart was pumping. I couldn’t stop.

Suddenly, I heard, “Aha! Oh flumine, inundatione! Creo quod dico!”

The sky turned black in an instant.

Water geysered from the pools that still held water. Rain sheeted down, raindrops hitting hard, feeling like rocks, they were so big.

I gasped and ran harder, not being able to see. I tried to slow down, because I could no longer see where I was going. My feet didn’t care, though I was grateful they seemed to know the way. I didn’t get stuck, or wrench my ankle.

The bank was just as slippery when I landed, and I crawled up its slick surface. I was splashing in water, and I realized the river had risen so fast, it was trying to pull me back in.

I crawled faster, pulling myself out of its sucking grasp.

I stumbled home, staggering like a beaten drunk. The rain drops stung, and I was sure I would have bruises on the morrow.

I could barely see people gathered around the well, no longer dry. It was already filled. They gaped, at me, at the sky.

My family was there. Even Mary and Judith. Peter’s family looked ‘mazed, but I shook his mother gently. “Your children! Get them back as soon as the rain stops!” I had to holler in her ear, but she heard me, and understood, her lips now in a rather terrifying grim line.

I hid in a doorway. The rain felt like punishment.

The river flooded, of course. So much water slamming onto such dry ground was bound to cause problems. The root vegetables revived, eventually. We would be sick of turnips come spring, but we would live.

So many trees fell, that we had firewood through the winter.

But I never saw Peter again.

Only once, did I go back to the hunger rock. Its tip jutting out at all seasons was rebuke enough. I dove down into the cold waters, and chipped PETER W MCMXI above the magic spell.

I never told the villagers about the words, though I did say we were caught in the river when the flood came. They seemed to think him a hero anyway, and mourned him as such. I wasn’t in much better shape; those promised bruises were quite real. I couldn’t move for days, even though everyone else claimed the rainwater tasted like elixir of life.

I miss you, Peter. I toast you silently, daily, as I sit here in resumed classes.