KINGDOM OF THE STONE -- a Wattpad featured novel

Chapter Twenty Four

"I'm sorry I don't understand," Jomel said.  "Just what is happening here?"

They were only able to wake three of the elders with the woman's help.  Once they were awake, however, she lay back down and went to sleep.  No one else seemed willing to wake and the children wouldn't even stir.  The three elders, suddenly overcome with thirst, staggered from the shelter but were too weak to draw water for themselves, turning to their visitors for help.

"We're dreaming.  We're all dreaming," gasped the first elder pushed away the water bucket Arnion had held for him as he drank.  He looked like he had once been a large, heavy-set man, his flesh now hung loosely from his thin body.

"But what about the stone?  What does it do?" Jomel asked.

"It speaks to us while we dream."

Karux involuntarily touched the stone pendant hanging from his neck and looked back into the structure's shadows.  "What does it tell you?"

An old bald man, who seemed to lack every other tooth smiled.  "It shows us the future!"

"What kind of future does it show you?" Karux asked cautiously.

The third elder, whose hair and beard stuck out in all directions in sparse long white tufts, gazed up at them in wide-eyed wonder.  "It's wonderful!"

"Is your whole korion in there?" Jomel asked.

"Yes," said the first man.  "I should go back."

"Wait," Jomel dropped a hand on his shoulder, nearly pushing him to the ground.  "Who tends your fields and your animals while you dream?"

The saggy man brushed off Jomel's hand irritably.  "We take turns gathering food, but we've discovered we don't need as much food as we once thought we did.  That is one of the things the stone has freed us from."

"What else has it freed you from?" Odo asked.

"Fear, worry, anxiety... the stone gives us peace and hope."

"Hope for what?" Karux muttered.

"The future!" The bald man smiled again showing his pale gums.

"I have a stone that shows me the future as well," Karux said touching his pendent.

All three men stared at his stone in amazement.

"Then you know!" the saggy man said.

"Know what?"

"The joy that awaits us all," the sparse-haired elder said.

"That's not the future I've seen.  I saw monsters and blood and death."

The men frowned at him.  "I don't think I'd like those dreams very much."  The bald man made a sour face.

"These weren't dreams.  These were true visions of the future.  Some of them have already come to pass."

The saggy man put a sympathetic hand on Karux's shoulder.  "You should throw that stone away and dream with us.  Our dreams not only show us the future, they make the future."  He gave Karux a slow nod and a knowing look.

"I'd like to see this stone," Karux said.

"Come."

The three men rose and shuffled unsteadily toward the shelter.  Karux, Jomel, Arnion and Odo followed.  Inside, the three elders pointed proudly to a sawed-off column of a tree trunk on which the dark rock sat.  Up close, it looked vaguely like a melted face.