By: Cynthia Pitman

to the Harmeling sisters, Fran and Lilah

My little sister has the Vision.
Born breach at midnight,
she was guided into the world
by the gnarled hands
of the old shaman-midwife.
When my sister wouldn’t stop crying,
the shaman spun a spell
and gave her the dual gifts
of calm composure and second sight.
A third gift from the old woman
now sits on my sister’s night table:
a jelly glass full of pretty pebbles.
Each night my sister selects certain pebbles
and forms a circle with them
on the floor between our beds.
She sits in the circle, quiet and still.
I sit in the middle of my bed,
just as quiet and just as still,
watching her:

She raises her arms
and summons the wind.
A gust blows through the window
and lifts the pebbles.
They circle around her head at arm’s length.
She spins them into story-telling mosaics.
Her low voice mutters her prophecies:
how the young couple down the street
will find a cursed treasure
of silver coins in the basement;
how the strange woman at the church
will have conjoined twins, one a mute;
how the shoemaker will lose his wife
then his family’s shop after sixty years;
how a plague will come to the village
and fell the guilty and the innocent alike.
She is always right.

The plague chooses to come for her first:
Sweat. Pocks. Unquenchable thirst.
A cold cloth pressed on her forehead 
turns limp and hot.
Aches. Cramping. Her legs won’t stay still.
A foul syrup is forced into her mouth.
Heaving vomit, then nothing
but bile and blood.
Muscles loosen. Veins turn cold.
Darkness falls upon her,
around her, through her.
She is still.

I cried for a hundred years.
Now each night I am the one
to select pretty pebbles from the jar
and form a circle with them on the floor.
I sit within and spin and spin.
Darkness only. Then it lifts.
I see my sister in the menacing path
of the blue mist:

She has awakened and found herself
in a strange land.
She lies in a gray stone tower
upon a bed of sweet pea clover.
All about her are bright colors.
But from afar, the blue mist begins to crawl in.
It alters the colors with its ominous filter:
yellow daylilies are dulled into green,
pink bougainvillea become fuchsia,
the green leaves of the trees darken to black
and seem to hang too heavy,
the slate gray of the tower rocks turns a flat navy.
Even the sky is a different shade of blue;
more blue has intensified it
into an almost unbearable indigo.
My sister must be strong
if she is to reign here, for her reign
is what has been foreordained.
She will wear the crown
of dark blue sapphires.
All will bow down.

But the blue mist
has muddled her Vision.
What she does not see coming down
from the blue mountain beyond
is an army of armored soldiers,
wielding shining shields
and swords of steel.

Thick blue mist steams
and overlays the battle scene.
Clashing of steel.
Cries and screams.
Bright yellow fire flames into green.
Red life-blood mists into deep purple.
Darkness falls. Eons pass.
The mist clears:

She stands in the middle
of a wildflower field.
No longer does she wear
the sapphire crown.
The remnants she managed
to salvage from her doomed reign
are assembled at her feet.
She wraps the silk scarf of royal purple
around her long blond curls
twirled in a circle atop her head.
She dons the white satin dress
and the cloak of ink-black cormorant feathers.
Her feet shod in doeskin,
she gathers one thousand brocade bags
she rescued from her stolen realm
and carefully stacks them
in the carved ebony wagon
she will pull behind her.
Then she sets out to every shore
to gather pebbles of every hue and tone.

When all the bags are full,
a thousand red-tailed hawks
congregate around her.
Each is given a brocade bag.
The hawks then take flight
and carry the gathered pebbles
to the deserted wildflower field
whence she has come.
There she meets them, empties the bags,
and sorts the stones by color and shade,
making a circular pebble palette.

She sits within the circle.
She knows I am watching her.
She can feel it, and so can I.
She raises her arms and summons the wind.
A gust lifts the pebbles.
She spins and spins
until story-telling mosaics
tell one hundred stories
of battlefield glories.
Her spun stories tell how this time,
it will be her armor and her shield
that are shining, blinding all other eyes.
This time, it will be she who wields
the sword of steel.
This time, it will be she who fells the foes
who seek the throne.

After her one hundred stories are told,
the pebbles fall to the ground.
She sits in spent rapture among them,
knowing now that her realm
will soon be recaptured.
Her stories will dispel the blue mist
and lay all strife to rest.
Her name will always be known:
she is my sister,
the Sovereign of Stones.

###

Cynthia Pitman, author of The White Room, Blood Orange, and Breathe, has been published in Literary Yard, Spirit Fire Review, Amethyst, Third Wednesday (One Sentence Poem finalist), Saw Palm (Pushcart Prize nominee), and others, and in anthologies Pain and Renewal, Brought to Sight, All This Sweet Work, and Nothing Divine Dies.