Stillness.
It was stillness Lara had seen in the block at the quarry. An unusual stillness. A thousand figures standing within one stone—all in perfect silence. She knew she could release only one, though all seemed to vie for her attention. The final figure would choose her when the time was right.
Lara’s tanned arms were flecked and powdered white from the day’s work as the sun lowered to meet the hills. Her biceps, shoulders, and forearms were taught as she hammered away in her studio yard. There were days of chipping, raking along edges, shards of stone shooting in arcs aimed for her eyes. Lara’s hands and arms ached, her eyes burned behind protective goggles, and every nerve vibrated from the hours of rhythmic ringing, metal to marble.
When thirst overtook her will, she stepped aside for a moment into the shade of a nylon canopy. She took several cold gulps from her metal water bottle setting it down empty with a hollow clang. Chalky dust swirled and slowly settled at the statue’s unformed feet.
She shook her head. It wasn’t right.
Not yet. . . But the picture in her mind would come clean. It always did. Lara pulled off a dusty bicycle glove to place her palm at the figure’s cool heart. There would be a rhythm. “I always find it,” She said aloud, eyebrows bunched behind her mask.
It continued to allude her as she smoothed the lines of hip and shoulder she knew would hold true. The hidden figure remained silent and still. Doubt lowered itself into her neck muscles and tightened at the back of her skull. Lara pushed back, filling her mind with the words of acclaim she had received for her marble dancers, her archer aiming toward the sun, her stealthy lioness, even the simple maiden hefting water from a well. They had each come to life beneath her hands. Their faces, their souls, reached out to her at just the right time.
Not this one. How was she to capture the stillness she had seen when she felt . . .
Nothing.
Nothing. Where are you?
It began to anger her. Lara paced around the marble block, only a vague sketch of a form standing before her. It taunted in its self-righteousness. Eyeless. Faceless. Defiant.
Rage began to boil in the muscles of her thighs. It rushed up her spine in an electric shock she could not stop. Lara’s body tensed before the stone’s pure arrogance, rational thought blocked, until her own arm flung itself back catapulting a full force slap to the unformed cheek. Flesh collided with stone, a loud pop, a tiny puff of dust, but the cold unmoving marble remained unaffected.
She fell to the ground, twitching and writhing, clutching the throbbing hand to her chest. Tears welled and pooled, trapped in the corners of her goggles.
As minutes passed, the pain slowly dulled. Keeping the wounded hand pressed against her own heart, Lara pulled at the elastic strap and lifted her goggles, peering up at her work-in-progress. It stood aloof above her, its smug expression. . . Wait.
Her heart leapt. “There you are!”
The face appearing behind the surface of the stone had deep set eyes, a serene look, a knowing hint of smile. Her arms were folded loosely, legs relaxed and yet ready to move forward toward her. There was something unkind in the potential she saw there.
Lara’s eyes grew wide, her jaw loosened, her mouth fell open. She fixed herself to the task of releasing this singular face among the thousand. But as she reached for her hammer on the table, the chisel lying beside it, an army of wasps stung at her palm. A glance confirmed, the offending hand was already swollen, hard as an apple. She could not open it to grasp the hammer.
The face behind the stone kept right on smiling its offset smirk.
Weeks. Months. Years crept by between the surgeries, therapy, more surgery. Time chewed hard at Lara’s body. Arthritis crept between the joints in her fingers, then crusted and closed every space within her wrist, her elbow, her shoulder, until every movement became excruciating.
She would do anything to get her hand back, to feel the precision of hammer and chisel again, to manipulate the sharpened picks and scrapers between her fingers, to shape the marble and finally reach the intimate stage of wet sandpaper baths that would at last transform stone to smooth white flesh. In desperation, she tried treatment after treatment, draining her savings drip by drip—ultimately to no avail.
Still young and seeking to distract herself from her disability, Lara studied opera. She trained her soprano voice until she could perform every note of Bellini’s Casta Diva, but she was rewarded no acclaim. The critics said there was no heart in it. No matter what she did, the unfinished mischief in the stone’s formless face remained relentlessly hidden from all but Lara. She carried the smirk behind her eyes. It blurred every human face from her vision. No real friendships could sprout from the marble dwelling in her heart. Every touch withered cold.
Lara died alone, incomplete.
Almost a decade after her death, a devoted student, Fernando came upon the unfinished work at the back of her studio yard. He hauled it here, to this small obscure reflecting pool, where it stands alone. In stillness.
Do you see the many hidden there, or the smugness in the smile? Does it anger you?
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Note
This story was begun based on Scoot’s Flash Fiction Friday prompt from April 17th.
Thank you for reading.