It started high on a moor. It remembered the feel of the stone. Its stone. Cool, damp moss, soft, loamy soil, an earthworm struggling through the compacted earth beneath it, something with many, tiny legs skittering across the craggy surface. Time passed.

The world moved a round it in a way that it hadn’t known for ages, not since the very earth thrust it up upon a mountain and the Great Ice came across to scrape it down to the moors below. Now it was moving, moving, faster than it had ever known. Gravity pulled it downward; the new forces lifted it upwards. Upwards over grass and wood; the trees that had been carved and wrestled into shapes for the new creatures to use to climb. Upwards over stone, other stone, that had already been bent to their will with chisels and hammers. It was placed in a storeroom. Time passed.

A chisel was set in. Markings; swirls and icons, markings and runes. It had been pared down to a shape that pleased the creatures; a keystone to a huge arch, beset with protective and much loved markings that bestowed power and guardianship. Guardianship. Yes, this was its place now. It was to guard. Ropes were looped around it, and for a brief moment it knew the freedom of swinging in space, of a kind of flight, before it was settled into its new eternity at the apex of the gate arch. Time passed.

Evil spirits and malicious fey were no match for it. The power in its core granted by the warmth of the runes and the love and power bestowed by them kept all of them at bay. What it could not keep at bay, however, were the hands of humans. Human hands that made it; human hands that unmade it. Chaos screamed around the arch that held fast until the madness ebbed. The coppery warmth of some new liquid was on it; not rain. Not wine, like the time a ceremony had called to offer thanks to the stone for its many years of protection. There was copper, but also iron, magnesium, so many tiny bits of familiar minerals in the thick, viscous fluid that was now drying on its surface. Time passed.

Flight, again, but a more familiar form; falling. It knew falling, this was a sensation that it had only felt ages ago, long before The Raising and The Carving. The impact was rough and left a crack along one of the few faults in the stone’s surface, but it wasn’t deep. Voices were around, but without urgency. These were thinking voices; planning voices. They appraised, they complimented. Good voices. The kind of voices that it had not known since The Carving. Now it was in another store room, the familiar cool, damp darkness a pleasant reminder of being deep in the earth. Time passed.

The strike and scrape of chisels were a familiar sensation across its surface, knocking away dust, moss, and rat droppings that had coated its surface after time spent in the storeroom. These chisels were not guiding divots and curves, however; they knocked away huge chunks of stone. More and more stone was gouged away until a hole went straight through it. More and more – were they destroying it? It could briefly feel the loss of chunks of itself laying several feet away before they lost their connection to the core stone and were gone. Another hole. Another chunk. Another corner. More and more was pared away from the stone; more voices, more thinking and planning voices. The stone was lighter than it had ever been, wind and fingers touching places that had never known light or touch by anything in this age. Tunnels had been carved out; it could feel the missing pieces that bored through thin, arching parts until it realized that the arching parts branching off into smaller, more delicate arching parts were in fact replicas of the things that held the chisels that had shaped it. There again was the feeling of weightlessness as it was lifted and moved out into the bright sun, out into the sky, upon the parapet of a castle. Once it was in place, time passed.

The castle was busy. It bustled with life, with war, with death, with joy, with weddings, with funerals, with festivals, with plague. It was vaguely aware that it could see it all; the carvers had bestowed what it had come to know as ‘hands,’ but also a ‘face’ which had ‘eyes.’ The fault crack caused by the fall from its arch now ached. It had a place to ache; it learned it was called a ‘back.’ Words had meaning the longer time passed and the more it watched the ‘humans’ from its parapet, the more they made sense. It watched everything from its perch, and somehow grew a fondness for the strange things that had carved it and given it a ‘heart.’ It wore the ‘heart’ with pride; not that it had a choice, for it wasn’t as though it could remove the colorful paper banner and embellished ribbon heart on the sash that adorned its – and every other carving’s torso – for the festival. This festival was different, however, and music and laughter turned to screams and wails as the invaders set upon the castle. Fixed as it was, unable to move, it watched the destruction unfold below. Someone – one of the castle’s family, he realized – had run up the tower with its offspring to escape the carnage but was followed, They backed up towards the edge, backing up against his stone with so many words. These words were not thinking or planning, they were fearful. The invader’s giant tool rose, and when it fell it chiseled into the humans with sickening efficiency, splashing the mineral rain-not-rain across his stone with a familiar, grotesque warmth. Time passed.

The castle was dead. It had been for some time now. Grass grew from between the few remaining stones in the few remaining walls, and the other stones that were shaped like him were long gone, worn down by rain and wind or stolen by humans for some unknown purpose. He saw them come and go from time to time, usually the little ones – ‘children’, as he understood – but occasionally the big ones. Today it was the big ones that visited him. They wore thick clothing and had heavy tools and ropes. They spoke more words of planning and thinking but held no chisels, only thin sheets of pulverized wood with runes that he did not recognize scrawled on them. “This is the one,” one said. “Get the ropes around it, get it in the crate.” There were a few grunting noises of effort – they lifted him with much more strain than the ancients had, and he was bigger then. Had they somehow gotten worse with lifting tools? Silly humans. The crate was padded with hay, and darkness swallowed him as it was closed. There was a sensation of movement, and time passed.

Up, up it was lifted, and he was acutely aware of swinging and movement, and more talking, talking all around him.

“This is heavy as fook I tell ye! Why’s the dashin’ bastard makin’ us move it at night?”

“Enough with the bellyachin’, haul on the lead and keep it tight. If this thing swings intae a window we’re done!”

“No no, not that one, the lead, the lead! Right fookin’ – oh for Chrissakes!”

There was chaos around him as he felt his pedestal settle into place, locked in by gravity and what felt like a piece of metal through the base. Iron and carbon, it felt like. A new combination he wasn’t familiar with; he’d only known copper and bronze and plain iron. He felt secure though, and as he settled into his new position over the imposing doorway of the manor home, he heard more voices below.

“Is it in place? I paid a hefty price; it’s an irreplicable antique.”

“Antique it is, but I remember playin’ on it as a wee one. We used to take turns runnin’ up to pat its bloody head on a bet. ‘Angry Allie’ we used tae call him, on account o’that scowl – “

“Charming. I asked if it were safely in place.”

“Aye, Lord Stahs, got it up safe and sound. But he didn’ bring much luck to his last castle, and ye oughta know it’s dashin’ bad luck to have one of them on yer home, m’lord. Doubly so with Prince Albert’s passin’, god rest his soul. It’s dashin’ bad luck to be decoratin’ so soon after – “

“I’ll bear that in mind. Have a good evening, gentlemen.”