The Secret Language of Stones by M. J. Rose Read Free Book Online Page B

entrances to Paris’s subterranean world. I’d heard stories of people who wandered for days, never finding a way out, who were buried alive in an avalanche, or who died taking a wrong turn and falling down a shaft.
    It’s easy to get lost. Once, after an air raid, I decided to explore, thinking maybe I could discover the source of my unease about going underground. I unlocked the door and ventured into the mine.
    Missing a turn, I spent over an hour trying to retrace my steps, my panic building. Suddenly I heard a loud and terrible noise. I took another step and looked into a cavern converted to a tomb. The deafening sound seemed like a nightmare come to life. The catacombs were clearly the source of my torture.
    Starting in 1777, in reaction to health problems caused by overcrowding in aboveground cemeteries, the city started to exhume bodies and rebury the dead in some of the empty caves. Over six million were buried in the ossuaries, and I’d stumbled upon one of the chambers.
    Standing on the threshold, I stared at the skeletal remains, bones arranged in a macabre design, the source of the thunderous noise, the cacophony of terror and tears. Here resided the last thoughts of so many who had died in pain. Their suffering trapped in their bones.
    Similarly to how I was able to hear the dying thoughts of the soldiers via the crystals in the talismans, I heard these poor souls’ final moments through the stone-studded earth. En masse, magnified, the storm of cries, curses, and calls terrified me.
    And yet, when the sirens rang out or Monsieur sent me down to the vault, my only choice was to steel myself and endure. The same way I endured the voices of the individual soldiers whose loved ones came to me, like my most recent visitor, Madame Alouette.
    I placed the box holding the envelope with her son’s lock of hair on my worktable, but I didn’t open it. Not yet. First I needed to prepare the object that would hopefully allow me to help her find peace.
    Sorting through two dozen chunks of rock crystal, I chose an egg-shaped orb about the size of my thumb. Once a month I brought the lapidary a dozen or so crystals, which he cut into eighths, like segments of an orange, and then polished. I did all the engraving myself. And although the work was painstaking, it absorbed me. While I sat at my table, all thoughts disappeared. I connected with my tools, and they became extensions of my hands.
    Sometimes, while scratching out the words and numbers and runes, I would crack a crystal, but the night of the tsar’s news, the operation went smoothly.
    On one segment, I carved Jean Luc’s name and the numbers of his birth date: 18/8/1890 . And the date of the battle in which he died: 8/7/1918 .
    Knowing his birthstone was a peridot, I looked through the assortment of stones I kept for the talismans. None of these were of the best quality. Because of what I do to them, occlusions don’t matter. I found a lovely rounded light lime-colored stone with a crack running through it, which made it ideal for my purposes.
    Hawaiians believed peridots were the tears of the goddess Pele, quite apropos for a mourning jewel. Placing the stone in a metal bowl, I pounded it with a small iron hammer, shattering it into fragments and then into powder.
    Next, I chased a chasm in the crystal, like a small stream, and filled it with the glittering green residue.
    Placing that section aside, I picked up another slice of the crystal and began to carve the Egyptian hieroglyphs for immortality, youth, and victory.
    I’d worked for two hours and was tired. Beneath my feet, Monsieur Orloff, Grigori, and Vanya were still meeting with their fellow Russians, trying to absorb and make sense of the fact that their beloved Nicholas had been shot dead. Did they find solace knowing he’d died honorably for his country? Did women like Madame Alouette find any solace knowing their sons had died for theirs?
    I finished all the