Born of Stone
By Sylvia Schwartz
The sculpted elephant began as a rough, fist-size, light gray stone from India. No feelings. No thoughts. No notion of what it might become. But within the steady hands of a young boy carving, etching, and smoothing its surface, the stone felt itself come to life.
This elephant also wasn’t born alone. Cut into this stone were six small elephants, three parading along each side like offspring determined to keep up. Then the boy did something remarkable. He chiseled a baby elephant inside her, visible through half-moon and tear-drop-shaped openings in the elephant’s stone hide.
But it wasn’t what she became that brought her to life. It was the boy. How he held her. The familiarity with which he knew every part of her—the warmth of his breath as he leaned close to polish her pointed tusks, score lines down her trunk, and deepen the circles that defined her eyes. Her feelings were new, knowing only this wondrous beauty of creation. Only when he stopped did she feel the air circulating through all the places he’d chipped away, making those missing parts of her more noticeable.
She didn’t know that she was made to be sold. Sadder still—on the day the boy held her high in the air for a busload of tourists to see—she learned she was no different from all the other elephants this boy had crafted.
And while she was chosen by a man who carefully bundled her in his clothes for a long flight home, she longed for something she could never have. The boy to have kept her.
She ached for the boy, knowing there was no way back to him. No way to recapture that spark of connection when it was just the two of them. Unable to articulate her woes, her memories remained trapped in silence. Do humans, she wondered, experience this anguish? Themselves, unable to voice a profound loss?
Each day, the elephant sat on a neglected bookshelf, hardening herself until she finally knew what it felt like to be as cold as stone.
THE END
Author Bio: Sylvia Schwartz studied literary fiction at The Writers Studio and One Story in New York. Her stories have appeared in several anthologies and have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She has been published in The Dillydoun Review; Page & Spine; The Write Launch; BOMBFIRE; Bright Flash Literary Review; Ariel Chart International Literary Journal; the Potato Soup Journal; Savant-Garde; Bold + Italic Magazine; Bull & Cross; Edify Fiction; The Airgonaut; The Vignette Review; and The Rain, Party, & Disaster Society. She is an assistant editor at Narrative Magazine and can be reached at www.sylviaschwartz.com or @aivlys99.