Story Prompt Friday: The Orphan Who Clung to a Stone

Coming to you from Whidbey Island, Washington this is Stories From Women Who Walk with Story Prompt Friday and your host, Diane Wyzga. The other day my longtime, dear friend and storytelling galpal, Michelle, asked me if I’d like to take over an expiring domain name. Why would I be interested in that? Because the name, Storywerx, was what we called ourselves, a troupe of storytellers who came together when I offered to teach a semester of story skills. We kept on learning, growing, and  eventually performing stories together. I’d not thought about Storywerx in years although a few of us are still in touch. A little older, a little wiser but still storytellers at heart and in practice. I was trying to remember a story that a gentleman in our troupe had told during a Storywerx performance. I vaguely remembered it having something to do with the teller’s past. It was a story about an orphan boy who brought a stone to life. Here’s a secret: the more you get to know a storyteller and listen to the stories she is telling, the more you will get to understand her life and why that story is being told at that time. Meanwhile, leave it to Michelle to know what I was searching for. I’d like to share the story with you as we walk each other home.   Once upon a time there lived a little orphan boy who was so lonely and so hungry that no one wanted to be near him. His mouth was always open, his teeth were always showing and his tears were always flowing down his cheeks. He was such a wild child—wild with hunger and loneliness—that the people in that village had to tie him down at the entrance to one of the skin houses so that he would not try to eat the hunters on their way to the seal hunt. That’s how hungry he was. Sometimes the people of that village would leave him bits of reindeer or seal meat but nothing would satisfy his hunger. As we know it was something more than hunger that was gnawing at him: those deep needs that not even the person themselves understands. Every day the boy stretched his chain a little bit more and a little bit more until he could get near a smooth round stone that was about his size. You see, his mother and father had died one night and their bodies dragged off by bears. All that had been left behind in the skin house where they all had lived was this one large stone. In time the boy got close enough to that stone, so close he was able to wrap his arms and his legs around it and would not let go. Of course his people thought the child had become quite mad. On their way from the hunt with animal carcasses slung over their shoulders they would jeer at him. They would say look and say: Annuk has taken a stone for a wife! It’s good for you to have a wife who is a stone so you cannot use your hunger to eat her. The boy was so hungry and so lonely that he finally reached the end of feeling for his life. He kept his body wrapped around that stone and the stone began to take the heat from his body. The boy began to die as the stone took the heat from his hands, from his legs, and even the heat from his face where he rested it on the stone. Just as the boy was living his last breath the hunters of that village came by on their way home from the hunt. Again they shouted to him, Boy! You are like a bird nesting with that stone like it’s an egg. We should call you Bird Boy! You are good for nothing. Near death the boy shed great icy tears that rolled down his cheeks and those cold cold tears hit the hot hot stone with a hiss and a crack and the stone broke open. Inside was the most perfect little girl the boy could ever want. She said, I am here for you now. You are an orphan no more. She gave him a bow and arrows and a harpoon. The boy and the girl made their house, raised a family and if they are not yet dead they are in that land where the snow is violet and the night sky is black. They are living still. Story Prompt: Recall a time when you felt at your lowest ebb and yet a deep intuition sensed that the darkest hour is just before dawn. And with the dawn would come what you needed to find your way back home. Write that story and share it as you will because we are all walking each other home.   The Stone Child - An Inuit Story from Warming the Stone Child by Clarissa Pinkola Estes You’re invited: “Come for the stories - stay for the magic!” Speaking of magic, subscribe & spread this episode  with a generous 5-star review & comment—it helps us all—& join us next time! AND!  Stop by my Quarter Moon Story Arts website during reconstruction, email me [[email protected]] to arrange a no-obligation Discovery Conversation, and stay current with me as Quarter Moon Story Arts on SUBSTACK. Stories From Women Who Walk Production Team Podcaster: Diane F Wyzga & Quarter Moon Story Arts Music: Entering Erdenheim by Steve Schuch & Night Heron Music ALL content and image © 2019 to Present Quarter Moon Story Arts. All rights reserved. Enjoy my work? Share & attribute it to Diane Wyzga of Stories From Women Who Walk podcast with a link back to the original source.