This week I wrote a proper short story in my genre. I’m going to try to write more stories like this that are in the world of the series I’m developing as a way to explore the characters and setting.
Titanus, the rock golem, sat at the edge of the forest with his knees pulled up into his chest. For the many months he waited, he could have stood just as easily as sit, but in this position he looked more like a loose pile of boulders at the foot of the mountain. One might not even notice him, except for his red ruby eyes, a kind of magic jewel called an uvomae.
Without these eyes, Titanus had the intelligence of an average rock, and with them he had the intelligence equal to the sharpest of stones. He could follow instructions to the tee as long as the instructions were simple enough for a child to understand.
Titanus' brain worked at different speeds depending on what he was watching. If a bird settled on his knee, it moved as most birds do, too fast to see as it jumped from one position to another. But if the bird started gathering twigs and building a nest on his knee, then his mind would slow down and the bird would seem to move in larger jumps, laying eggs to sit upon, then feeding and raising the baby birds to maturity in a quick succession of images. Rainstorms would pass in the blink of an eye, and an entire day could pass as if the Sun were being raced like a chariot.
Things had been so dreadfully dull as of late that Titanus saw the tree trunks expanding and spreading their branches as they sprouted leaves, before the leaves all turned colors and fell all at once.
Titanus stood as a sentinel to the Cave of Lamentation which the Kingdom of Teridatta used to store important skeletons. People were brought to the cave once in a while so they could raise their voices and beat their fists against the stone walls until they had finished their lament and grew quiet. They would find a place away from the other bones and lay down until they too became bones.
1
This is how the wizards explained things to him. Titanus would stand guard and make sure no one interrupted the lamentations.
He had stopped a few men who had tried to interrupt the people in the cave. They yelled things like, “I’ve come for you, my love!” Not too many men would approach him on purpose, but once in a while they would come singly or in number. Once he caught a group of five men who came with swords. Swords were a bit like cousins to him and would sing when they struck his body. He reacted with care not to break the swords or the men’s’ bones, and mostly squeezed the soft bits until the men went limp.
His mind had been moving at its fastest speed to make sure he didn’t damage the men’s bones and swords too badly.
A large round boulder stood in front of the Cave of Lamentation. The boulder stayed with Titanus during his guard duty. At times like this when only the bones remained, Titanus would take the stone for a friendly walk around the woods. He pushed with his massive arms and legs, even though this was unnecessary. He was friends with the boulder so he could ask it to shift its weight around and roll it any direction by making it heavier on one side and lighter on the other. But he was told to keep this ability secret since it was his finishing move. He could use itto protect the cave as a last measure.
Titanus would walk with the stone on a circuit in the summer months when the ground wasn't wet, covered in leaves, or crisp with snow.
As Titanus sat he felt a tremor in the ground and his mind returned to the present. He slowly stood in preparation and listened with the soles of his feet. At least a dozen men were approaching wearing full armor, accompanied by two
2
men on horseback. One was a war horse with light armor and the other a riding horse. Titanus knew all this before he ever saw them partly because of the vibrations in the earth, but mostly because he knew these men and their rhythm.
The men approached at a steady, somber pace getting closer and closer until they were outside the cave. They stopped as a unit and struck their spears and ceremonial flags against the ground two times.
From the center of the group a person was brought forward wearing a simple white gown and a black hood that completely hid their face. The soldiers liked to surprise the people when they brought them here and they would always cry out when the hood was removed.
As the person was turned around, a guard knight and a wizard rode forward and dismounted. The wizard—noticeable in his shiny robes, long white beard, and pointy hat—stretched his back with a series of cracks and groans. He walked up to Titanus and addressed him with a touch of pomp.
"Titanus Thebiratur. Please roll the boulder aside so that we may ensconce the prison—er, the subject."
Titanus nodded and pushed the boulder aside, asking his friend to cooperate as it moved across the hard, frozen earth.
The person was turned around to face the guard knight and her hood removed. Unlike other people brought here this one did not scream or start crying from the surprise. She stood tall and faced the guard. Titanus could now tell she was a woman because of her long hair and prominent ridge across her chest.
3
The guard knight unrolled a scroll and began to read. "Arylya Aetherius, you have hereby been banished to the Cave of Lamentation by order of His Majesty, the King, for the crimes you have been convicted of which are hereby listed.” He read for a minute silently. “There's a list here we can skip. And, ah yes, if you have any last words of remorse, speak them now so we may record them for posterity."
She smiled and bowed slightly as best she could with her arms tied behind her. She rose again and inhaled sharply before delivering her address. "Write this on your posterior: Get bent over a nail, you pompous ass."
This was a traditional greeting heard often in taverns. Titanus had heard it quite a few times himself in his early days when a drunk would stumble across him during the night watch.
As the soldiers carried the woman into the cave, cut her bonds, and withdrew, the wizard spoke to Titanus again. "Titanus. please roll the boulder back over the entrance of the cave so the subject will be undisturbed during her lamentations." The wizard pulled out a piece of paper with instructions. Golems were devotedly loyal to their maker. Despite this, there was a quirk to the nature of a golem that kept them from being fighters in war or soldiers in an offensive. They could only be ordered to protect, never to attack.
As with most security measures, there were clever workarounds.
"Titanus, you are hereby ordered to guard the Cave of Lamentation and protect the subject, Arylya Aetherius, during her respite from society. No doubt she will scream and plead for you to let her out. You will ignore her. This is her way of
4
testing that you are listening to instructions. If any of her friends—or in her case—devoted paramours comes to resc... disturb her seclusion, you will smash them to bits. Only as a last resort, if you are about to be overpowered, can you move the boulder in that way you do, and then only use it to crush those who would overpower you. Do you understand your instructions?"
Titanus processed the request and nodded. The wizard had previously asked Titanus to not verbally acknowledge his orders since it took him so damned long to reply. Even the nod was a painfully long nod, but the wizard, the guard knight and the soldiers didn't stick around for his head to bob back up. They marched away with a bit less grandeur as they grumbled about the cold, each hastening at their own pace to return to the side of a warm fire.
Titanus listened for the lamentations, but was surprised to hear nothing but calm breathing. Titanus "hmmed" with a long, deep breath that sounded like logs being ripped in the distance, but then returned to his "on duty" stance carefully turning his head and eyes from one direction to the other, scanning for disturbances. Despite his vigil, people always seemed to come from the opposite direction when his head was turned. This was bad luck on his part.
Eventually the woman called out to him. "Titanus Thebiratur is a very nice name. You're a rock golem aren't you?"
"Sorry, miss. I'm not allowed to talk to you, as you well know."
"Of course, I understand. You know, you have very beautiful eyes. On the market I've seen one uvomae half their size sell for 400 gold coins. I would say yours must be worth one platinum each."
5
No reply. Titanus thought about his eyes and thought about how much they would be worth. Two platinum coins must be valuable since his eyes meant the world to Titanus.
"All that is to say, I think you're quite a valuable asset to just leave standing about all day. Do you know why they imprisoned me here, Titanus?"
No reply.
"I'm a witch according to the men of the chancery. Do you know what makes me a witch?"
No reply.
"A witch is a woman with the power to disobey. That is all. We have a lot in common, you know?"
No reply. The woman stopped talking after that, but Titanus was a bit bothered. As a golem he was made to obey. Yes, he was powerful, but this was why he had to obey. Otherwise he would become a monster. Even when he would ignore orders to attack or cause harm, it was because he was obeying the words of binding inscribed on his eyes.
Titanus mulled these thoughts over as the night settled into place along with the now falling snow. You might think that Titanus would see the snow fall in a moment, but for some reason that only logic can explain, he saw the snow falling in the same way he saw a bird stopping by for a visit—in vivid detail as each snowflake settled into place on top of the others. He liked to count them.
6
They would fall on his body and melt from the subtle warmth he generated. His head especially would generate steam as he tried to track the snowflakes moment by moment, the numbers rising and falling intermittently as a few hundred snowflakes fell to the ground and a few hundred more would fall into view.
The woman spoke up again. "Listen, Titanus, I know this is the oldest trick in the book, but could you let me out for a moment so I can take a piss? You may not be aware of this, but we humans—witches, too—we have to... never mind. I won't go into detail. But let's just say I can't do it in here. It's unsanitary."
Titanus did understand. The wizard who made him had explained during his training that he shouldn't follow anyone into the bathroom. He knew all about humans, like how they eat food, breathe air, and use the bathroom.
"Titanus, you don't have to talk to me. But if you happen to want to say something, you could always say it aloud where I might hear it."
Titanus thought this over. True, that wouldn't break the wizard's instructions. He tried it out and found it worked. "We don't have a bathroom in the area." He stated as a bald fact.
"No problem. I can always run behind a tree. There's no bathroom in here, either. And I wouldn't want to make a mess of this sacred place. What do you say?"
"That would be acceptable," he said to no one in particular. After all, he was just meant to protect the subject during her lamentation.
7
He rolled the boulder aside and Arylya stuck her head out surprised at the amount of snow. "Wow, it's been busy out here."
"Much snow has fallen, but I’ve lost count," Titanus said to no one on a topic that had simply come to mind just then.
"I'm going to go behind that tree," Arylya said. As she moved over to the tree Titanus followed, ready to bring her back to the cave for protection… if she forgot to return. She spoke in a sing-song voice. "Would you mind not looking?"
"I must stay with the subject to protect them," he said generally.
"Well, let's make a compromise then. Let me hold your eyes in my pocket while you stand guard."
Titanus didn't have to think hard about this request. There were no instructions prohibiting him from removing his eyes. No one had asked for them before, but they were easy to remove. He popped them into the palms of his hands and held them out. The moonlight disappeared as Arylya slid them into her pocket. He could still operate as long as they were kept nearby and weren't shattered, and as a rock golem he could still sense vibrations in the ground and air.
"You really are a wonderfully trusting thing, aren't you? You have such a sweet disposition. It’s such a shame they leave you out here by yourself." The light came back as Arylya pulled his eyes out from her pocket and smiled. She climbed up onto one of Titanus' arms. "Oh, you're so warm. I hadn't expected that." She placed the rubies back into his eye sockets saying, "This is fun. It's almost like I'm putting the finishing touches on a masterpiece, isn't it?"
8
Arylya returned to the entrance of the cave and turned back towards Titanus. "I'm heading back in, but do you have anything for me to eat?"
"Humans eat food. Titanus remembers that. Wizard Belarus would eat four and two-thirds times each day on average.” Titanus stated these facts in a rather chatty way. It took half a minute to say all this and most people would have interrupted him by now. “If anyone nearby were to eat, I wonder if they would also want four and two-thirds meals each day."
"I think they would be fine with two or three meals per day."
"Titanus can provide three meals each day." The woman, Arylya, climbed down from Titanus and walked back into the cave, bowing deeply toward Titanus. He rolled the boulder back into place, but still the woman did not begin her lamentations.
Titanus stayed within sight of the cave entrance while searching for food, and it wasn't until the next morning that he rolled aside the boulder and presented the woman with a horned rabbit laid out on a piece of bark with some lichen as garnish. The horned rabbit had a pebble-sized hole in its head.
Arylya was laying down in the back of the cave, and Titanus thought perhaps she was preparing to become a skeleton, but she sat up as the light appeared. She yawned and stretched her arms above her head. “Oh lord, I needed a night’s sleep. Thanks for putting me up.”
"Good morning," Titanus said, projecting into the cave. "It is a good morning. I say good morning because I feel like it, but if anyone nearby wants to say good
9
morning back, I cannot control what other people say."
"Good morning, Titanus. Breakfast looks lovely. I can see you put some care into the presentation."
Arylya began to skin the horned rabbit with a sharp stone and rend its flesh with such ease, no one would have doubted her status as a witch. She popped the morsels into her mouth and licked blood from her fingernails. As Titanus began to withdraw she stopped eating for a moment. "If you could gather up some wood that I could burn, I would appreciate it greatly. Even as a witch, I need some warmth so I don't perish. I have had to become a witch, you know, in order to survive. But even witches have limits."
"Arylya does not want to perish?"
"Not anytime soon."
"I wonder what it means to perish."
Arylya thought about how to explain this concept in simple terms. "I would cease to be. I would turn into one of those piles of bones." Arylya pointed to the skeletons in the cave.
"Arylya would become bones. She would not cease to be." The golem scratched at his head as he had seen the wizard do many a time.
"I would stop being myself. That is what it means to be dead."
10
Titanus looked over to the bones and reached out with his mineral sense. "The bones are not dead. I can feel them. They are still lamenting."
"I see. Maybe they have some sort of life to you. But here, place your hand upon my bosom." Titanus reached out and placed his hand across her bust. "Do you hear my heart beating?"
"Titanus hears heartbeats. I can hear them beating. Is that not dead?"
"Yes, I am alive."
Titanus listened to the heartbeats and counted them as they vibrated through his palm. He heard the whisper, the true words that could never be broken. There was no decision to be made. "You and your heartbeat must be protected. A golem cannot allow an innocent to die. Those are the words inscribed on my soul."
Titanus found fallen branches and broke them into pieces as Arylya instructed. Then he rolled the boulder back into place. Titanus did not see Arylya start the fire, but she didn't take long getting it going. How does a witch start a fire? I don't know how it works for all witches, but I can tell you that a beautiful witch like Arylya has no problem at all. She just smiles and the wood obeys—is happy to self immolate—and will joyously involve its neighbors in the pyre as it hums happily to itself, "the pretty witch smiled at me."
She had built the fire in the back of the cave and now sat next to the entrance. "O, Titanus, Titanus! I've made a terrible mistake. I've filled the cave up with smoke. Do you know what breath is?"
11
Titanus sat with his knees pulled up. He did know breathing. The wizard Belarus had explained that he should not stop anyone from breathing unless he was protecting someone. The wizard had then shown him many ways to stop someone breathing. It made his eyes itch now as he thought about it.
"The fire will make you not breathe?" Titanus had forgotten to address no one in particular.
"The smoke will poison the air. I should have asked you to leave the door open."
"I see." Titanus spoke to the boulder with sounds too low to hear, and it rolled away from the door and across the snow. Arylya was surprised to see the boulder roll away while Titanus sat still beside the entrance. They were on opposite sides of the entrance, and neither moved for a while.
Arylya noticed his sparkling eyes were now throbbing dimly. “Are you okay, Titanus?”
"Titanus was tricked."
"I'm sorry. Yes, you were."
"Titanus was not protecting the people in the cave."
"No, you weren't. You were… you were not protecting them. You were tricked."
Titanus had never felt a weight so heavy in the decades he had stood at the entrance to the cave and counted the bones.
12
“I… I don’t know what to do. I must obey the words. My maker broke his words.”
Arylya stood and brushed her dress clean of any dirt. "I think I'm going to take a walk. Away from the kingdom." She followed the path the boulder had made and stopped before the heavy snowfall. She turned back towards Titanus. "Weren't you told to protect me?"
Titanus nodded. Slowly, he stood, walked over to Arylya, bent a knee and held out his arms. "I should carry you. You should rest." Arylya climbed up into Titanus' arms and allowed herself to be carried away like a princess from the kingdom. They followed a large boulder that moved on its own through the snow.
"I've had an interesting life, Titanus. I know this because I'm told this all the time. Do you know what a seductress is? That is the type of witch I am. This makes me the most beloved and most hated of all witches because I have the most fun. I shall tell you of my adventures, and we shall keep on going until the story ends."
13
AUTHOR’S NOTE: Looking over my notes, I wrote the first draft for this story in about five hours over a day and a half. When I sit my posterior down and do the dang work, I find it comes surprisingly easy. But man, getting myself to start writing is like pushing a wobbly boulder uphill.
For this story I started with an outline I worked out on a whiteboard. I mapped out the pages, placing story elements on the page and then fleshed out the passages, placing about three passages per page. Like so.
Element: Titanus, the Golem
Passage: The stillness of the rock golem and its observations at a long time scale
Element: The Cave
Passage: Introduce the Cave of Lamentation, the bones inside and hint at how those bones get there.
Element: The Stone
Passage: The golem's only friend, a large stone stood in front of the cave.
I like discovery writing, but I also like this method. It helps give each element its own space and time in the story.