He had the face of a grimacing, dead-eyed statue. His skin was dark from the

decades spent outside in the elements, his wrinkles were deep. His bones were harder

than rocks.



For more than half a century he trained himself.



Each morning he would wake before the rise of the sun. He would pick up a heavy

stone, hold it to his chest, and jog his way up the mountain. Up the winding, sandy path

he labored until he reached the highest point. There he would attack boulders with his

hands, arms, and legs. He lifted rocks above his head, threw them, and he rolled them to

strengthen himself. He smashed his body against the hardened earth until the daylight

crept away. When the sun began to set, he would then take up his heavy stone again,

and jog back down the mountain.



Nothing would stop him from training. He did not participate in any festivals; he was

not a part of any celebrations. He worshiped no gods, and never went to church. He had

no family, no friends, nobody that he trusted. Nothing to stop him.



Even when the Blue Death came, he trained. The disease killed hundreds of others.

It almost killed him. He spent those days lying on the ground, in agony, slamming his

fingers into the cobblestone to harden them.



When he was injured, he trained. If his legs were aching, he focused on his arms.

When his arms were aching, he focused on his legs. There was no rest in rest.

He swung hammers. He carried lumber. He loaded himself down with buckets of water.

Whenever someone was building a home, or tilling their land, or digging a ditch, he was

there to help. Any excuse to work he took, and was there exerting himself. In the rain.

Outside in the burning sun. When the winds were cold, or when the air was heavy. For

thousands and thousands of days he trained. He spoke to no one.



His body was hard and unbreakable. So was his mind. Immovable, inflexible like

stone. He was dying.



He was coming down from the mountain. He stopped, and did not know which way

to go. The light was leaving. As he stood there, he realized he had forgotten the path. He

traveled this path every single day for nearly his entire life. He traveled this path in his

dreams. He could run this path with his eyes closed. Yet he had forgotten it. The sun had

set, and then he knew his life was coming to an end. Like everything else he had known,

he would soon fade away.



He was shorter than the younger generation. They had been raised on the grains

and vegetables from the farms that he had helped build. Few of them had known hunger

like he did. Some would watch him as he marched home from the mountain at night.

Some of them watched from homes that he had helped build. Everyone had at least one

story about Old Man Stone. He carried the water that saved their mother. He cut up the

dirt and planted crops when their grandfather was ill.



In the beginning the people were disgusted and afraid of him. He looked like a

vagrant who lived in the street. He was filthy, unwashed. When he came to this village he

was spat on. But as he aged, people came to see him as just another part of the small

town, as much a part of the area as the trees, or the hills, or the buildings. By the time

he was old, he was well-known. He was there for as long as anyone could remember.

He was part of the language. When someone complained of being tired, another would

say “You are here whining while Old Man Stone runs up to the mountain each day, happy

to break his hands.” He ignored them, he wanted nothing to do with anyone else. But

they saw him. Even if he didn’t think it, he was a member of the community like they were.





The effects his actions had on the village were meaningless to him. That’s what he

wanted to convince himself of. In a way, he felt pride in having helped these people. But

he never admitted it. He felt attached to them in the same way one might feel attached to

the birds in the trees they pass while walking. He wished them no harm, and didn’t

consider interacting with them. There was nothing to gain from it. They were part of an

almost separate existence.



His parents died when he was young. He did not remember how, nor was he ever

told. His uncle, who cared for his grandparents, took him to live with them. They raised

them.



The uncle taught the boy how to work on the farm. He helped his grandparents. He

would fetch water to boil for dinner. He would carry things for his grandmother when her

hands got too cold in the winter. When his grandfather forgot the basket lids back at the

house on his way to the market, the boy would remember for him, and bring them to the

stall.



The grandmother loved the boy. She would tell him stories each night, and always

made sure he was warm. The boy smiled at her every morning. She gave him sweets

and sang songs for him. She knitted his clothing, and gave him money each week so he

could save it to buy a toy. The grandfather was pleased to have an extra pair of hands to

help with the chores around the house.



The grandparents were getting old. They became forgetful. Over the years their

minds failed them. It began with them forgetting where they had placed something,

where they were going. Eventually they would ask who the boy in the house was, and

each time the uncle would explain it was his nephew. Then they would scream at him.

They would scream when they saw him in the house, thinking him to be a stray that had

come to steal food from them.



The grandfather was the first to die. He wandered out of the house one night and

froze to death in the street. It was then the boy had the thought that this is how he would

die too.



He was terrified of his grandmother. She became a repulsive hag whose drool

dripped off her chin. He was too young to understand that she was not in control of

herself, that her mind was rotting away. She didn’t notice that her husband had gone.

She would spit and shriek at the boy. She died because she would not eat. She

screamed that she was being poisoned. She cursed and clawed at the son and the boy.

The boy ran away terrified, and cried outside alone. She died in winter, with a horrid look

of anger on her face.



The uncle, because of his own despair, could no longer take care of the boy. He

gave him away to an orphanage. They walked all day to reach the shelter, and did not

come to its door until well into the night. His uncle handed him over, and that was the last

time he ever saw him.



The orphanage is where the child learned about hunger and the cold. They ate

small portions of boiled flour three times a day, sometimes with onion slivers or mashed

garlic, but only if one of the villagers had felt generous. This is what they ate every single

day. If they wanted fruit they had to steal it at the risk of being beaten. The cots they

slept on were washed once every few weeks, and the sheets were thin and frayed from

their constant use. They creaked and moaned with movement.



Those on the outside were disgusted by the urchin, the bastard. Here he became a

joke for the children that had parents. He was a filthy object to be mocked and taunted.

At night, the revolting face of his screaming grandmother invaded his memories. The

darkness felt haunted by the dead parents he never knew. The betrayal of his uncle

having left him here was with him every night. It wasn’t uncommon for him to hear the

orphan girls being raped. Late at night he would hear the rhythmic squeaking of a cot and

the muffled noise of a child crying. Sometimes in the morning he woke up to the sound of

sobbing. He knew that if someone killed him for fun, there would be nobody around to

care. At the orphanage he learned to distrust people. Here he learned how to hate.



This is where he was taught to master himself. A monk came to the orphanage

each week. He took children to the monastery, to show them a life that might keep them

from begging in the streets. The monk performed for the children. He was a giant man

that awed his crowd with feats of strength and dexterity. He bent iron bars around his

neck to entertain them. He juggled heavy rocks that weighed more than the boys and

girls. He could thrust his fingers into the bark of a tree trunk without feeling any pain.

There are two people responsible for the legend called Old Man Stone. Old Man Stone

was the second, this monk was the first.



When he was old enough, the monk took the boy to the monastery. The training

there was merciless and cruel. But he grew stronger every day. He grew up every day.

The monks fed him. They told him jokes. They taught him to juggle. They taught him to

play tricks with rope. He did not make friends with them, but they were friendly to him.

He appreciated these people, thanked them.



His world became improvement. He woke up every morning to continue his

exercises. The pain eventually became something as natural to him as walking or

breathing. It was part of his profession. This was what he did.



When the Blue Death came, nobody was safe from it. The monastery quickly

became filled with people tainted by the disease. The monks placed them inside and

used their own beds to support the infected. They brought them water and cleaned them.

Many of the monks became stricken themselves. There was no more room in the

monastery for anyone else, so they laid the bodies on the road. The sun was in his eyes.

The cobblestone below him was cold. He heard the birds chirping, and the haggard

moans of the people dying next to him. The monk who brought the boy to the monastery,

who saved his life and gave him purpose, died on a soiled cot.



His mother was dead. His father was dead. His family was dead. His mentor was

dead. And he almost died himself, exhausted and diseased on the ground. When he

recovered, he felt that if he ever allowed himself to give up on life, he could lay down at

any time and die.



The memories that scarred him were too much a part of the town. He could not live

here. Each day he saw the same images in his mind, each day they tormented him all

over again. So he left. He never went back.



He began walking early in the morning. He did not stop walking until the same time

the next day. He walked until his vision blurred. He walked until he broke a bone in his

foot. Each step was like driving his legs into the hard earth, hammering them out of

place, crushing his bones into the joints and grinding them together. Trembling as he laid

down in a ditch to rest, he fell and stared at nothing. He would drag his body until he was

ready to collapse again.



He fell by the side of some road and sat there. His legs ached. The pain in them

was a regular and steady beating. Although he was sitting on the ground it felt as though

he was still walking, stomping on the road.



In the street there was a vendor selling food. The young boy occupying the front of

the stand was frightened by the broken drifter standing in front of him. In a weak voice he

told him the cost of the meal and thanked the man for his business. Old Man Stone

handed away his coins. He purchased a soup and some bread.



He sat down by the road again far enough away to not be seen, and then

consumed his food. He was far enough away from the town now. His earlier life would

not find its way to him here.



By this time, his exercises were simply something that he did. They were something

that he had to do each day, like eating, drinking, or sleeping. He made a living for himself

by accepting any odd job that was asked of him. He was able to build his own shack

farther away from the other houses and that is where he lived for the rest of his life.



He wanted nothing to do with people. They would find a reason to betray him. He

would find a reason to hate them. They would try to kill him. People were monsters.



The fire of his will was fueled by hatred and hope. As a young man he would look

up at the sky each day and feel an inspiration inside of him. He would make his body.

One day, he hoped, he knew, this hard work would mean something. Every day he

trained, improving his endurance, his swiftness, his might. There was something great in

his future, he thought, he would just have to work hard enough to rise to the challenge

when it came. But he was old now. The future had come. And there was nothing waiting

for him.



There was no challenge for him to overcome. He spent his life in preparation of

nothing.



As he aged, now an old man, he noticed he had his grandfather’s voice. He could

hear it when he muttered to himself. He could hear it scream at him when his mind began

to crumble.



He sat on top of the mountain and thought hard about what he must do. He might

harm the people below if he ever lost control of himself. His entire reality was a grueling

exertion of the will over the body. He did not want to die like his grandparents. There was

no purpose to any of it. And he didn’t want to do this anymore. He finally had a reason to

end it.



The rocks at the bottom of the cliff were hard and cold. The fall from the top was

enough to shatter any stone dropped from it.



There was nothing more for him. He lived his life. Now it was over.



He was relieved that it was over. He no longer had to put himself through the brutal

motions of his daily training. He spent a lifetime in gruesome passing. He remembered

now the times his skin shredded off at the knuckles, he remembered how he broke his

leg and stood on the other one. He could finally set down the rock he kept with him for all

those years, and never pick it back up again. There was nobody left alive to hate.

Nobody left to care about. The only thing he had left was the sorrow he carried with him

all throughout his life, the heaviest burden he ever felt in his chest. Then, he let that drop

too.



He had nothing to show for his life. He had no fondness in his heart to look back on.

And now no pain either. Then he was gone. His head split open as everything went black.

He died far away from the village. They would never find, or look for, the body of Old

Man Stone. If he knew it or not, if he wanted it or not, he left his mark on those people.





The village carried on. People still talked about Old Man Stone. The older

generation told the younger about a disciplined wanderer who helped build their growing

town. As each generation faded away into the next, fewer people heard anything at all

about the man. He was forgotten. But he helped build the village, and it carried on.

