Monster - A. Lee Martinez [58]
“You know that?” asked Judy skeptically. But not too skeptically. She’d seen enough in the past few days to believe nearly anything possible.
“Of course I do,” said Lotus.
Lotus’s kitchen was large and welcoming. It smelled of fresh-baked cookies, and every surface was pristine and sparkling. Roosters and hens decorated the wallpaper, and there were a few knickknack shelves screwed into the wall with ceramic kittens on display. A few cats slept in the corners, under the quaint kitchen table, and on the windowsills. A large, fat gray feline sat on the counter.
“Ernst, you know better than that,” scolded Lotus. She lifted the rotund cat off the counter and set it down. He meowed in protest. Except it wasn’t a meow but an elephant-like trumpet.
“Don’t be like that. You know it’s not feeding time yet. Go on, now. Scoot, scoot.” She gently prodded the cat with her foot. All the other prime sleeping spaces were taken, so Ernst trundled his way out of the kitchen. There was no other word for it. He trundled. He swayed back and forth and his little gray tail swished lazily. It was hard to find a shadow, but Judy was certain the dim reflection in the shiny linoleum belonged to a miniature elephant.
“You must really like cats,” said Judy.
“I think I prefer parrots, to be perfectly honest, but it’s too late to start over at this stage. I’m sure I’ll grow very fond of them in a few hundred thousand years. I didn’t particularly care for primates at first, and that worked out all right. For a while, at least.”
Lotus removed an apple from the refrigerator, set it on a cutting board, and with a few deft cuts sliced it into six pieces. She offered one to Judy.
“No. Thanks. I’ll take a beer if you have one.”
“Sorry, but I don’t drink alcohol.” Lotus frowned very slightly. “Rather nasty habit. I can offer you some juice.”
“Pass,” replied Judy. “So what’s going on here? Where’s this stone thing that everyone keeps talking about?”
“It’s more than just a thing,” said Lotus. “It is the life force of the very universe itself. The stone is responsible not only for the birth of everything you would call reality, but for the continued existence of that reality. It is the beginning and end of creation, the great wheel of life, the endless serpent eating its own tail.”
“Sounds keen.” Judy never had much tolerance for that New Age bullshit. The tea hadn’t changed that.
“Yes,” agreed Lotus. “Keen, indeed.”
“So where is it?” asked Judy.
Lotus brushed aside the apples and held up the cutting board. She whispered a few words that Judy didn’t understand. The wood darkened and became a shiny black slate with swirls of blue and red.
“That’s it?” said Judy.
“You sound disappointed.”
“I expected it to be, I don’t know, bigger or something. So this is the most important thing in the universe?”
“Considering that there would be no universe without it,” said Lotus, “I have to say that’s correct.”
“And you use it as a cutting board?”
“It’s indestructible. My countertops aren’t. It also makes an excellent nutcracker.”
“A hundred and one uses, huh?” said Judy.
“No. Really only four.” Lotus counted them off on her fingers. “Cutting board, nutcracker, universe creator, and paperweight.”
“Probably could steady a wobbly table with it too,” suggested Judy.
“Probably,” agreed Lotus, “but that hasn’t come up yet.”
“Can I hold it?”
“Be my guest, dear.”
Judy took the stone. It was a little warm, though not exceptionally so. It vibrated too, but not in a truly perceptible way. It was more a vague sense of vibrant energy. Strange shapes carved themselves into the slate. They reminded her of Monster’s runes.
“What’s that mean?” she asked.
“Oh, just the stone reacting to you. It not only sustains the universe but records what happens within it. You hold in your hands the source of all knowledge. Everything that has ever occurred