Free The Secret Language of Stones by M. J. Rose

tried to locate its direction. Was it coming from above? I climbed the steps to the third floor.
    Yes, the sound was more pronounced. I walked down another long hallway, past rooms used by servants. At its end, in front of another staircase, I stopped to listen again. It seemed the weeping was still coming from above. Was that possible? Were soldiers sleeping even in the attic?
    I followed the crying through a warren of storage rooms and a last ancient stone staircase leading to the bell tower, the one remaining structure from the sixteenth-century church that had once stood on this plot of land. This was where, in the late 1500s and early 1600s, my ancestor, the famous courtesan La Lune, entertained her paramours, including the king of France and the famous painter Cherubino Cellini, the man for whom she learned the dark arts in order to regain his love. After he died, she became a celebrated artist herself and lived, according to the family legend, into the 1700s while retaining the appearance of a forty-year-old woman.
    As a little girl visiting, I’d been drawn to this very staircase. I would ask if I could go up and see the bell tower, but my great-grandmother insisted it wasn’t safe. Too old and too fragile to hold the weight of a person.
    â€œThe steps are broken, and you could trip. Inside the tower is only scaffolding now,” she’d warned. “If you even tried to walk there, you would fall right through!”
    My mother, overhearing this, would laugh.
    â€œBut what is funny, Maman?” I asked. “It sounds dangerous, no?”
    â€œYour great-grandmother told me the same thing once upon a time. And I believed her too. But it’s not true. You should see what is up there, it’s part of your heritage.”
    Over my great-grandmother’s protestations, my mother took me up the last flight of steps. Yes, they were narrow and steep, but also sturdy and strong. My mother told me three hundred years of bell ringers had tramped up and down them and the tower they led to was constructed just as well.
    At the top of the steps was a door carved with tiny bas-reliefs, each detailing an alchemical event and other amalgams of magick and religious symbols sprinkled through the rest of the house.
    I tried the door, but it was locked. But when my mother put her hand on the knob, it opened for her. Inside was an artist’s studio with marvelous murals of Cupid and Psyche on the wall. To an impressionable child their suggestiveness was titillating, but it was the book of spells, hidden in a concealed cabinet, that made the biggest impression on me.
    â€œWhy is it here if it’s so valuable?” I asked my mother as she turned its old vellum pages.
    â€œIt’s safer here than anywhere else. No one can enter this room except for a Daughter of La Lune,” she explained, telling me about the legend for the first time. But the way she told it frightened me, and I ran crying from the bell tower, down the steps, into the arms of my great-grandmother, who held me safe. Glaring at my mother, Grand-mère insisted the story wasn’t true and that my mother was just indulging in make-believe.
    That Saturday night, when I tried the door, it didn’t open. I stood still, frustrated, listening to the sound of weeping coming from within. The soldier’s plaintive cries sent chills through my body. I pulled my robe closer around me and leaned against the door.
    â€œCan I help?” I called out softly, not wanting to disturb him, and at the same time feeling certain it was important I let him know someone was offering aid if he needed it.
    There was no response.
    Focusing, directing my energy the way I did when I read the talismans for my clients, I tried the knob. This time it turned, and with a single creak, I opened the door.
    â€œCan I help?” I called out into the moonlit chamber.
    No response.
    I stepped over the threshold. Everything looked just as I remembered from