In a war-torn land, the queen had a habit of demanding her soldiers’ hearts removed, and replaced with hearts of stone, that they might serve her better. Only the finest of stone was quarried for her soldiers’ hearts: cuttingly brilliant diamond for her generals, lushly veined marble for other officers, granite for the rank and file. None of her subjects objected to this practice, which had been customary for generations.
For all the queen’s cleverness and the hardiness of her army, however, her realm was defeated by dragon-eyed conquerors. Foreign observers agreed there was not a great deal she could have done differently. The harvests had been poor for several years running, and the queen’s predecessor had allowed the treasury to run dangerously low with their love of lavish banquets.
One of the queen’s soldiers, more pragmatic than most, carried out the last of her orders and then deserted when she heard the palace had been razed, the queen captured and beheaded. This soldier shed her uniform for simple clothes and traveled far beyond her home’s old boundaries, until the people she met no longer recognized her accent. She was not too proud to do whatever chores came her way in exchange for food and hearth-warmth, a virtue her time as a soldier had taught her. As for bandits, she had little to fear from those. Even if not for her sword, a stone-hearted soldier is more difficult to kill than the ordinary kind.
In the course of her travels, the former soldier met people both good and wicked, people of all professions and philosophies. She became preoccupied with her own nature. She knew the reputation her kind had outside their land of origin, that they understood nothing of mercy or rage or the usual human emotions, even in the thick of battle; that they committed the most terrible atrocities without qualm if so commanded. Yet she knew returning to her homeland would do her no good. For one thing, she expected it was still ruled by the dragon-eyed invaders. For another, her heart of flesh had been consumed by the great and pitiless magics that had replaced it with the heart of stone. She had watched the ritual with the rest of her company.
The former soldier knew the sum of her deeds, both glorious and cruel. She had been a good soldier, as these things were reckoned. Yet she knew that a good soldier and a good person are not always judged the same way. Perhaps, she thought, if she could resolve the matter of her stone heart, her course of action would come clear.
Eventually she heard a foreign saying that all wisdom is to be found in the sea. She was skeptical, but she had always wanted to visit the sea—her old homeland was landlocked—so she set out. It took her the better part of a year to reach it, but at last she came to the stern cliffs and salt winds of the sea where, the locals claimed, the Sea Oracle sometimes deigned to receive petitioners.
Mindful of her manners, the former soldier had brought the best offering she owned: her sword, oiled and blessed by a wander-priest. She descended the cliff by a trail cut into it by former petitioners, careful of her step, and to the sand-lined shore with its scatter of kelp and shells and driftwood. The roar of the sea overwhelmed her at first. It reminded her of battle, which she had not tasted in a long time. Then she regained her composure and called out to the Sea Oracle.
The Sea Oracle rose from the waves, taking on the shape of a sleek youth with secretive eyes. Jewels dripped from their hair, their fingers, circled their neck: pearls and sapphires and agate, carven ivory, beads of bleached coral. The former soldier laid her sword before the Sea Oracle and awaited permission to speak.
The Sea Oracle spoke in the everywhere voice of wind and wave and rain. “You have come a long way for a simple thing,” they said, not unkindly. “Look down.”
The former soldier looked down. She saw what she had seen before, sand and kelp, shells and driftwood. The gulls and terns cried out to her, yet she did not understand.
“You have a heart of stone,” the Sea Oracle said, “but did you think that meant your nature was unyielding? If there is something the sea knows, it is that sand is nothing but stone given wisdom by the hand of water over time. And sand can be shaped. How you wish to shape the sand of your heart—that is up to you.”
The former soldier bowed deeply to the Sea Oracle and would have left her offering, but the Oracle shook her head. “Take your sword with you,” they said. “I have no use for it. If you, too, are done with it, I am sure you can find someone to pass it on to.”
The former soldier began to thank the Sea Oracle, but all that remained was a rush of foam, an evanescent fragrance of blossoms and storm-ozone. Easy of heart, she picked up the sword and walked into a new life.