I CAN SEE MYSELF QUITE CLEARLY IN THE BLACK FACE OF the stone Merlin has given me. My mother says that when God made me, He had a spare blob of clay which He put on the end of my nose. I can see that, and my red ears which stick out more than Serle’s or Sian’s.
I like the rough-and-silky feel of the stone, and I like the way it quickly warms between my hands. But what is it for? And what did Merlin mean when he said it was time for me to have it, and time for him to let it go? “Until the day you die,” he said, “you will never own anything as precious as this.”
Serle always keeps an old arrow-tip in one of his pockets; he says it protects him from ever being wounded by an arrow. And Oliver has a coin from Jerusalem strung on the greasy key-thong around his neck. “The pope has blessed it,” he says, “and I wear it day and night. It drives away dark spirits.”
Is my stone like this? A kind of charm? Or does it have some other power? My obsidian! Merlin said it is made of ice and fire.