The Power of Artists

... Squeak...

Kenan Kalon threw a sack onto his bed and began to stuff clothes into it. One by one, he hurriedly emptied his dresser drawers.

He stopped dead.

A distant squeaking noise was shouted down by the violence of the wind and rain outside.

... squeak ... squeak ... squeak ... squeak ... squeak ... squeak ...

Kenan jerked upright. His big ears, the size of oyster shells, were alert. He felt the hairs stand up on his arms.

Torrential rain was still slashing against the windows, the gusts were still buffeting the shutters, and the waves were still crashing amongst the big round boulders into which his house was delved. But that was all. No more squeaking noise.

Finally he decided to act – so as to be sure. He went over to the window near the front door. With the bad weather, it was as dark as night indoors. Only a few puny candles kept the darkness from engulfing everything. He slowly approached the glass, and parted the embroidered curtains just enough to peer out with one eye.

An eye that suddenly opened wide.

The sky was swollen with large clouds, jostling each other and piling up as they poured heavy rain onto the ground. And a gaunt silhouette stood, motionless, between pine trees that were being shaken by the storm.

Kenan spun round and leant across the wall. Was it too late? Was everything already lost? He could feel his heart racing. But soon he looked up, and scanned the room in front of him: in one corner was his bed now covered with clothes, opposite was his small table and his wooden chair, close to it was his cast iron wood stove and his old pots and pans...

His gaze rested on his desk, and especially the inkwell on top of it. Then he looked down at the glass bottles that were standing on the floor next to the desk.

He suddenly straightened up, at the same time gripping the pendant he wore around his neck. Now that was an idea. It was an idea that might even work, he told himself, as he headed straight for the office.

It was only a matter of time until Soverinn Donn decided to come and get him. In the meantime, he was savouring the moment, that was quite certain. He would even be taking a morbid pleasure in enduring the downpour.

Kenan opened the top drawer of his desk. He took out a pile of brown paper, and a quill pen that seemed huge between his small, chubby fingers. He dipped the quill in the inkwell, thought a little, brought his hand to the paper, took it away again as if he had been on the point of doing something foolish. He finally began to write cautiously.

When he had finished, he took the time to re-read his message, then he rolled it up like a scroll of parchment. He grabbed one of the bottles stored at the foot of the desk, slipped his note into it and put the bottle back on the floor.

He then used both hands to unhook the jewel from around his neck – the pendant he had grasped a few seconds earlier. It was just a piece of granite, wrapped in copper wire and hanging from a coarse string. But Kenan handled it gently, like a precious object. He admired it for a second, before pushing it into the bottle. The stone slid down through the neck, and hit the bottom with a delicate 'clink'.

Kenan rose to his feet, holding the bottle in his hand. He closed it, and he was about to turn away from the desk when he paused. His eyes had fallen on the remaining sheets of paper. He looked at the bottle in his hand, with the message and his Granit inside it, and looked again at the pile of paper. He considered the door, a few paces from which Soverinn was probably still standing. Finally he put the bottle down and picked up his pen again, grumbling to himself. And he began to dash off a note.

Heavy blows struck the door.

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