The Alchemy of Stone

to carry such a weight, and she was about to leave her hiding place and depart, when the figure started to whistle. The mindless automatons did not whistle, and Mattie’s heart ticked faster.

The man with the buckets walked toward her hiding place, and as he got closer Mattie realized that his skin was the same color as Niobe’s, and she remembered that Loharri referred to Beresta, his mother, as an easterner. She wondered how he managed to remain hidden.

The man rested one bucket on the cobbles of the courtyard with a dull thump, and picked up the other with both hands. Mattie was close enough to see the ropy muscles on his arms tense under the ragged, unbleached linen of the shirt as he dumped the contents of the bucket into the feeder. The gravel rattled against the stone wall of the urn, and Mattie pressed her cheek to the rough surface, listening to the stone tumbling inside.

The man heaved up the other bucket and emptied it into the urn. He picked up both buckets and made a move as if to leave, but then he spun back around and looked straight at Mattie. “Are you gonna stay in there all night, or are you gonna say hello?”

She stood, trembling and feeling stupid. She just assumed that as a human he couldn’t see in the dark. “How did you know I was here?”

“You’re ticking, girl,” he said and cocked his head to his shoulder. “You might want to have that checked out.”

“No I don’t,” Mattie said. “It’s my heart, and there’s nothing wrong with that.”

“I was joking.” His teeth glinted briefly in the dark. “You’re an automaton, aren’t you? Haven’t seen one that clever before.”

“Not clever enough to remember that my heartbeat makes a sound,” she said, and extended her hand. “I’m Mattie. And you’re Sebastian.”

He touched her hand carefully. “My name is Zeneis. I don’t know who Sebastian is.”

“I looked for you on bequest of your dead mother,” she said, looking him straight in the eyes, so lost and dilated by darkness. “I spoke to the Soul-Smoker, and Beresta told me to seek you out.”

He hesitated just enough to convince Mattie that he was indeed Beresta’s son. “I don’t—”

“Hush,” she interrupted, in her best imitation of Loharri’s imperious tone. “Don’t lie when there’s no need. I have no interest in anything but your mother’s work. I’m an alchemist, and I want to know what she was doing for gargoyles. Of course, if you decide to not help me… ”

He sighed. “Dear Mattie, don’t threaten those who are stronger than you. I’ll wring your little metal neck faster than you can say ‘Aqua Regis’. You were stupid to come here all by yourself, weren’t you?”

She backed away from him. He did look strong, but Mattie suspected that she was just as powerful. The trouble was, she did not know how to fight.

He stepped closer, and the empty buckets clattered to the ground. “I’m sorry. I hate to hurt you, even though you’re just a mechanical thing. But I don’t trust those who threaten my safety and know my whereabouts.”

“I wasn’t threatening,” Mattie said and took another step back. “I was trying to help you.”

Sebastian smirked. “Help, eh? I’ve heard that one before. But every time someone in this city offers me help, I get worried. And remember, you came to ask me for help, not the other way around.” He sprang forward, his arms reaching out with the speed and strength of pistons, and grabbed Mattie’s arm.

She wrenched it free, and heard the thin bones of her forearm grind together. Shooting pain came a moment later. She swung a fist, aiming at his jaw, but he ducked, and she just caught the edge of his ear.

He hissed in pain. “You’re really going to get it now,” he said.

Mattie raised her hands to protect her face, and waited for the blow.

We shouldn’t intervene, even if there is a girl with the dead boy’s hair, and she is cringing in anticipation of a blow; we cannot bear the thought of her face shattered, the underlying gears exposed for all to see. We cannot bear having to ask another for help. And the man, we know him, as he is now and how he used to be—and we remember that he knows about us. Still, we shouldn’t intervene.

We flap our wings, and they both freeze as they are; she is covering her face, one blue eye looking between thin fingers hopefully in our direction, and he—imposing—with his shoulder thrown back, his elbow ready to release the tension of wound muscles, the fist heavy and bony and dead, as we feel his resolve draining away.

And then we arrive—we glide like leaves, like gray ugly stone leaves, we descend in a graceful arc, we float. We surround them, insinuate ourselves between them, gently pull them away from each other. We smooth her hair and chase the fear from every facet of her eyes, we tenderly take his hand—like a lover would, perhaps—and unclench his fingers, rest his arm by his side. We erase the frown from his high forehead, we smooth her dress. We position them with caring hands, with solicitous wings, to face one another.

“Now talk,” we say, and we wait for one of them to utter the first word.

Chapter 7

Everyone had a story; Mattie had learned that a long time ago when Loharri explained such intricacies to her. She remembered it well—a sunny afternoon when wide slats of sunlight painted the dark wooden floors and striped the furniture, giving it a semblance of trembling and very quiet life. “Sit down,” Loharri said.

She obeyed, sinking into the pillowed couch of his living room. There would be a lesson, she thought. She wasn’t yet sure how she felt about them.

“Do you know where you came from, Mattie?” He did not sit down but paced across the living room floor, his stockinged feet making no sound. It irritated her, his silence of movement—hers were not like that.

“Yes,” she answered. She was already learning to mimic some body language, and folded her hands over her breast and inclined her head, like a child reciting poetry by rote. “You made me just last week.”

“Two weeks,” he corrected. “A week has passed; time does not stand still.”

“So next week it will have been three weeks?” she asked.

He nodded. “As time goes by, things happen to you. You learn new things. You make yourself a story—your story. Everybody has one.”

“Do I have one?” Mattie asked. She was not sure why but she wanted so desperately to have it.

He sighed and raked his fingers through his dark hair that was long enough to touch his collar. “Not yet, Mattie. But you will.”

“Next week?”

He breathed a laugh. “We’ll see. It takes a bit of time, usually.”

“What is your story?” she asked him then.

“It’s not important,” he said, and paced again. “Let’s concentrate on making you one.”

Mattie’s story started in the mechanic’s workshop and continued among the shining pots in the kitchen, among the floor wax and wide windows that gathered soot like it was precious, and culminated in a small alchemical laboratory of her own.

And as it turned out, this is where Sebastian’s story started. He looked around Mattie’s alchemical bench and smiled at the sheep’s eyes and bunches of dried salamanders like they were old friends. “It’s just like my mom’s place,” he said. “She lived not too far from here.”

“Eastern district,” Mattie said. She still worried a bit about his presence among so many breakable and valuable chemicals and glassware—he seemed so awkwardly large in the narrow, cramped space that every time he moved his arms, she reached out involuntarily, ready to catch alembics and aludels he was sure to knock down.

He nodded and finally stepped away from the bench to sit down in the kitchen. “I grew up watching her work… I probably still remember some of the salves she used to make for ailing neighbors.”

She hurried after him, secretly relieved and already regretting letting him into her home—it was not safe, with Iolanda and Loharri liable to drop by. Why did he agree to come?

“So, you wanted to know about my mother’s work,” he said.

“Yes,” she answered. “Did she find out how to stop the gargoyles from turning into stone?”

“They still do, don’t they? No, she didn’t find the cure. She kept saying that it’s the stone that held them