The Alchemy of Stone

and heaved, and Mattie realized that his soul was straining to join its brethren. With her inferior new eye, she could not see the shape of the soul, and she regretted it—she wanted to see it detach from the man’s lips, transparent yet iridescent like a soap bubble, and bound toward Ilmarekh, joyfully shedding its fears as its former owner buckled and fell to his knees and then to his stomach and lay still.

The enforcers could wait no longer, and they turned the muskets away from the gargoyles. There was no time for the gargoyles to do anything, as several shots rang out. Ilmarekh, still reeling from the absorption of a new soul, sputtered forth a mouthful of blood. It spilled over Mattie’s homunculus, and the homunculus absorbed the new offering of blood eagerly, greedily, and only then did the enforcers notice it.

Mattie watched too—the souls, the wisps of smoke, poured out of Ilmarekh’s prostrate body sprawled in the rapidly spreading puddle of blood. Judging by their gasps and muttered curses, the enforcers could see them too. The tendrils of souls reached out, and everyone, including Mattie, took an involuntary step back, away from the hissing and writhing wisps. Only the homunculus stood its ground.

The souls found it and reached into it; for a moment, the homunculus looked like a skinned sheep carcass— red, shot through with white strands of marbling; it bubbled and hissed, boiling, yet remaining standing. The air erupted through its sides and face, sending forth small clouds of red mist. Gradually, the violent eruptions subsided, and the homunculus stopped seething and bubbling—it seemed bigger now, as big as a three-year-old child, and more solid, as if the souls had given it a semblance of flesh and independent life.

Mattie watched the unfolding of the strange event, forgetting about her pain and fatigue, unable to look away. Understanding took a while to take hold, but when it did, it bloomed forth with radiant certainty, and Mattie laughed—a sudden, too-screeching sound that broke the enforcers out of their reverie.

They all spoke at once, asking each other questions and pointing at the homunculus—the silent, calm center of the violent events. They discussed destroying it and wondered where it came from; they asked each other what had just happened, unable to comprehend the transition.

It is stone, Mattie wanted to say. The homunculus is the essence of the stone, now infused with the spirits of the dead. Now, every stone in the city, every old building was alive with countless spirits, all whispering their tedious and mournful tales.

And now, it was time to fulfill her promise to the gargoyles. She turned toward them. “Now,” she said. “Now it is yours. The essence of the stone and the spirits of the dead are alive within this creature, and it will break the bond that ties you to your fate. Take it, and accept the spirits of the dead people, and carry them with you. The stone cannot touch you now.”

The enforcers must have realized that they were witnesses to a momentous event. They lowered their weapons and let the gargoyles pass between them, they let the gargoyles pick up the homunculus, which stained their hands and visibly diminished with every touch. The gargoyles passed it from one to the next, and as the homunculus grew smaller and their hands stained a deeper red, a change came over them.

Their hides changed their color from gray to the faintest blue, like clay on the riverbanks, and a slight color infused their faces with a glow the likes of which Mattie had never seen. Their features softened, and they no longer seemed carved of stone, but mere creatures of flesh. Flesh that did not last, but Mattie decided not to think about it now. They asked her for freedom, not immortality, and this is what she gave them.

She wished she could talk to Beresta just one more time, a quiet shy ghost of the woman who was the first alchemist to walk down this road. Mattie imagined that Beresta would be proud that her work was concluded, would be happy with Mattie’s achievement. She wished Ilmarekh had not needed to die to release the souls he had consumed; she wondered what he would be like if he were not so haunted. She missed the friend she did not even know—the friend she could’ve had.

We lack the words to describe what is happening to us. We know that we are supposed to do something, to help the girl who has helped us, but we feel dazed, awash in the new experience of being separate from the stone. We feel floating, uprooted, like the clouds. Weightless. The city looms behind us, and for the first time we feel separate from it; we float, disembodied, while it remains substantial and stationary and alien.

We look around us with new eyes—like the girl who is now sitting on the ground for some reason; we do not think we have ever seen her sitting down. The enforcers do not know what to do with us, and we feel sorry for them because we understand what it was like, to shed one’s hard protective carapace and to stand on the hillside, exposed, with two dead men lying on the ground, mere objects, just like the city and the hill. We smell the salty marine smell of blood on our hands and in the air, we inhale with full chest absorbing the stench of burning—the Soul-Smoker’s shack is starting to smoke; did he leave aflame inside unattended? But it is salt we smell most of all, and it stirs memories within us, memories we have no right to possess.

We remember the voyage across the sea, smooth as glass, the ship becalmed for days on this green surface; we remember it wrinkling like silk under the first breath of wind; we remember the waves and the terrible precipitous valleys that open between them; we remember the sensation of our stomach leaping to our throat as the ship poses on the crest of a wave, hesitant, and then plummets downwards, accompanied by cries of terror and exhilaration.

We remember the cities we have never visited, the lives we have not lived—children and grandchildren, and the inevitable aging of the parents; we remember smells of cardamom and moist tropical heat; we remember the soft, red earth which gave so generously when it was not compelled to do so, and was so barren when farmed. We remember the dances in the city squares—open squares fringed with low buildings, which were much more about air than they were about stone; we remember the bright paints children use to decorate themselves and to throw at each other, laughing.

And then our vision doubles as we see our city but through the eyes of the outsiders—the imposing edifice, carved of stone; we see ourselves as others used to see us—perched on the steepled roofs, our wings a sharp silhouette against the fading sky. We see the gray severity and the stern beauty, which does not invite appreciation but rather demands it. We grow dizzy, and we shake our heads, bedazzled and entranced.

And then the other voices awaken inside us, the souls of the people who were ripped away from the dead man who is cooling on the ground before us. We hear a multitude of voices whispering to us, insistent. “Listen,” they say. “Just listen.”

Mattie forced herself to stand on her wobbling legs. The right knee joint kept alternately locking up and buckling under her, but she paid it no mind.

She felt no satisfaction from her accomplishment but rather an emptiness she did not know how to fill—there was nothing left to do. The thoughts shifted sluggishly in her mind, as the gears turned and clicked with unusual hesitation. There was Sebastian and Iolanda and Niobe, none of whom wanted her. There was Loharri, who did not want her anymore either. Then there was the key—her key, the key that would spark her back to life. When she would be her own mistress, she would find a mechanic to fix whatever was wrong with her. And yet none of this seemed important next to the gargoyles, transformed by her alchemy.

They nudged her, gentle, still in awe of their new hands. “Shouldn’t we go after them?”

She looked after the pointing fingers, flushed gloriously golden, a real life pulsing within them. “Go after who?”

“Them.”

Then she forced her eye to move from the gargoyles to the object of their attention—the enforcers trudging dutifully toward the mouth of the mine. There were enough of them to open the hidden entrance, Mattie thought. There were too many of them to follow. “No,” she said. “They have muskets. They will kill us—even you. You are not what you used to be, remember that. You are mortal now. You can be killed.”

The gargoyle faces turned fearful, and she hurried to reassure them. “They won’t do anything unless you provoke them. And following them now would be provoking. Come on, you must know of other ways to get underground.”

The gargoyles nodded, all together, like they always did. “There is a secret place inside the city, near the district that burned first.”

“Can you take me there?”

They did not answer but swept her up again, holding her securely aloft, and flew.