The Alchemy of Stone

Mattie did; she was not sure whether it was the shock from the loss of her key—forever irretrievable—or a real sensation, but her heartbeat slowed, and the image of the smoldering, charred walls swam in and out of her field of vision. She wondered if Loharri had led her away from the house to show kindness or malice, sparing her the immediate disintegration in favor of a slow, lingering demise; if his last thought was not to avenge the destruction of the city but to punish Mattie for disobeying him. It did not matter now, she told herself. There was no reason for the dead man to have such a hold on her. She should try and help, she should live out the time she had left as well as she could. Her legs wobbled, but she took Niobe by the elbow, steadying her. “It’ll be all right,” Mattie whispered, even though she knew that it wouldn’t be.

She looked up, searching for the gargoyles—she was certain that they were following her, crawling in the rain gutters along the roofs, hovering in the thick clouds of greasy smoke. “Funny,” she said, addressing the low clouds and empty air. “Now it is my turn to become immobile, and no one can stop it.”

Great wings dispersed the smoke as several gargoyles descended into the street around her. “Can we help?” They spoke in one voice.

“No, but it doesn’t matter,” Mattie said. “I’m going home. You’re welcome to come along if you wish.”

She gave one last look at the smoldering ruins and the lone figure of Niobe, to the prostrate form of Loharri, and walked east. The gargoyles followed her in their usual way, along the gutters, crawling along the facades—a habit really, since there were no passersby to see them. They clung to the faces of the walls with their clawed fingers and toes, their presence a mute consolation.

The house still stood, although the apothecary in the first floor was gutted and burned out, all the salves and bandages long gone, and only a weak smell of aloe still lingered over the stench of charred wood and paint.

The stairs were missing the lowest step, and Mattie had to pick up her skirts to swing her foot high. She could smell her bitter herbs and spoiling sheep’s eyes upstairs, a familiar, embracing aroma that brought to mind her long workbench and the rustling of pages in her books. She only wanted to touch them again, but instead of hurrying, she lingered.

Mattie looked over her shoulder, at the winged shapes splayed in the shadows and crouched in narrow places. She thought of how still she would soon be, how quiet her heart. The slow rising of feathered wings outside made up for it—or at least, it had to.

Epilogue

And so the city stays, changed but eternal. Everyone has to adjust, to carve a new niche in the mutable landscape, find a fitting fissure to wedge oneself into. Some of the former residents have returned, but others never will—not the deceased Duke, not his family. But there are voices of the dead whispering to us every day, and we learn to live with the constant ebb and flow of their memories and regrets.

We hide in the rain gutters and on the rooftops, we slide through the shadows; we overnight in the abandoned buildings and the remains of the Calculator. Parts of it still clack and whir, and exhale the ghostly remnants of pungent steam. It comforts us; this is also where we keep her.

The mechanical girl is broken, but we put her together the best we could. Still, she would not wake up and the hole in her chest gapes at us, pleading and longing. We know what it wants, and we search for it —we search through the debris and the refuse of the markets, through the burned-out houses; we dive to the bottom of the Grackle Pond, our wings silvery with the powder of air bubbles, and we look in the clouds.

Sometimes the mechanic—a child of red earth, of the world that is not so distant to us anymore—comes to the ruins of the Calculator, its metal insides mysterious and inviting. He sits by the girl for a while and then leaves; we let him come and go as he pleases, because he seems so different now. Even his smell has changed—he now smells of dusty paper and ink, and we suspect that it is the cause of his sadness.

We never tell him about our search, of our moonlit flights over the rooftops, of our bargaining with the spiders who spend almost as much time searching for something in the city’s filth as we do. But we do not let him touch her because it is our duty to fix her, and it is our task to find the key.

Some days we despair and think that it has melted in the fire, into a shapeless lump fused to the cinderblocks of the foundation; sometimes we think that it was vaporized by the first blast of the explosion, like the woman who had been holding it in her soft hand. But we chase away such thoughts. It’s out there somewhere, and if anyone can find it, it is us—and we will keep looking as long as we live.