Let it become another ruin, she thought.
She flew closer to Yossele and then darted backwards, taunting him. Again he chased after her.
“Stop!” the Golem shouted again, despairing.
“No, wait,” said the Jinni, at her side. “Let them, Chava.”
“Let them?” she said, bewildered.
“Maryam is warning the neighbors. It comes down tonight.”
“But—” She looked up at the building she’d barely had a chance to see. This took him years, she thought. “Ahmad, are you sure?”
He nodded. “I’m sure.”
She turned to him, a host of questions upon her lips—and then Yossele struck the column again.
Glass fell from the arches in a hail of blue shards as the jinniyeh dodged another fist. Yossele hurled himself at her—and this time, when he collided with the column, something shifted.
There was a screech of rending metal. The central column leaned to one side, dragging the arches with it, twisting them out of their alignment. With an ear-splitting shriek, the topmost section of the column broke free.
The arches gave way—and the roof collapsed.
Bricks and girders, tar-paper and cigarette butts all tumbled around them. The Jinni grabbed the Golem and brought her beneath the shelter of the column, which stood like a broken redwood, its branches bent. The night sky appeared above, moonlight shining through the dust.
With a slow, strange grandeur, one of the upper platforms crashed edge-first into the forge.
Coals scattered to the outer walls. The metal crumpled like tissue and began to melt. Flames climbed the window-paper, the showroom curtains. Beneath the column, the Golem and the Jinni held each other in the wreckage as, above them, Yossele and the jinniyeh kept on fighting: no longer out of fear or self-defense, but in matched exhilaration, a dark and destructive joy.
Another shudder; and the hole in the roof grew. A round-sided structure came into view, listing toward them—
The Jinni said, “Is that—”
The Golem grabbed him and ran out from beneath the column’s shadow as the water tower toppled from its platform and burst apart.
A vast flood of water poured down the column. It missed the jinniyeh by inches—she screamed and flew to safer air—and struck Yossele like a battering ram. He tumbled backward, fell three stories, and crashed to the ground. The deluge covered him in an instant, a wave spreading outward. It reached the Golem, who picked up the Jinni and threw him onto the forge as the water knocked her off her feet. He landed in the coals, which hissed and spat as the wave broke around the forge’s housing. The wave struck the outer wall, rebounded, rippled, stilled.
Silence.
The jinniyeh hung in the air.
Below her was a shallow sea full of broken, twisted metal. The two monsters lay in the water, submerged. Her lover stood atop the forge, gazing around at the wreckage. He looked up to her; his face was grim.
The woman-creature stood from the water, wiped her hair back from her face. She, too, looked around with chagrin, and saw her hideous counterpart trapped beneath one of the fallen girders. She went to him, lifted the girder away. He sat up, his anger apparently spent—but he wouldn’t look at any of them, only sat there in the water.
Already the flood was receding, carried away by the drains in the floor. Gingerly her lover stepped down from the forge, and went to the woman. A quick murmur between them, words of concern. Are you all right. I think so, and you.
Watching, listening, the jinniyeh felt as though she was back at Washington Square Park, gazing through cold panes of glass into lives that she’d never comprehend. She had no place here; nor did she want one.
She looked up at the hole in the roof, the sky beyond. She would return to the desert, she decided. She could manage it herself, now. The sailing schedules in the newspapers. The ticket offices in the docklands. She’d use her accursed knowledge to go back—and then she’d find a way to cut the humanity out of herself, even if it took the rest of her life to do it.
Dima, Sophia pleaded—
“Dima,” the Golem called—
Dima? the Jinni thought in confusion—
But the jinniyeh was already gone.
Below, the pair stood together, numb and unsure. Voices came from outside: a crowd murmuring, and Maryam telling them to wake their neighbors, to make certain that everyone was out—
“What do we do now?” the Golem said in dismay.
The Jinni looked around. Even now, the Amherst’s wreckage had a certain splendor, as though it were the toppled city of some unimaginable race. Yossele and the jinniyeh had done much of the work for them—but it wasn’t enough. Not yet.
He looked to the burning forge, and the wooden remains of the water tower, arranged conveniently around the column. He thought of the bucket of powdered magnesium in the workshop cabinet; he’d bought it long ago on a whim, meaning to experiment with alloys. The wood was damp, but the magnesium would help.
“We melt it down,” he told her. “As much of it as we can.”
The onlookers crowded Washington Street, all of them drawn outside by the news that something strange was happening inside the Amherst. They milled about, whispering and speculating, many in pajamas beneath their overcoats and slippers upon their feet. No one knew quite what was going on, only that the most horrible noises had been heard inside the building: crashes, shouts, inhuman shrieks. Maryam and Sayeed had recruited a handful of men to keep everyone back, away from the sidewalk. Murmurs ran through the crowd: ought they to knock? Break down the door? Could the Bedouin still be in there?
Suddenly, flames leapt behind the papered windows.
People cried out, pushed back. The flames were a strange, blinding white; they traveled through the building, floating between the floors, igniting whatever lay in their path. Before long it seemed that the entire interior was ablaze.
The crowd stood silent in shock, and not a little satisfaction. This was no accidental tenement fire. The outer walls
