When at last he reached the top, he began the arches.
They branched outward from the column, reaching up to form trusses that held the weight of the roof, then down again to hide the roof’s corners behind their iron curves. Where the trusses met the walls, he fit hidden bolts that sent the weight of the steel down through the bricks and into the bedrock.
He worked in midair, upon a slender iron scaffold, a five-story drop at his back. Days and nights went uncounted, unnoticed. The filtered sunlight entered first one set of windows, then another. His life was heat and movement; his thoughts were in the sounds of flame and wind as much as human words. The forge sustained him, it was his companion and his storyteller, whispering to him from his past. Once there was a jinni who was injured in a storm, and took shelter inside a Bedu’s cooking-fire. Once there was an imp who tricked a wizard into falling in love with a horse.
When at last the arches were in place, he removed the rest of the support columns, tearing them down brick by brick. It was an agonizing process, and at each moment he expected the awful shifting groan that would mean he’d taxed the building beyond its limits. But the central column and its arches held steady; the iron bore the weight.
Then, he began the platforms.
Each was a steel disc roughly fifty feet in diameter, cantilevered out from the central column and held up by curving trusses. There were eight of them in total, and they rose around the column in a helix, each one making a curved half-roof for the next. When he stood at the top and looked down, they were a series of moons that spiraled away beneath him, filling the void with shining steel.
There was still much to be done. The hill of slag, growing beside the forge: he would melt it down, turn it into panes of glass, and then fit them in the spaces between the arches, a second roof snug inside the first. He’d run electricity up the central column, hang lanterns and fairy-lights from the platforms’ edges, create hanging sculptures that soared through the open air. There were any number of alterations he might make—enough to occupy his mind fully, and leave room for nothing else.
* * *
In the Culinary Science classroom at the Asylum for Orphaned Hebrews, twelve girls in pressed white coats and hats stood eagerly around a rectangular island of countertop, each at her own place.
“Your attention, ladies,” their teacher said. “Today, each of you will prepare and stuff a chicken for roasting. The recipe is on the blackboard. Please take a moment to review it.”
The girls all looked to the blackboard, and read:
Roast Chicken with Stuffing
Singe bird.
Cut off head and remove any pinfeathers.
Remove feet and tendons.
Cut off neck, leaving skin intact.
Remove entrails and giblets.
Melt fat and mix with crushed crackers.
Stuff the bird.
“The main ingredients are before you, as you can see.”
The girls now turned their attention to the cutting-boards on the countertops, one for each girl, and the plucked chickens that sat atop them, stray bits of fluff still clinging to their flesh.
“You have thirty minutes to complete the recipe, and your success will depend on how well you manage that time. Which begins”—she glanced at the clock—“Now.”
For a long moment no one moved. Another teacher might have reminded them of the ticking clock, and scolded them into action. But she only examined them calmly, with all her senses. They were fearful, excited, but also disgusted by the raw birds: their yellowish skins, their wrinkled, reptilian faces.
The silence stretched. Their teacher waited. She had faith in her students. They would master their fears, and begin.
At last one of the girls lit her oil burner, grasped her chicken with both hands, and hoisted it above the flame. One by one the others gathered their courage and did the same, turning the birds evenly above the burners. The room filled with the acrid smell of burning feathers.
Now their teacher began her customary clockwise stroll around the island, assessing their progress, making notes on her clipboard. She had no true need for the notes, or the clipboard, but it was a useful prop nonetheless. It reassured the girls that cooking was a skill, to be learned like any other—not some secret art that could only be gleaned in a loving home, at a mother’s side.
There were scattered thunks as the girls took up their cleavers and unburdened the chickens of their heads. One girl already had advanced to step three; she laid one spindly orange foot across the edge of the counter, then gripped it, steeled herself, and jerked downward. There was a loud snap, and the foot came away trailing its ribbon of tendon. The girl burst into horrified giggles.
The others looked up, startled. Their teacher frowned. “Maddie.”
“Sorry, Miss Levy.” The girl composed herself, and removed the second foot with more dignity.
Their teacher kept her slow pace around them, judging their progress. One girl had wandered into a daydream, not realizing that she was about to slice through the chicken’s neck without first pulling back the skin. Ought she to intervene? No, better to let it happen. The lesson would be useful. They moved on to the stuffing, melting yellow cupfuls of chicken fat over the burners, pouring them into bowls of crushed crackers—and now the one who’d made the mistake realized it at last. She stared down at her bird; tears welled in her eyes. “Miss Levy?”
Her teacher went to her side. “What happened, Miss Rosen?”
“I cut the skin off the neck,” the girl said in a near whisper.
“And why does that make a difference?”
“The stuffing’ll fall out. There’s nothing to hold it in.” The girl’s chin wobbled.
“All right, Sarah,” her teacher said consolingly.
