The Alchemy of Stone - By Ekaterina Sedia Page 0,45
and open, and the two men stand for a while, eye-to-eye, mouth-to-mouth, and we listen to the hissing of the escaping soul, we watch the stranger’s eyes go white and empty like the clouds, and we hear the clink of his shackles as he collapses on the pavement, formless and soft like water.
A mindless automaton enters the courtyard and approaches the blind man who is motionless, his narrow chest expanded as if by an impossibly big breath.
“You have done your duty,” the automaton says in a grating voice, uncolored by either emotion or understanding. “Write your report by tomorrow morning; someone will be by to pick it up.”
We regret that he has to do it, we regret that among the souls that could not find rest there are others, to whom rest was denied in favor of extracting confessions. We know that our children are mendicant—they speak of never killing anyone, but they let buildings and the smoker of souls take the lives of those they cannot be bothered to kill themselves.
We did not want it to be like this, but what can we do? We are naught but a shadow of a distant memory, whispering in the rain gutters, clambering along the rooftops; we are nothing but decorations on the building, amusing in our grotesque bodies and webbed wings. We have heard of other cities where the buildings are decorated with statues of angels with golden wings, but we doubt that these angels were ever alive or even real. Most beautiful things are not.
We regret not having finished the story we started to tell to the girl—our understanding of time is vague, but we have a nagging feeling that it would’ve been useful to her. We resolve to tell her soon, and try harder this time, perhaps hold onto her skirts and plead with our eyes. Listen, we should say, listen.
We turn our attention back to the man and the automaton in the jail courtyard. The automaton gives its orders once again. The white-haired man nods and heads back home, the memories and the terror of the newly inhaled soul sloshing inside him heavily, like water in a bucket.
As the days wore on, Mattie noticed the troubling changes in the air—even though she rarely left the workshop these days, preoccupied with her work. She tried to get to the meaning of Sebastian’s words, of understanding the very soul of stone. For that purpose, the burners belched blue flames, and the alembics filled with ground stone were heated to a red glow.
She studied the transformation of stone. It turned the flames yellow and blue and sometimes green, it could be dissolved in Aqua Regis, and with enough heat, parts of it sublimated, leaving behind a hard and latticed carcass.
The stone was complex, as Mattie realized, consisting of many minerals so blended together that one could have no hope of separating them for individual study, and had to deduce the composition of it from its behavior during many transformations she subjected it to.
Mattie also taught Niobe—not about the blood alchemy but of the elements and their manifestations. She described the salamanders that lived in and commanded fire as golden lizards, and Undinae—as small girl automatons fashioned with webbed fins instead of arms and legs. Niobe laughed at her claims that she was able to see the salamanders, and Mattie did not really mind. She offered small sacrifices to the salamanders by burning some fragrant herbs along with stone, asking them to help her solve the riddle of the gargoyles.
But the stone alchemy was not the only thing that occupied her days and nights—having no need for sleep, Mattie felt superior sometimes at being able to accomplish twice as much in a day as any other alchemist. She worked on the stone during the day, when the light was bright enough to see the spectral colors and emanations; during the night, she practiced blood alchemy.
A deal was a deal, and she learned the new craft with dark satisfaction. She made a small homunculus from rendered sheep blood, with the heart woven from Iolanda’s and Loharri’s hair. The homunculus was still, waiting to be awakened in order to ensnare Loharri’s soul. The process took her longer than she wanted, but her learning was hindered by her inability to ask Niobe pertinent questions—she was ashamed to ask about compulsion and denial of will, and she feared that if Niobe found out about such practices, she would think poorly of Mattie. So Mattie saved the