The Alchemy of Stone - By Ekaterina Sedia Page 0,79
the better the memories are.
The lizards do not drag carts behind them anymore; a few of them have broken loose and stomp the streets in blind panic. Automatons are few and far in between, most of them smashed to pieces or sent away to the farms. The paper factory, as well as all other ones, has stopped, soon after the caravans of coal stopped coming through the city gates. The air has a different quality to it—woodsmoke and clay and stone instead of metal and burning coal; we are trying to decide whether it is an improvement.
We watch the enforcers, their buggies abandoned, their armor nowhere to be seen (too heavy to walk in) head toward the city gates. They cannot possibly hope to retake the farms or the mines; they lead a prisoner among them, and we realize that they want the Soul-Smoker—one always brings a decoy, a sacrifice on such outings. Or perhaps they want to bargain with the rebels and the man walking with his head low, his clothes soaked with the rain, is their bargaining chip. We cannot be sure, but we worry about the blind boy, all alone in his cabin.
The telegraphs all over the city chatter and thrash and spew forth endless ribbons of paper covered in messages no one reads—no one has to anymore. Soon they will run out of paper, and we imagine them straining and chittering, and punching the empty air with their beaks that will have run out of ink too. We wonder how long the water will keep flowing.
The markets are quiet now, and there is little left to buy besides last year’s corn and turnips. We see hollow-eyed women cowering—how fast they learned to move in quick dashes between the buildings!—and keeping close to the corners and houses. The merchants leave the centers of the markets free too, their stands leaning sparsely against the protective walls.
The children are gone, as if they had all disappeared overnight—we know it is not true, we know that some are locked inside and others were taken by their parents out of the city; yet others were sent away to relatives in other cities, where they could be children and carefree, while the adults wait out the awfulness that befell them. But it feels to us that they ran away, abandoning the city that disappointed them, and we try and imagine what it would be like, to run away forever, turning our ridged, winged backs on this city. We imagine the sounds of the sea and the smell of red, kind earth, the smells of different spices and the taste of unfamiliar rocks, made of limestone born by the sea and not the cruel hot compressions of the earth underneath. We contemplate joining the circus, like we imagine everyone does—idly, not seriously, but wistfully. There is such temptation, such forbidden joy in abandonment.
And then the rain starts falling, black rain tainted with soot; it weeps from the ledges and mourns in the gutters, it roars as it runs through the streets, like organ pipes, like a song. We look into each other’s faces and wipe away the black rain that weeps from our hardened eyes, leaving black tracks down our cheeks. And we are suddenly not sure whether it is the sky or us who is crying.
We look around us, and we mourn ourselves, we mourn the fact that even after the city and we are gone, the rock will remain. We mourn the ruined city, the unfinished construction, the demolished palace, the gutted houses. Even if it is right for it to be ruined, we can still feel sadness at its passing, can’t we? Can’t we? And the rain falls.
We watch a lone figure stagger through the streets, holding a parcel to its chest. We recognize our metal girl, our friend, and we creep closer. She does not look good with her one eye and her blood homunculus, which she cradles to her chest, protecting it from rain. The homunculus wails as if water hurts it. The girl lurches onward, determined and half-blind, but heading steadily north. We imagine her walking like that, broken but unbreakable, forever, the homunculus at her chest crying in its gurgling incessant whine.
We eye it with suspicion—we are not of blood and bone, we are not of plant magic, and yet we feel a strange kinship to the pathetic creature, so soft it is almost liquid. And yet somehow it smells of stone, of the gray-limned stone