The Alchemy of Stone - By Ekaterina Sedia Page 0,8

opium smoke had dissipated, and Mattie imagined that the consumed soul was done with flailing inside its flesh jail and had started to settle in its new place.

“So there it is,” Mattie said. “I studied with Ogdela . . . I wanted to be an alchemist because of the power they hold over others. I hadn’t realized then that not everyone is afraid of them, but I never regretted it, so it doesn’t matter.”

“The ghost . . . Beresta, she says she also studied with Ogdela. She will answer your questions.” Ilmarekh stammered and stopped. Large drops of sweat swelled on his forehead, and he swallowed a few times.

Mattie guessed that the opium was getting the best of him; as the darkness descended outside, she remembered the family, still waiting by the porch, too fearful to enter their own house. “Perhaps I should take you home,” she said. “You look like you need to rest.”

Ilmarekh sat upright, the empty bowl at his elbow clanging with the sudden movement. “You’d do that?”

“Of course,” Mattie said. “Why wouldn’t I?” She regretted saying it as soon as the words touched the darkened air. Of course she knew why no one ever went to the Soul-Smoker’s house, and Ilmarekh knew that she knew. To him, her feigned ignorance could only be interpreted as condescension, a feeble attempt to pretend that she did not know his disadvantage, the way people saw him. “I’d like to take you anyway,” she said.

He nodded, slowly, and rose, leaning on his cane heavily. She hooked her arm under his, and he jolted at her touch—any touch, she guessed, would be a novelty to him. “Can you see in the dark?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said.

He seemed relieved at not having to worry about finding his way and being able to use his cane for support only. His weight, small as it was, pressed on Mattie’s arm, and she wondered at the birdlike thinness of his bones, at the feverish warm coating of flesh that knotted over them.

We watch from the secret places of the city—the rooftops and rain-gutters, the awnings of bakeries and the scaffoldings rising around new buildings—as the girl and the man walk through the dark streets. She doesn’t bother finding the lit streets and cuts along pitch-black alleys and around dark ponds that reflect no stars; it is cloudy tonight. It is too dark to fear thugs or thieves, but we keep watch nonetheless.

We watch as she almost carries the frail man who seems unsure on his feet all the way through the narrowing streets, through labyrinths of dirt paths of the shantytowns fringing the city, to the gate, to the wall. There, we do not follow, but we keep watch—we watch over her as the two of them exit the gate on the distal side and walk up the hill. The rain starts, slicking the path, and her mechanical parts creak louder as water gets trapped in her joints and delicate wheel-bearings. They are just a blur now, a double shape through the gray curtain of the rain and the night. The ground is still warm from the sun, and silvery mist rises and snakes along the path, clinging low over the wet grass.

There is a house on the top of the hill—no man’s land, no-place, too steep for agriculture and too rocky for pasture, out-of-the-way and inconvenient for city dwellers and farmers both. This hill, the Ram’s Skull, the bald forehead of the once-mountain worn to a nub by time (slipping, slipping, faster and faster) is nothing but bedrock and loose stones. The house on the top sits lopsided already, its northern corner sinking with the decay of the slope under its supports.

The mechanical girl and the Soul-Smoker enter the house—we hear the long squeal of a door as it opens and a slam as it closes behind them. We do not know what is happening inside, but we can guess—there is light in the fireplace and the gurgling of a kettle, and low, guilty voices. And we think of the souls and we count them—we had known every ghost in the city, and we can recall their names. We marvel at the cruelty of their fate without having the capacity to truly comprehend it—no more than to merely recognize it as grotesque. But, like the mechanical girl, we have no souls, and we are not afraid of the Soul-Smoker, we have no reason to worry that the souls inside him will somehow lure ours