G Anderson - Das Steingeschöpf

I looked out of the window. "Religion shouldn't matter to a Schöpfer, in any case. I create new life. It’s the highest blasphemy.”

Ambroise smiled at that, the features of his face grinding together as they moved. "Men and women create new life together all the time.”

My response was noncommittal.

He met my eye. "It’s strange to have memories of someone I’ve never met. The man with the red hair: who is he?"

I had added a part of myself to the mixture inside Ambroise — it was impossible to avoid. But I had left something else inside him too. The love I carried like a stone in my gut, uncomfortable and ever-present, would stay with Ambroise for the rest of his days. I didn’t have the heart to spoil it with the truth: Franz had been dead for over a year.

He’d been part of a communist mob intent on disrupting a rally for the Sturmabteilung. The brownshirts retaliated and things quickly turned violent; in the chaos that spilled into the street, someone drew a knife.

Steingeschöpfe carved by an apprentice are rarely sold, but for Franz’s artistry, the Guild made an exception. The night before they were due to be scattered like dandelion seeds across Europe, I went to see them. The pieces of himself he’d left behind. They watched me as I walked among them, their stylised heads moving as one. As insubstantial as cigarette smoke. What else had he poured into them besides his atrocious language? Was it possible, perhaps, that I was surrounded by fragments of his love for me? I would never see them again, would never have another chance to touch them; I longed to reach out my hands and fall into the world inside them — would it comfort me, to watch his memories and see his heart and hear whatever words he never said?

No. Whatever I could learn from them wouldn’t bring closure. Only pain.

There was no pain in Ambroise’s face as he waited for my answer. I envied him.

"Franz," I said quietly. "Franz Meier."

Ambroise mouthed the name with Franz's own lips.

A dry cough echoed down the hallway, and Ambroise sighed. "If only you could carve new lungs as easily as you carve new eyes."

On the morning I left, I put my head around the door of Friederike's bedroom. My train departed in an hour, and I needed plenty of time for the icy walk to the station. I expected her to be sleeping, but she was alert and propped up by pillows, the morning sunlight draped across the eiderdown. The gold in her eyes looked like melted butter. She beckoned me in and patted the space beside her.

So I sat with her, in the bed in which she would soon die.

Only one short month would pass before the cheque for my services, a letter, and several parcels would arrive at the dormitory. In the letter, Ambroise would describe Friederike's last days and tell me of his desire to return to the place of his creation, Rouen, to grieve. The parcels were his canvasses, sent with the hope that I would look after them until he could meet me in Berlin. Amongst them would be one new painting, in the same modern style. The composition was more refined, the colours more vibrant now that he could choose them properly. He'd called it Für den Mann mit den roten Haaren .

Bombs almost destroyed Rouen in 1944, taking Ambroise — and my memories of Franz — with them.

That was all to come; but for now, on that last day in Bavaria, Friederike Leitner’s hand was on mine, warm and pulsing with blood. She was watching me with her kingfisher eyes. "I made you something," she said. She drew from her bedside cabinet my Guild badge, which I'd hardly noticed was missing. She turned it over so that I could see the pin she'd worked into the back. I sat very still as her trembling fingers attached it to my lapel, over my heart.

“This is too important to keep in your pocket, Herr Schöpfer,” she said. "No more hiding it away."

The bronze badge, usually so dark, glinted in the sunlight.

G. V. Anderson lives on the south coast of England, existing on a steady diet of fantasy books, daydreams, and spicy pizza. Right now, she ought to be working on her novel — but she's probably asleep. Tell her to get a move on at @luna_luminarium.