Ekaterina Sedia - The Alchemy of Stone

“It doesn’t matter,” Mattie said. “It will pass.”

Niobe stood too. “Listen. Come visit me the next holiday, all right? I live by the market, the one on the other side of Merchant Square. There’s a jewelry shop downstairs.”

“I know the place,” she said. “It’s owned by other… easterners? Like you?”

Niobe smiled. “That’s right. Will you come?”

As much as Mattie resented being treated like a thing that could be kept indoors at one’s whim, she thought that Niobe deserved another chance. After all, where else would she find someone as alone and mistrusted as herself? “Yes,” she said. “I will visit you. Maybe you can tell me about the alchemy you practice.”

Niobe’s face brightened with a smile. “Yes! And promise you’ll do the same for me. The alchemists here seem awfully protective of their secrets.”

“They don’t like outsiders.”

Niobe raised her eyebrows. “Really? 1 haven’t noticed.”

Mattie shrugged. “They did let you in, like they let me in. Believe me, this is the best either of us will be treated.”

“Unless we change that,” Niobe said. “I’ll see you the next holiday.”

Mattie headed down the embankment, unsure whether to go home or to visit Ilmarekh. She decided on the latter; it wasn’t just Beresta’s secrets or her elusive son, but Mattie worried about Ilmarekh, of how he withstood the assault of the ghosts inside him. She headed west, for the city gates.

We mourn today as we will have mourned tomorrow, and we hide in the rain gutters and the attics, we smell dust and people’s cooking. At night, we huddle on the roofs, the shingles rough under our feet, our folded wings chafing against the bricks of the chimneys. Sometimes, the wind blows and brings with it the sound of quiet laughter and the smell of lilacs, the humid breath of the water lilies in the Grackle Pond and the stench of bleach from the factory.

We are sad that we cannot smell cool stone, the dark moss pockmarking its surface, the rain and snow whipping its inert bulk and slowly, imperceptibly eroding it. And as we think of stone, we think of the things we haven’t thought about in ages—of how stone heaved and buckled and split, releasing us into the world; of how it followed us, like the night ocean follows the moon, how it bounded toward our hands, like a loyal dog to the beckoning of its master. When we were many, we could breathe a barest whisper, and it heard and obeyed, it listened. And now our voices are few and weak, and we cannot rebuild what has been ruined.

Mattie found Ilmarekh in his house on top of Ram’s Head Hill, and immediately saw that he was unwell. She cursed herself for not thinking to bring a tonic or a strengthening elixir.

“What’s wrong?” she asked Ilmarekh who sat, wrapped in a blanket, by the roaring fire despite a warm, balmy day outside.

He shivered in response. His teeth clattered so loudly that no words could come out.

Mattie moved closer, stepping carefully around dirty dishes on the floor and an occasional bowl of ash. She touched his forehead, and her sensitive fingers registered no fever, just a film of clammy sweat covering his brow.

It didn’t take Mattie long to recognize the symptoms of opium withdrawal—the alternating sweats and chills, the body aches, nausea, uncontrollable sneezing and watering eyes—she catalogued them in her mind and hurried back to her shop.

There was little to be done about that but wait it out, but Mattie looked to diminishing the pain before cures. She thought of buying more opium but instead decided to use what few dried poppy flowers she had left—they would be enough to ease Ilmarekh’s suffering and let him sleep.

She ran up the stairs, the light metal of her lower legs swinging over two steps at a time, and started her brewing. To opium, she added lemongrass against nausea, chamomile for a general calming, and vanilla to relax his knotted shoulders and let him sleep.

She flew through her shop, mixing and grinding, measuring and distilling, filtering and decanting. A plain bottle would suffice, she said to herself. What does he care? She rummaged through the jars and bottles and decanters crowding the shelf over the bench, and picked up an old apothecary vial shrouded with dust and cobwebs. She wiped the grime away and discovered on its side an image of a gargoyle in low relief on a flat medallion filigreed with gold.

When she was still living with Loharri, he sometimes took her eyes away as a punishment for disobedience, and she had to feel her way around for as much as a week. She still remembered her delight when her fingers stumbled upon a familiar shape and recognized it—a full, round surprise that made her heart bubble with joy. She remembered finding the vial with the gargoyle in it and secreting it in the folds of her dress, so she could trace the gargoyle wings in her room, in secret, and thus defy her blindness.

She cleaned the vial and poured her mixture into it. Surely the man who was blind for all his life was not immune to the joy of tactile recognition, she thought, and hurried back to the gates, the vial wrapped in the tight coils of her fingers. The elixir would make him better; she chased away the selfish thoughts of the questions she would ask him once he was coherent again. She needed to fix him, and did not dare to think beyond that.

Back in his shack, Ilmarekh had moved away from the fire; it still smoldered, ashes wet from a carelessly dumped bucket of water. He was now curled up on the bed, little more than a mere straw-filled mattress.

Mattie shook her head and poked at the wet ashes with the tip of her foot. “What are you going to do if you want fire later?”

He shrugged, sullen at the nagging note that crept into her voice.

“I brought you something,” Mattie said, softer now. “Please drink it.”

“Does it have opium in it?” Ilmarekh said.

“Very little—just to make you feel better. Why?”

He either shivered or shrugged, she wasn’t sure. “When I don’t smoke and my head is clear, the souls stop talking. I want them to stop talking.”

“Just drink this,” Mattie said, “and sleep—I promise they won’t bother you.”

“You won’t… you won’t do anything to hurt me, will you?

From previous experience, Mattie knew that people didn’t trust her just because she mentioned her good will or kind nature. Nowadays, she relied entirely on mercenary arguments. “Why would I do that? I still have questions to ask you.”

Her words seemed to reassure him, and he propped himself up on one elbow, pulling a ragged woolen blanket around him. He grasped the bottle and drank, his long white fingers twitching on the glass, pulsating with every gulp as if they were the tentacles of an octopus testing the strength of its suckers. He was almost finished when his fingertips brushed across the glass medallion with the emblazoned gargoyle, and his blind white eyes widened in surprise.

Mattie was relieved to see a ghost of a smile touch his lips.

“Mattie,” he said. “This is a truly lovely engraving. Thank you.” He fell back on his mattress, still clasping the vial, and was asleep before he remembered to stop smiling.

Mattie guarded his sleep, which gave her plenty of time to look around. She knew the Soul-Smoker was poor, she just hadn’t realized how much so. The house—the hut, if one wanted to be honest—lacked even the most basic necessities. There was no running water, and the fireplace seemed to be the only way to cook meals and heat water for a bath. There was just one room, one corner of it sagging perilously and threatening to bring down the entire house. The wooden floors, drafty and not covered by anything but sparse trickles of sawdust, were worn to a soft shine by the feet of many generations of Soul-Smokers; their daily paths were clearly visible—one led from the fireplace to the table, rickety on its thin, deformed legs; another shot from the table to the bed and the deep ceramic tub in the corner next to it; the third led from the bed to the fireplace. A simple triangle enclosing a life of privation.