Anton Strout: Stonecast

Rory hopped on a stool behind the counter bar and simply stared at him.

“What?” he asked.

“Do you not even hear what you are saying sometimes?” she asked back. “On behalf of all women everywhere, I think my reproductive organs literally just crawled farther up inside me.”

Marshall was on the verge of responding, but startled as he looked down at floor level.

“Bricksley!” he said with a nervous laugh. “You scared the crap out of me.”

My tiny brick golem looked up at Marshall, his face ever the happy, painted-on smile and wide-eyed expression.

“Sorry,” I said, heading to the ingredients I had laid out on the counter earlier. “I’m a sloppy cook and set him about Roomba-ing.”

Rory joined me the way she used to when we took over the kitchen on Gramercy from my mother. As usual, it quickly turned into me fighting her on overspicing everything .

“It’s my Latina heritage!” she protested, slamming her spoon-clenching fist against her chest.

“I like spice,” I said, “but don’t blame your heritage on the atrocity you’re committing in my kitchen. You just have a bad palate and overdo it.”

She started to argue, but she knew I was right, and gave in to the evening and just had fun with it.

After stowing Bricksley away, I invited my parents up from downstairs to join us for dinner, where we avoided talking about both the arcane and my run-in with my father’s spiritual counselor. The former was a subject they were aware of but chose to avoid, and the latter simply gave me the wiggins that I simply didn’t want to mention his name.

Marshall cleaned, claiming it was the least he could do although the least-that-could-be-done award went to my father, who headed back downstairs to attend to more of his business right after the meal. But Marshall’s contribution was welcome.

The whole affair warmed me, reminding me of a simpler time—one before men of stone, mad cultists, and Rory’s mastering medieval French weapons.

After my mother left, the three of us sat around the partially furnished living room enjoying each other’s company, and, for a second, I felt normal, but eventually all spells must be broken, and all good things must come to an end.

“I’ve another surprise,” I said. “I thought we might go over our notes from the last couple of outings. If I’m ever going to master Spellmasonry, I need to be able to not only control stone, I need to be able to do all the things that Alexander Belarus did. I still can’t seem to control any stone creature larger than Bricksley, and I’m light-years away from figuring out how to build something like Stanis. There’s something that I’m missing in the process. We just need to figure out what that is. And it wouldn’t hurt to stumble across how to make a lot of Alexander’s concoctions that we’ve been using up. The Kimiya is starting to look like a very finite supply these days. We need to step up our experimentation.”

Rory sighed, sitting up in her chair. “You want to head up to Gramercy now?”

I shook my head.

“That’s the surprise,” I said. “I thought we might do it here.”

“But what about the experiments and equipment?” Marshall asked. “What about your supplies?”

“We have a lot of the alchemical mixes on the premises,” I said, “and I’ve been moving some of the other supplies down here. I thought it might be nice to have a change of venue.”

Rory sat forward. “You mean . . . ?”

I nodded. “My great-great-grandfather’s guild hall,” I said. “I know how hard you’ve both been working on this with me. I appreciate it, but the idea of dragging the two of you back to the haunting emptiness of Gramercy again just seemed cruel. I thought a change of venue might help. It took a lot of doing. Clearing away the debris of the building collapse was fairly easy, but trying to build this place on top of Alexander’s secret laboratory? I filed and refiled plans until I was blue in the face, changed construction companies at least half a dozen times. By the time it was done, I don’t think anyone working on Belarus South knows what truly lies beneath this building.”

“I am so jealous,” Marshall said. “Think of the game setup I could do down there with all that creepy, dungeony, carved stone.”

I smiled at Marshall. “If we can figure out how to create something like Stanis, you can throw your weekly games down here.” A twinkle of approval lit up in his eyes, and I turned my head back to address both my friends. “So . . . we know that I can’t sustain bringing anything larger than Bricksley to life, but we know it’s possible. How do we know it’s possible? Stanis, wherever he is, is living proof that an autonomous creature of human proportions can be brought to life. I don’t know how to unlock that level of power. My grandfather was clever about those arcane secrets.”

I pulled my backpack closer to me from where it lay on the floor and reached for the solid stone book within it, finding Bricksley nestled in there. I took the book from under him, breathed out the words of power that transformed it to leather and paper, then pulled my own notebook out. “We’ve got his work and my own lame-ish start at a spell book of my own.” I held up my own notebook. “We need to make this as powerful as his.”

“There are too many missing pieces,” Marshall said.

“That’s why we compare notes, then,” I said. “Do you think Einstein gave up just because he had too many questions?”

“This isn’t science,” argued Rory.

“Maybe it’s more of a science than we think,” I offered.

“Maybe it’s more of a science than we can think,” Marshall said.

I looked to see if he was mocking me, but he was serious.

“This hurts my brain,” Rory said. “Can we go back to dinner conversation?”

“No,” Marshall said. A second ago I wouldn’t have thought him capable of it, but he looked riled up. “Lexi’s right. We’re all just frustrated, but that’s no excuse. We need to continue to be analytical, keep experimenting, keep refining.”

“Exactly,” I said, standing. I gathered up my books and a few of the others I had been reading through. “Let me show you the cool stuff I’ve rigged up, then.”

Rory stood, and we were halfway to the stairs when Marshall stopped.

“Go on without me,” he said. “I’ll be down to the Bat Cave in a couple minutes.”

“Where’s he going?” I asked, as Rory and I started down the steps.

“Excitement pee,” she said, taking some of my books from me to carry. “He gets this way when he talks about Comic Con, too.”

Alexandra

Rory and I headed down to the finished basement of our new building, not wanting to wait around for Marshall while he hit the little boys’ room. The sooner we got to work sorting through our comparative notes from the brick-man incident, the sooner I might get to sleep. Pillowy thoughts of slumber filled my head as we walked along the half-finished basement hall, following the series of bookcases off to my left.

“I’m glad you took Marshall’s suggestion months ago when he tried to talk you into the library motif,” Rory said.

I nodded, counting off the bookcases as I went. “‘Very Wayne Manor,’ he had said. Apparently, Batman liked secret doors, too.”

“I still don’t get why you call it Alexander’s guild hall, though,” Rory said. “I mean, he was a guild of one.”

“My guess is that Alexander built it in the hopes of using it for a higher purpose,” I said. “For finding other Spellmasons, for educating others to his way, but I think having a madman hunting down that power made him think the better of it. Some things, it would seem, were better kept secret. Which, conversely, is why we’re so busy playing arcane Nancy Drews.”