We flap our wings, and they both freeze as they are; she is covering her face, one blue eye looking between thin fingers hopefully in our direction, and he—imposing—with his shoulder thrown back, his elbow ready to release the tension of wound muscles, the fist heavy and bony and dead, as we feel his resolve draining away.
And then we arrive—we glide like leaves, like gray ugly stone leaves, we descend in a graceful arc, we float. We surround them, insinuate ourselves between them, gently pull them away from each other. We smooth her hair and chase the fear from every facet of her eyes, we tenderly take his hand—like a lover would, perhaps—and unclench his fingers, rest his arm by his side. We erase the frown from his high forehead, we smooth her dress. We position them with caring hands, with solicitous wings, to face one another.
“Now talk,” we say, and we wait for one of them to utter the first word.
Chapter 7
Everyone had a story; Mattie had learned that a long time ago when Loharri explained such intricacies to her. She remembered it well—a sunny afternoon when wide slats of sunlight painted the dark wooden floors and striped the furniture, giving it a semblance of trembling and very quiet life. “Sit down,” Loharri said.
She obeyed, sinking into the pillowed couch of his living room. There would be a lesson, she thought. She wasn’t yet sure how she felt about them.
“Do you know where you came from, Mattie?” He did not sit down but paced across the living room floor, his stockinged feet making no sound. It irritated her, his silence of movement—hers were not like that.
“Yes,” she answered. She was already learning to mimic some body language, and folded her hands over her breast and inclined her head, like a child reciting poetry by rote. “You made me just last week.”
“Two weeks,” he corrected. “A week has passed; time does not stand still.”
“So next week it will have been three weeks?” she asked.
He nodded. “As time goes by, things happen to you. You learn new things. You make yourself a story—your story. Everybody has one.”
“Do I have one?” Mattie asked. She was not sure why but she wanted so desperately to have it.
He sighed and raked his fingers through his dark hair that was long enough to touch his collar. “Not yet, Mattie. But you will.”
“Next week?”
He breathed a laugh. “We’ll see. It takes a bit of time, usually.”
“What is your story?” she asked him then.
“It’s not important,” he said, and paced again. “Let’s concentrate on making you one.”
Mattie’s story started in the mechanic’s workshop and continued among the shining pots in the kitchen, among the floor wax and wide windows that gathered soot like it was precious, and culminated in a small alchemical laboratory of her own.
And as it turned out, this is where Sebastian’s story started. He looked around Mattie’s alchemical bench and smiled at the sheep’s eyes and bunches of dried salamanders like they were old friends. “It’s just like my mom’s place,” he said. “She lived not too far from here.”
“Eastern district,” Mattie said. She still worried a bit about his presence among so many breakable and valuable chemicals and glassware—he seemed so awkwardly large in the narrow, cramped space that every time he moved his arms, she reached out involuntarily, ready to catch alembics and aludels he was sure to knock down.
He nodded and finally stepped away from the bench to sit down in the kitchen. “I grew up watching her work… I probably still remember some of the salves she used to make for ailing neighbors.”
She hurried after him, secretly relieved and already regretting letting him into her home—it was not safe, with Iolanda and Loharri liable to drop by. Why did he agree to come?
“So, you wanted to know about my mother’s work,” he said.
“Yes,” she answered. “Did she find out how to stop the gargoyles from turning into stone?”
“They still do, don’t they? No, she didn’t find the cure. She kept saying that it’s the stone that held them hostage, that they were one flesh. And only if she could break the bond with the stone…” He cut off abruptly and gave her a sly smile. “This all sounds like nonsense to you, doesn’t it?”
“No,” Mattie said. “Not at all. It makes perfect sense.”
“This is why I became a mechanic,” Sebastian said, and stopped smiling. “The alchemists… you just babble nonsense and pretend that it means something.”
“It does,” Mattie said. “How did they let you into the Lyceum? You… you’re not like them.”
“My mother pulled some favors,” he answered, frowning. When he got angry, he seemed to get bigger, and the stool under him looked ready to give up and crumble, abandoning its duty. “But of course, once they let me in, they watched me like a thief in a jewelry store. I could do no right. No matter what I proposed, they refused it, and then acted like one of them came up with that idea. And it’s just relentless.” He slapped his knee. “Every day, every day!” His impassioned speech brought color to his cheeks, and despite her preoccupation, Mattie noticed how attractive he looked.
“You are very beautiful,” she said.
He looked at her—she couldn’t quite comprehend his expression, but it reminded her of the time she first asked Loharri for her key. “Not an hour ago, I almost hit you,” he said, quietly and slowly. “If it hadn’t been for the gargoyles, I would’ve killed you; you’d be just a pile of springs and gears. Why do you talk like that?”
Mattie realized that she had said something wrong. “You didn’t kill me, though,” she said. “You’re not my enemy.”
He shook his head. “How did you come to be an alchemist, anyway? And how come the gargoyles chose you?”
“That’s what I wanted to be,” Mattie said. “You became a mechanic because you were raised by an alchemist; I became an alchemist because a mechanic made me.”
He smiled at that, showing small, uneven teeth. “Fair enough. What about the gargoyles? They seem protective of you.”
Mattie nodded. “Yes. But I don’t know why they chose me after your mother. Because we are both women? Because we are resented for what we are?”
“You got that right,” he muttered. “She told me that the alchemists were better with the foreigners than the mechanics, but not by much. They just take the trouble to hide it a little.”
“That’s something, isn’t it? I feel grateful to even be emancipated, let alone accepted into the society.”
Sebastian studied her for a while, as if considering how she fit into his view of the world. “Emancipated, eh? And how did you manage that?”
“I just asked my master to be an alchemist,” she said. “As I got better, he decided that making me clean his house was a waste, and he made me new hands and built another automaton for housework.”
“It must be nice to have someone do for you the work you loathe,” he said. There was a hint of disapproval in his voice.
“It was a mindless automaton,” Mattie said. “Whatever the case may be, when I asked to be emancipated, my master agreed and signed the papers. I only see him when I want to.”
“Congratulations,” Sebastian said. “Who is your master?”
“Loharri,” she said. “Do you know him?”
“A little,” Sebastian said. “He’s not quite as awful as the rest of them.”
“He can be pretty awful,” Mattie said. “He was the one who told me that you were exiled… but he didn’t tell me why, and neither did you.”
Sebastian laughed. “I only just met you,” he said. “Suffice it to say, I’ve done nothing wrong.”