The Alchemy of Stone

Epilogue

And so the city stays, changed but eternal. Everyone has to adjust, to carve a new niche in the mutable landscape, find a fitting fissure to wedge oneself into. Some of the former residents have returned, but others never will—not the deceased Duke, not his family. But there are voices of the dead whispering to us every day, and we learn to live with the constant ebb and flow of their memories and regrets.

We hide in the rain gutters and on the rooftops, we slide through the shadows; we overnight in the abandoned buildings and the remains of the Calculator. Parts of it still clack and whir, and exhale the ghostly remnants of pungent steam. It comforts us; this is also where we keep her.

The mechanical girl is broken, but we put her together the best we could. Still, she would not wake up and the hole in her chest gapes at us, pleading and longing. We know what it wants, and we search for it—we search through the debris and the refuse of the markets, through the burned-out houses; we dive to the bottom of the Grackle Pond, our wings silvery with the powder of air bubbles, and we look in the clouds.

Sometimes the mechanic—a child of red earth, of the world that is not so distant to us anymore—comes to the ruins of the Calculator, its metal insides mysterious and inviting. He sits by the girl for a while and then leaves; we let him come and go as he pleases, because he seems so different now. Even his smell has changed—he now smells of dusty paper and ink, and we suspect that it is the cause of his sadness.

We never tell him about our search, of our moonlit flights over the rooftops, of our bargaining with the spiders who spend almost as much time searching for something in the city’s filth as we do. But we do not let him touch her because it is our duty to fix her, and it is our task to find the key.

Some days we despair and think that it has melted in the fire, into a shapeless lump fused to the cinderblocks of the foundation; sometimes we think that it was vaporized by the first blast of the explosion, like the woman who had been holding it in her soft hand. But we chase away such thoughts. It’s out there somewhere, and if anyone can find it, it is us—and we will keep looking as long as we live.





Acknowledgements

I owe a debt of gratitude to the many writers and first readers who helped me with their advice, support and friendship: Paul Tremblay, Jay Lake, Catherynne Valente, Nick Mamatas, Paul Jessup, Paul Abbamondi, Sarah Prineas, Hannah Wolf Bowen, Mike Allen, Jessica Paige Wick, Darin Bradley, Ivona Elenton, David Schwartz, Jenn Reese, Forrest Aguirre, Barth Anderson, Jonathan Wood, K. Tempest Bradford, Darby Harn and Amal al Mohtar.

Many thanks to the wonderful folks at Prime—to Sean Wallace for having faith in this book and to Stephen Segal for his graphic design.

I am grateful to Jennifer Jackson, for being the best agent ever.

Finally, I am forever grateful to my family—Chris, my wonderful husband, and to my mom, dad, my sister Natasha, my dad-in-law, and Connie for their encouragement and love.

Thank you all for being in my life.