Si-Si giggled. “Are you okay? I know I shouldn’t laugh. But . . . the wall . . . you.” Swallowing, she tried to stop giggling and hiccupped instead. “You can’t—hiccup—cross a wall. You have to go around. That’s how walls work—they keep you out.”
Rubbing her hands, Mayka backed away from the wall. She’d never seen anything like this—unthinking stone that reacted. “I think maybe you’re right.” As she walked along the wall without touching it, she kept studying it. It seemed so wrong that a stonemason would bring a wall to life but make it unable to communicate anything more than a warning. It must have other thoughts trapped within its mortar.
Or maybe it didn’t. Maybe it was alive but not aware. Worms were alive but not capable of advanced conversation. You couldn’t reason with a flower.
“Why bring it to life at all if you don’t make it able to be more?” Mayka asked.
“Because the land needed protecting,” Si-Si said. “My keepers had a wall like this around their entire estate. I was just lucky that it had been ordered to keep people out, not in, or it would have been a lot harder to leave after they abandoned me.”
The sadness was back in her voice. Mayka wished there was something she could say or a story she could tell that would make the little dragon feel better. It had to have hurt so much to be forgotten. She patted Si-Si’s back, between her wings. “I’m sorry. Do you want to talk about it?”
“No,” Si-Si said, shifting away from Mayka. “It’s upsetting, and I don’t want to be upset on my way to change my destiny.” She arched her back and lifted one foot, posing as if she wanted someone to admire her bravery.
Mayka thought about repeating her apology but decided the best choice was to change the subject again. “Risa, how far out of our way will this take us?”
“A few miles. But, Mayka, there are walls as far as I can see. We’ll have to take the roads into the city. And there are people on the roads.”
“Maybe they’ll be friendly.” Mayka didn’t know if everyone here was like the farmers, and they were going to have to risk it at some point—they still had to venture into the city, with all its people, to find their stonemason. “I’m not going to be afraid of the unknown.”
“That’s okay, Mayka,” Jacklo said. “I’ll be afraid for you.”
“I’ve met lots of people,” Si-Si volunteered. “Or at least a few people. Sometimes we’d have visitors at the estate. All of them were very different from one another. One of them liked to eat seeds and spit the shells on the floor, and another incessantly washed his hands . . .” Mayka listened as Si-Si rattled off person after person, more than Mayka had ever imagined meeting. She tried not to feel overwhelmed.
Si-Si continued to talk, and the faces in the wall continued to watch them as they walked alongside it, careful not to touch it, until they came to a road. By now, it was properly dawn, with pale yellow light flooding the valley.
The road was packed dirt, with deep grooves from wagon wheels and indents from hoofprints—Mayka couldn’t tell just from the prints if they’d been made by flesh or stone. She stepped out from behind the wall and into the middle of the road and started to walk.
By midday, she saw it: ahead, in the distance, was the city of Skye.
From here, it looked like a streak of white and gray, gleaming near the horizon. Leading to it, the road rose and fell over hills that were dotted with farms and houses, some clustered together and others tucked in between trees or beside rivers. People and creatures were walking and riding to and from the city—from here, they did look like ants, just as Jacklo had described. It was . . . Mayka tried to think of an adjective large enough to encompass it: magnificent, stupendous, extraordinary.
“Wow!” Si-Si said.
Mayka agreed. That word worked too.
“I never thought I’d have to come here,” Risa said.
“I never thought I’d want to come here,” Mayka said. “But I do!” She began to jog toward it. So close, and so incredible! She was really going to see it, the city from the stories, the birthplace of their father, the legendary Skye!
“Come on!” Si-Si called, breaking into a deerlike lope. “Faster! Our future awaits!”
Chapter
Eight
As Mayka jogged down the road with Si-Si, she tried to sort through her emotions—tried to imagine how she’d feel if this were one of Father’s stories. Am I nervous? Or excited? She felt as exposed as a rabbit in a field, but also thrilled to be out on the road, in sight of all the other travelers. She wanted to race forward and bolt in the opposite direction at the same time.
At first the other travelers were far away, but as Mayka and her friends drew closer, she found herself wondering what they’d see when they looked at her: a stone girl, composed of gray mountain granite, with bare feet and a dress carved to look as if the fabric were ruffled by wind. Mica freckled her cheeks and arms, and a streak of white quartz striped her hair. Hints of black stone clustered on the skirt of her dress, like black stars in a gray sky. She’d been polished smooth, except for her hair, which curled into braids with the natural ripple of the rock. Thinking of the farmers, she wondered how nervous she should be.
Everyone’s different, she reminded herself. It was true for her and her friends; it would be true for the people in the valley. They’ll see me for me.
She wondered if Father had ever felt this way coming into the city, this mix of wow-can’t-wait and no-don’t-want-to. She wondered if any of the other travelers felt this way.
The first person they passed was flesh and blood, steering a wagon pulled by flesh horses. He had a hat pulled over his ears, and Mayka felt his eyes on her as they jogged by. She made herself smile and wave. “Hi! Are you going to the city?”
His eyebrows shot up. “Yes.”
“Keep going,” Si-Si advised Mayka. “He’s not a stonemason.”
“How can you tell?”
“It’s obvious,” Si-Si said with a roll of her fiery eyes. “All stonemasons have to wear badges to prove they’re registered with the guild. No one’s allowed to carve stone without one. It’s the law.” She picked up her pace, and Mayka matched it. Soon they were past the man and his wagon.
Next were three stone horses, like the one they’d seen two days ago, pulling a load without a driver. One was gray, one was black, and one was pink granite, and all wore leather harnesses hooked to their carts. The horses didn’t acknowledge Mayka or Si-Si in any way. They just kept plodding forward.
Mayka wondered if Father had had a stonemason badge. She’d never seen him wear one, and she’d never found one in the house.
After they passed several more travelers, Mayka decided she felt more excited than nervous. What a tale this would have made! Their journey to Skye. She imagined herself and her friends gathering around Father, maybe on the roof at night with the moon overhead, fat and low in the sky as if it wanted to listen too. He’d tell of their journey, and Jacklo and Risa would jump in—Jacklo with embellishments, and Risa with commentary. Dersy would faint at the part with the farmers, and Nianna would want to hear more about the fallen stone giants that Jacklo saw.
Ahead were the city walls.
White stone, they gleamed in the morning light. Quartz and mica sparkled—it looked as if someone had collected stars from the night sky and then wrapped them around the city. Beyond the walls, she saw spires and domes, sheathed in white and blue, gold and bronze. I didn’t know it would be so beautiful, she thought. The story of the sky brothers had never mentioned that. But the city was a jewel, shimmering and glittering and shining so brightly that Mayka couldn’t look away.
All roads led toward a stone arch, and all the travelers streamed together. Mayka and Si-Si were within the crowd flowing toward the city, while the two birds flew above. At first, Mayka watched all the faces—waiting for someone to yell at her or try to grab her, like the farmer—but no one seemed to pay any attention to her or Si-Si, or to notice Jacklo and Risa flying above. Sh
e began to relax, and even to enjoy herself.
Over the road, at the peak of the arch, was the face of a friendly turtle with a broad smile and sagging eyes. The rocks around him were patterned to look like a shell, and the arch itself was made of his legs, spread wide for people to walk through. He spoke in a booming voice. “Welcome to Skye! Home of a hundred dreams and a thousand opportunities!”
If Turtle could see this . . . She thought of her old friend, high on an overlook. Clear nights on the mountain, you could see Skye twinkling in the distance, but she knew he’d never imagined a turtle on the entrance to the great city. She grinned and waved up at the arch, and was rewarded with a smile back from the great turtle. When a stonemason wakes Turtle, I’ll tell him all about it.
As she passed through, she felt as if the city were wrapping her in sounds: voices, bells, whistles, footsteps, wagon wheels across cobblestones. She turned in a circle as she walked, trying to see everything at once, but within the press of people, it was impossible.
In the city, Mayka had expected to see other dragons like Si-Si, but even here, the little dragon seemed unique. Mayka didn’t see any legendary creatures. The stone creatures were like Mayka’s friends, forest and farm animals: horses, pigs, dogs, rabbits, all carved out of a variety of stones. White quartz. Rose quartz. Obsidian. Marble. Limestone. Even stone she didn’t recognize. And the people were just as colorful, with skin that ranged from pale pink to deep black and with hair that was colored every shade of the earth, sea, and sky from cornsilk yellow to sunset rose and river blue.
She felt as if she were being drowned in shapes, voices, and colors.
Calm, she told herself. Stone should be calm.
But there was nothing calm about the stone-filled city around her.
“Festival vendors, this way!” a voice trumpeted. “This way to the Festival Square! Straight ahead to the Inn District! Lodging for weary travelers available! Left to the farmers’ market, bakers’ row, and the Garment Quarter!”
Trying to see the speaker, to orient herself, she stopped and craned her neck, and people jostled her. Mayka wished she were taller, less childlike. Someone bumped hard into her shoulder.
“Sorry,” a man grunted, then he looked at her and his eyes widened. “Well, look at that: a stone girl! Remarkable!” She noticed a few other people gawking at her. Most, though, seemed not to care.
She made herself smile in what she hoped looked like a friendly way. “Yes, mountain granite,” she said, and then she herded Si-Si deeper into the crowd. People closed around her, and when she looked back, the man had been swallowed by the masses.
She was glad that Jacklo and Risa were flying high above, and she wished she could join them. Now that she was within the city, it seemed . . . too full, too much. This deep in the forest of people, she couldn’t see anything but more people.
She wormed through the crowd. Both flesh people and stone creatures were pushing their way forward, and many were pulling carts and wagonloads full of food and wares. They chattered to one another in such a din that it all blended into one sound, words blurring into one another so that she couldn’t distinguish them. She felt as if she were beneath an avalanche, battered by sounds and shapes and bright colors falling down on her, and she forded ahead, aiming for a spot of openness in front of her.
Away, she thought. Run. As much as she’d wanted to come here when they were out on the road, she now wished she could flee and run out of the city, across the valley, and back up her mountain, back where there weren’t all these people or creatures or buildings, back where there was quiet.
She was shaking, her stone fingers clacking against her palms. She breathed in and out, and tried to think calm thoughts: a lake, a mountain, the sky. She could barely see the sky from here. The buildings leaned against one another, as if they were trying to block it from view. Everything was stone or wood, all of it carved into intricate shapes and patterns. Even the street beneath her feet, which was chunks of smoothed stone, had been crafted by expert hands. Carver hands, like her father’s. She tried to let that fact calm her.
“Are you all right?” Si-Si asked. “You don’t look all right.”
“Just . . . it’s a lot.”
“Come on,” Si-Si said. “I’m good at finding quiet places.” She hopped over the cobblestones, weaving between people. Following the little dragon, Mayka ducked into a canyonlike space between two buildings.
Above, the sky was only a thin streak of blue. But the roar of the city felt muffled, smothered by the walls. She took a deep breath, the way Father used to do every sunrise, to shed the nightmares. She’d never had a nightmare or any kind of dream, since she didn’t sleep, but she imagined one felt a bit like this: as if the world were squeezing you. “Where are we?”
“It’s an alley, a space between buildings too narrow to be a road,” Si-Si said. “It doesn’t lead anywhere. We had a bunch of narrow spaces like this at the estate, between the barns. I used to seek them out when the other stone creatures were picking on me.”
“I didn’t know there would be so many people.” I didn’t know so many people existed! She’d never felt this way before, like she didn’t belong. She should be where she could see the wide, open sky, where the valley was laid out at her feet, safely far away.
“It helps if you don’t try to look at all of them at the same time.”
Peering out of the alley, Mayka gazed at the people, trying to make herself focus on them one at a time, rather than seeing them as “Eek, lots!”
It helped, a little.
They came in all shapes and sizes, wearing more colors than she knew existed: a boy in a more-orange-than-a-pumpkin hat, a woman wearing a dress of feathers, a man with a bare chest but a many-layered skirt with tassels dangling all around. Between them were stone creatures, plenty of them. Stone rats scurried through the street with rolls of paper strapped to their backs, carrying messages. A stone squirrel with a bucket around its neck was scrambling across the face of a building as it cleaned the windows. Other stone creatures—bears, wolves, and bulls, some crudely carved and others exquisitely detailed—blocked the entrances to the fancier houses, acting as guards.
Jacklo and Risa flew into the alley.
“This is amazing!” Jacklo cried. “There are so many of us!”
“It’s a good sign,” Risa agreed, as she landed on a stack of crates. Jacklo perched beside her and folded his wings. “There must be many stonemasons in this city.”
She’s right. Someone had to make all these creatures. It was good the city was so crowded with so many stone creatures. You wanted to come here, Mayka reminded herself.
“This should be easy,” Jacklo said. “All we have to do is ask anyone.”
Mayka didn’t want to move from the alley. It felt comfortable there, like being in a cave, safely cocooned in shadows. She took a step backwards, knowing she should be taking a step forward, and her foot squished. Looking down, she saw she’d stepped on a pile of rotted fruit. It oozed between her toes. Shaking her foot, she tried to scrape it off on the cobblestones. I can’t stay hidden. We’re so close! “Come on. Let’s find a stonemason and go home.”
Before she could reconsider, she forced herself to walk out of the alleyway, back into the crowd. It swallowed her almost instantly. But this time she rode the wave instead of letting it crash over her. She went up to a woman who wore a headdress of bone antlers and a dress painted to look like a sunset. “Excuse me, but do you know where I could find a stonemason?”
The woman frowned. “Ask your keepers. You should go to their stonemason.”
“But I don’t—”
“It’s their business, not yours. Go home, stone girl.” The woman walked on, and Mayka saw she was holding a leash, with a stone dog trotting behind her. Sculpted out of sandstone, the dog was painted pink and wore a collar of diamonds and rubies. Glancing at Mayka and Si-Si, it sniffed as if it had smelled garbage.
“I know who to ask,” Si-Si said, hoppi
ng into the crowd. “Excuse me? Excuse me! Oh, hello, could you please direct us to a stonemason?”
Pushing forward, Mayka saw the dragon had stopped in front of a pillar with a stone owl carved at the top. His legs and tail feathers were part of the pillar itself, barely chiseled, holding him immobile, but his head and body were free to move. His head swiveled to watch in all directions, and his wings were directing traffic, pointing down streets. “Ahead for the Inn District, right for the Festival Square and festival preparations, left for all other business!”
“Hello? We’re looking for a stonemason.” Si-Si hopped higher so that the owl could see her. “Hi? We need directions. Please help us.”
When he didn’t answer, Jacklo landed on the owl’s head and twisted his neck to look him in the eye. “Hello! It’s not polite to ignore the little dragon lady. Could you please answer her question? Which way to a stonemason?”
“Interrupting my work is not polite,” the owl said. “And lingering by the city entrance is not permitted. You must keep moving.” He waved his wings in a circle. “Keep moving. Moving, moving, moving.” He swung his wings until Mayka and Si-Si scooted out of the way. Jacklo launched into the air.
“You’d think the one giving out directions would have been the best choice,” Si-Si grumbled. “Do you want to try? Pick one to ask.” She stuck close to Mayka’s ankles, and Mayka appreciated that. It would be easy to be separated in a crowd like this. Looking up, she scanned the roofs for Jacklo and Risa. She thought she saw them perched at the top of a building on its gutter. At a distance, they blended in with the flesh-and-feathers pigeons.
Mayka and Si-Si kept asking stranger after stranger. But everyone seemed intent on making their own way into the city and had no interest in helping two stone creatures who looked like a young girl and an ornament.
Maybe we need to be farther from the gate before anyone will listen, Mayka thought. Too many people here.
Picking a direction at random, she joined the stream of flesh-and-blood people and stone creatures.
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