Alchemystic

by Anton Strout

  “‘You, my friend,’ Alexander said when he looked up, ‘are my legacy. You can stand sentinel for the ages, keeping my kin from harm as long as they reside here. Family…Respect…These are the things I need to instill in you.’

  “‘I understand,’ I said.

  “Alexander looked up, a kindness flickering in his eyes.

  “‘No,’ he said, ‘I don’t think you do…but you will. Stay hidden. Keep yourself safe. Keep them safe.’”

  Alexandra dropped the book she was writing in and stared up at me. She stood, switching the notebook in her hand for an older one.

  “So my great-great-grandfather sculpted you, breathed life into you, and you’re really a gargoyle,” Alexandra said with wonder in her voice. She pushed her hair over her ear and went back to flipping through the second, newer notebook. “There was this cartoon on the television about them I watched in reruns, but I didn’t think they actually, you know…existed.”

  “Gargoyle,” I repeated with a shudder. “Such a crass name. I prefer the term grotesque.”

  “That sounds a lot worse, actually,” she said with a frown.

  “Really?”

  The girl nodded. “By modern standards, yeah, but it’s the word I use, too. I learned it years ago in the family library.”

  “The Spellmason hated the term,” I said. “Gargoyle was the layperson’s term for what I was. He preferred to call me his chimera or his grotesque.”

  “Well, a hundred years later, it doesn’t sound so great.” She reached out her hand and ran it down the worn, pockmarked stone of my arm. “Looks like you’ve had your fair share of acid rain or something. You’ve got a little bit of erosion going on there.”

  I pulled away. I had little familiarity with humans touching me. I reached up and felt along the same area where a few of the spots on my arm were worn down. I sighed. “I am not sure my maker could have predicted how swiftly the modern world would wear on a grotesque such as I.”

  “Still,” she said, sensing my sadness, “the underlying carving is exquisite. The wings, the claws, the, ummm…demon face.”

  I smiled. “Thank you,” I said. “A love of stonework runs in the family, I see.”

  “Not really,” the woman said. “I’m the first to even take an interest in the art of it all. My brother, when he was alive, anyway, only seemed to like defacing it. I wouldn’t be surprised if that graffiti were his doing. But when our parents told me about our past, the history of our family, something about that time period and my great-great-grandfather’s craftsmanship just spoke to me. How well did you know him?”

  “As well as any piece of stone can know its maker, I suppose,” I said.

  She laughed. “You’ve got quite the sense of humor,” she said. “You know, all things considered.”

  “Your great-great-grandfather built me with the capacity to learn all things,” I said. “I do not know if he ever knew I would come to feel and joke, though. I wonder often about that.”

  I stood lost in quiet contemplation of that until the woman spoke again.

  “You said there were three rules? Always protect the family, always return to the building before daylight, and always keep hidden from humanity?”

  I nodded.

  “Well, two out of three ain’t bad,” she said, holding up two fingers.

  “There were more of us to come, but…” I looked to a large block of half-carved stone that sat farther along the ledge next to me, one I had not looked over at in quite some time.

  Alexandra put the notebook down gently and walked over to the block and examined it.

  “It’s broken,” she said.

  I shook my head. “Not broken. Never finished.”

  “Too bad,” she said, sadness in her tone. “I would have loved to have seen whatever my great-great-grandfather saw when he started carving it. He never got around to finishing it…?”

  I shrugged, causing my wings to flap.

  “What happened?” she asked.

  “One night your great-great-grandfather simply did not show up.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said with a nod, then turned away from the block. “He died later the summer he carved you, from what I’ve been able to read.” She held up the notebook. “It’s slow going. Half these books are in a mix of Slavonic and Lithuanian.”

  “Your kind die so quick,” I said.

  “I guess we do,” she said. She stood up and started walking to the far end of the roof.

  “Those wings,” she said as she crossed. “You flew away the other night, after saving me. So they’re more than just ornamental, aren’t they?”

  I cocked my head. “What do you mean?”

  “I saw them work a little when you left. You can fly well, then?”

  I nodded.

  Alexandra stopped at the edge of the roof and stepped up onto the ledge.

  “Good,” she said, and jumped.

  Before she could even fall out of sight, I heard the words of my maker in my head as if he were alive today, screaming one of the rules at me. Always protect the family.

  With my inhuman speed, I ran across the roof and dove over the side. The girl was dropping fast, but I flapped my wings and closed the distance as quickly as I could. The wind rushed over me and I pressed myself to close with her. I reached out, remembering how fragile these humans were, and carefully grabbed for her.

  I caught her by one wrist, and before I could begin flying back to the top of the roof, she pulled herself around me, clutching both arms around my neck, the drumming of her heart hard against my chest.

  As I flew straight up into the nighttime sky, Alexandra stopped shaking, settling herself against me. I should have landed back on the roof, but something else compelled me and I kept flying upward instead.

  This human closeness was strange, but not unpleasant, and the woman stayed there a long while before lifting her head off my chest, looking back over my shoulders. “Your wings,” she said, eyes widening, “they’re so quiet but…but they’re stone. I thought they’d make some kind of noise or something, but you’re flying effortlessly.”

  I said nothing but continued to fly higher, feeling the great-great-grandchild of my maker tightening her grip even more. Once we were higher than any of the surrounding buildings, I swooped back down through the concrete and metal canyons, angling back and forth through the gaps in the buildings until the Belarus building came back into sight. I landed, setting Alexandra down, and stepped away from her.

  Anger flushed through my body. “I do not engage in games, child…”

  “I just had to see it for myself,” she said, still breathless and stumbling around as she got used to standing on the solid rooftop again. “If everything my great-great-grandfather wrote in his book and what you say is true. You told me about the rules to always protect, and you did!”

  I stood there, unmoving.

  “Relax,” she said, and I felt myself do just that. “Art’s not the only thing about Alexander Belarus I found interesting. His library is full of books and notebooks, a lifetime of learning. I think, perhaps, there’s a bit of truth to some of the magic and alchemy of which he wrote, though it is hard to figure out. You’re living proof. What was it you told me the other night about healing?”

  “To heal the stone, to heal the house.”

  “Yes!” she said, clutching the talisman once more that I had felt the faded power in. “And I’ll do that just as soon as I figure out where all that information is in the library. So much of his work is partial references that then refer to other partial references in another book. But I am fascinated to learn what it took to breathe life into stone.”

  “Only the maker could do that,” I said with a shake of my head.

  “Yeah, well, I’m going to start small,” she said, placing the notebook to the side and grabbing up her scrub brush from the bucket again. “Getting this paint off you is just the beginning. Most of these blocks up here look unfinished. I don’t think my great-great-gran
dfather meant for you to be alone. Maybe I can do something about that someday.”

  The woman set to work and I joined her as she handed me a second brush, although in truth I had no knowledge of the task at hand. I followed what she did, scrubbing at myself, and soon I found I was fully immersed in the task. The longer I worked, focused as I was, a distracting sorrow built in my chest, but it was not my own, forcing me to look around. The woman stood there, her brush lying at her feet, her eyes wet with tears.

  “This pain of yours,” I said. “I feel it. What is the matter, Alexandra?”

  Her shoulders heaved up and down in a rapid motion as she cried. She raised the back of her hand to her eyes and wiped.

  “You said you were created to protect my family,” she said. “Right?”

  “Your great-great-grandfather set me to that task, yes. As I have told you.”

  The girl took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. “So…why didn’t you protect my brother?”

  “I do not understand,” I said.

  “My brother,” she said in a low, even tone as her eyes filled with sadness. “Devon. He died in a building collapse. Why didn’t you try to save him?”

  I cocked my head at her. “I was unaware of this,” I said.

  Her eyes widened. “How can you have been unaware? He was family.”

  I felt around inside for some sense of connection, but there was none to be found. “I do not know what to say. I have had a sympathetic bond with all of your blood over the centuries, but I did not feel any such distress from him.”

  “How is that possible?” she said, her voice cracking. “He was crushed to death when one of my great-great-grandfather’s buildings collapsed on him. He’s dead—do you understand that?”

  “I understand what death is,” I said. “I have seen many of your kind grow old and pass on. But that does not change what has happened. I did not feel the danger to your brother…but you say one of Alexander’s buildings fell in on him. Where?”

  “The Lower East Side,” she said. “On St. Mark’s.”

  “I remember such a place,” I said. “The stone was strong there. It was one of the first buildings Alexander ever put up.”

  The girl gave a pained laugh. “Well, he should have built it stronger, then…”

  “It was strong,” I insisted. “I know that stone. If that structure fell, it was by no accident.”

  “Someone would do that on purpose?”

  “I cannot say. I only know your great-great-grandfather’s craftsmanship.”

  I did not know what more I could say. Pain radiated from the girl, but I was not lessening it, and that shortcoming in me, the inability to calm it, burned like fire. I wondered what I could say to help, but I did not have to wonder long. Before I could figure out what might ease her pain, she was running for the doors leading back down into the Belarus building.

  Fifteen

  Alexandra

  I came down the stairs fast, taking two at a time with the old, worn notebook clutched in my shaking hands. I flew past Alexander’s library, down past mine and Devon’s floor, and found my parents sitting together at opposite ends of the large couch directly across from the television. My father worked at an elaborate lap desk with ledgers and printouts weighing it down, my mother staring blankly at some graying talking head on the screen. When she saw my face, her hand darted for the remote, lowering the sound on whatever financial program they were watching.

  “Honey,” my mother started in that quiet voice of hers. “What’s wrong?”

  “Leave the girl alone,” my father said, stern, not looking up. “She has been through much these past few days. She will rally.”

  “I’m not going to rally, dad,” I spat out. My tone drew his attention. Despite my anger, tears escaped from the corners of my eyes and I hated that I couldn’t help it. Still, everything the creature had said…

  My father closed the ledger he was working in and set the desk on the floor next to him. “Alexandra,” he said, softening. “What is it?”

  “Anything you want to tell me about my brother’s death?”

  He glanced at my mother, then back to me. “What do you mean?”

  “Like maybe it wasn’t an accident…?” I asked, but there was little reaction except confusion on their faces.

  “Alexandra,” my mother said, confusion filling her eyes. “What are you going on about?”

  “Come, sit,” my father said, patting the couch, and I went to him like I was four, sitting down. He put his heavy arm around me and squeezed my shoulder. “Miss Alexandra, you should know, there are no accidents in this world.”

  I looked up at him. “No?”

  My father gave me a soft smile. “Of course not,” he said, pointing to the ceiling. “All of this is according to His plan.”

  I doubted he meant the gargoyle sitting on our roof, and I stiffened. I didn’t love the idea that whatever Power there Might Be went around planning how to kill people like some twisted game of The Sims. Still, Stanis had been sure the building collapse hadn’t been an accident, and I wasn’t ready to go down the road of blaming the Almighty for carrying out some elaborate scheme just yet.

  I wasn’t looking for a lecture on theology, realizing I could investigate the nature of the accident on my own. And now knowing my father’s story about falling through the ice as a boy, I also didn’t want to have the “Your guardian angel is actually a magical gargoyle” talk with him just yet. That wasn’t the real reason I had rushed down here so suddenly, anyway. That had been because of Stanis’s reaction to the death of my brother…For someone sworn to protect the family, he had seemed relatively uninterested in Devon’s death. Whatever the arcana was that ran Stanis, it was messed up. If not, there was only one other alternative that made logical sense to me.

  “Was Devon really my brother?” I asked.

  My father laughed out loud, but not before hesitating. “Of course he was your brother,” he said, waving a dismissive hand.

  I searched his eyes, watching as he quickly shifted them away from me. “I mean, biologically. By blood.”

  My words were met with silence from both my parents, but it was my mother who finally spoke up after a long moment.

  “Tell her,” she said.

  My father gave a heavy sigh and nodded. “It is true. Devon was not your biological brother.”

  “Why haven’t you told me before?” I asked, my heart hurting.

  “Please do not take this the wrong way,” my father said, “but when you were born, while we were very happy to bring you into this world, I was a little bit in shock.”

  “Why?”

  “We Belarus have always been very strong about our family, about our kin. For generations, the firstborn child was always a male. We held our strength in the belief that a patriarchy was part of what assured our continued success, our continued luck. Call it superstitious, if you like—”

  “Your father loves you very much,” my mother impressed on me, putting her hand to rest on my knee.

  “Please hear me out,” he said, turning his eyes down from me. “When you were born, I was…disappointed.” After a moment he looked back up with a weak smile on his lips. “I was young and foolish and determined that there must be a male to continue the family’s success. Someone who could grow into a man of business. So before you were old enough to remember, we…adopted a boy. He was meant to take on the burden of business in this family.”

  “And you never told me,” I said, anger rising up in my chest.

  “I’m so sorry,” my mother said, her hand squeezing my knee again. “The timing was never right, and we kept meaning to, but the more time passed, the easier it got to not bring it up.”

  “Since when has Dad ever shied away from anything? He’s got the Lord on his side!”

  My father’s eyes turned to me, a mix of fear and anger. “You leave God out of this.”

  “Gladly,” I said, standing up to face them. “My point is that I should hav
e known.”

  My father turned away from me, staring at the silent television. “I lost a son,” he said, simple and cold, but I wasn’t going to let him shut down on me like that.

  “And I lost a brother,” I fired back just as cold and with real anger building. “Or at least I thought he was my brother. And now I’m stuck with his job that I’ve been busting my ass on, by the way. Do you think this is what I want for myself? I’ve been doing it to please you.”

  “Oh, honey,” my mother said. “Devon was always your brother. Even when you two were fighting like cats and dogs, he was always your brother.”

  “You haven’t had a bad life, have you?” my father asked, dead serious with a little venom in his words. “You’ve been able to follow your own pursuits…That is, until the accident.”

  “I don’t want to come off as a spoiled brat, but yes, and I’m very thankful for that. I’ve been able to mostly pursue what I want, as long as I stayed close to home.”

  “The Belarus family keeps close,” my mother said from behind me, but I was still concentrating on my father.

  “Everything I’ve studied of our family’s cultural legacy, everything you’ve ever encouraged me to do, every bit of my being wants to be connected to history and art…Now you’re taking that all away from me. And the worst of it is, you didn’t ask me. You just told me.”

  “Running the family business is part of your legacy now,” my father said.

  I held up my great-great-grandfather’s notebook. “So is the art and design and…other things. That’s the only legacy I care about.”

  “We won’t have anywhere to keep any of that legacy if we lose our business,” my father said, his voice turning agitated. “Think of that. Don’t be such a selfish girl. You will learn the family business. Think of your mother.”

  The veins in his neck were pressed out so far I thought his head might explode. His tone was so vehement I knew there was no arguing him, and right now I had better things to think about than the family business.

  “Well, for the sake of the empire, I hope you’ll be more forthcoming about the family business than you were about Devon,” I said, standing up. I stormed off, beyond crying anymore. Fury and bitter resolution had replaced my tears. My mother called after me, but I didn’t bother turning back. What good would it do? It wouldn’t change the fact about what they expected of me, and right now the family business wasn’t foremost in my thoughts.