Mayka watched dawn rise over the city. Lemon yellow licked the spires and towers until they gleamed. It truly was a beautiful city. She wished their adventure here could have gone differently. If Master Siorn hadn’t invented his mark, if Jacklo hadn’t fallen and broken his wing . . .
“How are your wings?” she asked Jacklo.
He stretched out his wings and twisted his head to see them. “All better.”
“No flying yet.” Risa pecked him on the shoulder.
“Hey! Don’t do that!” Skipping sideways, he folded his wings back against his sides. He shook himself, and his feathers clicked together until they lay flat.
Jacklo’s squawk woke Ilery. Rubbing her eyes, she sat up. Her hair had tangled in the night, and half of it was plastered against her cheek. Mayka’s hair would never do that, no matter how she lay or how long she lay there. It would always look the same. She wondered what it must be like to have a body that changed all time. You’d wake up wondering how much you’d grown, and whether you’d function the same way that you did the day before. How strange, she thought.
“It’s time for me to be going,” Mayka said.
“Oh.” Ilery sounded sad. “Will I see you again?”
“I don’t know,” Mayka said honestly. “I hope so. You could come visit me someday.” She pointed in the direction of her mountain. “Climb the highest mountain, and when you get to the cliff with the waterfall, call to Jacklo and Risa, and they’ll guide you the rest of the way. I’ll ask them to fly out once a day to look for you. Jacklo, Risa, will you do that?”
“Of course,” Jacklo said.
“If we make it home,” Risa said.
“Don’t be such a pessimist,” Jacklo told her. “Mayka will get us home. She got us away from that stonemason, didn’t she?”
“We haven’t left the city yet,” Risa pointed out. “And she’s planning to go back.”
“You don’t need to come,” Mayka told the birds. She could do this alone. She was the one who’d made the promise to the griffin.
Swinging her legs out of bed, Ilery stepped into a pair of slippers and dragged her fingers through her nestlike hair. “You can all stay here. You’ll be safe with me.”
“We stick together,” Jacklo said. “We’re family. That’s what we do.”
“And I’m not going to be left behind!” Si-Si piped up.
“Ilery has a point,” Mayka said. “You will be safer if you stay here with her. Si-Si, you’ve already done so much to help us escape. And, Jacklo, you might want to lie low until you can fly.”
Raising his wings up, Jacklo stood taller. “I can fly now!”
“No risking it,” Risa insisted. “You might fall again.”
In a small voice, Jacklo said, “I didn’t like falling.”
“How did you fall?” Mayka asked. “It’s not like you.” He hadn’t told the story of his accident. She’d assumed he’d crashed into something—got distracted and flew into a wall. Or tried to break through a window—hadn’t Master Siorn said Jacklo had been trying to enter someone’s house? She wondered if she could trust anything Master Siorn said.
“It happened fast. I was flying along, trying to see through windows, when something hard hit me. I heard a crack, and suddenly couldn’t control my wing.” He studied it sadly. “I didn’t see what it was. It’s not much of a story, I know.”
“Something hit you? Something thrown?” Mayka thought of the stone otters. Master Siorn could have ordered them to throw rocks at all intruders, even aerial ones. Under the control of his mark, they wouldn’t have been able to resist. They even seemed to like throwing things. She shuddered. No one should be forced to hurt another. “Like a rock?” That would have been enough to damage him, and it would also explain where he fell.
“Maybe. Probably?” He shuddered.
“You’d think it would have taught you caution,” Risa said.
Mayka smiled at Jacklo. “It’s okay. I like you just the way you are.” It was good to see him acting like himself, not worshiping Master Siorn.
“Can he learn caution?” Ilery asked. “I thought stone couldn’t change.”
Mayka used to think that too. “I already have.” She’d left home—that was something she’d never expected to do. Since she’d come to this city, she’d learned how to lie, she’d learned how to sneak, she’d learned how to carve, and she’d learned how to be brave. All of that was new. “We should go, before I lose my nerve.”
Crossing to a trunk, Ilery picked out a blue dress dotted with stars. She also chose a pair of black shoes and a yellow scarf.
With Ilery’s help, Mayka dressed. It felt strange to have fabric encasing her. For her whole life, her clothes had been stone, but now layered over the stone was this cotton. She touched it and then looked at herself in the mirror. Already she looked transformed.
“You look like flesh,” Si-Si said.
“Good,” Mayka said. It was funny that simple clothes could change what others saw as her story. She’d become someone else with a different past and future. She wondered if clothes were a way for flesh people to wear a kind of mark. These clothes, for instance, marked her as a girl like Ilery, from a farm in the valley.
Ilery tied the scarf around her hair. “This is the style I wear mine in back home.” She looked at Mayka in the mirror, standing next to her. “We could pass for sisters.”
“I’d like you for a sister,” Mayka said.
Ilery beamed. “I’d like that too. Did you really mean what you said? That I can visit you someday?”
“Yes, absolutely. I’ll miss you.” And she meant it.
“It might not be for a long time,” Ilery said, her smile fading. “I’ll live with my parents until I’m grown. You might not even recognize me.”
“Then wear a scarf around your hair, tied like this.” She waved at the scarf that Ilery had knotted around her stone hair. “I’ll know you that way.”
Ilery’s smile came back, as bright as the rising sun.
Sitting on the edge of the bed, Mayka slid her bare stone feet into shoes for the first time. She giggled. It felt so strange! She wiggled her toes, and they hit against the top of the shoe. “You wear these all the time?”
“Otherwise we’d cut our feet.”
Standing, Mayka practiced walking across the room. It would feel strange to run in them, but if she were running, that would mean something had gone wrong, and she could just kick them off.
Ilery fetched the basket, and Mayka laid Jacklo in it. Cooing at him, Ilery tucked him in with another scarf so he wouldn’t be seen. She put an apple on top to further disguise him and then turned to Si-Si. “I don’t know how to disguise you.”
Si-Si folded her wings. “Don’t worry. No one ever notices me anyway.”
Ilery laughed. “You’re a firestone dragon! Everyone will notice you! You’re the reason I talked to Mayka in the first place, you know—I thought any girl who’d befriend a dragon had to be worth knowing.”
“Really? But my keepers—”
“Didn’t deserve you,” Mayka finished for her. “You are extraordinary, Si-Si. You chose to help us. You are brave and selfless, even though your story doesn’t say whether you are or aren’t. You chose to be who you are.”
“Also, you’re really bright red and orange, so you can’t come with us,” Risa said. “Not to the Festival Square, and not to the city gates. You’ll give us away.”
“But I . . .” Si-Si blinked, and Mayka thought if the little dragon weren’t stone, she would be crying. “I want to come with you! I want to keep being . . . me. This new me. And you . . . help me be that me.”
Mayka and Ilery looked at each other. “I’d give her a dress, but I don’t think that would fool anyone,” Ilery said, and both of them grinned at the image of the little dragon in a dress. “I didn’t pack any dragon disguises.”
Jacklo poked his beak out of the basket. “Can’t she just hide like me?”
Risa snorted. “She won’t fit, silly.”
Ilery brightened and then rummaged through her trunk again. She produced a pack with two shoulder straps. “You could carry her in this! I think it’s large enough. But I don’t know how heavy she is.”
“Very,” Mayka said, and then she smiled again. “But I’m as strong as stone.” She took the pack and opened it. Si-Si climbed in and curled up with her wings around her. Bracing herself, Mayka lifted the pack onto her shoulders, and Si-Si made a chirping-chime sound as she bounced on Mayka’s back. “Are you all right in there?”
“Yes.” Her voice was muffled. “Let me know when you need me to come out and be brave.”
Mayka smiled. “I will.” She checked her costume one more time. “I might not be able to return any of this,” she said to Ilery.
“Give it back when I visit,” Ilery said.
Mayka hugged her. “Thank you for everything.”
“Good luck,” Ilery said, hugging her back.
Risa flew out the window toward the roofs, and Mayka left the room and then the inn. The badger at the front desk glanced at her with a squinting frown, and Mayka took that to be a good sign—he didn’t recognize her. Stone creatures never wore cotton clothes.
Carrying Si-Si and Jacklo, she walked through the streets, past the mural, toward the Festival Square. Before she reached it, she heard the sounds: voices shouting orders, hammers hitting wood, chisels on stone.
The square was even more crowded than it had been before—the festival was tomorrow. Jugglers and acrobats were practicing. Dancers twirled one another in complicated steps, their skirts flowing around them as they spun and tossed ribbons into the air. Musicians, all playing at the same time, rehearsed. Food vendors were setting up carts and opening colorful umbrellas. She weaved her way toward Master Siorn’s stage and hoped that Risa was keeping an eye out. If Master Siorn was there, then Mayka could blend in with the crowd and wait until Garit was alone.
But luck was with them: Master Siorn wasn’t there.
Neither was Garit, though.
On his stage, she saw the pedestals she and Garit had made, decorated with wreaths of stone flowers—the flowers weren’t alive, but they were beautiful, with petals carved from stones and jewels of every color of the rainbow. It looked ready.
He has to come!
Other workers and apprentices were at their stages, adding final details. One stonemason had shaped his entire stage like a clamshell, with seaweed made from green malachite and pearls shaped from alabaster. Another had etched geometric patterns in such fine detail that the lines seemed to spin as Mayka looked at them. A different stage was drenched in diamonds and rubies and guarded by two stone wolves who had emeralds for eyes. Yet another was bare, except for a perfectly formed stone sphere in the center, a marvel in its perfection.
Where is he?
Poking his beak out of the basket, Jacklo said, “I see him!”
“Shhh,” Mayka said.
Through the crowd, she saw Garit squeezing his way to the stage, his arms full of firewood. Climbing up onto the platform, he piled the wood near the pedestals.
Slipping between two workers who were carrying armfuls of flowers, Mayka approached him as he climbed off the stage. “Hi, Garit. It’s me.”
He startled and then peered at her. “Mayka?”
“Did you get in trouble?”
“I’m fine. He was furious, but . . . I’m fine. You shouldn’t have come back! I thought you’d be miles away by now.”
“I can’t leave, knowing what Master Siorn plans. I have to at least try to erase the mark from Kisonan and the others.”
Garit shook his head. “I can’t help you. Master Siorn will be even more furious! Look, I agree with you—what he’s done and what he plans to do isn’t right. I hate that I ever trusted him, and if I could leave my apprenticeship, I would be gone in a heartbeat. But I’m as bound to him as the stone creatures he’s enslaved. I can’t disappoint my family by acting against the man who is giving me a future.”
“We’ll keep you blameless,” Mayka said. “Take me into the Stone Quarter, and then bring Master Siorn back here. Stay with him the entire time. That way, he can’t blame you, because you’ll have been with him.”
“That’s brilliant,” Garit said.
“Thank you.”
She waited while he looked at her.
“So you’ll help us?” Jacklo chirped from within the basket.
Garit jumped. “Um, yeah.”
“You’re about to be heroic,” Si-Si said from within the bag. “You should say yes with more conviction.”
“Yes, I’ll help you.”
So many people and stone creatures were at the entrance to the Stone Quarter that there was a line that wound around the corner. Keeping her head down, Mayka held her basket tight to her chest as they shuffled forward in the line until they reached the guard. “Apprentice Garit,” Garit said. “This is Apprentice . . . Bird. She’s with me.”
It wasn’t the same guard as before, Mayka was relieved to see. This man had tufts of hair on his head, as if he’d torn out other clumps. He looked overwhelmed by the flood of people coming in and out through his gate. “Yes, yes, move along. Keep it moving.”
In the Stone Quarter itself, there was chaos everywhere as stonemasons and their workers rushed to prepare. Mayka slipped closer to one of the houses, hoping to blend in with the various apprentices, while Garit went to persuade Master Siorn to join him on the festival stage.
Hidden in the crowd, Mayka watched as a stonemason tried to push a stone ox onto a cart. The ox didn’t budge. Instead it stood still, watching a butterfly that flitted over a flowering bush. The woman looped a rope around the ox’s neck and pulled, but it didn’t work. She called over three helpers, and they all pulled.
The ox swung his head over lazily to look at them, then returned to studying the butterfly. At last, the stonemason called to the workers to stop. She asked for something from one of them—Mayka was too far away to see what—but the worker produced a cloth, which the woman then wrapped around the ox’s eyes.
The ox walked docilely onto the cart.
Would these people recognize that the obedience mark was evil?
Or would they just see that it made their work easier?
I have to stop Master Siorn, she thought.
If she didn’t, every stone creature here—every stone creature everywhere—would be in danger. She watched Master Siorn’s house anxiously, hoping he’d come out soon. If Garit couldn’t distract him . . . If she couldn’t change the marks . . .
At last Mayka heard a tweet overhead as a gray bird flew low—a signal from Risa. Mayka stepped behind a cart and watched through the slats as Master Siorn and Garit strode away toward the exit of the Stone Quarter.
She darted across the street and danced over the stones, ducking beneath the otters’ rocks. “Kisonan,” she called through the door, “we came back.”
The rock rolled open, and the griffin filled the doorway. “You took a great risk in returning,” Kisonan said, in a tone that implied he didn’t approve.
“I made you a promise.”
He snorted, and she expected him to send her away or at least argue. But he didn’t. “There is limited time. You must begin.”
She nodded and hurried to the workroom. I hope I can do this. So far, she’d carved only Jacklo. She wasn’t sure she could carve the griffin the same way, since their stories were different. But I have to try.
She set down the basket with Jacklo and then lowered the pack with Si-Si to the ground. The little dragon emerged. “Hello again,” she said.
Kisonan humphed. “You all took a great risk.”
Mayka found the tools she’d need. The griffin stood still, his chest out and his wings displayed. She studied his marks. This . . . looked possible. “If I change the left curve . . .” It should be a much simpler alteration than she’d had to do on Jacklo, primarily due to the size and placement of the mark.
The griffin’s story said he was noble. It retold a tale of a long-ago prince who had become lost. Beset by wolves, with winter snows on their way, the little boy should have died, but a wild creature—part lion and part eagle—defended and protected him. Kisonan is loyal, brave, and strong, the story read. He defends his prince. And then: He obeys Master Siorn. Mayka understood why Kisonan had felt so offended. It wasn’t just that the obedience mark took away free will, but he was already loyal—to have that questioned must have hurt his pride.
“Carve quickly,” Kisonan said. “There are others who wish for your services.”
Glancing at the workroom door, she saw several stone creatures had crowded inside.
“Master Siorn gave no order against this,” Kisonan said smugly.
She smiled. “Si-Si, can you tell them that I’ll help them all? And Risa, can you please fly outside and watch for Master Siorn? I’ll carve as fast as I can.”
And then she got to work.
Taking up her chisel, she reshaped the curve that formed the stonemason’s name and added several more strokes so that it now read He obeys his conscience.
The next creature, an otter, rushed in and jumped onto the workbench. “Me next!” He lifted one arm to show his mark, neatly tucked beneath it. Changing this one would be a little trickier because of the ripples in the stone that served as his fur.
“Your story says you were born playing and laughing.” She touched the marks. “You’re an acrobat of the river who once made the fish laugh so hard that they fell onto the shore and fed a family of flesh-and-fur otters for an entire winter. You came to land with your family to—” And here the stonemason had written his obedience mark. She set about changing it from “obey” to “lead” and linked it to the mark for laugh, obscuring the stonemason’s name. “To lead them in laughter,” she finished.
Grinning hugely, he hugged her, and the next otter scurried up, replacing him on the workbench.
“Watch for Master Siorn’s return,” the griffin instructed the second otter as Mayka finished her. “We will not have forever.” The two completed otters scampered away to stand guard as Mayka sank herself into her work on the rest of the creatures.
She wasn’t a master carver, or even an apprentice, but she could make the simple lines that were required to alter the words. The more marks she did, the better she got at carving them.
On one of the lizards who guarded the gate and had a story that spoke of stubbornness, she changed the mark to “obeys his own wishes.” On the other, whose story told of loyalty, she made it “obeys his own heart.” She wanted to give each creature its own unique tale, so that its revised story would mesh with all its old stories.
“Speed, little storyteller,” Kisonan said. “You must finish.”
On one mishmash creature, after a string of marks that talked of his love of silence, she made the obedience mark a part of his past but not his future. On another, she read about his love of the kitchen and preparing food—on him, there was enough room to add the mark for choosing so she wrote he could choose to obey or not. He could follow his love of cooking, or find another passion if he wanted.
The workroom was hazy with stone dust that floated in the air, and the sound of chisel on stone filled her ears. She grew used to the feel of the hammer and the way the impact shook her arm.
The griffin paced back and forth in the workroom, while the others watched either her or the door.
At last the final stone creature was done.
Her fingers ached, as if she’d been battering them against a wall. “You’re all invited to come with us to the mountains—my family would welcome you. Or you can go wherever you want in the valley, or even beyond the valley. But we need to leave now, before Master Siorn returns. We’ll tell the guard that we’re all going to the Festival Square, and then we’ll head for the gate to the city.”
“We are not leaving,” Kisonan said. “Master Siorn cannot be permitted to carve the obedience mark on any other creature, and he cannot be permitted to share his invention with any other stonemason. We must stop this abomination from spreading.”
The two otters who weren’t already on guard bobbed their heads in unison.
I know he’s right, Mayka thought. It wasn’t enough just to free these creatures. Master Siorn could simply carve the mark onto a new creature and show it at the Stone Festival. And if other flesh people learned that the mark worked, all stone creatures throughout the valley would be in danger. “But how do we stop him?”
Kisonan opened his beak and shut it. The other creatures whispered to one another. A few whimpered, and the octopus coiled his tentacles as if trying to curl into a ball.
Sticking his head out of the basket, Jacklo piped up. “Maybe we could trick him?”
All of them looked at him.
Before he could explain, an otter raced into the workroom. “He’s coming back!”