“Hi,” a voice said beside her.
Jumping, she looked to her left. A flesh-and-blood girl, exactly Mayka’s height, stood next to her with a wide smile on her face. She was dressed in brilliant yellow. Even her socks were yellow.
“Hello,” Mayka said, cautiously.
“Are you here for the festival? What part are you excited about? I’m excited to see what new creatures the stonemasons have carved. And I’m excited for the music and the dancing. And I’m excited to see the fireworks, because I think it’s amazing we can set the sky on fire without setting the city on fire.”
Mayka had never heard anyone talk quite as quickly as this girl. “Um, I’ve never seen fireworks. I’ve heard about them in stories.”
“Ooh, do you know any good firework stories? I do. I know six.” The girl held up six fingers. She gestured so much as she talked that Mayka wondered if she ever held still. “In one of them, the city gets half blown up. It’s exciting.”
“I don’t know that one.” A new story! Mayka prepared to memorize it, to tell her friends on the roof later, when she was home. “Will you tell me?”
“Really? You want to hear it? My parents are tired of all my stories. They say I talk too much, but I think if you have thoughts, you shouldn’t hold them prisoner inside your head. You should let them walk free! Unless they’re bad thoughts that are going to hurt someone else. Those shouldn’t be free. Unless they have to be free, because you have to say them or else something worse will happen.”
Mayka wasn’t entirely sure what the girl was talking about, but she liked the way she talked, with a waterfall of words. “I do want to hear your story.”
“Yay! Okay, it happened in Skye during the second Stone Festival. See, the first festival was meant as a punishment, and it was all dour and no fun at all. All the stonemasons had to prove that they hadn’t carved anything dangerous, but by the second Stone Festival, some of the people of Skye decided that if they were going to have to watch a bunch of stonemasons show their wares, then it might as well be fun. But they kind of forgot to tell anyone else.”
Mayka had so many questions: What was the Stone Festival? Why was it a punishment? For what? But she didn’t interrupt—this was the girl’s story, and she’d asked to hear it. Beside her, Si-Si was listening too.
“So they hired all sorts of acrobats and musicians, and when the stonemasons came out of the Stone Quarter, the revelers signaled for everyone to begin. And there was music and performances and so much excitement that the people of Skye began cheering, as if it were a parade, which it kind of was, just an unplanned one. But one stonemason thought they were being attacked, and he panicked.” The girl waved her arms over her head, to mimic panicking. “He started running around and screaming, which caused all his stone creatures to panic and start running around, and they knocked over some of the food vendor carts—and one of the carts was roasting chestnuts, and when the hot chestnuts rolled out, they hit the confetti, which caught on fire, and then the fiery confetti blew all over the place until it landed on a firework-maker’s shop, which was closed for the stonemason demonstrations. And boom!”
“All the fireworks blew up?” Mayka guessed.
“Exactly,” the girl said. “Straight into the sky. And half the city with them. But the best part was that since everyone in Skye was in the square for the demonstrations, no one was hurt. Afterward, everyone decided they loved it so much that they made it part of the event. And that’s why we have fireworks at the festival.”
Mayka grinned. That would be a fun one to tell the others. She could already think of ways to elaborate on it, with voices for the stonemasons and boom sounds for the fireworks. She’d never heard real fireworks before, just Father’s description of them. “I can’t wait to see them.”
“Is this your first festival?” the girl asked.
“Yes. I didn’t even know it was happening.”
“You didn’t? Wow, I thought everyone knew! We come every year. You’re going to love it. Oh, we can watch it together! I mean, if you want to, if you don’t have other plans. I’d rather see it with a friend than trail after my parents the whole time—they just want to shop and talk to people they know who will ignore me or, worse, tell me how much I’ve grown, as if I was going to stay baby size forever.”
Mayka wanted to say yes to watching the festival—whatever it was—with this unusual, friendly girl. She knew stories that Mayka had never heard, and she chattered more than anyone Mayka had ever known. On the mountain, they all knew each other so well there were no surprises. But every word out of this girl’s mouth was a surprise. “What’s your name?”
“Oh! I’m Ilery. What’s yours?”
“Mayka, and this is Si-Si.”
Si-Si drew herself up taller. “Siannasi Yondolada Quilasa.”
“So nice to meet you!” Ilery curtseyed to both of them. “I’d been hoping I’d meet someone I could talk to.”
Mayka thought back to how she’d wished to meet another stone girl. This girl wasn’t stone, but maybe that didn’t matter. Ilery didn’t seem to care whether Mayka was stone or flesh. “Me too. What’s your story?”
“Mine?” Ilery’s mouth opened and closed like a fish, and Mayka wondered if anyone had ever asked her to tell her story before. “I don’t have much of a story.”
“Everyone has a story.”
“Even if it’s pathetic,” Si-Si said glumly.
“Okay, I guess mine starts with the day I was born. Except I don’t really remember that. My mother says I cried a lot, but I was a baby, so I think that’s to be expected. You probably didn’t cry when you were born.”
“I can’t cry at all,” Mayka said.
“That must be nice. It makes my nose feel all stuffed up.”
“I don’t know what that feels like either.”
“Can you smell?”
“Not a thing.”
“But you breathe?”
“Yes. But I don’t think I have to. It’s just . . . a thing we do, because we’re alive.”
Ilery blinked at her, as if trying to process that. “That makes no sense. You’re stone, so you don’t have any insides, so you don’t have any lungs, so why would you need to breathe?”
“It’s the way I was carved.” Mayka pointed to a neat, tiny mark on her collarbone. “It reads ‘Mayka is a twelve-year-old girl.’ And it means I think, I feel, I breathe—I live as a twelve-year-old girl.” She never thought to question why she’d been carved this way.
“Wow.”
Mayka held out her arms to show more marks. “And these tell more about me and my life.” She thought she should have another mark, about how she’d ventured out of the mountains and what she’d found. Maybe when they found a stonemason, she’d ask him to add it. She liked that idea. “How do you manage without your story written on you? How do you stay the same?” It was a question she’d always wished she’d asked Father. It hadn’t occurred to her while he was alive.
“I’ve got my story inside.” Ilery thumped on her chest, near where Mayka knew humans carried their heart. Father had had a heart. She remembered sitting on his lap, her head against his chest, and listening to his heartbeat as he told her stories or just looked up at the stars. Sometimes he sang to her, though his voice was low and he sang only a few notes. It had always reminded her of the crooning of wind through the pine trees.
“If I had marks, they’d say I’m a farm girl,” Ilery continued. “I live with my parents on a small farm far away from the city. Not many neighbors. No kids nearby. And my parents don’t have much money, so they can’t afford much help. They run the farm themselves, which means I’m alone pretty much all the time. So I made friends with the stones who work the fields. One of the horses loves to talk—he’ll talk even if there’s no one listening—and there’s a stone dog who thinks he can predict the weather. He’s always wrong. They’re my friends.”
Ilery went on to describe her life on the farm, and Mayka
thought it wasn’t so different from her life. Ilery fed the chickens and the goats. She planted seeds and weeded the garden. She helped keep the stone horses clean and ready to plow. From her description, Mayka gathered that Ilery’s horses were a lot more alert than the ones Mayka had seen on the road.
When Ilery finished, Mayka talked about her home, about the cottage and her friends, about the fish in the pond, about the way they watched the stars at night, about how sunsets looked over the valley.
For the next hour, while they waited for the great turtle to wake, they traded more stories: things they’d done, things they’d seen, things they’d felt, until they heard a commotion from the front of the line, near the entrance to the city.
Jumping from foot to foot, the girl pointed toward the gate. “Look! He’s awake! It’s about to open!” She clapped her hands together.
On the arch, the turtle’s eyes were open, and he was surveying the crowd. “Good morning! Please form an orderly line. Welcome to Skye, home of good fortune!”
Ilery waved at a man in a purple cloak and a woman with a golden bird’s nest, cradled in a purple hat, on her head. “Those are my parents. We’re going to stay at the Marble Inn. Where are you staying?”
“Um, we aren’t staying anywhere,” Mayka said.
Si-Si jumped in to explain. “We don’t sleep.”
“But you need someplace to spend the night, don’t you? Ooh, you should stay with us!”
“We have to meet up with some friends of ours,” Si-Si said. “Other stone creatures.”
“Maybe we’ll see you again?” Mayka asked Ilery. As she said it, she knew it was unlikely. Once she found her friends and the stonemason, they’d leave for the mountain. This was her one adventure beyond the forested slopes.
“I hope so!” Ilery waved happily and bounded off toward her family. A man loaded her onto a seat on a cart, then climbed up next to her—the cart was pulled by two stone horses.
Mayka waved back.
At least there was someone here who treated her like a person. She wished they could have gone with Ilery, seen the city together, watched the festival like ordinary tourists. But Ilery’s family was already swallowed by the crowd, separated from her by two other wagons and a string of stone donkeys.
Bells rang cheerfully from the spires of the city as the great gate swung open and the crowd pushed through. There were even more people than yesterday, coming for the Stone Festival. Most of them streamed toward the festival grounds or toward the inns, directed by the owl, but Mayka and Si-Si weaved through the people and creatures, aiming directly for the Stone Quarter.
Slowing, they saw it: the thick wall that gleamed with a thousand jeweled stones, and the arch of stone vines and leaves with a red-clad guard. The guard turned several people away. Even though she couldn’t hear what he was saying, she could imagine it. Closed until after the festival.
“Now what?” Si-Si asked.
“We wait for the birds to find us.” Mayka was sure they’d come out, sooner or later. They’d probably been searching for Mayka and Si-Si all night. “All we have to do is make ourselves visible.”
Parading up and down the length of the wall, Mayka scanned the sky. She saw plenty of birds, mostly pigeons, and with each one, she called out, “Jacklo? Risa? We’re here!”
She got lots of questioning looks, but no one stopped her, and she didn’t go near enough to the wall to wake its defenses, or to the guard to attract his attention. As she called to her friends, she tried not to worry, but failed, as her imagination kept conjuring up images of the birds broken in the street, swept away with the trash . . .
At last, one of the birds overhead broke from the flock and aimed directly for them. Closer, Mayka saw its feathers were gray stone, and its eyes were black. “Risa!” She held up her arm, and Risa landed on it, then climbed up to her shoulder.
“Where were you?” Risa scolded.
“Did you find a stonemason? Where’s Jacklo?” Can we go home yet? Mayka wanted to ask but didn’t. She surveyed the sky, hoping that Jacklo would fly to them next. After an entire night and morning of worrying, she’d had enough of the city and adventure.
Risa ruffled her feathers, trying to make them lie flat, but they spiked back up, a clear sign she was upset. “I haven’t seen Jacklo all night, and the stonemasons refused to talk to me—they’ll only deal directly with my ‘keepers’ and only after the festival.”
“Maybe Jacklo had better luck?”
Watching the sky, they waited for him until sunset, but he didn’t return. Several times, Risa flew over the wall into the Stone Quarter, only to come back more worried than before.
“He could have become lost,” Risa said. “Or gotten hurt and been unable to fly. Or gotten himself stuck somewhere.” All of them stared at the darkening streets, as a stone ferret went from streetlamp to streetlamp, climbing up one and then using a knife against his body to strike a flame. Lights began to blaze from the lamps as the sun sank behind the mountains.
“We can’t wait any longer,” Mayka said. “There’s a curfew. We’ll have to leave the city before they close the gates. We’ll return in the morning.” I shouldn’t have let him fly away from us. Jacklo was too easily distracted. He lacked common sense. Anything could have happened to him.
“I’ll continue to search,” Risa said. “And when I find him, I’ll wring his neck for worrying us.” She flapped toward the Stone Quarter, while Mayka and Si-Si left the city to hide again in the darkening fields beyond.
Chapter
Eleven
Still no Jacklo at dawn.
Risa circled twice above Mayka’s head before settling down on her shoulder. “This isn’t right,” she fretted. “I can always find him. Always. I know something’s happened to him. He’s not on any street. He’s not on any roof. He’s not in any alley. I searched them all.”
Mayka stroked the bird’s head and tried to think of what she could say to reassure her. But she couldn’t find the words. She’d never felt like this before: as if something were gnawing on her, chewing her stone body. Jacklo’s gone.
He’s not. We’ll find him.
“You couldn’t search inside the buildings, right? He must be in one.” Mayka tried to make her voice sound calm and reasonable. “All we have to do is find which one he’s in and let him out.”
Beside her, Si-Si rose up on her hind feet as if that would be enough to let her see over the Stone Quarter’s wall. “How can we do that? We can’t even get past the wall, much less into the houses.”
“Then we find someone who can,” Mayka said.
Si-Si snorted. “Because we’ve had such luck with people so far.” She dropped back to four feet and glared balefully at a woman leading a stone donkey laden with packages. The donkey didn’t even glance at them, but the woman switched to the opposite side of the street.
Mayka thought of Ilery, who hadn’t been like the other people they’d met. There had to be other friendly people in Skye. “Ilery talked about stonemasons at the festival—she mentioned they did demonstrations in a square.”
“Who’s Ilery?” Risa asked.
“A flesh-and-blood girl we met outside the city,” Mayka said. “Maybe someone preparing for the festival can help us get into the Stone Quarter?” She was flailing for an idea, she knew, but it felt logical. The guard had said you needed permission from a stonemason to enter the quarter—what if they got permission?
“The owl on the stick talked about a festival square,” Risa said. “Come on. He can tell us where to find it.” Without waiting for a response, she flapped away from the Stone Quarter, and Mayka and Si-Si followed her.
Closer to the entrance to the city, it was even more crowded than it had been the day before. More and more flesh people and stone creatures were pouring through the city gates, all of them talking about the upcoming Stone Festival. The streets were clogged with wagons, and the sidewalks were filled with families and workers. Mayka felt like a fish swimming ag
ainst the stream as she and Si-Si were forced to slow to a near stop, despite repeating, “Excuse me, excuse me.”
Overhead, Risa flew above the crowd, directly to the owl on the pillar who was giving out directions. She returned to Mayka and Si-Si and reported, “It’s east, just past the city mural.”
“What’s the city mural?” Mayka asked.
“Ooh, it’s famous!” Si-Si said. “It’s supposed to be the history of the valley. I’ve never seen it, but it should be a very clear landmark.”
“Follow me,” Risa said.
Joining the flow of traffic, they switched directions and, trailing behind Risa, made their way across the city, toward the Festival Square. Soon, they encountered the city mural, a vast tapestry of stone.
“We’re on the right track!” Si-Si cried. “Come on!”
But Mayka slowed.
Other pedestrians flowed around her, but she ignored them.
Stretching across several buildings, the city mural was a mosaic made of shards of different colored stones and jewels carefully arranged into images, scenes, and landscapes. They weren’t alive, but they were beautiful.
Mayka stared in wonder as she walked slowly down the street, drinking it all in. She hadn’t ever seen anything like this. The colors were like the sunset, rich and deep. She saw the Dragons of the Mountains, depicted in all their splendor, and the great soaring glory of the towers of Skye. She saw the first stonemason carving a rock in the orchard—a story she knew. She saw giant stone creatures destroying a city—a story she didn’t know. She saw other images from more tales: humans riding stone chariots in what looked like races, fields being plowed by horses that were led by a stone farmer, depictions of festivals, children playing, and then she saw a very familiar face, composed of topaz and diamond shards:
Father.
She stopped in front of it. There was a series of panels in this section, each with Father in the center. She reached out and touched the jewels that made his face. He was carving in this first one, and the image had caught his fierce concentration and joy with onyx for his eyes and red garnets for his cheeks. “He’s here.”