“Everyone’s saying the mark was a disaster.”
“Good,” Mayka said.
“Even better, they know that stone creatures were the ones who stopped the monster,” he said. “Lots of people saw you all attack him. You’re heroes. There’s a bunch of different stories already about what happened. No one knows you changed the mark.”
“Good. Very good. Let them tell whatever stories they want. So long as the stories have a happy ending.” Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the other creatures filter into the workroom: the otters, the mishmash creatures, Kisonan. “We’re going back home. I just wanted to make sure all of you were okay first.”
“We’re fine,” Garit said, “but Si-Si . . .” He knelt next to the little dragon and then looked up at Mayka. “Will you stay long enough to help me finish her? You’re good with marks. I could use your help.”
Mayka opened her mouth to say that she was needed at home, but then she closed it. He thinks I’m good! I think . . . maybe he’s right. She could take the time for this. She had already found the perfect stonemason for her family. Mayka glanced at Risa and Jacklo.
“Of course you have to help her,” Jacklo said.
Risa nodded. “Of course.”
Si-Si beamed at all of them. “Really truly?”
“Really truly,” Mayka told her.
Garit taught her as they worked, explaining techniques she’d seen Father do so naturally, breaking them down into steps. She practiced on shards of stone, and then she and Garit worked on Si-Si, reshaping the little dragon so that her wings would hold her. While they carved, Mayka told him about the new story she’d given the monster, and then, when he asked, she told him other stories, about Father as she knew him and her friends on the mountain.
As they worked and talked, flesh-and-blood people began to arrive. First were guards, who came to thank them. Others—men, women, and children of all ages—came to gawk at them, the stone creatures who had attacked the monster.
At dawn the next day, Ilery came with her parents. The mishmash creatures fed them breakfast while Ilery visited with Mayka. Garit continued to work on Si-Si while the two girls talked.
“The mural is gone,” Ilery told her. “I’m sorry.”
Mayka considered it for a few minutes. “It’s okay. That’s not the way I remember Father anyway.” She thought of the image of the two graves. He may have carved her to replace his daughter who died, but did that make Mayka any less of a daughter to him?
No, she thought. I was his daughter too. He loved me.
She’d never doubted that, and she wasn’t going to start now. She was sure he’d loved his first daughter, and he’d loved her too. She was just as real to him. “To me, to all of us, he was Father, not the famous Master Kyn. He made us, and he loved us.” Saying it out loud made her feel better. He may have been a hero to Skye, but she had her own stories about him, and she liked those better anyway. He was happier in her stories.
“What will you do now?” Ilery asked. “Will you stay, or do you still plan to return home? I’ve heard the council is going to end the curfew, and there’s even talk of not rebuilding the wall around the Stone Quarter—the people liked that stone creatures stopped the monster, and all the stonemasons have been denouncing what Master Siorn did. Things are going to get better for stone creatures here.”
“I belong at home,” Mayka said. “We’re going to leave as soon as Si-Si flies. But the offer still stands for you to visit me.”
“I will someday,” Ilery said, “when I can.”
“Whenever you want to,” Mayka said. “You’re always welcome.”
After they finished carving Si-Si’s body, Mayka lay on the floor with papers in front of her. She drew, sketching out mark after mark, telling of Si-Si’s wish for the sky, her wish to be free of the earth, her wish to be one with the wind, like the dragons of legend whose story she bore.
Peering over her shoulder, Garit frowned. “But that’s not like any of the flight marks I’ve ever seen. It’s all about wind and the sky. It doesn’t even match what’s on the birds.” He pulled out his notes. “See, I’ve studied all the attempts at flight marks by dozens of stonemasons over decades.” He then brandished a fresh piece of paper, with new marks on it. “And here’s what I think we should do, based on what they’ve already tried.”
Mayka looked over the marks, both Garit’s and the other older stonemasons’. All of them, without exception, were about the mechanics of flight: lift, thrust, balance. Garit’s was more advanced, but it was still all about the technical details of how to fly. It didn’t touch the heart of what it meant to soar, free on the wind, with the sun above and the world with all its worries and regrets shrunk small below. “Mine will work. Si-Si, what do you think?” Mayka asked.
“Mayka’s marks tell my story,” Si-Si said. “Carve those.”
And so they did, carefully and painstakingly. Garit did the majority of the work, since he had both more experience and more training, but Mayka was there every step of the way, guiding the lines and carefully watching to be certain the story was right.
At last, when it was finished, they stepped back and studied Si-Si.
She was the same, but sleeker, with bubbles of air within her that reflected the light shining through her stone. She spread her wings. “Are you certain this will work?”
“It doesn’t matter what I think,” Mayka said. “You have the story now. You just have to make it yours.”
“We’ll fly with you,” Risa said. “Follow us.” She flapped her wings and took off in an upward spiral. Sunlight glittered above her, and soon she was a dot against the sky.
Jacklo stayed with Si-Si. “You spread your wings and then push down, catch the wind beneath them. And then—look to the clouds!”
Si-Si began to flap. She rose off the workbench.
“You’re doing it!” Garit cried.
The little dragon smiled. One wing flapped harder than the other, and she veered to the side and crashed into a boulder.
Garit started to go to her, but Mayka put a hand on his arm to stop him.
Si-Si righted herself. With Jacklo and Risa encouraging her, she flapped again, and this time rose higher. She spiraled up with the birds toward the hole in the roof. Wobbling in the wind, she flew unsteadily toward the sky.
She looked awkward and ungainly, as if she was about to crash at any moment.
But she flew.
As they watched, she flew higher and higher, free of the earth and one with the sky.
Chapter
Twenty-Five
Mayka left the city at dawn, with Jacklo and Risa riding on her shoulders. Her friends Garit and Kisonan, as well as Si-Si, walked with them as far as the gate.
“You can come with us,” Mayka told Si-Si.
Si-Si spread her wings. “I’ve so much to see first. There’s a whole valley to explore! But thank you for making me into who I am.”
“You did that yourself,” Mayka said. “All we did was make your outsides match your insides. Your heart could already fly.” She knelt and hugged the little dragon, then she turned to Garit and Kisonan. “And the offer’s open to you too. Anytime you want to climb a mountain.”
“Thank you,” Kisonan said gravely. “Be well, and may your story continue as long as you wish it to.”
“Yours too.” She asked Garit, “Will you be all right?”
“I’m going to try for my stonemason badge,” Garit said. “After carving Si-Si . . . Well, I think I can do it. And if I succeed, then I’ll be able to help my family for certain.”
“You’ll do it. I know you will.” She hugged both him and Kisonan.
Then Mayka, with Jacklo and Risa, walked out the gate, as the giant stone turtle smiled down at them. Every time Mayka looked behind her, her friends were still there, watching and waving. And every time, she waved back too.
The city faded into the distance as they walked on. She guessed the fields to the east had been trampled, but in this directi
on, the countryside bore no damage from the monster—in fact, it looked exactly the same as it had when she’d come to the city. She half expected it all to be different, since she felt so different from when she’d arrived. She kept to the road, jogging as she went, and didn’t try to talk to anyone.
A few travelers called out to her. She greeted them with a wave, but didn’t pause.
No one tried to stop her. She ran with purpose. She wasn’t lost.
When night came, she kept going, slowing to a walk so she wouldn’t fall. Jacklo and Risa sometimes flew and sometimes rode. Night blanched into day and then faded to night again.
They passed the field where they’d met Si-Si. They passed the farmhouse with the horrible farmers—she gave it a wide berth.
Ahead was their mountain.
As she drew closer, she felt as if something inside her was singing. Jacklo and Risa flew off her shoulders and into the trees. They darted in between the birches and pines, and Mayka smiled. She ran faster.
She scrambled beneath the trees, waded through the streams, tromped over the underbrush. At last, she found the cliff and climbed the stone steps.
Ahead of her, the birds cried, “We’re home! We’re home! We’re home!”
And as she ran up the mountain and burst out of the forest, she saw their cottage. Her family was all there, rushing toward her: Dersy and Harlisona, Kalgrey the cat, Nianna the owl, Etho the lizard, and Badger. Even the fish were poking their heads up in their lake.
The chickens were reacting to the excitement, pecking and chattering in their pen, and the goats were butting against the fence. Laughing, Mayka dropped to her knees and hugged as many of her friends as she could at one time.
“You came back!” Dersy cried. “Oh, you’re back! You’re here!”
“But where is the stonemason?” Kalgrey asked. She looked to the woods.
“She’s here,” Mayka said. “She’s me. Or I will be, once I’ve practiced enough. Come on, I have much to tell you, and the sun is setting.”
Together, they climbed onto the roof of the house, and Mayka, with Jacklo and Risa, told them all their story, how they’d gone into the valley and come back again. She told them about Si-Si and Garit and Ilery and Kisonan and Master Siorn and the monster and the great city of Skye, once home to their father, the man who had carved them all and begun their stories.
And the stars traveled across the sky.
When the sun rose, Mayka climbed down from the roof of the cottage and went inside. She stood in front of Father’s tools. They gleamed, polished but not used, as they had for all the years since he’d died. She reached a hand toward one and then stopped.
What would he think? Would he be proud?
He’d never imagined she could carve, never mentioned it as a possibility, so she’d never thought it was possible. But in the city of Skye, she’d done it. She’d even helped Si-Si fly.
Mayka took a chisel off the wall and a small hammer. They fit nicely in the palms of her hands, as if they’d been waiting for her. She went outside.
The mountain was full of rocks she could practice on.
And so she did. She carved and cut and chiseled. Just shapes at first: a cube, a cylinder, and then she began on more complicated carvings.
When she completed a flower, she knew she was ready.
She began on herself first: carving her own story into her stone. She chose a spot she could easily reach: her legs. On the legs that had helped carry her away from home, she wrote the marks that told of her journey. I am Mayka, who left home to save her old friends, and returned home after saving her new friends. I am a storyteller.
It took her three days to figure out and carve all the marks she wanted, and she spent those days by Turtle, staying with him the entire time. And then when she’d finished on herself, she cleared the moss from his back and carved him, deepening the marks that had faded and adding more, about how he had stopped and then reawakened.
The others watched. They were there when Turtle took his first step forward. They were there when he saw the yellow flowers she’d planted around him.
“Welcome back,” she said.
In his slow, soft voice, he said, “It is nice to see you again. I had thought I wouldn’t wake.”
“I woke you,” she said. “And I’ll keep you awake.” On the overlook, with the view of the valley, she told him the story of her journey, and he listened to every word.
When she finished, he said, “You are your father’s daughter. He would have been proud of you. He already was proud of you.”
Mayka hesitated. She wasn’t sure she wanted to ask her next question, because she wasn’t sure she’d like the answer. But she had to ask. “Did Father carve me to replace the daughter he lost?”
“Yes,” Turtle said. “But he loved you for you.” He swung his head slowly to look out across the valley. “He loved us all for who we were, and we loved him. Your city badger was correct—the stone creatures who fought beside him did so of their own free will, out of love and respect . . . the same reasons Jacklo and Risa accompanied you to the valley, the same reasons the stone creatures fought beside you against the monster in your tale.”
Mayka felt as if something had been healed inside her, a piece of her that she hadn’t even known was cracked. “I’m glad you’re awake, Turtle.”
Echoing her, her family cheered. “Carve us!” Dersy cried. “Fix all of us!”
And she began the process of recarving her family, deepening their marks and smoothing them. She didn’t add new marks to any of them unless they requested it. Both Jacklo and Risa wanted a new mark, to represent their journey, but the others wanted to stay as they were.
During this time, Turtle began his walk back from the cliff to their home.
When she had recarved her friends, she hung the tools in the cottage and spent time with her family, as she’d always done. And then, a few months later, she picked up the tools and began to carve again: new creatures with new stories about journeys and adventures. Rabbits, squirrels, birds, minks, foxes, cats, badgers . . . She released them into the world when she was done.
As the years passed, some of her creations returned. Some stayed. Some came only to be recarved. Some wanted new stories added to them, to reflect all they’d experienced out in the world. They told tales of the valley and of distant lands beyond the mountains, with plains and savannahs and deserts and oceans.
Other stone creatures began to come, making the pilgrimage up the mountain. They wanted to meet the Carver on the Mountain. Jacklo and Risa kept daily watch at the cliff, to guide those visitors up the steps and then the rest of the way to the cottage.
Mayka learned there were stories about her, down in the valley, each less accurate than the last, but all of them talking about a brilliant carver who breathed life into stone, carrying on her father’s legacy. She liked that story.
One day, when she was carving fur into the back of a stone squirrel, Jacklo came flying toward the cottage. “Mayka! Mayka, she’s here! She came! Come see!”
Mayka apologized to the squirrel for the interruption, then put down her tools and followed Jacklo to the cliff. She walked carefully through the streams and peered down over the rocks.
A woman was at the bottom of the cliff. She looked to be twenty or thirty years old—it was difficult to judge human age, especially at this distance—and she carried a baby in a scarf tied to her hip. She also had a scarf tied around her hair.
“Mayka?” the woman called. “It’s me, Ilery. Remember me?”
“Of course I do! Jacklo and Risa, show her the steps.”
Guided by the birds, Ilery climbed the cliff. When she reached the top, she hugged Mayka, laughing. “You’re really here! I heard the tales, and I thought it was you—they call you the Secret of the Mountain and the Maker of Miracles. And sometimes just the Stone Girl.”
“I’m glad you came,” Mayka said.
“I look old to you, don’t I?” Ilery said. S
he gestured to the baby at her hip. “This is my daughter, Flika. We’ve been looking for a new home.”
“Then you found one,” Mayka said, and she led her old friend to the cottage of shining marble with the garden in front and fishpond beside it.
“Oh, Mayka, it’s exactly as I pictured it!” Ilery said. “It’s perfect.” The rabbits and other animals hopped around her, curious. No flesh-and-blood person had ever visited them before. The animals fetched her food, and the fish helped provide the water. Mayka showed her to Father’s room with his unused bed.
Over the next several days, Mayka carved a cradle for the baby. Its base was stone, but they used blankets for the mattress. There was goats’ milk to feed the baby and Ilery, and food from the garden, plentiful, with honey from the wild bees to sweeten it.
“You can stay as long as you want,” Mayka told her.
“I’d like that,” Ilery said.
Over time, Mayka learned that Ilery had left an unhappy home. She’d wanted to start a new life for herself and her baby, and she thought the mountain would be a good place to come and figure out what she wanted her story to be.
Three years after Ilery came to live with her on the mountain, another friend came: Garit. And with him, another surprise. Si-Si.
Mayka saw that Garit had aged too. She introduced him to Ilery and Flika, now a sturdy toddler, and he greeted them kindly.
Si-Si introduced herself to Mayka’s friends, “I am Siannasi Yondolada Quilasa, but you can just call me Si-Si.”
“Hi, Si-Si!” Jacklo said. “Want to fly with us?” The other birds that Mayka had carved—over a dozen in all—crowded around her, chirping and tweeting and chattering.
“Oh! Yes!” Si-Si cried. “You can all fly?”
“Of course,” Risa said. “Come fly!” And Si-Si took to the air in the middle of the flock. Mayka, Garit, Ilery, and Flika watched them as they circled above the cottage and then flew toward the peak.
“Tell me of your adventures,” Mayka said to Garit.
He smiled. “I’m Master Garit now.” He showed her the patch sewn into his leather garments. “It’s not as permanent as stone, but it means almost the same thing. It says I became a stonemason in truth. I have a shop in the Stone Quarter, and I’ve performed in several festivals. People . . . well, they’re nicer to stonemasons and stone creatures now. There’s no wall around the Stone Quarter, and there’s no more curfew for stone. We can all come and go whenever we please. My family visits me all the time—with the money I send them, they can afford to now. And Si-Si comes to see me too, in between her adventures. Things are good.”