After several blocks, Mayka realized that the street had cleared, at least somewhat. Instead of the chaotic tumble of people, now she was part of a steady flow up the street. She was finally able to look around and see the city itself.
And it was beyond what she’d imagined.
Stone was everywhere: the buildings, the benches, the roads. Some of it was alive, and some of it wasn’t, but it was all amazing to look at, with intricate patterns that seemed to swirl the longer she stared at them, elegant arches that looked as if a breath would break them, and soaring spires that rose so high, their points were lost in sunlight.
Father had built their house out of stone, and she’d thought it was the most beautiful place in the world, but these . . . these buildings were works of art. Alabaster spires spiraled up beside gold-leaf domes. Even the streets sparkled with quartz and mica and pyrite caught in the mountain granite.
Stop sightseeing. You’re here for a reason!
Mayka picked the next person to ask: an older man who was carrying a stone turtle tucked under his arm. Maybe it was the presence of the turtle that made her choose him. Maybe it was merely that he was moving slower than others on the street. She caught up to him and walked alongside him. “Very sorry to bother you.”
“Hmm? Yes? What is it, dear?” He squinted at her. His eyes were milky, and they didn’t quite focus on her. The turtle didn’t speak or move.
“We’re looking for a stonemason,” Mayka said. “Do you know where we can find one?”
“Ah, a tourist? You want the Stone Quarter, my dear. Head northeast three blocks, and look for the multicolored wall. Can’t miss it. Prettiest wall in the valley.”
She thanked him. That was easy, she thought. Maybe I shouldn’t be so afraid of people here. Maybe everything will be fine and we’ll be home, with a stonemason, in no time.
Humming to himself, the man continued on as the two birds dove down to rejoin Mayka. “What did you learn?” Risa asked.
Si-Si hopped from side to side. “He said northeast! Let’s go!” Bounding ahead, she hurried across the square. Mayka jogged after her, while the birds flew.
Three blocks northeast, and she saw it: the Stone Quarter.
It was unmistakable, surrounded by a towering wall made of hundreds of brilliant, gleaming stones. “Don’t touch it,” Si-Si warned her. “It’s probably alive.” She trotted toward an archway carved with leaves and vines. The entrance to the Stone Quarter was much smaller than the gate to the city, only wide enough for one person at a time, and it was guarded by a flesh-and-blood man in a red uniform.
Mayka approached him.
He neither moved nor spoke.
“We’d like to go in, please,” Mayka said.
Glancing at her, the guard said, “No one allowed without express permission of a stonemason until after the festival. Go back to your keepers and wait.” As if he’d dismissed her from notice, he went back to watching the crowd flow up and down the street.
“We’re not here for any festival,” Si-Si said. “We’re here to see a stonemason, on business.” She puffed herself up to look bigger and more impressive, but she still stood only as high as Mayka’s knees.
“All stone business is suspended until the conclusion of the festival,” the guard said. He was as motionless as a tree and as wide as a bear, filling the gateway.
We can’t slip by him, Mayka thought. Maybe we can wait until he lets us through. How long could it be? An hour? Two? “When is the festival?”
“It begins in four days’ time,” the guard said. “Move along. The Stone Quarter is closed.”
Chapter
Nine
Tucked into an alleyway, Mayka and her friends plotted how to get into the Stone Quarter. Waiting was out of the question. Now that they were here and so close, the thought of waiting another moment made every inch of Mayka’s stone body itch, an unfamiliar and uncomfortable feeling that she wanted to end as quickly as possible.
“When it’s dark, maybe we can sneak in,” Jacklo suggested.
Si-Si shook her head, her stone wings tinkling as they rattled together. “When it’s dark, they’ll replace the flesh guard with a stone owl or cat. My keepers did that on their estate—they used stone guards who could see in the dark.”
She’s probably right, Mayka thought. At home at night, Nianna watched over the chickens and the cottage from above, while Kalgrey prowled on the ground, keeping the foxes away. So what can we do? There has to be a way in! “We could climb over the wall where they can’t see us . . .” But as the words left her mouth, she thought of the stone wall they’d encountered in the field and dismissed that idea.
The dragon snorted like a high-pitched whistle. “This is where the stonemasons live. They’ll certainly have a living wall. The only safe way through is the gate.”
“Or over it,” Risa chirped. “Jacklo and I can fly over the wall and find our stonemason. Bring him out.”
No, Mayka wanted to say. This was my idea. It’s my responsibility.
But she had to admit that it was a logical plan.
The birds could fly over the wall with no problem, and they both could talk as well as Mayka could. There was no rational reason that they couldn’t be the ones to find the stonemason.
But they shouldn’t even be here! She was supposed to have come alone, so that only one of them would be leaving their sanctuary—Nianna had been right about that. They should be safe at home. “You have to promise to be careful,” Mayka said.
“We are always careful,” Jacklo said loftily.
Risa rolled her eyes. “You wouldn’t know ‘careful’ if it marched up to you and introduced itself.” To Mayka, she said, “Don’t worry. We’ll be fine. Come on, little brother.” She flapped out of the alleyway, and Jacklo followed her.
A few seconds passed, then minutes. Mayka tried again to remember what it was like to wait for the setting sun or the rising moon, when patience was easy to come by.
“If my marks had given me a spectacular singing voice, I’d sing to pass the time,” Si-Si said. “Sadly, they didn’t. How about telling me a story?”
“I can tell you a story about Jacklo and Risa,” Mayka said. She knew several, some true and some not. Jacklo always liked the tale about how he’d saved their animals from a hungry mountain lion, which wasn’t true, or the tale of how he’d flown through a storm to bring Father a strip of bark he’d wanted for his tea, also not true. “This one’s a true story: once, long ago, a lizard named Etho had become lost in the woods. He had chased an orange-and-black butterfly across a meadow, through a stream, and between trees, and only when he was so deep into the forest that all the trees looked the same in every direction did he realize he was lost.
“As soon as his friend the bird Jacklo realized Etho was missing, Jacklo set out in search of him. But Jacklo was easily distracted, and when he too saw a pretty orange-and-black butterfly, he chased it. He became lost also, but the butterfly did lead him to his friend Etho. The bird and lizard wandered through the woods together for days, following more butterflies, until they found a patch of trees covered in hundreds of migrating butterflies.
“And when Risa realized that both Jacklo and Etho were missing . . .”
Si-Si interrupted with one raised wing. “Don’t tell me. She followed a butterfly and got lost too.”
Mayka smiled. “She didn’t need to. She flew exactly to where the monarch butterflies always rested on their yearly migration, which was less than a mile from home, and she found Jacklo and Etho within minutes.”
Si-Si giggled. “If they were only a mile away, why didn’t Jacklo just fly above the trees and see where they were?”
“Risa asked him the same question. He said he didn’t want his friend to be lonely. Ever since then, Risa takes Jacklo and Etho—and anyone else who wants—to go see the butterfly migration every year, and when the final butterflies have flown south, she leads them back home.” She remembered how beautiful it had been the last
time she went, when hundreds of butterflies spiraled up toward the sky while the sun rose. They’d looked like flying jewels. “Risa is the one who looks out for all of us. She might seem prickly, but she has the biggest heart.”
“Tell me about your other friends.”
“Well, there’s also Nianna the owl and Badger and—”
She heard a thump, like wood hitting stone, as if a tree branch had smacked against a nearby building. “Hey, come on out of there!” a voice, deep and male, called. “It’s curfew!”
Si-Si whispered, “Does he mean us?”
Closer, the voice called. “Don’t make me come in after you!”
He definitely means us, Mayka thought.
She inched forward, keeping to the shadows, until she could see out of the alley. Standing in the street was a man in a red uniform. He had three silver stars pinned to his shirt, near his neck, and a mustache like a caterpillar on his upper lip, and he was thumping a thick stick into one meaty hand. “Sunset. It’s curfew for—oh, sorry, miss, what are you doing in that alley?”
“Waiting,” Mayka said honestly. “I didn’t want to be in anyone’s way while I did it. The streets are very busy.” Or at least, they had been busy. Stepping out to look past him, she saw they were emptying, as people flowed into houses. Only one stone donkey marched down the street, pulling a load. The cart’s wheels clattered, the loudest nearby sound.
“You should head home. It’s not safe for a little girl to be out at night—” He stopped, then frowned at her as she came into the low rosy light of the setting sun. “Oh. I thought you were real. Still, you should get home. Your keepers will be coming to me for reparations if anything happens to you. Get going.”
“I’m waiting for someone,” Mayka said. “I can’t leave yet. It’s important.” She wondered how much of her story she should tell. So far, no one seemed to be interested in listening.
“Who are you waiting for?” the man asked.
“A stonemason.”
“Which one?”
“Whichever one will come.”
“No stonemason is going to do housecalls this close to the festival.” He withdrew a notepad from his pocket. “Let me take the name of your keepers. Someone ought to tell them not to send you on fool’s errands so close to stone curfew.”
Si-Si bumped against her ankle. “Run?” she suggested, whispering.
Mayka hesitated—the man seemed friendly, in an official sort of way. She hadn’t come here to be afraid of people. She’d stick to the truth, she decided. “My family lives far away from the city. We didn’t know about the festival.”
He paused, his pen poised above the paper. “Are you serious?” He looked from the girl to the dragon. “The Stone Festival. You must have heard of it.”
Mayka shook her head.
Si-Si gave a shrug, which made a tinkling sound.
“Then why are you in Skye?”
“I told you: to find a stonemason.” Mayka wondered if talking with city people was always this frustrating. She felt as if she’d said the same thing three times. “My family needs me to bring one back with me. He’s needed to recarve their marks.”
“Your ‘family’ can hire one after the festival—that’s the whole point of all the demonstrations. It isn’t just for the stonemasons’ egos, even though it seems that way. They’re showing off their skills and wares, so keepers can choose who to hire.”
Hire?
She hadn’t thought about hiring one. She’d planned to ask, explain their situation, and impress upon him or her the urgency. “How do I hire one?”
“You don’t.” He was frowning at her. “I think you’d best come with me. We’ll find your keepers, and I’ll speak to them about their responsibilities to you. Mighty careless of them to allow you to wander like this.”
Si-Si bumped her again and whispered even louder, “Run now!”
This time, the man heard her. “Hey, now, no running!” He lunged forward to grab Mayka’s arm, but Mayka was already in motion, and he grabbed her as if she were flesh—lightly, so as not to bruise her skin. Mayka twisted hard and broke free.
She pounded down the pavement.
He shouted after her, and she heard others take up his cry: Stop! Come back! She didn’t listen. She headed to where she knew she could lose them: in the crowd by the city gates.
With sunset darkening the sky, the flow of traffic had slowed, but there were still a few wagons coming through the arch. The owl in the center of the entrance square was still directing people to the Inn District or the Festival Square or wherever they planned to go. Except, apparently, to the Stone Quarter, she thought.
Picking the thickest crowd, Mayka plunged in and then slowed as she was swept up in the swirl of traffic. Si-Si matched her pace. “Do you think we lost him?” the dragon asked. She craned her neck to see, and Mayka looked too.
“If we can’t see him, then he can’t see us, right? Besides, he must have better things to do than chase us all night. We didn’t do anything wrong.”
“I don’t know,” Si-Si fretted. “We look valuable. He has to think we’re precious baubles who’ve run away from wealthy owners. If so, he’ll want the reward.”
Stopping—the crowd flowing around them as if they were stones in a river—Mayka bent down so her face was even with Si-Si’s. “I don’t care what your markings say. You aren’t a bauble.” She’d thought their marks defined them, but she’d never met anyone like Si-Si before, who wanted to be more than her story. “And no one owns you. Is that what ‘keeper’ means? Owner? People can’t own other people. You shouldn’t have a ‘keeper.’”
But instead of looking comforted, Si-Si looked wounded. “But I want to be valued! I want to be useful and never again forgotten.”
“What your keepers did says more about them than it does about you,” Mayka said. “You should be with people who appreciate you for who you are. You should come home with us, to the mountains, and meet my friends. You’ll love it there! You can see the whole world laid out before you, and the sky—it’s so close you’ll feel like you know the stars personally. Every night, we lie on the roof and watch them cross the sky.”
“Sounds dreadfully boring,” Si-Si said.
Boring? It was the most beautiful place in the world! Mayka missed the sound of the wind through the pine trees, the warmth of the sun of the rocks, the rustle and chatter of her friends in the pens and garden. “It’s perfect.” It’s home!
“Oh! Sorry! I was rude, and you’ve been so nice. It’s just . . . Now that we’re separated from the birds, how are they going to find us, even if they do locate a stonemason?”
It was an excellent question. They should have had an emergency plan and picked someplace to meet in case they had to split up. Instead, they’d barreled in without any plan at all. But how could we plan when we had no idea what was here?
The owl on the pillar had changed his cry. Instead of welcoming visitors, he was squawking about curfew: all stone creatures were required to return to their homes, except for those with permits for night work. “All permits must be presented to the city guard!”
“What’s a permit?” Mayka asked.
“Something we don’t have,” Si-Si said.
“Then I think we need to find a place to hide.” Mayka didn’t like saying it—if they were hidden, it would be even harder to be reunited with the birds. “We’ll have to meet up with Jacklo and Risa in the morning, when it’s safer.”
She didn’t know what the city guards would do to stone creatures wandering around without a permit, but she had a pretty good idea that they weren’t treated nicely, if the encounters she’d had so far were any clue. At the very least, the guards would try to take them to their keepers—and would most likely be angry when they failed to find hers.
“It’s not that I’m not brave, but hiding is a very, very good idea.” The dragon peeked through the legs of the people in the crowd. “But where? That alley was discovered q
uickly, and all the buildings have their own guards.”
Mayka looked through the arch, at the road that stretched away into dusk. “Outside the city?” They’d have to travel for a while to reach beyond the walled-off fields, but since they had no need of sleep . . . “We keep moving until we’ve gone half the night, and then we come back.”
“That’s your plan?”
“Can you see any problems with it?”
“It’s . . . um, it’s not much of a story, is it? When they retell our tale years from now, what will they think of us spending the night out roving across the countryside, rather than a fraught-with-peril night spent hiding in the city?”
Mayka stared at the little dragon. “That’s your worry?”
“Well, this is the beginning of my story: how I became the hero of the valley, the fierce dragon defender of Skye who soars with the wind. Or, you know, whatever I’m going to be, once I can fly.”
“Uh-huh. If it’s anything, it’s the story of how we saved my friends by bringing a stonemason to them, and they won’t care about any of it except that we came back.”
As the last of the sun dipped behind the mountains, the turtle gate began to close, his legs shifting and the rock creaking as two massive doors started swinging shut. Mayka noticed it first and began to jog toward the gate. Si-Si followed her. People blocked their way, but Mayka and Si-Si weaved between them. “Excuse us, excuse us, sorry!”
People glanced at her. Some moved out of the way, and some didn’t. “Excuse us, please, excuse us.” She and Si-Si reached the gate when it was open only a few feet. Mayka didn’t hesitate—she plunged through it and turned back to see Si-Si squeeze out just in time.
The gate shut behind them.
And the sun vanished behind the mountains.
Chapter
Ten
Mayka and Si-Si ran all night, and at dawn, they were back at the city gate, in a line of people and stone creatures, all of whom were waiting for the gate to open. Mayka scanned the sky, looking for any sign of her bird friends. She saw a few sparrows and one hawk, but no Jacklo or Risa against the pale blue.