Stoneheart

by Charlie Fletcher

  She’d heard the Gunner say they needed to talk to sphinxes. She hadn’t walked all of the streets of the city, but she knew a lot of them. And she could think of only one place where there were sphinxes.

  And it was by the river.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The Riddle of the Sphinxes

  The rain was easing off when they turned off the Strand and headed downhill toward the Embankment. As they slowed a little, George asked a question that had been troubling him.

  “What happens to statues when you shoot them—like you did—and they sort of go to dust and blow away?”

  The Gunner spared him half a glance and less of a smile and kept on walking.

  “You don’t kill all statues like that. Not spits, anyway. But you kill a taint, they do go to pieces, and the wind or something takes them and winnows them off. I mean, they’re gone from the walking world. They do end up reconstituted back on their perch or their plinth after turn o’day, but they never walk again. They’re just lumps of rock or metal.”

  “And spits are different?”

  “Chalk and cheese, mate. We don’t go to pieces like taints do. It’s like we got more to hold us together—the spirit part. At least that’s how I see it. It’s like a sense of who we are is just enough glue to stop us getting blown away like a taint. We can get hurt, mind, and if we’re hurt too far from home, same thing happens to us. But if we get back on our plinth or whatever before turn o’day—that’s midnight to you—we get better.”

  “You get better?”

  “It’s like we wake up next day mended. Recharged, like a … like a …”

  “Like an electric toothbrush,” said George, getting it.

  “A what?” said the Gunner, almost offended.

  “Like an electric toothbrush,” said George.

  “Electric toothbrush, my Aunt Fanny!” snorted the Gunner. “No such thing. What kind of banana would put electricity in their mouth? Stress is getting to you, mate.”

  “No—” began George.

  “Adam Street.” The Gunner jerked a thumb at the street sign as they passed. “That’s a good omen, if you believe in ‘em.”

  George didn’t know what to say.

  “Not really sure what to believe in after today.”

  The Gunner jumped over the railings into Victoria Embankment Gardens and lifted George after him.

  “Well, believe in good luck, then. Got to be good luck coming to the Sphinxes down Adam Street. Adam being the first man, and all. I mean, this is man’s business you’re on now, young ‘un, so a good sign don’t do any harm. There they are.”

  He hunkered down behind the railing and pointed with his chin. George crouched next to him and looked across the traffic to the edge of the Thames. A tall stone obelisk soared up into the night sky, and on either side of it, looking in opposite directions up and down the river, lay two crouched figures with the massive bodies of lions and the smooth faces and ribbed headdresses of ancient Egyptian royalty.

  “It’s Cleopatra’s Needle,” whispered George.

  “’Course it is,” said the Gunner. “I said we needed to talk to the Sphinxes. Though don’t call it Cleopatra’s whatsit if it comes up in conversation. They’re a bit touchy on the subject.”

  “Why are they touchy?”

  “Because they’re Sphinxes and they’re stuck in London and it’s a lot bloody colder than Egypt—how do I know? Anyway. They don’t like the rain, one of them really doesn’t like people, and they get really narked if you call it Cleopatra’s Needle.”

  George remembered walking past this place with his dad and mum when things were great and he was smaller.

  “Right. It’s not Cleopatra’s Needle. It’s an obelisk to Thutmoses or Tutmosis or someone. …”

  The Gunner dropped his head and watched the last of the dwindling rain pour off it and splash on his boots.

  “Probably shouldn’t have said that. I mean you’re right, but… you probably shouldn’t have said that.”

  “Why?” George asked.

  The Gunner stood up and swept his cape back over his shoulder, staring across the road.

  Edie’s voice came from behind them.

  “Because they heard. And now they’re looking at you.”

  The Gunner’s eyes flicked at Edie and then dismissed her. “Both of them. And we only wanted to talk to the nice one. Enough trouble getting a straight answer out of her as it is. Come on …”

  He stepped over the railings and hoisted George over after him. Edie stood there with her hands on her hips.

  “What about me?”

  The Gunner shrugged.

  “Not my problem. You got in there, you get out. But I’m telling you for real this time. Stay away. I won’t harm you. I’m a spit. Them Sphinxes, half-human, half-animal? … well, they’re something in between: half-taint, half-spit. Get on the wrong side of them, it could go either way.”

  He pulled George across the traffic, oblivious to the cars and buses swishing past, but avoiding them as if by magic or blind luck. He spoke quietly into George’s ear.

  “It’s because they’re half-spit, half-taint that we’re talking to them. If you’ve stirred up the taints, they’ll know what’s to be done—if anything’s to be done.”

  As he got closer, George realized the Sphinxes were really as big as small elephants, and they both had their heads turned toward him. The faces were women’s faces, as alike as identical twins, but not, somehow, the same. The Sphinx on the right had a kind, amused smile on her lips. The Sphinx on the left had the same smile, but something wasn’t right about it. It wasn’t kind. It was pained. George found himself edging toward the kinder-looking Sphinx. He heard the Gunner whisper under his breath.

  “Good choice.”

  And then the Sphinx spoke.

  “Thutmose the Second—to be exact.”

  “Not that we like to be exact,” purred the other Sphinx. “We like to be enigmatic. Do you know what ‘enigmatic’ means, clever little boy?”

  The Gunner nudged George.

  “It means mysterious,” he croaked. It really was very difficult having a conversation with a mythological creature the size of a minibus. You didn’t know where to look.

  “It means much more than mysterious. It means obscure, it means questionable, it means unreliable.”

  George couldn’t help thinking they probably weren’t the best things to come to for advice then, but he knew instinctively that it would be a really bad idea to mention it.

  “You’re probably not the best people to come to for advice then,” said a tough little voice behind him.

  “Who is she?” purred what George was beginning to think of as the nice Sphinx.

  “I’m Edie Laemmel,” said Edie before the Gunner could answer for her.

  “She’s a glint,” hissed the other Sphinx.

  And now even the nice Sphinx didn’t look so friendly either. They both tensed and drew back, like cats seeing a terrier approaching.

  “Why did you bring a glint?” she asked the Gunner, using the word like it was something dirty. “We thought there were no more glints. We thought the gift had died out.”

  “She’s not with us. She’s just following us. She won’t leave us alone.”

  “Of course not. She’s a glint. They make pain for everyone. You shouldn’t have brought her.”

  The Gunner spun and pointed at Edie.

  “Back away. Double-time. Across the street. Now.”

  Edie stood her ground. Her lower jaw came forward and a strand of hair dropped in front of her eyes as she lowered her head, never breaking eye contact with the Gunner. George watched her nostrils flare and her lips whiten as she pressed them together.

  “Look—”

  The Gunner waved her off. “Go away.”

  “Listen—”

  The Gunner stepped toward her suddenly. “Go away—please.”

  “I don’t even know what a glint is.”

  The Gunner stopped.
His head came back as if he hadn’t thought of this possibility, as if he needed a beat to consider it. Edie stuffed her bunched hands into her pockets and looked at George.

  “I’ll go, if you tell me what a glint is.”

  It was George’s turn to shrug helplessly. The Sphinxes hissed behind the Gunner. It was a cat noise, but coming from bodies their size it had the effect of a steam valve opening. The Gunner shook his head.

  “No. You go. We ask these ladies our question. Then I’ll tell you.”

  Edie’s lips thinned down into an ever tighter line. Then she gritted out one word. Fine.

  George watched her walk off down the pavement and lean against the wall, looking across the river as if she suddenly wasn’t interested in them anymore. The Gunner put a hand on his shoulder and turned him back to the Sphinxes. They looked more relaxed—although, as they spoke he noticed one or the other of them was always looking over his shoulder, keeping an eye on the small girl silhouetted against the Thames. The Gunner edged him closer to the statues. George’s head craned back as they loomed above him.

  “We have a question.”

  The not-nice Sphinx spat an answer without taking her eyes off Edie.

  “Everyone has a question. That’s why they come to us.”

  “The boy, he’s done something to stir up the taints. They’re after him.”

  The other Sphinx, who wasn’t looking so nice anymore, stared at him.

  “So what?”

  “So the question is, how can we stop them—”

  “Killing him?” finished the Sphinx.

  “That’d do for a start, yeah,” said the Gunner.

  “And that’s your question?”

  The Gunner looked at George. George nodded.

  The Sphinx on Edie-watch suddenly turned her huge eyes on George. Her movement was so fast, and the headdress so like a cobra’s hood fanned out on each side of her face, that George could only think of the three stone serpents rearing back to strike just before the Gunner had stepped off the monument. He could suddenly see exactly how half of her, at least, was a taint. The impression was reinforced as she hissed her question.

  “You’re sure? You’re sure that is the question you want answered?”

  Since George couldn’t think of anything more important than not getting killed, he nodded again.

  “Ask it, then.”

  He cleared his throat.

  “How can I stop these things killing me?”

  They looked at him expectantly.

  “Oh, please.”

  The Sphinxes leaned against one another with a sinuous feline familiarity.

  “Anyone can ask us a question, and we must answer, but only if the questioner first answers a riddle or a question we ask them. That is the way of the Sphinx.”

  George looked at the Gunner. The Gunner nodded.

  “That’s how things work with them.”

  “But I’m terrible at riddles.”

  The not-nice Sphinx smiled. At least, George thought it was the not-nice Sphinx. Since Edie arrived, it really was becoming harder and harder to tell them apart.

  “Then you won’t get an answer; and you can go away and take your glint with you.”

  “She’s not my glint.”

  “You can take her away anyway.”

  George saw a look in her face, a flash of malice, a spark of the same bored unpleasantness he’d seen in Killingbeck’s eyes. It made him angry. The anger flickered awake in his belly, like a flame in a woodstove when a log has been lying smoldering all night without flames, waiting for someone to open the door and let enough air in to reignite the blaze. It wasn’t a blaze, it was just a cat’s tongue of flame, but it was the first time George had felt anything except fear and confusion since the pterodactyl had unpeeled from the frieze, so he held on to it. It felt familiar, and comforting. He faced up to the Sphinx.

  “Ask your riddle.”

  The Sphinx lowered its head to the pavement. George could see its shoulders hunched high behind it. He knew he was getting the mouse’s eye-view of a big cat. And he knew cats liked playing with mice.

  Before they ripped them apart.

  The Sphinx’s head began to move in a small serpentine zigzag as it spoke. George wondered if it was trying to hypnotize him.

  “I am a suit no men may wear, neither peasants nor kings,

  Yet no man goes without me.

  What’s got by me shall be well known.

  What lies at me is the reason for things.

  All may touch me when I am soft, none when I am stone.

  Lose me and you will falter—yet if I am taken, you will find courage anew.”

  The other Sphinx purred the question over the first one’s shoulder.

  “What am I?”

  George stood there. Traffic hammered past on the road behind him. He could hear the hiss of tires on the wet tarmac. He knew the real world was right there, a world where boys didn’t have to answer impossible questions asked by even more impossible creatures like giant bronze cat-people. But he also knew that answering this question was the only way he could get back to that other safe world. He didn’t know how he knew it, but he did. And because he knew this, and couldn’t begin to think what the answer to the riddle was, he let that flicker of anger build. Frustration hit the anger like pure oxygen hitting a flame, and the flicker turned into a blaze and a roar that blocked everything out. He clenched his fists and turned to the Gunner.

  “It’s not fair! I don’t know the answer! It’s stupid!”

  He felt the rain on his face trickling down the side of his nose. Then he realized it wasn’t raining, and that the rain on his nose was tears, and that made him angrier still. He swiped his hand across his face, wiping it off.

  “It’s not fair, it’s just—”

  The Gunner crouched down. Gripped his shoulders. Looked into his face. Shook him twice, hard.

  “You’re angry. Sometimes angry gets things done. This isn’t one of those times, right? Angry stops you thinking. And this is one time you need to do exactly that.”

  George breathed in through his mouth, out through his nose. He did it again, trying to slow things down. It was something his dad had showed him how to do. Sometimes it worked. He looked up at the Sphinx.

  “Can you say it again?” he asked.

  “I don’t have to.”

  George felt the flame flare. He tried to shut the oxygen off by controlling his breathing again.

  “You must be scared I’ll guess it, then.”

  The bronze eyes held steady. “Must I?”

  George tried not to blink. The Sphinx shuddered and stretched.

  “I am a suit no men may wear, neither peasants nor kings,

  Yet no man goes without me.

  What’s got by me shall be well known.

  What lies at me is the reason for things.

  All may touch me when I am soft, none when I am stone.

  Lose me and you will falter—yet if I am taken, you will find courage anew.”

  The moment the Sphinx began to talk, George closed his eyes. He just concentrated on what he was hearing. He thought of different kinds of suits: business suits, diving suits, suits of armor, tweed suits, lawsuits, sailor suits—nothing made sense. It just didn’t. It was like the crosswords his father used to do, clues within clues, cryptic like a code that only grown-ups understood. His father used to try clues on him, and he hardly ever understood the answers, even when he explained them to him. There were words that meant secret things, other words that meant you had to take words to bits and use their letters to make new words, and lots of shorthand winks at the puzzlers that the regulars would get to help them on their way.

  He could see his father laughing at some particularly clever clue when he’d solved it. He could hear him saying it was simple if you remembered that words could mean more than one thing, saying you had to read the clues again because they might not mean what you first thought, saying that sometimes they were there
to send you down the wrong alley.

  He opened his eyes. The Sphinx’s smile was especially annoying. He closed them again. Suits—what other kind of suits were—And then it hit him like a bright flash, and he was talking before he had finished the thought.

  “Hearts. Hearts! You’re a heart.”

  His eyes opened fast enough to see the surprise ripple between the two Sphinxes. The Gunner gaped at him.

  “Heart?”

  George knew he was right. It all fell together as he spoke, and he felt something like clean air blowing through his mind.

  “I am a suit no men may wear—that’s ‘suit’ like suits of cards, so it’s got to be clubs, spades, diamonds, or hearts. No man goes without me? Well, it’s got to be a heart, because if you don’t have a heart you’re like a thing without a battery, you don’t go at all. What’s got by me shall be well known? Easy—if you’ve got something by heart, you know it well. What lies at me? i.e. what lies at the heart of something—is the reason for things …”

  He could feel the Gunner looking at him in amazement. More than that, he felt elation sweeping him onward, his mind becoming faster and clearer as the rest of the riddle almost seemed to solve itself as it tumbled out of his mouth.

  “All may touch me when I am soft, none when I am stone? A soft heart is easily touched, but a stone heart isn’t affected by anything; it’s untouchable! If you lose heart, you falter, but if you take heart, you get your courage back. Heart. The answer is heart. You have to answer my question!”

  He realized he was jabbing his finger at the front Sphinx, like he was in charge. It didn’t feel particularly wise or polite, but it felt good.

  “You want to know how to stop the taints killing you?”

  “Yes. I answered your riddle. You have to tell me!”

  The Sphinx sat back on her haunches and looked at her sister. The sister spoke.