by Matt Ryan
“There is no end!” I screamed. “That’s the whole point.”
She staggered back and put her hand over the philosopher’s stone in her chest. She glanced at the ceiling and around the room, almost as if she was thinking of escaping. I didn’t like that idea at all. I walked toward her, holding onto the breaker stone.
“You really think we can stop it?” she asked.
“Yes. Just like you saw Mark and I make this stone, you and I have a connection as well.” I was only about ten feet from her now.
Up closer, I could see the wrinkles were gone from her face, and her skin tone looked perfectly uniform, but the age was in her eyes. She had seen too much, and been through too much, to not have them affect her in visible ways. The burden of the stone must have been immense, and I pitied her. I was the stone bearer, and I’d left her to take on the task.
When I got within five feet, I felt the stone itself. It pulled on me, not physically but mentally. It wanted me, like gravity wanted me to stay on the ground.
“What are you doing?” she pressed her hand against her chest.
“It wants to leave you, Mother.” The stone pulled at me again, and it felt like a pulse now, coming in quick beats.
“No, it belongs to me. It’s part of me. You can’t have it.”
“Mom, please. You know you’re not the one. It should have been me. It should have always been me.”
“No.” She punched herself in the chest, hard enough that part of her hand broke through her skin, crushing her bones momentarily. She pulled her fist out of her chest and examined the bloodied knuckles.
The pulling pulse from the stone stopped, and I realized I couldn’t move. She had frozen me in place. “Mother?” I said with my partially opened mouth.
“I see your game now.”
“Let me go,” I said, standing there like a statue.
She walked to me and took the breaker stone from my hand.
“There’s still time. Destroy it.”
“That’s not going to happen. I have a different plan for you and your friends.”
“A plan?” I said and tried to find the point in my capture. I didn’t even see what stone she used on me, but it must have been a freeze stone. Could she move that fast?
I tried to close my eyes, but I couldn’t, so I went into my head space and tried to find the weakness in the stone and break free from it.
“I’m going to make sure you and Mark don’t remember a thing about this, any of it,” she said, waving her hand around. “What you did to Leo? That. And I owe it to you for the idea. I hadn’t thought it could be done, but you inspired me, and I have perfected the memory wipe stones so well that I can get down to the second.”
“No, please, I love him.” I knew she meant using a memory stone. “Don’t take that away from me.”
“I’m your mother, Allie. You think I would do that to you?” she said. “I’m going to take you back to the moment where you had no idea where you and Mark were accepted into Verity’s academy.”
“Mom, please, stop,” I said as I found a sliver of movement in my hand. I used that, and began to send heat up my arm and toward my body.
“This is going to be a good thing. I’m sending your mind back to the moment you made that jump from Mark’s living room to Verity’s academy. But this time, you’re going to my academy, both you and Mark. You can fall in love with him all over again, and find new friends. You’re going to like it. I know you will.”
She had tears in her eyes and a memory stone in her hand. Blood dripped from her chest, staining her yellow dress. It all made her look even crazier. She was close to me now, and I made every effort to appear like I was still as frozen as she thought I was.
This close up, I felt the philosopher’s stone again, and knew what I had to do. I only wish I could have told Mark everything before I did.
“Mom?” I said in a meek voice, hoping it might trigger her motherly instinct.
“Yes, sweetie?”
I then spoke so low that she couldn’t hear, making her move closer to me.
“What is it? This won’t hurt, dear. It’s for the best, trust me.”
Each inch she moved closer amplified the stone’s pulling pulse. It screamed for me now, and I knew if I waited one more moment, she’d feel it as well.
I wrapped my arms around her in a quick motion, and I heard her sigh and briefly lean into the contact. But I squeezed her tight, to the point she was wheezing. “I love you.”
“I love you too. I’m so sorry for not being there as you grew up.”
I hated doing it, but I called for the philosopher’s stone, and it came to me. It ripped out of her chest and struck mine.
I fell back to see my mother’s face, staring at the hole in her chest with a look of shock. “Allie, what have you done?” She dropped to her knees and a look of fear and betrayal spread over her face. “There is another, and she hates us . . . ” Her sentence trailed off as she collapsed to the ground.
The room turned into chaos as Mark, Jackie, Bridget, and Carly all came back to at the same time.
I rushed to my mom. “Get me a healing stone.”
“What did you do?” Mark asked. “You used the breaker stone?”
“Give me a heal stone! I need to save her.”
Jackie handed me a stone and I put it on her skin. But it rolled off and onto the ground.
“No!” I grabbed the stone and tried to press it into her, but it wouldn’t absorb. “Give me a different one.”
Mark tried to get me to calm down. “Allie.”
I ignored him as Carly handed me another stone. I shoved this one against my mother, but the same thing happened. I cried out and fell onto my back, covering my face with my hands.
I had just killed my mother.
“Allie, what’s in your chest?” Mark asked, fear lacing each word.
I could hear the girls’ gasps as I stared at my chest. There it was, the philosopher’s stone, sitting half in me and half out.
Good God, what had I done? That’s when the stone put its teeth into me and my soul. The sounds in the room amplified and my vision sharpened. Deep down, I felt a hunger, yet I was able to suppress it.
“No, no, no,” Bridget cried out, pacing next to me. “This is not what was supposed to happen.”
“Can we still use the breaker stone?” Jackie asked. “Can we break it? Can we free you?”
“It will kill me.”
“There has to be a way,” Carly implored. “How did it even get into you?”
“It chose me. I think that’s the way it works,” I said.
“The breaker stone,” Bridget said. “Give it to me, so we can keep it.”
“Why?” I asked and stuffed the breaker stone in my pocket.
Bridget let out a deep sigh and held her hand over her mouth. I think she was starting to cry. Her and Jackie both.
“I’m fine. We’ll figure this out. Maybe I can right some of the wrongs my mother did to this world.”
Mark laid down next to me, tears in his eyes, and kissed the side of my sweaty face. “We’ll figure this out. You and me, okay?”
I nodded and cried along with him. “Okay.”
Chapter Twenty-three
One Month Later
The leaves were starting to turn. The warm breeze blew one leaf off and I watched it float down. I could count the fractured lines that made up its structure, and even the tiny hairs along its surface. It was falling at 5.7 miles per hour and picking up speed. Then it hit the concrete sidewalk, 7.2 feet in front of us. I knew all of this, but didn’t share any of it with Mark. It wasn’t that he would love me less for knowing such things, I just didn’t want to be so different. And all of this was with the breaker stone on my person. I couldn’t imagine what it would be like without it.
The breaker stone kept my urges subdued, and I had been able to lead a normal life, for the most part.
Mark squeezed my hand. “So, what do you think?”
&
nbsp; Oh no, he’d been talking and I hadn’t heard. I searched my memory and found the words he’d spoken. “We could eat at your place tonight?” I said, recalling his question.
“I thought you wanted Chinese?”
“A girl can change her mind, you know.”
We walked, holding hands, and passed Jackie’s house. I could feel her in there, or at least a life force, but with the breaker stone in my pocket, I only felt a sliver of what I could really do.
I sighed and then smiled back up to Mark. She’d come around, just like Mark had.
The stone had corrupted my mother because it wanted to be with me. I was the rightful bearer and I’d corrected the error. As long as I held the breaker stone, I could control it. It wouldn’t need to feed, even if it wanted to. I was in control, not the stone.
Mark took a turn off the sidewalk and started walking up to his house. “You know my mom’s a terrible cook.”
“I’m more of a mac and cheese kind of girl anyway,” I said, as I sensed a person in Alabama. A young man just finding out he was an alchemist for the first time—a special. I couldn’t help but think of what a heavy soul stone he’d make. I hated these impulses, and pushed them back down. Somehow, strong events still made it through my shield.
It brought back memories of when Mark and Sarah told me about my gifts. Then I heard the Alabama kid’s parents talking to the kid. They told him about me, and how he’d have to conceal and hide from me, because I am out to get powerful alchemists.
Ridiculous. My mother had been dead for one month and I hadn’t created one soul stone. Was I the boogieman? It wasn’t the first time I’d listened in on conversations about me. The scar my mother left behind was deep on the world, and I could only heal one nasty layer of mutilated skin at a time.
I hated the idea of anyone in the world being scared of me. If they knew me, they wouldn’t be. Rumors persisted though, and more alchemists were missing. It was one of the reasons why I wanted to toss the breaker stone away, so I could use the full power of the stone to find out what was happening.
My mother’s last words hung with me, though. There is another, and she hates us.
That’s when I looked to the sky above Mark’s house and noticed a girl’s face floating in the sky, as if she was looking out of a window. I didn’t sense her, but there she was, staring at me until we made eye contact. She was only about fifty feet up, and I could see the hate in her eyes. She terrified me.
I stopped Mark, freezing him in place. I could never let him know that I’d done it to him; he wouldn’t understand. I started to fly up to the girl’s face, but she was gone as soon as I left the ground.
I kept my attention on the spot in the sky and arrived at the exact spot. Then I found the window she was using to spy on me. I dipped my head inside it and peered into the pure blackness inside.
“I see you,” I said. “Please don’t be afraid of me.”
In the distant blackness, I saw the girl retreating into the void.
“You’re not the one I’m scared of,” the girl said, just before she disappeared.
I wanted to go all the way in, but knew I shouldn’t. The stone was telling me as much. “Who are you?” I called out, but it was useless. The girl was gone.
Angry, I floated back down to Mark and put my hand right back where it was, then released him.
He stopped walking and lifted our clasped hands. “Your hand went cold.”
“Got the chills,” I said and warmed my hand up quickly. Stupid little spying girl had me slipping.
“What’d you do?”
“Nothing.”
“Allie, if we don’t have trust in each other, then we can’t have a solid relationship.”
“Ugh, fine. I spotted the girl in the sky again,” I said. “I just didn’t want to miss her.”
“Again, eh?” Mark said. “Who do you think she is?”
“I don’t know.” That wasn’t entirely true. At one point I was that girl in the sky, looking down on my mother. I think the stone was calling out to this girl for some reason, just as it had for me.
I sensed eyes on me and turned to see who I knew was already there. Wes and Carly, across the street, walking by. I waved and they both waved back. Then they walked faster. Sometimes, I wished I didn’t have the breaker stone on me, so I could hear the thoughts of my friends.
“Don’t you love our street?” I asked, and thought of Bridget in her house with her family.
“It’s awesome what you’ve done for us,” he agreed.
I never had to look into Mark’s mind. He had an unconditional kind of love for me. It never wavered.
After the event in the glacier, I’d spent the next week correcting my wrongs around the world. I found out I could make stones with almost no emotion now. I delivered the Lotus stone for Manny, a Scarab for Rafi, and I made a special trip to see Jin. I couldn’t figure out a way for him to leave, in fact, the stone in my chest didn’t like being near Jin. I didn’t know why, but I never entered his palace. I did make a Canyon stone for him though, even as everything in me was telling me not to. I had to make at least a small right for Jin. He had done so much for us.
Jackie had sworn to him that she would find a way for him to leave, but maybe that was his way in this life, his way of fulfilling his family legacy.
“At least we don’t have to run anymore,” I said. “We can live our lives finally. Speaking of which, you should stay at my house tonight. We could watch movies and eat popcorn.”
Mark smiled and gazed at me with loving eyes. “I want nothing more than to be with you, but in due time, okay?”
“It’s okay,” I said, but I didn’t really think that at all. As much as I knew he loved me, something had changed when I took on the stone. I wasn’t sure if it was him or me that changed, but I felt as if the stone was keeping us at a distance.
“Hey, guys,” Sarah said from the front door. “What are you doing standing out here? Come on in. I have a visitor.”
The words shocked me because I only sensed one person in the house. “Who?”
“It’s a surprise,” Sarah said and motioned for us to come in. Then she walked into the house and stood about fifteen feet back, in the darkness of the house and didn’t move.
I froze time around me and walked into the house, leaving Mark at the door.
Mark’s house looked exactly the same as before, and there wasn’t another person in the house to be seen or felt. I went back to Mark and released time. I was intrigued by what Sarah had planned now.
“Okay, I like surprises,” I lied. I hated them.
We entered the house and Sarah guided me to the edge of the family room and held my hand.
“You okay, Sarah?”
“Just wait here for a second,” she said.
I looked back to Mark, who only shrugged.
The air shimmered at the far side of the room and I hesitated, waiting to see who it was before I did anything. Bridget appeared first, then many more shimmers appeared. Carly, Wes, David, Kylie, and finally, Jackie and Leo.
Most of the people I cared about in one room. Seeing Leo and Jackie together always warmed my heart. After my mother had died, Jackie went on a search for him and found him held by the Egyptian alchemists, not remembering a thing we did. What he did remember was his love for Jackie. Now the two were never apart.
I waited for a surprise, or some kind of information that told me what the hell this was about.
“Allie,” Mark said gently touching my shoulder. “We’re all here because we love you.”
“What is this?”
“Allie, please take a seat.” He gestured to the chair in front of him.
If anyone else in the world had given me that same request, I would have done anything but sit down. But for him, I sat in a wooden chair that faced the rest of the room. I was surprised they’d all felt the need to jump here, versus just being here to begin with.
I placed my hands on my lap and smiled. Or maybe I was
just grinding my teeth, trying not to say things I’d regret.
“Allie,” Sarah said. “I’m sorry for us all jumping in on you like this, but we wanted to discuss something with you.”
“Wait, is this an intervention?” I said, thinking it was the most ridiculous thing in the world. But after the words came out, I realized that was exactly what it was.
“Just hear us out, okay?” Mark asked, sitting next to me. He took my hand in his, but for the first time ever, I couldn’t look him in the eyes. “I think the stone is doing things to you that you don’t even know about.”
“No.” I shook my head. “I control it, it doesn’t control me.” It came out far harsher than I wanted it to.
“Allie, where were you last night?”
“What do you mean? In my bed,” I said, but it wasn’t entirely true. I’d had trouble sleeping ever since taking the stone. Too many noises in the world. Too many things to do. Too many experiments I wanted to test out.
“You left your house.”
“What? No I didn’t.”
Leo walked to the TV and connected his cell phone to it. “Hey, Allie, sorry we did this. I for one don’t care what you’re doing. You saved me from myself and reunited me with Jackie. I’d kill for you.” He looked at Jackie. “And I love you, Jackie, but are you sure you want to show this to her?”
“Yes, just do it. She needs to know.”
My heart pounded in my chest, and it took all my will power to not fly off the chair, take the phone, and see what was on it.
“I took a high-speed video through the night and caught this around three AM,” Leo said and pressed play.
The black screen came to life with a wide shot of my house. A lovely house with wood siding, green grass and high windows. The front porch held my hammock and a swinging chair, where Mark and I would snuggle on temperate evenings.
Then I spotted movement in the window. It was me, looking like I was making a sandwich or maybe mixing a stone. But I hadn’t been making any stones the night before. I leaned forward in my chair.
“I’ll zoom in,” Leo said. He manipulated his phone and the picture zoomed into a tight shot of me. I had been wearing those clothes that night, but it couldn’t be real. I would’ve remembered. Then I saw what I was doing, and my mouth dropped open.
