We take the lift up one level. The platform halts, and I instantly feel the air is thinner here, carrying the smell of open sky. The Stillhalls are wide and high, and the ceiling is partially open through carved vents. Wind moves through the hall in slow currents, and daylight falls in long, slanted bands across the floor. Rows of golem figures stand upright, spaced evenly, facing forward. None of them move. They look like statues, except they don’t look carved, more like frozen in time.
“These were living, breathing golems,” Irrva says, her voice low.
“What happened to them?”
“It’s a natural thing,” she says. “It happens to golems sometimes. Nothing to worry about, just nature doing its thing. It gives, and at some point, it takes.”
I look at the faces as we walk between the rows, men and women, young and old, and so eerily still.
“Is it like a sort of death?”
“Yes. That’s exactly what it is.”
We stop in front of a golem woman near the center of the hall. She’s older, her stone face weathered and lined, but I can see the resemblance – the same plump cheekbones, sharp jaw, and wide mouth. She looks like Irrva.
Irrva kneels and rearranges a vase of flowers at the woman’s feet, straightening the stems and brushing away petals that have dried. She turns the vase, so the blooms face outward.
“This is our mother,” she says.
“I’m sorry.”
I think about my own parents. I haven’t written to them yet, and they don’t know where I am and if I’m all right. In return, I don’t know anything about them. We haven’t spoken in months, and my grandmother is old and frail. I should write and ask about her health.
“Your father?” I prompt Irrva.
“He died in a cave-in in the mines,” she says. “They never found his body.”
I look at their mother’s face, still and calm in the bright sunlight, and my chest aches for both of them. Korr and Irrva are orphans. Irrva has her husband, who I have yet to meet, and Korr has… me? Does he have me? Only if I allow it, and so far, I haven’t allowed much to happen between us. It makes me feel guilty.
The loneliness of him not having a kitchen keeps bothering me. He never had one, because there was no one to share it with, and the women he brought to his chambers before me never stayed long enough for this to change. Maybe they were even colder and more distant than me, and that’s why he eventually said they weren’t his soulmates and let them go.
I don’t believe in soulmates. At this point, it sounds like a pretext Korr has been using to release them from their wifely duties when he realized they weren’t genuinely interested in him. If I keep it up the way I have this past week, it’s going to end the same between us.
As the wind plays in my hair and I look at the mountains and valleys stretching before me, I think it would be rather sad if I let that happen.
Chapter Twelve
Korr
I’m putting the plates away when my hands stop cooperating. Both seize at once, every joint locking rigid, fingers splayed open around the plates I’m holding. They slip and shatter on the floor, and I leave the pieces where they fall because I can’t bend down. My wrists lock, then my elbows. My knees go stiff on the walk to the nearest armchair, and I barely make it, dropping into the seat so hard the wooden frame groans under me.
My jaw grinds when I try to open my mouth to test if I can still speak. I push against my own joints and try to flex my fingers, but nothing gives.
I watched my mother go through this. She had episodes when everything seized and held for hours, and when it let go, something that used to move didn’t move anymore. I know how this works, and I know where it ends.
But what I’m thinking about is Sorina. The Stillhalls aren’t far, and Irrva won’t keep her up there all afternoon. When they come back, she’ll find the broken plates on the floor and me frozen in the armchair, unable to explain myself. She’ll see exactly what I am, a boulder that can’t walk, can’t stand, and can’t even answer her when she asks what’s wrong.
She had lunch with me today. She bought a pie, carried it up to the Highhalls, sat on a stool at my workbench, and ate beside me. She touched my arm. She was looking at me the way you look at someone you might want to spend time with, and I can’t let her walk in on me in this awful, embarrassing situation.
I try harder. I push until sweat runs down my forehead and the back of my neck. The effort sends my temperature spiking, and a fever rolls through me, hot and thick, until my shirt soaks through across my chest. I keep pushing because if I can get mylegs working, then I can get to my bedroom and close the door before she comes back. I need to lock myself in and ride it out.
My legs refuse to cooperate. I can’t wipe my own face.
The door opens, and my heart sinks. I close my eyes because I can’t stand to see the pity in her eyes when she realizes what’s happening to me.
Sorina walks in first, then Irrva behind her. Sorina is mid-sentence, thanking Irrva for taking her to the Stillhalls. She turns to me, and I open my eyes and try to act normal. Maybe she’ll go to her bedroom quickly, as she always does, and I won’t have to pretend I’m fine for more than a minute.
“I learned so much today,” she tells me.
