The Heart of Stone

by Ben Galley

‘Move. Try your limbs,’ said the wrinkled figure, a man. He turned his head, making strange noises, feeling his bones grate. He turned the other way, and the same sound chased his movement. He looked down, and began to writhe. Stone. He was made of stone.

‘Haeerm!’ ‘Concentrate on shaping the lips. Use your cheeks. Try it again!’ The man was climbing onto him now. ‘Whaarg!’ ‘The lips, damn it!’ ‘Why?’ That startled the wrinkles out of the man. He retreated, wringing his hands, eyes searching the floor. ‘There must have been a mistake,’ he said. ‘Fourteen golems, and you’re the first to ask “why”.’

There was one thing he enjoyed holding onto during every transition, and that was the glimmer of hope. The dogged hope that this master would be different; that their war would be different. The golem snorted at the countryside. Four hundred years, and he was still waiting.

Task shuffled, uncomfortable. He had made few friends in his time. In fact, he could count the number of humans he’d ever liked on one hand, even without the thumb. Ever since his first master had shown him the true face of humanity, barely a year awoken, he had known the cost and danger of making friends. And this girl—this skinny, grubby girl—was far too familiar for his liking. ‘Are you scared of me?’ The girl snorted. ‘I don’t get scared. Mam thinks the Architect forgot that part when he built me. Fear, that is.’

Task had seen enough history to know how it was made. History was a bloody mess, scraped up and strained into the books of the people who made the mess in the first place.