Before the first strike of the chisel, she was stone.
Ten sweat-grimed men worked quickly cutting into the ribs of a mountain that held more graves than most. Their rusted winch snapped dragging her out of the quarry, killing two and injuring a third. Eventually the foreman, a bow-legged man forever gnashing at his cigar, coaxed new workers into hauling her the final few feet. Then, heaved onto a truck, she was driven to a warehouse in the city she used to overlook.
“What d’ya think of her?” Cigar slapped her flank. A young man in a misbuttoned waistcoat stepped forward, his lips parted.
“Beautiful.” Droplets of humidity from his breathless panting settled onto her rough surface.
“Good. Now pay me for lugging her ass outta there. Killed two of my best men.”
The young man reached deep into his trousers pocket and extracted a billfold. His pale, thin hand proffered a selection of notes.
“If they were your best, why are they dead?”
She remained there, absorbing talk and exuding moisture, for two days before the thin, disheveled young man collected her.
Chills coursed through her at his tentative first touch.
“I’m Arthur,” he murmured, his cheek laid gently against her. “I’m a sculptor.”
He traced a line down her side; the fingernail scraping at her. A tiny shard came away. He flicked it to the floor.
“I’m going to make you magnificent.”
Arthur’s studio, once she arrived, felt cool, though the men straining to move her sweated in the afternoon sun. Finally ensconced in the middle of the empty room, the men laughed and slapped her with damp handkerchiefs.
She groaned, shifting her weight imperceptibly.
Then, they left. For days. Time fragmented here. Not one seamless transition from morning to afternoon to evening and beyond, time was punctured, and punctuated, by the sharp clops of horse hooves and the whining grind of car engines. She felt the sun weakly, through grimy windows set high in the walls. Metal roofing repelled the elements.
When Arthur returned, alone, he carried hammers and chisels. He accepted delivery of a table; the accompanying stool arrived a week later. Pencils and paper moved about endlessly as he sketched, capturing her in both her current form and the one he dreamt for her.
“Would you like to see what I am going to make of you?” Arthur held up a sheet roughly lined with a woman’s form.
She shrank from the sense of what he was showing her. The lines were brash and arrogant, thick tumbling scratches vying for dominance.
He tacked the drawing on the wall and began to sweep. Then he sharpened his tools. Finally, he seemed bored of preparations.
He struck.
She perceived no pain. Instead, she sat amazed as chunks of her former self piled around them. Listening to the hammer strike the butt of the chisel, she became aware of angles and curves, lines and planes.
“Your brow will be high,” Arthur murmured, “And your chin strong. You are to be defiant. But you will be beautiful, my darling.” He stroked her with the back of his hand. “I will make you extraordinary.”
As he chipped and chiseled away, casting more and more of her to the floor to be swept away into the refuse pile behind the warehouse, she felt herself slipping away. The one she had been, in the mountain, under the water, was gone. She would be new. The spirits she carried ran in fright from this unfamiliar thing. And to frighten the ancient ghosts, she must be terrible indeed.
The sun left and when it returned, Arthur stumbled in retching on his own doorstep. He sank to the floor, his back against the door, his jacket soaking in bile.
“I hate that man,” he muttered. “My little piece. That’s what he called you, my love. My little piece.”
Arthur rolled into the room, smearing vomit across his shirt. He landed flat on his back, staring up at the ceiling.
“He asked me, ‘Son, what is your little piece to be called?’ Do you want to know how I answered?” He paused. “Of course you do. You are waiting with baited breath,” Arthur snickered. “I said, ‘Father, dear Father, my little piece will be called Medea.’”
Arthur craned his neck to look at her. His bleary-eyed stare clung to her like algae. He rose, stumbled, careened to the cabinet. He yanked the doors open and, having pulled too hard, followed the momentum and fell to his knees, giggling. Every move reverberated through her.
Digging around, discarding rags and papers, Arthur produced a bottle of sherry that he held aloft.
“Huzzah! A lesser quality than Father’s but so be it.” He tugged the cork out and drank deeply, spilling some down the front of his stained shirt.
He gulped, coughed. “That’s you, my love. Medea. Do you know the story? Angry with her husband for running around with another woman and killed their children. That’s it. An old story.”
Arthur swung the bottle around him by the neck then placed it to his lips and guzzled the rest. She shrank from him.
He dropped the bottle with a clank and a crack. His arms swung out wide; he dropped his chin to his chest. She, now Medea, thought he’d fallen asleep, crucified by drink. But then he began to laugh, a deep rasping erupting from his chest. He lifted his head. Tears snaked down his face. Then, a small jig in his hips, a movement that she nearly mistook for a step toward her.
He inhaled, sucking through his mouth, and he leapt. Landing on his toes, he leapt again. And again. He whirled, winding a trap of stale breath and stink until she was surrounded. She felt him, rage bleeding from his mouth, grief welling like a river behind a dam. He laughed harder, the sound hardening, becoming a brittle cackle. The cackle became a scream.
Arthur collapsed to the floor. Medea wished she could do the same.
Another trip of the sun and a young woman burst through the feeble door. She clicked in on heels like knives. Arthur lay curled around his vomit-soaked jacket on the floor. A broken bottle lay at Medea’s feet.
The young woman, a parasol gripped in her fist, tapped his forehead with the toe of her shoe.
“Get up,” she commanded.
Arthur snored.
She rapped his temple with her foot.
Once, “Will.”
Twice, “You.”
Thrice, “Get.”
She delivered a hard kick to his shoulder. “Up!”
Arthur snorted. Rolling onto his back, he reached for her.
“Ugh, Arthur!” She pranced backwards, avoiding the grubby hands. “This is ridiculous.” She slapped the sides of her dress with her gloved hands. Medea watched her eyes dart in disgust landing, finally, on Medea herself.
“This is the ugliest thing I’ve ever seen from you, Arthur.” She sneered.
Medea groaned.
Arthur sighed, forced himself slowly to his knees, then his haunches. He crouched there, his blood-shot eyes staring balefully at his creation’s feet. “Margaret, she’s not finished yet.” His voice scraped out of his throat.
Margaret sniffed, yanking her gloves tighter. “It’s heavy, coarse. The stone is mottled, not a good quality. There is no finesse, no artistry. And worse, I feel nothing when I look at her. No rage, no passion, nothing.”
The words spewing from Margaret’s mouth washed over Medea.
“She’s not finished yet, Margaret.” Arthur’s teeth snapped as he bit off her name.
Margaret shook her head, the feathers of her elaborate hat swishing side to side. “It doesn’t matter, Arthur. You are far enough along. There should be something there.”
Arthur grunted. “Shut up, woman.”
Margaret clicked her tongue. “You’re an imbecile. Or mad.” She caressed a ribbon tied to her dress, flattening it against her skirt. “In any event, I won’t marry you.”
Arthur lifted his face. Heat rose through Medea’s feet, through the folds of the garment carved into her legs. She wanted to twist away. But she had nowhere to go; nothing to relieve the pressure she felt.
Arthur rose, his eyes fixed on those of his fiancée. Margaret slipped a ring off her finger and held it out. It sparkled in the dusty beams of light filtering through the room. Medea pulled herself in, away.
Arthur snorted, turning his back. Margaret dropped the ring to the floor, a shard of sunlight flashing off the metal as it fell. She strode through the door, slamming it shut behind her. Arthur picked up a hammer.
When he was finished, Medea had a face. The cleaves and hews were sharp, cutting against the humid air surrounding her. She felt stung, her stone weeping. The harsh sandpaper he took to her next forced more of her to crumble.
He gave up when the dust began to irritate his lungs. Throwing his tools at her feet, he barged away, not bothering to lock the door. Medea exhaled.
But she could not settle. Striations of rock vibrated. Minerals throbbed as they forced their way to the surface. No longer her old self, she couldn’t control her own rock. Those pieces, mixed in, vied for their own shred of sunlight, should it ever come again.
The next morning, Arthur sanded more gently. “You see my love; you see how they treat me?” Sober, refreshed, he had come dressed in clean clothes and smelling of lavender.
She remained rigid. The air in the studio hung rank and stale, though the front door stood wide open. She swelled in the humidity. Yesterday’s emotion hung in the air, its own cloudscape.
Medea absorbed it all.
“I am but a pawn to them.” He wiped dust from her eyes. “They think I’m stupid, a fool, laughable.” Arthur took a short rasp to her chin.
“They think I’ll get this out of my system. Finish my little piece, work for Father. Or take up the law, God forbid.” Arthur gently stroked her cheek. Medea felt a prickliness at her surface. He continued, “Mother cries that her boy is obstinate. She raised me better.” Arthur peered into the eyes he’d shaped. Medea stared back.
Moonlight crept through the windows that night. The shadows thrown onto the floor chased each other, melded together.
“Marble is quite soft, my darling,” Arthur had told her once, his hand draped over her shoulder, “that’s why it’s so easy to shape.”
But he’d carved severity. Medea stood upright; poised to step. One arm hung by her side; the hand gripped a knife. The other reached, fingers outstretched, palm open. Her shoulders were squared, her chin set firm. He’d cut lines around her eyes, forcing her expression into one of anger, menace.
“Shall I paint you?” Arthur caressed her cheek. “Perhaps jewels?” He laughed. “Something that sparkles.”
He told her the story of Medea again as he polished her with a cloth. Told her how she’d tried to fool Jason into thinking he was forgiven; that she’d wanted to kill him too.
When he got to her face, rubbing gently over her nose and cheeks, she allowed her eyes to follow his hands. It amused her that he felt it, jumping, startled.
That night, she marveled at the power surging through her arms and shoulders, the energy in her legs. She examined the strength of her back, found herself tall, proud. She noted the defiance in her jawline. She felt the intelligence behind her eyes.
The next morning, something in Medea’s breast fluttered when she heard Arthur’s key jerk into the lock. He yanked the door open.
“There you are, my dear. Sleep well? I did. I did, yes, thank you. How do I look?” He twirled in front of her. His new coat flaring out just above his knees, the thread glistening.
Medea admired him, her sculptor.
The flutter quickened and a pulsing throb spread from the center of her chest outward into every line and curve carved into her. As she gazed at him, the bright patent of his new leather shoes sending shards of light in every direction, she thought, for now she could think, of dashing herself to the floor, setting free the thrashing being trapped within cold rock.
“I have a meeting now, my love, a very important meeting.” Arthur giggled. He ran a fingertip down her arm. “Your new master is buying me lunch.”
The creases around Medea’s eyes deepened. She watched as he gazed into her face, seeing nothing. In the center of that pulsing throb, a hole opened.
“Yes, my love, you are to have a new home. What do you think of that?” He placed his cheek into her outstretched hand. His delicate skin warmed her.
The flutter seized, spasmed. Her gaze moved with him as he stepped back. Ice from the harshest winter wound down her back. Her throat, a piece of anatomy that until a moment ago merely lacked air to cry out of its own accord, squeezed shut.
“Ah, my love. I’ll visit.” His gaze, pride knocking against her, fed the rage already etched into her face.
He lifted his hand to her cheek, pressing his warm palm against her. His face loomed closer as he brought his lips, chapped and smothering, to her own. She felt the kiss, meat against stone, and a shudder surged through her.
“I am ridiculous.” Arthur breathed into her face, a moist breeze settling over her.
“Well, my love,” Arthur pushed away from her, “I am off. When I get back, I’ll have your new owner ripe and ready. Do make an effort.” He smacked her hip and scurried out, banging the door behind him.
Medea remained in the center of the room. Arthur’s excitement buzzed through her, every crystal vibrating. She fought the emptiness opening wider, deeper. She moaned, minerals grinding. A great wrenching feeling overwhelmed her and Medea found muscle and sinew. She twisted. The arm shackled to her side tore free.
Arthur spun back into the room. “So sorry, my love, forgot my umbrella.” He waved.
Her arm rose. The knife lifted; its point sharp. He raced back, heading for the door, brandishing his umbrella like a sword.
Medea groaned forward. Her body stiff, cumbersome. Fingers tightening around the knife she could not put down. Arthur stopped, eyes growing, jaw working. His umbrella fell to the floor. Medea ground toward him, grasping, rock springing free. A voice, older than the fury scored across the planes of her face, asked her to stop.
She could not. She would not. Resistance at the end of the knife. Man’s skin a thin barrier to his stomach.
His blood warmed her hand.
Janel Konzer is a fiction writer living in Michigan. She drinks far too much coffee and knows far too few crows. Her hearing is terrible, a good thing considering her house is very loud.