Stoneheart by Charlie Fletcher Read Free Book Online Page A

looked at George. He realized her eyes were the same deep dark brown as her hair, as deep brown can get before it becomes black. So dark that you couldn’t really see where the eye stopped and the iris began. This was a little unsettling. For all he knew, the irises were pinpricks of hate.
    “So what?” he asked.
    “So I thought you might be like me.”
    “He ain’t,” said the Gunner, still looking hard at her. “He’s nothing like you.”
    Edie lifted her chin. Maybe it was to look up into the Gunner’s face. Maybe it was just defiance. George thought it was probably both, but what he thought on top of all that was that the only thing weirder than finding yourself talking to a statue that talked back and shot things was seeing someone else do it. Somehow, standing to one side and watching something impossible happening made you a lot more woozy than doing it yourself. He found his hand had excavated the lump of plasticene in his pocket and was kneading it nervously.
    “Why not?” asked Edie.
    “Because,” said the Gunner, as if that ended it, and walked past her, heading for the exit ramp. George and Edie looked at each other.
    “Er,” he said. That didn’t sound impressive. So he tried “Um"—which sounded just as pointless as the last time he had used it. The black eyes blinked at him once. Then turned away as Edie strode off after the Gunner.
    “Hey,” she spat, “’because’ isn’t an answer. Why isn’t he like me?”
    The Gunner stood on the ramp, looking up at the rain coming down.
    “I’m talking to you.”
    The Gunner turned very fast and grabbed her wrist.
    She went to bite him, striking in the same swift snake action with which she’d bitten the bus conductor, but stopped before her teeth hit the bronze hand. Instead she growled in anger and kicked him. All she hurt was her foot. He reached for the collar of her coat and lifted her until they were eyeball to eyeball.
    “I heard you,” he said.
    “So why isn’t he like me? He can see you. He’s just like me. He’s—”
    The Gunner cut her off. “He ain’t like you. Ain’t like you at all. No one’s like you… .”
    She struggled against the grip on the scruff of her coat, but it was about as effective as kicking him.
    “No one’s like you. No one’s been like you for years. I ain’t seen nor heard of someone like you for more than years. For decades. No one has. Some of us even think you’re …”
    Rain dripped into a growing puddle at the base of the ramp as he stood there trying to think of the right word. When he found it he rolled it around his mouth like a favorite sweet before letting it out.
    “Extinct.”
    “I don’t know what you’re taking about. I’m not gone. I’m here. I’m a—”
    “You’re a glint.”
    “A what?”
    “A glint. You’re a glint.”
    She looked at George. He shrugged.
    “What’s a glint?”
    “A glint is what you are if you can see all this. You’re a glint, a seer, a bright spark; someone so sharp and shiny they cut themselves, so sharp they slice between all the different layers of ‘what is’and ‘what might be’and end up chopping right on through into the ‘what was.'”
    There was a flicker of something close to panic in Edie’s eyes for a moment, then she pushed it away and jutted her jaw at the Gunner.
    “I don’t know that. I don’t know what that means. I’m just me—”
    “Glints is dangerous. Glints is trouble. Glints is so much bleeding trouble that they attracts more trouble. A glint is the last thing we need if we want to get where we need to go. So you stay here—and we’re going.”
    “Don’t tell me what to do,” Edie growled. “Put me down.”
    “Or what?” asked the Gunner with a dangerously good-natured smile.
    Edie squirmed her hand in and out of her pocket, and brandished the sea-glass disk in his face.
    “Or I’ll use this,” she spat.
    He looked at the dull glass circle with interest. He reached his hand toward it. He tapped