“He’s frightened!” said Opal. Chert had to hold her back, wondering even as he did so whether it was the right thing to do. “Let go of me, old man—can’t you hear him? Flint! Flint, I’m here!”

“I assure you, good Mistress Opal, he cannot hear you.” Something odd and hard had entered Chaven’s voice—a tone Chert hadn’t heard from him before. “My master Kaspar Dyelos taught this working to me and I learned it well. I assure you, he hears no voice but mine.”

“But he’s frightened!”

“Then you must be quiet and let me speak to him,” Chaven said. “Boy, listen to me.”

“The trees!” Flint said, his voice rising. “The trees are…moving. They have fingers. They’re all around the house, and the clouds are all around too!”

“You are safe,” the physician said. “You are safe, boy. Nothing you can see can hurt you.”

“I don’t want to go out. Ma said not to! But the door’s open and the clouds are in the house…!”

“Boy…”

Flint’s desperate words came out in little bursts, as though he were running hard. “Not…the…don’t want…” He was swaying on the bench now, boneless as a doll, his head rolling on his neck as though someone were shaking him by the shoulders. “The eyes are all staring! Where’s my ma? Where’s the sky?” He was weeping now. “Where’s my house?”

“Stop this!” Opal shrieked. “You’re hurting him with your horrible spell!”

“I assure you,” Chaven said, a little breathless himself, “that while he may be remembering things that frightened him, he’s in no danger…”

Flint suddenly went rigid on the bench. “He’s not in the stone anymore,” he said in a harsh whisper, throat as tight as if someone squeezed it in strong hands. “He’s not just in the stone—he’s…in…me!” The child fell silent, still stiff as a post.

“We are done now, boy,” Chaven said after a long moment of stunned silence. “Come back to your home. Come back here, to the candle, and the mirror, come back to Opal and Chert…”

Flint stood up so suddenly that he tipped the heavy bench over. It crashed onto Chaven’s foot and the physician hopped back on one leg, cursing unintelligibly, then fell over.

“No!” Flint shouted, and his voice filled the small room, rattled from the stone walls. “The queen’s heart! The queen’s heart! It’s a hole, and he’s crawling through it…!”

And then he went limp and fell to the floor like a puppet with its strings cut.

“He only sleeps.” Chaven spoke gently, an unspoken apology behind the words, but Opal was having nothing of it; the look on her face could have crumbled limestone. She angrily waved Chaven and her husband from the sleeping room so she could continue dabbing the boy’s forehead with a wet cloth, as if the mere fact of their presence would compromise her healing abilities—or, as Chert thought more likely, as though the very sight of two such useless men made her feel ill.