“At first glance, the sample looks like any other stone, and to the human eye acts the way we all expect a stone to act—like nothing at all. But at the microscopic level, well, take a look.” Davidson switched out the slides. “This is a normal stone.”

King arrived before Alexander and took a look. He saw a patchwork of stone crystals mashed together.

“Stones are composed of varying sizes of mineral grains. Differing amounts of minerals give us limestone, granite, basalt, et cetera. In this case we have Preseli spotted dolerite containing chunks of plagioclase feldspar, which adds to its bluish tint, especially when wet. The point is, the minerals contained in stone are compressed in a random formation that does not shift unless the stone is broken.” Davidson switched out the slide when King stood back. “This is a sample of the bluestone.”

King looked again. The stone crystals were now an orderly formation of overlapping minerals. Their placement throughout was still random, but it was as though they had been snapped into an organized grid. “It looks like chain mail,” he said.

“Exactly, which would give the stone flexibility, and the ability to merge, at least temporarily with similarly affected stones. Like Velcro. Or a zipper.”

Alexander quickly looked at both slides. “Anything else?”

“It has no traces of DNA, if that’s what you’re wondering,” Davidson said. “As I mentioned before, they’re not living. Simply animated by some kind of energy.”

The statement struck a chord in King’s memory. His family had taken a southwestern summer trip in an RV. The strange site had been one of their stops, at the insistence of his father. “This isn’t totally unheard of in the natural world. The sailing stones in Death Valley move on their own. Some are as heavy as eighty pounds but travel across the flat desert appearing to move under their own power. They leave grooves in the ground hundreds of feet long, make ninety-degree turns, and sometimes travel in pairs before breaking off in different directions.”

“Amazing,” Davidson said. “Are there theories about how they move?”

“Heavy rain coupled with high winds is the best I’ve heard of,” King said.

“Perhaps wind alone is enough?” Davidson said. “If stone can be affected by sound, such as with a golem, perhaps there is a rock formation that produces a certain tone at the right frequency, something that sends a simple command: move! Has anyone looked at the stone’s microscopic structure?”

“They didn’t talk about that on our family vacation,” King said.

Alexander began switching off the lab equipment. “If there’s nothing else, I think we should be go—”