81 - The Stone Healer

Leroy stood, and found two candles, handing one to his sister. He settled down again, and gave a little grin.

"Of course, not every story that begins in Dagon's Hollow stays there. One of the Thothson clan leaned to cut stone, and that was their ticket out of town. To Rome, the Vatican, and finally to strange episode that I call

THE STONE HEALER

The tink-tink-tink of hammer on stone haunted Horus Thothson's dreams. He often slept in his workshop, a place where broken Christs and saints were carefully restored. Some statues were worn away by erosion or vandalized by tourists who wanted a souvenir. A few had been marred by the well-meaning hammers and chisels of pious churchmen who had broken away the offending breasts and cocks. Horus had spent days recarving the penis of Jesus and cementing it carefully in place, in such a way that only careful examination would reveal the repair.

It was profitable work. The Catholic Church was less picky in who repaired its stone legacy than might be supposed. Horus visited many churches, cathedrals, and basilicas, but worshipped at none of them. An atheist worm in the heart of the holy city.

They provided him with a workshop, and access to a large backlog of statues that needed repair. Some of them had been locked in this space, under tarps, for a century or more. One day, the previous sculptor had simply set down his hammer and chisel, and...walked away.

Autumn in Italy start hot, still feeling the heat of summer, and cool off slowly into a more temperate climate. The noise of Rome itself was constant, the lights, the hustle and bustle; in the Vatican it could be quieter. Not silent, exactly, but in his workshop Horus could forget for a while everything that went on outside. It was near the end of October that he found the gargoyle.

The faded manila tag was written in French and Latin. Perhaps it said Paris. Horus found it in the furthest, darkest corner of the shop; the part he might never get to in a decade of healing stone. Curiosity made him uncover the ancient ropes that held it, carefully remove the tarp—and reveal what had been hidden so very long.

Horus had studied Guillaume Geefs' Le génie du mal, that bat-winged representation of Satan as a man of terrible beauty. There was something of Geefs in this work. Black marble, rather than white, and clearly female, with the budding breasts and the serene face that should have been on an angel, if not for the small horns that rose from her tousled hair. The sculptor—there was no name clearly visible on the tag, not even a cathedral of origin—had clearly been a master of anatomy. There was a luscious fluidity to the muscles, the bones that seemed to press through the skin, the delicate details of the throat and how the wings grew out from the back.

Yet the damage was evident between her legs. A crude, ugly blow had shattered the genitalia, erased the sex of the statue. A flaw that somehow made her more monstrous than the small inhuman quirks of her anatomy.

The reconstruction involved research, first. Matching the marble. Trying to find the listing of who had sculpted it, and when, and which church it belonged to. Ordering a sample of the stone. Then endless sketches. For many works, Horus had a free hand to reimagine the lost parts as he wished, whatever seemed appropriate given the proportions of the statue and the damaged section. In this case, however, the carving had been so careful, so precise with her anatomy, that the earliest drawings simply did not seem right.

Horus found himself working in clay and plaster, molding and estimating the dimensions. Studying anatomy textbooks, amazed at how precisely the unknown sculptor had made hip bones and ligaments. They had either studied corpses, or a life model. Possibly both.

The breakthrough came by accident. A shelf in one corner of the workshop collapsed, spilling out old, hardbound anatomy reference books. Horus cursed and rose to clean up the mess when he saw the photo one dusty tome had opened up to. It was a black-and-white photograph of a French hermaphrodite, from the early 19th century. The penis was stiff, the testes not present, but there was a prominent vulva, shaven clean. The woman's face was not there, but he saw the small breasts, the odd combination of features—a truly androgynous figure, the hips midway between man and woman, with features of both.

Now, Horus realized his mistake. Why the model vulvas he had played with did not make sense. The statue was an hermaphrodite.

The repair itself was a blur of sleepless nights and rushed meals. Measuring, cutting, shaping, polishing. His clothes grew loose as he shed weight, his hair grew long, untamed. Dreams of the gargoyle haunted Horus' nights. Not her as a broken thing, but whole, alive, with cold flesh of smooth black marvel, her claws tracing lines down his body. Moulding flesh like clay. In dreams, Horus saw her form his flat chest into small breasts, winnowed his waist, made his hips flare and buttocks fill out.

The last night, the cold hand grasped his prick. For the first time, something seemed to flicker in those cold stone eyes. The cold cock pressed against his crotch. He did not wake, though the pain tore into his body. The freezing penetration of unliving stone that thrust his balls between his hips. Lips of living stone that pressed against his mouth.

Sunrise found the pedestal empty, the doors to the workshop uncharacteristically open. The Vatican Guards questioned Horus on the theft, and he told them only what he knew: he had been working on the statue for some weeks, had finally finished the repair last night, and had slept in his workshop. The inquiry into his finances showed no odd transacations, nor did Horus show any sudden influx of money.

Fortunately for Horus, they did not search his person. His new anatomy, discovered shortly after the loss of the gargoyle, was not something he could explain. The callused fingers that explored his new hole found it to be as tight as he had imagined in his dream; as tight as the cunt he had carved for the gargoyle herself.

The scandal was hushed up; the Vatican is good at burying such secrets. Horus confessed the whole affair to me, for he knew how well I appreciate strange stories, nor did I doubt the authenticity. There is, after all, plenty of physical evidence for those who have examined the body.

Leroy smiled wickedly. He blew out the candle, and let one finger play in the thin trail of smoke.