Let Them Turn You Into Stone
Let Them Turn You Into Stone
A forger in a court of thieves embarks on a dangerous mission to a gorgon's prison to make up for her mistakes.
Rosemary Melchior writes speculative fiction, always in the present tense. Her work has been published in Luna Station Quarterly and The Aurora Journal, as well as featured on the podcasts LeVar Burton Reads and In Short. Her mini-chapbook "Death of the Oracle" was published by Sword & Kettle Press in March 2024.
They say the gorgon lives in a city of salt.
Punishment, for all the wrongs she’s done. Berenike learned of the story long before the King of Thieves says the words — before he challenges her to break into this prison and bring him back a prize. A test, for all the wrongs that she’s done.
“It’s a cursed jail,” she says, resisting the urge to twist at the ends of her black braid. A good thief never shows their nerves. “What is there to steal?”
The Thief King watches her, a gold coin dancing between his fingers and across his knuckles. Jeweled rings flash against his scarred skin — he’s no royalty by birth.
“The gorgon’s divine eyes? A writhing snake from her head? A branch from a salted tree?”
Slamming his hand down on the surface of his desk, he traps the gold coin beneath his palm. The sudden sound makes her flinch against her will, and he leans forward to continue. “Bring me something that proves you were there. Something that can’t be forged. Show me that you’re worth this trouble.”
He means it to be a real challenge, sending her to a place where she can’t falsify the results. Berenike swallows. It’s not her fault that her last plan failed so dangerously and cost him so much, but that’s too close to disrespect to say. She’s worked too hard to impress him to lose it all now.
Instead, she bows her head. She offers up the only answer that’s allowed to her in this room. “I swear that I will.”
They’re not the words she wants to say, and when they leave her mouth, they don’t feel like her own. But in this life, what does?
• • •
It started with an urn.
They came across it in the marketplace — tall and narrow, with a painted floral design. Berenike saw the way her mother’s eyes ate it up, like a sunrise after a rough night. Hungry. Berenike was only nine but she knew the urn cost too much coin, more than they’d have in this lifetime or the next. Her mother moved on, fingers pinching around Berenike’s arm, but Berenike didn’t forget that look.
Three weeks later, she found a broken vase in the trash heap where she hunted with the other children. It was the wrong colors but the right shape. Cheap clay, but close enough — Berenike saw what it could be. A copy. She cleaned and she painted, and though it wasn’t perfect, it softened her mother’s fists and put a smile on her mouth.
For a time.
Berenike tried with more vases, then moved onto fancy statues and figurines. Anything that gleamed with worth at the marketplace, she recreated. Anything that might elicit another response from her mother, she copied. Berenike chased after that same reaction, but her mother let the frown drop from her mouth only once more — in her death from the plague four years later.
When the creditors and crooks came to pick over the bones of her old life, it was the trinkets they were interested in. Just like that first vase, Berenike saw what the moment could be. Clever hands, a discerning eye — Berenike took her talent and honed it into a skill, sharp as any expensive blade. Soon, she moved on from ceramics to paintings, to recreating jewelry and falsifying documents for any deal that would have her.
It took her years, until she got herself here: a forger, in a court of thieves.
• • •
Berenike treats the king’s command like any other job.
She’s copied enough lost artwork, “lost” artwork, and mythical treasures that she has the right connections, each scholar like a plank in her crooked bridge across the city. Digging through old records and leafing through faded texts, she swallows up everything she can of the salt city. All the writings say that the place was chosen for a prison because no stone could be used there — it allowed no memory of the gorgon’s former power. No rock to scrape together, not even a pebble. Just salt, grains and grains of it.
The directions to find the city are the same whenever she comes across them: Sail due east, between the two bright stars like a keyhole. After the island of Cypress, follow the wild wind.
A wild wind in winter, or spring, or is it at the hint of a storm? It doesn’t say anywhere. Berenike thinks of the hard look in the king’s eyes when he threw down his challenge and decides to figure it out on the waters. She knows how cold it is outside the court. And how dangerous within.
Once she has her map, the rest of the plan falls into place. She taps into favors she’s owed and those always up for a little risk in exchange for a drink or a coin. A crew for the ship that she commandeers from the city wharf — after everything else, ownership papers and seals are easy to forge.
She keeps her long hair up under a faded hat when she talks to the harbormaster, but everyone on board knows who she is.
She’s been winning favors and accruing debts for years, hoarding goodwill like gold. Now is her time to use it.
• • •
Staring at the churning waves from the deck, she tries not to look over her shoulder. What’s behind her in the city is leagues away, although it doesn’t feel like it. Her failures follow her like a rope pulling taught.
It was a foolproof plan, one that had been executed a hundred times before — no one looks for a thief when there’s nothing there to miss. Using knowledge that she digs up beforehand, she crafts a copy of what she wants stolen and finds a partner to switch it out. The object always holds the story that she gives it.
The Thief King heard whispers about her skills and tapped her for a special job — a jeweled necklace so rare that the details of its design weren’t well known outside the owner’s walls. Whoever made the forgery would need to finish it on site. High stakes but high reward: an invitation to the Thief King’s trusted inner circle if she succeeded. Worth it, or so she’d thought, even as the iron manacles pinched her skin...
“What’s next?” The old cook startles her, her hands clenching tight on the railing when he sneaks up to her side. “Going to ask us to kidnap a harpy or pickpocket a cyclops?” He laughs like rusted steel against the air, too loud away from his kitchen. “Sounds like someone doesn’t want you to survive.”
Berenike glares at him. “Brave of you to sail with me then.”
“I like you, young one. You’ve got a crafty mind.” Before she can roll her eyes at the sentiment, he spits over the railing and grins. “And you always pay your debts.”
She feels a flush of pleasure and glances around at her crew. They respect her, as much as thieves and criminals can. But it doesn’t matter.
It’s never enough for her.
• • •
They sail past the coast of Cypress a week later. She almost doesn’t notice the wind change until she does, a warm curl at the back of her neck.
“Wait.” The navigator keeps them floating straight; Berenike wants to stop him with a hand against his wrist, but tangles them behind her back instead. “Follow that wind.”
“It won’t carry us,” the boy warns. He’s young, too young, but knows how to read the skies. “It’s not strong enough — and it keeps changing directions.”
That might be true, but this is too: “It will carry us.”
He shrugs an angled shoulder, eager enough to please, and turns the oaken wheel to follow this new plan. Berenike rocks back on her heels, wondering if she looks like him every time she nods and says yes to anyone who asks. She doesn’t have time to think about it. A sudden fog rushes over the rails of the ship like a cloud of dust shaken loose from the sea. It expands to fill the sky around them. The crew shouts curses and orders, but she barely sees them, catching only the black boots of someone as they scale up to the crow’s nest.
It can’t be natural. That much is clear, and she feels her way to the railing. She doesn’t know what to expect, so she looks for anything.
“Wait! There!” To the west, she sees a white spire that pierces through the fog, straight into the clouds above. It’s too angular not to be crafted by man.
When no one answers her, she shouts again. “Over there!”
They don’t see it. No matter how she calls it out, the rest of the crew sees nothing but the fog. In the end, it doesn’t truly matter — this challenge is hers alone.
“Keep the boat here until the next sunrise,” she orders, already grabbing her supplies and swinging them into the shallow row boat. “And I’ll come back alive.”
She can feel them watching blindly as they lower the boat to the waves, but she keeps her eyes on the spire in the distance. With a swallow like she’s going underwater, she rows straight into the fog.
• • •
It doesn’t last.
Her boat passes two full lengths in the white fog before it dissipates, burned up in a bright sun. Too bright for this time of day, and Berenike squints.
Not just the spire, she now approaches an island. Brown dirt, baked by the sun, and a few scraggy green bushes pushing their way through: she tracks it all. Beyond that — she gasps. Sheer white walls rise up above her like a cliff. Salt. It’s hard-packed and solid except for the gap of an open gate.
The small boat scrapes ashore. Stepping into the shallows, Berenike hefts a scythe and a shield into her arms, polished until they shine like mirrors. She feels like a hero in a myth, but they’re always male and murderous.
Climbing towards the gate, she can taste the salt whipped off the wall by the winds; when she steps through it, it’s a different world.
Her leather sandals scuff against the white salt ground, a facsimile of paving stones for there are no wheeled carts or people here. Just looming buildings, their doorways open and the shadows cool within. Pillars hold up nothing but sky, glittering white and sparkling in the sunlight. She can’t help but reach out to touch the one closest to her — the grains of salt are almost smooth underneath her fingertips. One discordant thought rings through her: this doesn’t feel like a prison, but a paradise.
Shield held high to her chest, she wanders through the beautiful streets until they open out into a square. In the center of the city is a raised platform. There is a roof but open walls, the breeze coming in through loose white curtains. When they part, she catches a glimpse of a deep purple velvet chaise, a blur of a body on top. A nest of snakes that threaten to stop her heart.
One snake lifts its head into the air, like a stalk of wheat caught up in the wind. As soon as she notices it, the snake turns, black eyes fastening on her.
• • •
“You’re spotted.” The crisp voice carries easily from the body on the divan. “Come here. My eyes are closed…”
Berenike bites her tongue, caught already. Her fingers tighten on the scythe and she wonders what to do now. Stealth was all she had.
“I said, come.” The gorgon’s words have an edge now, slicing through the air between them. “Leave the weapons at the stairs.”
Wind moves silently between the buildings, and Berenike is completely alone. She has no element of surprise, no good odds of winning a fight — what else is she meant to do? Lifting feet that are too heavy, she walks towards the dais. She places her shield and her scythe carefully on the ground before she walks up the stairs to the monster.
The gorgon didn’t lie — both eyes are closed, black lashes like scratches against skin the color of copper left out in the rain, palest green.
“You’re the first in a while,” the gorgon says, and when she smiles at Berenike, it feels like a threat. Bronze silk drapes the shape of her body, held up with golden pins at her shoulders.
“Others have been here?” It’s strange — there are no stories of that — and even stranger still that the gorgon is talking to her.
“Of course there have been others.” The gorgon tilts her head. “Now tell me — who betrayed you?”
Unsettled, searching for solid ground, Berenike arms herself with words. She lashes out with the story she was told. “The only betrayal here is yours. I’ve heard the tale. You were a guard at first, a protector of valuables. Before you went power mad and turned on your master.”
One of the serpents twists towards her, its sharp tongue tasting the air that Berenike breathes out in a rush.
The gorgon smiles wider in the silence, revealing pointed teeth. “I accept no man for a master, so how could that be true?”
Reaching up, the gorgon bites gently at the meat of her hand, between thumb and forefinger. A pinprick of blood lands on the table next to the divan, blooming instantly into a bowl of fruits — rich, red persimmons, and oranges that perfume the air, green leaves still attached. “Sometimes you cede your story for life itself,” the gorgon says, resettling herself against her cushions. “I was tired of being hunted, so I built this place instead.”
“You built this?” Berenike looks at the windows and the stairs, and this time she doesn’t think the blight of salt and lack of stone is a taunt. No reminders of the past, nothing forced to be something it’s not… it’s a release.
The gorgon inclines her head, lifting the fresh fruit to her mouth. “Only a girl betrayed can find it.”
“But I haven’t been—” Berenike begins to say, but the words dry up on her tongue. Because how can a mortal argue with a myth?
• • •
Berenike thinks back over the job… the accomplice? The Thief King, or someone too close to him? Was it some second deal with the necklace’s owner? Half her life she honed her skills, preparing for an opportunity like that one. The plan was perfect. It shouldn’t have failed unless someone made it so.
It isn’t surprising that the owner expected an attempt to steal the necklace. It is surprising that they expected someone like her — a forger, not just a thief. Berenike hadn’t even begun her work when the guard put a spear against her back. All she held was a partially created necklace based on word of mouth and jeweler’s receipts. The ghost of the object, the cousin of the true thing. It shouldn’t have been enough to detain her, but it was.
That they couldn’t find her tools to finish the forgery saved her from the worst of the prison cells. All of the false jewels that she might need were pressed into decorative pins at her shoulders, waiting until she saw which ones to use. A secret no one else knew.
Berenike thought she was following the arc of a story, but this is an ending.
It doesn’t matter who betrayed her, the result is the same — she can’t explain to the Thief King what went wrong on the job or promise it won’t happen again. There’s no evidence but this, her eyes finally wide open and her sandals scraping against salt.
The Thief King will never fully trust her, never accept her into his inner circle. He’ll make her prove herself over and over: another job, another journey, another chance to be cut off at the knees.
Looking back to the gorgon, Berenike feels herself harden, solidifying into who she is right now. All her life she’s been striving, unfinished. Working for the moment when someone tells her that she’s done enough. No more. This is who she is; it will be enough.
“You were right, I was betrayed. Will you help me?” she asks, because there has to be a reason that the gorgon’s city can be found by girls like her.
“Will you keep my secret?” The gorgon turns to her, eyelashes black lines like scars on her skin.
“I vow that I will.”
“Vows mean more in my city,” the gorgon says, but she doesn’t say no. Berenike waits.
The gorgon tilts her head as if she’s thinking. A moment later, a crystalline tear slips between the seam of her closed right eye. The gorgon catches it on a fingertip, letting it roll to the salted floor. Light breaks like glass where it hits, blinding, and Berenike watches, hands still at her side for the first time in weeks.
A silver dagger, as long as her forearm, emerges from the ground. Not made of iron or steel but something different. Something magic. It’s an object that can’t be forged.
Berenike can give it to the Thief King, and what would she get in return? The prestige and acceptance that comes with his approval, for the short time that it lasts. Or… she can keep it for her glory alone. She’s done following the lines of another. There’s a whole ship of eager sailors waiting for her out there. With a dagger like this and the right words, she’ll sail back home a legend. She’ll be so renowned that the King’s displeasure won’t matter. No one will be able to stop her.
Stories are malleable; they belong to the telling of it. The gorgon let go of her story to survive. Berenike will take hers back for the same reason.
When they speak of her, she will be the salt and the stone.