4
March Ruvane
The Heart boywho loved glass.
Helovedit—this much he knew. This much everybody knew.
Yet the feelings that went through him right now as he moved the rod were very different.
Dark.Slimy.Bad.
He might have been the Heart boy who loved glass once, but he wasn’t anymore. At least not in the way he knew.
Faces in front of his mind’s eye as the fire in the furnace burned and burned, the heat of it against his skin like a caress, the sweat beads falling down his forehead like old friends trying to remind him that he was still here. Even though he felt like he’d drifted off with the wind long ago, he was still here, watching the glass forming at the end of the rod as the flames slowlylicked it.
He didn’t know what it was that he was making yet—his hands were deciding for him, though he had an idea.
They’d been doing that a lot lately, his hands. Moving without permission. Reaching for things he didn’t need. Shaping glass into forms he didn’t quite plan.
He pulled the rod from the heat. Blew and shaped and turned—motions that were second nature to him now.
And when he held it up, just like he suspected, he found a heart.
Not your usual heart, mind you. At least not in his head.
It was a mechanical heart the way he envisioned it, with gears and cogs and pins that fit seamlessly into the shape. A hearthe knewbut didn’t. Just something that was in his head. The shadow of a memory—a very persistent shadow that refused to leave his mind.
With a sigh, he set the mechanical heart made of glass on the cooling rack next to the others.
The other five were already there, cooled, each new one better, with more precise lines and shapes than the last. He’d made one every night this week—the exact same thing, trying to get it right.
The problem was, the Heart boy had no idea what “right” really looked like. He just knew he wasn’t there yet.
“It’s three in the morning.”
His mother’s voice came from behind him, from the doorway that connected her studio to their home. He wasn’t surprised—he’d felt her there minutes ago, watching him. She used to come closer and ask him why he wouldn’t sleep, ask him why he was so restless.
She’d stopped about a week ago. Now she just came to remind him of the time and leave him food and pick up empty plates.
Lately, the Heart boy hadn’t left the studio at night at all.Slept only during the day, when his mother actually used the studio for her work.
“I know.” He pretended to be busy cleaning some tools. He still wanted to try to make something else before the night was over.
His mother stayed there and watched him for a little while longer, then took the empty plate she’d brought before midnight, and went back.
“Don’t turn the furnace off. It costs more to turn it back on an hour later,” she muttered, and then the Heart boy was alone.
Trying to figure out why he kept trying to make a mechanical heart—what a silly thing, something he was certain he’d never seen before.
Trying to figure out why the Spade girl from the arena occupied so much of his mind constantly, when he’d barely seen her for five minutes total before they were taken away.
Yes, she was perfection as he never knew something could exist. So beautiful the stars paled in comparison, and even fire lost its shine—with wide blue eyes, her skin a canvas for the most beautiful, scattered freckles, and her lips shaped like someone had taken hours and hours to perfect every line and edge and curve until they got them exactly right.
Just like the Heart boy was trying to do with that mechanical heart.
Only, whoever had madeherhad succeeded.
He sometimes wondered if he even remembered wrong because how could someone like that even be possible?
