Free Fix by Ferrett Steinmetz Page B

could spring from any obsession, the endless varieties of magics that flourished in their safehouses were a delight. Seriously, how often did you get to be embraced by a stone golem? Put that lumbering statue in a museum and art critics would have praised its rough-hewn beauty. This ’mancer had taken a thousand rocks no one would have looked at twice, seen a secret magnificence within them, and labored until he joined simple stone into a geologic clockwork.
    Aliyah stared at the heaps of stone as if all she saw was an avalanche.
    She reluctantly allowed Robert to lift her from the vehicle. She looked back towards Paul.
    â€œYou’re coming along, right, Dad?”
    Paul was so filled with gratitude that he leaned down to enfold Aliyah in a hug before his broken ribs made him recoil in pain. Like most teenagers, Aliyah ran hot and cold – she couldn’t have abandoned him fast enough back at the Morehead Wendy’s.
    But going to visit the new ’mancers? That was their ritual.
    â€œCome on, kid,” Robert said. “You’ve been marinating in your own misery for hours now, get out and walk it off. It’ll do ya good.”
    â€œâ€¦except for that blazing ball of death overhead scarring my fine pale skin…” Valentine muttered darkly.
    â€œGot you covered. Literally.” He tossed her a travel-sized sunscreen bottle. She snatched it out of the air before slathering it on her skin with exaggerated “yuck” noises, and for a moment Paul marveled at how the two of them functioned like a single organism.
    â€œWho’ll drive the car back? Will he do it?” Aliyah asked, pointing at Yoder, who had ignored the conversation to pick up rocks. This was, sadly, something Paul had come to expect; most ’mancers were so obsessed with their craft, their social skills had atrophied into indifference.
    â€œClip-clop, clip-clop, clip-clop, bang bang , clip-clop, clip-clop, clip-clop,” Robert said rhythmically.
    â€œâ€¦what?” Aliyah squinted, suspicious. Valentine stifled a laugh with her hand.
    â€œYoder doesn’t drive,” Robert explained. “He’s Amish. All he knows are horse-drawn buggies.”
    â€œSo what was that noise?”
    â€œAn Amish drive-by,” Valentine explained, and both Robert and Valentine dissolved into childish giggles while Aliyah stood stiffly, not getting the joke.
    Paul wondered how the Amish treated ’mancers in their reclusive communities, then decided a selfish devotion to a hobby didn’t go over well with a community that shunned computers because they felt possessions detracted from brotherly love.
    â€œDoes his ’mancy have a name?” Aliyah asked.
    Some ’mancers were so into their passion they’d forgotten their names, let alone the names of their magic – but Aliyah needed to catalogue things, a trait she’d inherited from Paul. Her room is messy but her mind is tidy , he thought.
    Robert shrugged. “He’s a… rock… balancer… -’mancer. We spend enough time sweeping up rocks that we haven’t had time for better nomenclature.”
    â€œSo what do they call his hobby? I mean, in scientific circles?”
    â€œThey call it ‘rock balancing.’ It’s… a pretty weird hobby, even by hobby standards. And the guys who do it tend not to really get out much.”
    â€œYou mean they don’t get in much,” Valentine interjected.
    He shot her twin fingerguns as payment for her zinger.
    Aliyah brightened – enough for Paul to feel they could get through this. “So I get to name it?”
    â€œYoder, you care?”
    Yoder weighed two different rocks in his hands, having already rebuilt a stack of schist up to waist height. He chewed a piece of straw as he eased one of the two rocks onto the teetering pile, serene as a meditating monk.
    â€œâ€¦Yoder doesn’t care. It’s yours.”
    They headed