The Imperial Alchemist

by A. H. Wang

  The man rubs his bare scalp. He leans towards her, fixing her with his dark eyes. What he says next comes in a whisper, and Sarah feels an involuntary chill run up her spine.

  “There are people after her, Sarah. Don’t you know she’s in danger?”

  50

  Sitting at the dining table, Georgia rubs her temples with her fingers in an attempt to dispel the oncoming headache. A glance at the kitchen wall clock tells her that she’s been studying Naaya’s writings for at least three hours. It’s now close to midnight, and she’s getting nowhere.

  Several days have passed, and she’s no closer to pinpointing where Naaya’s tribe lived. All of the entries are emotional accounts at best, and it’s difficult to separate helpful facts from story to assist with the search. Perhaps she is far too engrossed in the details to see the bigger picture, and some distance is required.

  Huffing a long breath, Georgia leans forward to rest her cheek against the smooth table surface as exhaustion overcomes her. She blinks slowly a few times, the drowsiness enveloping her like a warm blanket. The clock on the wall ticks on, strangely hypnotic.

  Just as she’s about to close her eyes, her vision focuses on the edge of the photograph next to her face. Frowning, she lifts her head, all the while keeping her gaze fixed on the object that has caught her attention. Her hand reaches straight for the magnifying glass, enlarging the peculiar design at the bottom corner of the image.

  Georgia examines the rest of the photograph: it is of a bark drawing, depicting an annual hunting ritual of Naaya’s tribe. Groups of men are returning to the village with game slung over their shoulders as women and children congregate around a big bonfire, singing and dancing.

  She rummages through the other prints, studying them one by one. Several minutes later, she has compiled a collection of photographs depicting other symbols of similar nature, all doodled on the corners or edges of Naaya’s drawings and writings. Georgia’s eyes widen at the different shapes of circular, rectangular, and irregular designs, wondering how she missed them in the first place.

  Her chair scrapes against the grey slate floor as she pushes it back to stand, and walking briskly into the living room, she finds Charlie on the sofa, his legs and hands crossed in a meditative pose.

  “Charlie?”

  He opens his eyes, his dark green gaze bright in the dim light.

  “Do you know what this is?” Georgia approaches him with the first print she came across, pointing at the strange symbol on the bottom corner.

  “Ah.” He smiles as he looks at the drawing. “I asked Naaya about these once.”

  “And?” she urges. “What did she say?”

  “She told me about a boy,” Charlie says, smiling at the memory. “Someone from a neighbouring tribe that she was in love with. He was a jade craftsman’s son, and these are some of the designs she helped him with, ritualistic and jewelery pieces that he then made with his father.”

  Her breath catches in her throat as her mind works over the facts.

  “What is it?” Charlie cocks his head to the side.

  “What happened to the boy?”

  He shakes his head. “Naaya never told me. She did not want to talk about it. I have a suspicion that he was killed during the massacre, and it most likely compounded her sense of guilt.” He pauses. “Why?”

  Georgia sits on the sofa beside him, spreading out the other photographs over the coffee table, each with a strange symbol embedded in an obscure corner of the bark or scroll.

  “These designs,” she begins, “they remind me of the jade relics that were discovered at the Peinan archaeological site in Taitung on the east coast. The remains were stumbled upon when the government was building Taitung railway station in 1980.”

  Charlie lifts his brows, but says nothing as he waits for her to continue.

  “The Peinan culture was actually quite similar to the neighbouring Chi-lin culture, coexisting in Taiwan at the same time around two, three thousand years ago. At the time, jade was used abundantly for accessories, daily utensils, and tools throughout Taiwan. Then, two thousand years ago, Taiwan entered the Iron Age. This, combined with the growing scarcity of the raw material, meant that jade was no longer used.”

  “So these jade items could only have been made during that period,” Charlie surmises.

  “Yes!” Georgia nods enthusiastically. She points at the first drawing. “You see this particular design? It’s a shape of two people standing side-by-side, with an animal above their heads. This shape has been made into one of the most iconic prehistoric jade objects in Taiwan—it has been found at different archaeological sites all over the island.”

  Charlie leans in, scrutinising the drawing with the magnifying glass Georgia offers to him. “What animal is it?”

  “The popular belief is that it’s the Formosan Clouded Leopard, which is now extinct,” replies Georgia. “It’s fitting, really. Naaya drew this design on the painting she made of her tribe’s hunting festival.”

  “Okay,” Charlie says, leaning back on the couch. “So what does this all mean?”

  She sits up, excitement bubbling through her. “See, this is where it gets interesting. You mentioned the boy Naaya was in love with was from a neighbouring tribe, and that he was the son of a jade craftsman. Now, these jade pieces were mainly created around the Pinglin, Chungkuang, and Laoshan Archaeological sites, all within a ten-kilometre radius of each other in Hualien County. They’re where jade was mined in abundance.”

  Charlie’s brows shoot up. “You think that Naaya’s tribe must be from near there.”

  “Exactly.” She smiles. “Naaya and the boy’s tribe must have lived within walking distance of each other. So based on the location of those three sites, I can narrow down our area of search through triangulation.”

  Charlie smiles broadens. “Brilliant.”

  Elated with the breakthrough, Georgia gathers the photographs to return to the dining table, all hints of her previous drowsiness now gone. She knows that with this finding in mind, she will be able to pick up something new as she reviews the information before her.

  It’s going to be a long night.

  51

  450 BCE, Taiwan

  All was lost.

  Naaya sat down on a rock beside the river, her head in her hands as she wept.

  It was difficult to contemplate that she was the last of her people, a thriving tribe that she had helped to destroy. She had spent the last of their days hidden until all was quiet. When hunger finally forced her to leave her refuge, she had crept out of the hole, fearful of what she would encounter.

  But deep down, she had known exactly what she would find.

  Dismembered bodies had been strewn through the woods, paving a macabre path back to the village. She had walked slowly, full of trepidation and grief, tears streaming down her face as she went. She could hear and smell the aftermath of her tribe’s ruination before she reached the plateau: the sharp, sickly reek of rotting flesh and the dense black cloud of buzzing flies.

  Everyone was dead.

  It was certain that they had incurred the wrath of the mountain god Zai, for it must have been He who brought this monstrous curse upon them. Naaya had seen His grotesque features in the face of Raha as he plunged the knife into his brother’s chest. This, Naaya was convinced, was Zai’s punishment for her stumbling into His secret cave.

  Naaya walked through the village, sobbing with distress, finding no other survivors. The nauseating stench made her heave what little was left in her empty stomach. She halted in her tracks when she saw a sounder of wild boars in the distance, snorting and gnawing on some indistinguishable body parts. Her breath shallow, Naaya tried to backtrack before the pack became aware of her presence, but the largest amongst them looked up suddenly, its beady eyes zeroing in on her. She froze, staring at the animal’s long, menacing tusks, her heart drumming hard in her chest. She was ready to bolt if it decided to run at her. But the beast only gazed at her briefly as it r
emained in the same spot, then it opened its jaws to give a languid yawn before returning to its feast.

  Naaya spent the following days gathering what she could of the dead. Recalling her own mother’s funeral, she tied the bodies to rafts. She placed bouquets of flowers all around the bodies and sent them downstream as she sang a special song. Father had told her before that this was the way they sent the dead to the afterlife, where they would travel down the meandering river and then out into the ocean as they are met by the gods.

  Now, as she sat by the river, she looked at the boat beside her. This final boat was her own. She had loaded the last of her supplies a while ago, and yet, she was still reluctant to climb in. Instead, she stood and climbed up the bank of the river, heading back towards the village. Arriving at her family’s hut, she sat down and made a final drawing of her home on a piece of bark. She detailed the mountains surrounding the plateau, the huts that populated it, and the forest beyond.

  Then, she slowly walked back to the river and climbed into the boat. It was still early morning, and the bird songs accompanied her as she pushed the boat away from the bank, letting it drift downstream. Naaya knew she would reach the sea before the sun was overhead. Gazing at the glistening white rocks that lined the gorge, and the beautiful river that was eternally turquoise-blue, she committed all of these details to her memory, storing them away forever.

  “Goodbye, forest, mountains, river,” she whispered under her breath. “Goodbye, home.”

  Georgia gasps, a rush of adrenaline washing over her. Her eyes traverse a particular line in the notebook again and again.

  …the glistening white rocks that lined the gorge, and the beautiful river that was eternally turquoise-blue…

  She stands and walks into the lounge room, her eyes searching over the bookcases for a particular volume she spotted previously. When she finds it, she picks it from the shelf, tracing her finger over the gold embossed title on the cover.

  Atlas.

  Georgia quickly searches through the index at the back, finds what she’s looking for, and flips to the corresponding page. Her eyes roam over the map, the breath catching in her throat when she locates her goal.

  “Charlie!” she calls.

  “What is it?” He pokes his head out of the kitchen, puzzled.

  Georgia waves the atlas in the air, her words coming out fast. “I think I’ve got it! I know where Naaya’s people lived.”

  52

  When Sarah wakes again, she finds herself lying on a bare mattress, a new addition to the basement that has become her prison. Her wrists are bound behind her, the rough rope digging into soft skin with every movement. It’s obvious she’s been in this position for a long time, because her shoulders and arms are absolutely killing her.

  Sitting up, Sarah moves around to get some blood back into her limbs. She blinks a few times to shake off the lingering grogginess from the drug the kidnapper has been using on her. Having been in and out of consciousness through it all, there’s no telling how long she’s been down here. It might have only been a day, it could have been much longer. The man has returned at least three times now, repeating the same interrogation process over and over again.

  This is getting old.

  Sarah can never remember anything afterwards. She’s hoping, though, that the fact he keeps coming back means he’s getting nothing useful.

  She rises to her knees to stand, exercising muscles that have not been used for a while. Walking around the dimly lit basement, she searches for something—anything—to get her out of these ropes. Since the space is pretty much empty, the only thing to be examined is the desk at the far corner. Hoping her kidnapper has left something sharp behind, she bends at the knees and twists at an awkward angle to pull the drawers open with her bound hands, one by one. To her chagrin, she finds them all empty.

  She heaves a sigh of frustration, looking at the wall above the desk and the photographs and writings plastered all over it. What’s the man mapping here, and what’s he trying to figure out? There are countless pictures and names, some clustered in groups, others just floating on their own.

  Without a hint of context, Sarah has no idea how these people relate to each other. She doesn’t recognise any of the faces, except for the one at the very top.

  Georgia.

  53

  “You think that Naaya’s people were from the Taroko area?” Charlie asks as she walks swiftly back to the dining table with the atlas.

  She nods enthusiastically, grinning like a little girl. “It all fits perfectly!” she exclaims, pointing at the notebook. “All of Naaya’s drawings, her descriptions… it all fits.”

  Taroko National Park is the famed region around Taroko Gorge, a popular tourist destination in Hualien County. The park spans more than ninety-two thousand hectares in the northern section of the Central Mountain Range, where the peaks rise above three thousand metres. Taroko Gorge, also known as ‘The Marble Gorge’, is an eighteen kilometre marble-walled canyon, a true natural wonder of the world. When Georgia was little, her family travelled there a few times on holidays. Georgia remembers walking along the beautiful gorge, hand-in-hand with Amah, listening to her explanations of how the glistening white marble cliffs were carved out by the river over hundreds of thousands of years. Amah also explained that the calcium deposits from this erosion made the water a startling turquoise blue.

  The unique geography of Taroko was formed as a result of the Penglai Orogeny, where the two tectonic plates collided, pushing thick layers of limestone rock from the marine depths to form lofty peaks, and the immense tectonic forces produced high pressures and temperatures to metamorphose these limestone rocks, turning them into marble. Before quarrying was banned, Hualien County was one of the biggest producers of marble in the world. For this reason, it was dubbed the ‘City of Marble’, a name it lives up to by the copious use of the material in many public buildings, and even its sidewalks and bridges.

  “Here.” Georgia points to a drawing in the notebook, showing an expansive, two-tiered plain surrounded by mountains. “This is the last drawing Naaya made of her village. The terrain is the kind of dramatic landscape that’s typical of the Taroko area. She also described how her memories of home are always filled with the shimmering light glistening off the white rocks in the gorge, the sound of water flowing around the giant boulders, and the turquoise blue water of the river.”

  “Just like Taroko Gorge,” Charlie murmurs, raising his brows. He hovers over the dining table, looking at the drawing.

  “Yes!” She flips to another page. “Here, it talks about her last happy memory with her father, where they walked together from the village to the shore to collect shells for medicine. She described her journey as they headed east, following the river, all the way to the ocean.”

  She slides the atlas before them, tracing her finger over the map of Hualien County. “Look,” she says. “The Liwu River is the main Taroko river that originates from the high mountains along the central Taiwan alpine ranges. It flows eastward through the marble ravine, directly into the Pacific Ocean. Now, Naaya wrote that it took them only half the morning to reach the shore on foot. Judging from the terrain of the area, they would have been able to walk about…” She does a quick mental calculation. “…ten kilometres within those hours.”

  She grabs a pencil and plots out the route, measuring the distance from the beach along the river.

  “That would put their village roughly around… here.” She circles the spot on the map.

  “The Swallows Grotto?” Charlie says, bending over to read out the tiny inscription on the map.

  Georgia stands back suddenly, goose bumps breaking out over her skin.

  “Of course,” she whispers. She can only think of one sprawling, two-tiered plain in the midst of this dramatic landscape.

  “What?” Charlie turns to look at her, perplexed.

  She exhales, meeting Charlie’s eyes. “I think I know where the cave is.”

  5
4

  They are driving along highway nine on the east coast of Taiwan. As soon as the sun rose this morning, Georgia and Charlie left the cabin in his car, heading south along the coast.

  They drive in silence, Georgia at the wheel as Charlie meditates in the passenger seat. She glances at his profile, seeing his peaceful composure, and a blanket of deep silence settles over her. She marvels at the sensation, having only ever felt this profound sense of quietness on one other occasion. It was many years ago, just after Ethan finished high school. He was going through an experimental phase and was passionate about all things hippie and New Age. Fascinated by Asian mysticism, Ethan took a gap year to spend months in India and Burma, studying under various yoga teachers and meditation masters. When he finally came back to Australia, he returned home to Sydney for a month before heading to Melbourne for his studies in the Visual Arts. One night, Ethan persuaded Georgia to join him at a meditation class. He wanted to spend time in Sydney specifically to meet with a revered meditation teacher he had heard about.

  Georgia’s impression of the guru was that he seemed to exude an infectious, pervasive sense of calm. There were occasions when he walked into the room, and she would feel as if she was instantly transported into a soundproof room padded with acoustic foam, where all of her extraneous thoughts are silenced and absorbed. At times, she could almost hear her own heart beating when she sat next to him.

  She continued to go to classes with Ethan for the month he was in town, but after he left, she soon lost interest. Georgia, a scientist and a fierce sceptic, could not reconcile who she was with attending a class on mastering something that she could not scientifically understand.