Dark Alchemy

by Laura Bickle

  Maria’s house smelled like vegetable soup and fresh-­baked bread. Maria ducked into the kitchen and pulled some bread out of the oven. She was wearing jeans and a halter top, her hair braided tightly around her ears. Petra self-­consciously fingered her own out-­of-­control hair. She’d never figured out how to do that properly. Whenever she tried, she always wound up with a lopsided, stringy rope.

  Petra sat down awkwardly at the kitchen table, nervously winding her feet around the chair rungs. Pearl followed her, perching on a chair opposite with just her green eyes and grey ears peeping over the top of the table. Sig busied himself with licking random spots on Maria’s kitchen floor.

  “Thanks for lunch.”

  “Anytime.” Maria brought Petra a bowl of delicious-­smelling soup and a slice of piping-­hot bread, then scooted Pearl out of her chair and set her own bowl down.

  “What’s on your mind?”

  “I’m trying to figure out how things work around here, and . . . it’s not going so well.” Petra shredded her bread with her fingers.

  Maria chased a carrot with her spoon. “Hon, it’s the Wild West. It’s not like anyplace else.”

  “So I’m gathering. I went to the sheriff’s department this morning.”

  “Oh yeah?” Maria’s brows creased.

  “I’m trying to find information about my father. He vanished in Temperance in 1995. I thought that was the logical place to start looking.” The soup was hot and delicious on Petra’s tongue. “And I also got a gift from a trespasser last night.” She showed Maria the photo of the burned-­out circle on her cell phone.

  “That’s weird.”

  “And full of mercury.”

  “Even weirder. The cops weren’t impressed?”

  “No.”

  Maria grinned. “You got bupkus, didn’t you?”

  “It was a total waste of time, effort, and gas. So I made a bunch of these up at Bear’s deli.” Petra reached into her pocket and pulled out a creased flyer that included a grainy copy of her dad’s picture. She’d scribbled below it in capital letters with a Sharpie marker:

  HAVE YOU SEEN THIS MAN?

  JOSEPH DEE—­MISSING SINCE 1995

  ANY INFORMATION, CALL 555-­555-­7419

  Maria smoothed it out on the table. “I don’t know him. But if you’ve got more of these, I’d be happy to put them up at the family center and around the reservation.”

  “Thanks. I appreciate it. I’ve already papered most of Temperance—­the post office, Bear’s deli, and the back wall of the ladies’ room in the Compostela.” She hadn’t yet worked up the nerve to duck into the men’s room, but maybe she could put Mike up to it.

  “Maybe somebody knows something.”

  “Hopefully, more than the cops.”

  “Yeah. They aren’t really the law around here. Sal Rutherford is.”

  “So I hear. But why is that?”

  Maria soaked up some of her vegetable soup with the bread. Her fingernails were painted with a warm coral polish. Petra stared down at her own short, rough nails.

  “The Rutherfords run things. Always have, at least since the time the town founder disappeared,” Maria said.

  “The alchemist?”

  “Yeah. Lascaris. Lascaris was involved in some creepy shit. And not just creating gold and chasing down the secret to living forever.”

  “What, then?” Petra leaned forward.

  “Monsters.” Maria fixed her with a deadpan look. ­“People have seen all kinds of stuff out here—­phoenixes, ghosts, banshees.”

  “You sound like Frankie,” said Petra.

  “Frankie isn’t always wrong. Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.”

  The screen door squeaked open.

  “Speak of the devil,” Maria muttered.

  Frankie stumbled inside and flung himself into a chair at the table. “I smelled something good,” he slurred.

  Maria rolled her eyes, but she stood to ladle out some vegetable soup.

  Frankie stared at Petra, rocking on the back legs of his chair.

  “Hi, Frankie.”

  He didn’t greet her, just kept rocking. Petra stared into her bowl.

  Pearl climbed up on the table and swatted Petra’s cell phone with her paws. Maria removed the cat from the table with an exasperated grunt. “Show the symbol to Frankie. It might shake something out of his metaphysically pickled head.”

  Petra punched the button to show Frankie the picture, and he took the phone from her and stared at it. “You got a visit from an alchemist, did you?”

  Petra’s gaze flicked up at him. “What do you mean?”

  He turned his mouth up and down, as if working around heavy words. “That’s one of their symbols. Somebody wanted you to know he was there.” He put the phone down, and a white paw reached up from the edge of the table for it. Petra tucked the phone safely in her pocket.

  “Great.” Seen enemies, unseen enemies—­what did it matter? Petra turned her attention back to her soup.

  “Did you find your daddy, yet?”

  Petra looked up at him, nearly dropped her spoon. “What?”

  “Your daddy’s been looking for you.” Frankie stared up at the ceiling, began to hum.

  Petra slid out from behind the table, knelt before Frankie. “Where is he, Frankie?”

  Frankie looked at her with glazed eyes. “In the white space of heaven.”

  “Frankie,” Maria barked.

  Petra swallowed. “You don’t think he’s alive.”

  “He’s here.” Frankie’s eyes glistened, and his lined hands framed his face. “Alive. In the serenity of his own head. Suspended. But his spirit is elsewhere.”

  “Jesus, Frankie,” Maria said.

  Frankie raised his hands as if in surrender, then got up from the table to go outside. The screen door slammed behind him, and Petra watched him slump into the porch swing, head lolling to one side.

  Maria shook her head, and her cheeks flamed. “I’m so sorry. He’s just—­”

  “He’s family. It’s all right.” Petra stared after him. “Do you think . . . do you think he’s right?”

  Maria bit her lip. “I don’t know.”

  Petra kept her mouth shut. She couldn’t believe in anything she couldn’t see, touch, and measure. But she was seeing, touching, and measuring some very weird shit.

  She helped Maria wash the dishes. Pearl supervised Sig licking the floor and the dishwashing from her perch on top of the refrigerator. Sig eventually tired of cleaning the floor and nosed the screen door open to go out. Maria told her about the best grocery store to go to and which mechanics to avoid. She told her about the chuckwagon lunches on weekends set up at the foot of the mountains and when the farmer’s market was on the reservation. This felt normal, and Petra began to feel more grounded. The soap on the dishes and the dishrag in her hand felt real. Ordinary. Comforting.

  “And, if you haven’t noticed, there are a lot more men than women in town, if you’re looking to date men,” Maria said. “There are also some available women, too.”

  “I like men,” Petra said. “But I don’t want to date.”

  “Understood.” Maria seemed to make a conscious effort not to look at the scar on Petra’s arm, exposed by her rolled-­up sleeves. “There’s a whole lot of macho posturing that seems to happen around here. All the men think they’re cowboys.”

  “I’m getting that feeling.” Petra groaned. “Mike Hollander has been hanging around. I think he can’t decide if I’m a damsel in distress or not.”

  Maria chortled. “Mike and I used to date.”

  “Oh. Erf. Is this awkward?”

  “Not at all. Mike is a nice guy. He’s just a bit too much for me in that whole caretaking role. He really wants to settle down and have a bunch of kids and take them all to Boy Sco
ut camp. You can trust him, though, if you decided to go out with him.”

  “Eh. I’m not really in the market for the white picket fence right now.”

  “Just be clear when you friendzone him. He’ll take it fine.”

  “I would like for Mike to be in the friendzone.” Petra scrubbed at a bowl vigorously. “How did you guys wind up . . . uh . . . not together?”

  “A lot of it was his wanting to ride in on the white horse and rescue me from dealing with crazies in my line of work. Wanting me to move off the reservation and to someplace he thought was safer. And he really didn’t get the whole woo-­woo thing.”

  “With Frankie?”

  “And me, I guess. I think that I’m fairly spiritual, in my own way. But Mike is definitely a guy who believes only what he sees. He loves nature, and so do I. But he doesn’t feel that there’s any kind of spiritual force behind that. He thinks that, when he dies, that’s the end, and he’s gonna be worm food.”

  “I could see where that might be an issue.”

  Maria shrugged, slinging the dish towel over her shoulder. “He’s a good guy. Sort of uptight. He can’t leave it at work, and I hate being told what to do.”

  Petra grinned. “I get that.”

  “Which isn’t to say that I would object to you guys dating . . .”

  “Friendzone, definitely.”

  Maria laughed. “Make no promises. See how it works out. Like I said, he’s not a bad guy.”

  They finished the kitchen cleanup, and Petra went out to the porch. Frankie was still slumped in the porch swing, his hat covering his face. Sig was sitting in his lap, also asleep.

  Petra gingerly sat beside them, trying to figure out a way to ease the coyote from the old man’s arms without waking him.

  “That’s a fine friend you’ve found.”

  Petra blinked. Frankie was awake. His hat moved as he talked.

  “I think he’ll be a good friend, too.”

  Frankie pushed his hat back and stroked Sig’s ears. Petra noticed that his wrinkly fingers were very long and tapered, the nails oval. “He’s very loyal. He won’t lead you wrong.”

  “Lead me where?”

  “Anywhere. This world, the spirit world. Have you ever gone on a spirit journey?”

  “Ah, no. I have my hands full with this world.”

  Frankie reached into his shirt for a pipe, tapping some tobacco into it and lighting it. The smoke smelled like sweetgrass, and reminded Petra of her father, for a moment. Frankie shook his head, smiling.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “The spirit world has much to teach you.” Frankie shifted Sig from his lap and stood, cracking the bones in his spine as he stretched. “Come for a walk with me. I want to show you something.” Frankie ambled down the steps and away from the house.

  Petra hesitated. She had, after all, seen Frankie go off and nearly beat a guy to death on the street. But Sig sleepily waddled after Frankie, so Petra did the same. She caught up with him, puffing away, in a field of gold grass and tiny limestone pebbles that shifted underfoot. Sig zipped ahead, just his tail visible over the tassels of the grass. The sun felt warm on her face, and the smell of Frankie’s smoke floated over her. She felt peaceful. If she was honest with herself, this was probably the first time she had since she’d come to Temperance.

  Frankie followed a worn path out of the grass to a clearing, then sat down on a sandstone slab worn concave by what had to be centuries of asses sitting on it. The slab was the size of a toppled refrigerator, one of six ranged in an oval.

  “Oh, wow,” she said.

  Inside the rough-­hewn benches, water gathered in a swallet about the size of a small swimming pool, ringed by a bank of flat stones. The water moved and seethed, likely fed by an underground spring. It was a brilliant blue, more powerfully blue than the sky. Sig paced along the edge and stared at his reflection.

  “This is beautiful,” Petra said. She knelt at the edge of the water, bracing her hands on the stone. The one she perched on was the size of a doorstep, the sandstone grains hot to the touch.

  “It’s an old spring. Been here for centuries.”

  Petra could imagine it—­the rocks worn smooth from centuries of gossip and laundry. She scooped her hand in the water. It felt soft and warm, a little cloudy. Sig splashed in and dog-­paddled around the edge.

  “It’s a sacred place. The locals call it a name that means ‘The Eye of the Spirit.’ ”

  “I can see why.” The outline of the pool was vaguely eye-­shaped.

  Frankie scooped his hands in the water and took a drink. “It’s considered a sign of respect to drink from the spring. Offering the mouth of your spirit to the Spirit of All.”

  Petra squinted at the water. The Technicolor blue was likely the result of some kind of funky bacteria or algae breeding beneath the surface. She glanced at Frankie, feeling the heaviness of his gaze upon her.

  She sighed and cupped her hands. It was likely that there was nothing in it that couldn’t be fixed by a round of antibiotics. She pulled the warm blue water to her lips and drank.

  She expected it to taste like iron, salt, or some other mineral, but it had no such harsh taste. Instead, it was sweet. Almost like tea. Petra let it slide down the back of her throat, reached in for more. It seemed to quench some thirst she hadn’t been aware that she’d had, a longing.

  “The sweetwater,” Frankie said. He stretched out on his rock and pushed his hat back over his eyes, as if he intended to take a nap. “The sweetwater brings you to Spirit.”

  Petra wiped her lips with the back of her hand. Her mouth buzzed, humming as if she were playing a harmonica. She leaned over the rock to peer into the water. Her reflection gazed up at her, looking fuzzy and pensive, hair dipping into the surface of the water. She felt suddenly dizzy. Her fingers clutched the sandstone edge, and her vision blurred. Her limbs felt leaden, full of sunshine. She tried to summon a feeling of alarm, but a blue buzz suffused her brain.

  “The sweetwater,” Frankie said from what sounded like a great distance. “The sweetwater will bring you home.”

  Petra pitched forward, into the waiting warm blue water.

  Chapter Ten

  Altered States

  Flying.

  Air slid through the raven’s feathers like fingers through water. His pinfeathers grasped the edge of a hot air current, turning him west. He felt weightless, like paper pushed on the downdrafts of the mountains, insubstantial and free.

  Apart.

  Away.

  This high, this apart, there was no pain, only the push of wind against his chest and the scrape of it trickling down his throat. He climbed as high as he could, leaving the ranch behind like a speck of dust, a tiny scar on the land.

  He moved away, instinctively chasing the sun. Nothing could hold him. No duty, no curses, no dusty oaths—­not even gravity. The bird imagined what it would be like to stay in this form, with all those years upon years of consciousness poured into a single weightless body. A body that could be undone in seconds by a hawk or an eagle or even an unlucky downdraft. In raven form, he was just as vulnerable as any other bird. For that time, being apart, being suspended between earth and sky . . . perhaps it would be worth it.

  The wind pushed up from the south, lifting him higher. At this height, the drafts shredded into his wings. Below him, the smaller scattered sparrows were only dots. A vulture circled in an ever-­tightening spiral around something dead.

  The raven let the air push him north, flattening his wings wide to a knifelike edge. He sailed like a kite, his shadow passing over ribbons of road and roofs of houses. When he’d split from the body, he’d given no thought to where he was going.

  His eyes roamed over fields, pausing on the gem-­like blue of a tiny body of water. It was the most color in the landscape, like spilled antifreeze on a baked street
. Seductive. He angled his head down, cupping his wings against the pull of the current.

  Shiny.

  As he swung down, he remembered it had been a long time since he’d been here. Even then, he’d come on wings. Never on two feet. This was not his territory.

  A woman lay motionless in the pool, facedown. An old man gripped her shoulders while a coyote tried to slog out of the water, unable to get his hind legs over the stone ledge circling it. The coyote barked and snarled at the man, in the attitude of a dog defending a pup from a predator.

  The man seemed dimly familiar. Trying to remember brought a twinge of pain to the raven’s side. He knew, in some part of his vast memory jammed into a skull the size of a walnut, that this man had hurt him. But the woman . . .

  The raven swooped down to get a closer look. Blond hair spread out in the pool, turning green in the unnatural water. A golden pendant shone at the surface of the water, tethered by a familiar chain around her neck.

  Shiny.

  He swooped down, into the chaos of the coyote splashing and howling. The old man, focused on the woman, tried to fight off the coyote.

  The raven charged the man. Yelling, the old man swung at the raven, but the bird was too fast for him. He clawed at his enemy’s face, drawing blood and curses. The raven fluttered away and reached toward the woman’s throat. He’d forgotten his physical limitations; she was too heavy to lift when he was in this form. He pinwheeled back from the struggle with only the snapped chain of the pendant in his talons.

  “Damn bird! Get away!”

  Thinking that the old man was going to drown her, he dove again. But the man anticipated the attack and slapped at the raven, catching him midair. The blow was heavy against his chest, ringing through him like the time he’d struck a window in a storm. He landed in the dust, beak parted, panting, one wing outstretched.

  The old man turned to the woman, reaching down for her.

  The raven shrieked.

  Grunting with effort, the old man pulled her to the lip of the pool. The woman lay on the sandstone with rivulets of turquoise water dripping from her body. The coyote managed to haul himself over the rock lip of the pool and stumble toward her before falling over, motionless.