The Accidental Alchemist

by Gigi Pandian

  This basement was the reason I had hired Charles Macraith. Working with a contractor with a versatile set of skills who was known for keeping his mouth shut, it would have been possible for me to build the type of alchemy lab I thought I might want again. Not merely a room, but a carefully organized laboratory including a tower furnace.

  Even before Dorian came into my life with his peculiar book, the reason I was drawn to practicing alchemy again was because I wanted to feel whole. Alchemy had dominated so much of my life that even though I had run from it, I couldn’t escape it. But while I was running, I was also running from myself. I wondered if I needed to practice alchemy to find myself again.

  My plan, when I bought this house, had been to ease myself into it. Finding a place to call home, working the land to create an edible garden of herbs and vegetables, and fixing up a working laboratory to practice alchemy. The last step would be creating spagyric plant transformations to heal myself both physically and psychologically. Now that fate had forced my hand, that final step had to jump to the forefront.

  I had already found the Elixir of Life, but the elixir is only a small part of alchemy. As I had explained to Brixton, alchemy is about the transformation of the impure into the pure. Transforming lead into gold. Transforming the body to free it from its bonds of mortality. Transforming the spirit into mental well-being.

  I had lost sight of myself over the last century. I had been taking care of myself physically, because I could make simple healing foods without thinking. But I wasn’t really living. Ever since Ambrose.

  Besides my brother, Ambrose was the only person I had ever loved. After Thomas died, it was Ambrose who taught me how to live again. For a while, at least. But that, too, ended in a tragedy I didn’t anticipate. Because of me, they had both died painful deaths, alone. How could I have known what Ambrose would do?

  But that was all in centuries past. I had been running without looking back for long enough. I felt my gold locket again. The metal was warm from where I wore it close to my heart. The only two people I had ever loved with all my heart were gone. There was nothing I could do about that now. But I could save those I cared about in the present.

  I had to have a clean workspace free from distractions before beginning an alchemical transformation. I had never shied away from hard work, so even though I couldn’t build a proper lab, I could clean the basement and set up the old alchemy laboratory supplies I’d shipped from Paris. I needed to buy some new materials, but I would be able to do some simple transformations right away.

  I hoped.

  ———

  After I saw Brixton off to school the next morning—listening to him grumble about water torture from the malfunctioning shower—I got to work.

  With a combination of vinegar and strength of will, four hours later my basement no longer smelled like a dank moldy brewery. Now it smelled like a fresh-scented brewery. A previous owner must have brewed his own beer down here. I was going to do my own brewing, but not of beer.

  Now that the floor was clean, I noticed a scrape running across the center of the large room. Had someone previously built the basement into separate rooms? I thought again of the plans I had wanted Charles Macraith to execute, immediately followed by a pang of guilt. The man was dead. And I didn’t know if his death was related to me.

  The idea would have been easier to dismiss as paranoia if not for the reaction of other contractors I tried to hire. I was willing to settle for a handyman who could do basic repairs to the roof, broken windows, and pipes. I’d deal with real fixes later. If there was a later.

  But as soon as I mentioned the address of the house, everyone I contacted gave excuses for why they couldn’t come. They were booked. For how long? For the foreseeable future. They hung up without saying goodbye. One person even had a bout of shingles come on while they were talking on the phone. I knew the economy was doing better, but were they all so worried about the possibility that I was a lunatic murderer that they didn’t want such a big job? Oh. When I thought of it like that, maybe they were being prudent. It had made the papers that Blue was under suspicion. But Blue Sky Teas was a Portland institution. I, on the other hand, was new in town. The day after I arrived, a man was not only poisoned but stabbed right outside my front door. If I didn’t know me, I’d probably run away screaming.

  I sighed and took a look at what I’d been able to accomplish on my own in the basement. At least it was no longer a moldy room that reeked of hops so strongly as to overwhelm the senses, I reminded myself.

  I had a few more hours before Brixton was due back from school. Enough time to get started.

  I’ve never liked the expression that something you used to do but haven’t done in years is “like riding a bike.” I didn’t learn to ride a bike until I was over one hundred years old, shortly after the miserable contraption was invented. It was called a velocipede at the time. And it never came easily to me. Maybe it was because of the discomfort of those first bicycles that didn’t have air-pressurized tires, giving them the nickname “bone shakers.” Give me a motorcar any day. Now that was an invention I related to. I took to driving almost as naturally as I did to plants. I was quite disappointed when speed limits were introduced.

  Setting up my alchemy lab turned out to be exactly like riding a bike—meaning I completely failed at picking it up again.

  Though I didn’t have everything I would need for a full laboratory, in theory I had enough to get started. Several glass retorts—long-necked containers that could be heated over a flame and sealed with a stopper—and other glass containers that had survived the journey, including a hermetic vase, skull cup, angel tube, spirit holder, and tomb of the dead. I never said alchemists weren’t creative. I was missing an athanor—the furnace Charles Macraith was going to build into the wall below the living room fireplace—and I’d need to restock several ingredients.

  When Dorian crept down the stairs to bring me a sandwich, he nearly dropped the plate when he saw me. I didn’t blame him. My arms were covered in green sludge. Perhaps the consistency would have been better described as slime. If I thought my creaking old house was actually haunted, I would have sworn a ghost had vomited ectoplasm on me.

  “Take a break,” Dorian said. “Brixton will return from school soon. I’ll keep this sandwich warm in the oven for you. ”

  After taking a quick, icy shower in the upstairs bathroom that needed plumbing help, I joined Dorian at the dining table. Brixton was already there, inhaling a sandwich.

  “Thith ith tho good,” Brixton said through a mouthful. “What ith thith?” He swallowed. “I thought Zoe didn’t eat meat or cheese.”

  Dorian grinned and removed my roasted mushroom sandwich with truffle cream from the oven. The cream sauce was made from blended cashews, not dairy, with the mushrooms giving the sandwich its hearty “meaty” texture. It was the same thing Brixton was eating, and it was every bit as good as he said. I hadn’t realized how famished I was until I took a bite of the heavenly toasted baguette sandwich.

  “Can we go see Blue?” Brixton asked.

  Dorian raised an eyebrow at me, then lifted another two un-toasted open-faced sandwich slices into the oven.

  “Why don’t you give your mom a call,” I said, “while I call and see about Blue.”

  Brixton sat back in his chair and crossed his arms. “The gargoyle has my phone.”

  “Mon dieu,” Dorian said. “You may have the phone to call your mother, but I will be watching. N’est pas?”

  Two minutes later, we all returned to the table, disheartened. Brixton’s mom hadn’t asked him about Blue during their brief text message conversation. On my end, I was told that the hospital wasn’t allowing visitors.

  As we ate in moody silence, Dorian threw his hands into the air.

  “I cannot stand this!” he said. “If you wish to eat without speaking to savor the flavors I have created,
that is one thing. But this? I cannot tolerate such a maudlin mood while eating. I will at least tell you of some interesting news stories I have been reading in Le Monde.”

  “What’s Le Monde?” Brixton asked.

  “You may never have seen one of these before,” Dorian said, scampering off his chair and picking up one of the folded newspapers from the far side of the table. “It is called a newspaper. A very civilized invention that has neither pop-up ads nor viruses.”

  Brixton rolled his eyes.

  “Listen to this,” Dorian said. “Three museums on the continent are reporting that gold pieces from their museums have been switched for fakes! None of them know how the switch was made, but the fakes are crumbling.”

  “What’s ‘the continent’?” Brixton asked.

  “Mon dieu. The European continent. France, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Germany, Luxembourg—”

  Brixton grunted a laugh. “You made up that last one.”

  Dorian sputtered.

  “I don’t think he’s had geography or world history yet,” I said.

  “Yeah we did.”

  “You’re not helping yourself, Brixton.”

  “What? I know all about local history. That what’s important, isn’t it? Did you know there’s a wicked series of tunnels that runs under Portland? Mr. Strum took us on a field trip to the Shanghai Tunnels in his class last fall. It was pretty funny, because he had to walk hunched over the whole time; otherwise he’d smack his head on the low beams in the ceiling. He showed us all sorts of hidden areas—that was before the tunnels were boarded up even more and he couldn’t take anyone back. We learned all about the history of this place. In the old days, guys who went to bars would be kidnapped and sold to ship captains. It was called Shanghaiing, since they were put on ships headed to Asia. Pretty wicked, huh?”

  Dorian gave up at that point. We were done eating anyway.

  It was raining again that afternoon, so instead of fitting in weeding first, I sent Brixton upstairs to do his homework, asking him to let me know if he needed any help.

  “I know what we must do,” Dorian said, speaking quietly so as not to be overheard.

  “Brixton is only in ninth grade. It’s okay that he hasn’t been paying attention in class.”

  “Not that. I know what we must do as a next step in our investigation.”

  “What do you mean our investigation? There is no our investigation.”

  “Things are moving too slowly.”

  “I know. That’s why I set up my lab. I think it’s the last step I need to figure out the riddles of your book. I’m already beginning to remember more.”

  “And the specific pages from the book? You have had more success translating the pages you have?”

  “It’s tough without greater context, but I’m getting closer to an overall understanding—”

  “It was difficult,” Dorian said, “for me to shift from stone to life today.” He gave one firm shake of his head. “We can no longer wait for you to see what you can accomplish with only those few pages. We must find the book.”

  “I can’t stand seeing this happen to you, but how do you propose we get it?”

  “Blue Sky possessed your other stolen items. Is it not possible the police missed something? They did not know what they were looking for. We must go to Blue’s house.”

  “It’s a crime scene, Dorian.”

  He tapped his claws on the table. “Then we must break in.”

  fifteen

  Getting a closer look at Blue’s house was a tempting thought. Tempting, but dangerous. I wasn’t into danger these days. I’d had enough of it for many lifetimes.

  “I’m not breaking into someone’s house,” I said.

  “Why not?” Dorian asked.

  “It being illegal is the first thing that springs to mind.”

  The gargoyle rolled his eyes. “For someone who lives outside of normal society, you have a strange concept of justice.”

  “I’m not talking about it being wrong to break in.” I’d lived through the execution of enough unjust laws that “the law” wasn’t high on my list of things I respected. “I’m talking about it being risky. I’m trying to stay under the radar.”

  He squinted at me.

  “Oh,” I said, “‘under the radar’ is an idiom that means I don’t wish to be detected.”

  “Ah yes, I understand now. But this is not the time for an English lesson. If we wish to learn what has become of my book, there is much more we must learn of Blue, no?”

  “There are other ways.”

  “Such as?”

  “I haven’t thought of them yet,” I admitted.

  “You know why this is so important to me.” His eyes bore into me.

  “I know, Dorian,” I said. “I know.”

  ———

  That’s how a few hours later I found myself making an energizing chocolate elixir to stay alert in the middle of the night.

  “Brixton is getting ready for bed,” I said as I came through the kitchen door with a coconut. After dinner I’d made a quick stop at the market for the coconut and checked on Brixton.

  Dorian was finishing cleaning up the kitchen after the three-course dinner he’d cooked us—a potato mushroom soup starter, a pumpkin loaf crusted with poppy seeds as the main dish, and a bed of arugula with fennel and orange for the third course. Brixton had eaten everything except the fennel, which he refused to taste. I thought the licorice flavor of fennel would appeal to him, but not so much. He’d accepted a lot that week. I wasn’t going to push.

  During dinner that night, Brixton had continued to ask intelligent questions about alchemy. He was understandably confused about what was real and what wasn’t, due to pop culture’s treatment of alchemy that gave it magical properties. The more answers I gave him, the more questions he had. That was alchemy.

  Once Dorian finished washing the dishes, he untied the apron from around his waist and hung it on the door hook. “I do not understand why we cannot make the boy a dessert and add something to it that will help him sleep while we are out tonight.”

  “I’m not drugging Brixton,” I said emphatically.

  “It would be safer.”

  “I draw the line at drugging a kid.” I slammed a butcher’s knife into the fresh young coconut, splitting the thick white husk on the first try. Two more firm pounds with the edge of the knife and I had a triangular hole in the coconut.

  Cutting into a coconut is daunting if you’re not used to it, but coconut was an important part of the energizing elixir that helped keep me awake when I had to be up well past dark. Being alert during the middle of the night was nearly impossible for me. My only chance at being coherent was natural sugars and fats with a little bit of caffeine.

  “Now that you have successfully massacred the coconut,” Dorian said, “you should place it in the fridge.”

  “I need to drink this before we go.”

  “How long does it last? We should not venture out until after midnight.”

  “After midnight?” I set down the knife. “Can’t we go earlier?”

  He shook his head resolutely.

  ———

  I stayed awake by again looking through the pages of Dorian’s book, this time hoping the mental preparation of setting up an alchemy lab was enough to spark further understanding.

  I paused on a woodcut showing a menagerie of animals. At the bottom of the illustration, the land was covered with toads, symbolizing the First Matter. Yet even in the still illustration, the toads were clearly dead. In the sky above, bees swarmed, symbolizing purification and rebirth. The carving alluded to motion, showing the wind pushing the bees in a counterclockwise direction, pushing them toward the earth.

  The stress of not understanding, while knowing what was at stake, did a decent job keeping me awake. Stil
l, I felt myself fading. Midnight might not be a bewitching hour, but it effectively turns me into a pumpkin.

  At a few minutes to midnight, I grabbed a jar of unsweetened cocoa powder from the cabinet and scooped a few tablespoons into the blender, scraped vanilla paste from a vanilla pod I kept in a glass jar, added the coconut meat and liquid from the fruit I’d split open earlier, and blended the mixture. I offered half to Dorian. He politely declined.

  Before we left, I walked by Brixton’s room, trying not to make too much noise on the creaking floor. I could see through the one-inch space between the door and the floor that his light was off.

  We drove my truck to an isolated field near Blue’s house. Dorian took my hand to lead me through the field. His eyes were able to see in the dark much better than mine, so it allowed us to move without a flashlight.

  “Is that it?” I asked, pointing to a house blanketed in shadows.

  “Yes,” Dorian agreed, “I can see the police tape.”

  We had reached the edge of a growth of trees but were still at least fifty yards from the storybook cottage. I hadn’t had much time to study the yard the first time I’d visited. Now that my eyes had adjusted to the moonlight, I couldn’t help noticing some of the more interesting plants. Caught up in the bounty surrounding me, I lost sight of Dorian.

  I whipped my head around. I didn’t see him. Some of the weeds grew higher than three feet, so he could have been anywhere in the field.

  “Dorian,” I whispered.

  He didn’t answer, but I heard a click. I followed the sound. He had just opened the front door.

  I hurried to the door, following Dorian inside and closing it behind us.

  Unlike the wild nature of the outside of the house, the inside of the cottage was well maintained. In the kitchen, colorful handcrafted dishes filled open cabinets. The remnants of dried herbs hung from hooks on the ceiling. The police must have taken the rest as evidence.

  One thing was lacking from the house: photographs. I wondered at first if it was the police who had taken the photos as evidence, until I saw that there were a few photos on a bookshelf. One was a photo of Blue with a younger Brixton. I didn’t recognize the people in the other photos, but they all had Portland backdrop. There was no evidence of Blue’s life before she moved here. The life she’d been running from.