Soleil

by Jacqueline Garlick

  “Is this all right?” I call out to the alchemist as we slug the massive beast up to the hearth.

  “It’ll do spectacularly.” The alchemists’ eyes light up. “Now, add it to the fire.” He jerks his head toward the hearth.

  Masheck halts. “The fire?”

  “Yes,” the alchemist barks in a forceful voice, not his own. His eyes are flaming amber.

  Masheck jolts back.

  “Let’s just do what he says,” I whisper, straining my back to pick up my end of the cauldron.

  Masheck picks up his end, never taking his eyes from the alchemist, and together we wrench the vessel up into the flames. It lands with a great wood-crushing clunk. Heat immediately devours its sides, thrashing out from the hearth, and we fling ourselves backward to avoid being singed.

  “Now, mix together the silica, lime, and soda ash,” the alchemist barks. “Quickly. We’ve no time to waste.”

  He glares our way, and Masheck and I shoot forward, propelled as if by some otherworldly force, our bodies able to work at twice their normal speed. We shovel the ingredients into the cauldron at preternatural speed. The flames are so ferocious we should be burned, and so thick and hot we can barely see.

  “This will help to soften the silica.” The alchemist reaches into the fire and drains a bottle of foul-smelling chemical into the cauldron. I choke and gasp on its caustic off-gasses, raising a hand to mouth to guard my lungs. The alchemist draws back without so much as flinching.

  “It’ll lower the melting point and alter its basic molecular structure,” the alchemist adds.

  “Of what?” Masheck mutters, and I can tell by his tone that he’s not sure who’s structure is about to change—ours or the mixture’s.

  The alchemist turns stern eyes on him. “The sand’s, of course.”

  I step toward him. “But won’t that take days?”

  “Not with me here.” The alchemist turns to leave. “Now, fill it up to the brim.” He flicks his chin toward the cauldron. “We’ll need all the supply we can conjure.”

  “Wait! Where are you going?” My breath escapes. Is he about to disappear on us again?

  “To secure the missing chink.” He folds his hands inside his great sleeves and stares at me, amber eyes narrowing. “Once you’ve finished churning the mixture smooth, you’ll need to rake it.” He bends over the pile of supplies, selecting a multi-pronged instrument with metal-fingered ends, and stuffs it in my direction. “Both of you. But don’t look while you do it, or you’ll never see anything else again.”

  I know not what to think, so I just do as he says, my mind consumed with Eyelet’s welfare.

  “I don’t know about this,” Masheck mutters, as we finish filling the cauldron. “You sure you can trust that chameleon?”

  “He far surpassed trust about an hour ago.” I glance back over my shoulder to where the alchemist floated from the room.

  The steely fingers of dread seize my chest.

  It becomes almost impossible to stir, what with the flames and the heat, the tug of metal rake against the thickening grit. At first the mixture moves like clay, then stiff taffy, then at last like a churning river’s current, each round circling faster and faster, until we can barely keep up.

  “That’s it, that’s it.” The alchemist clucks, swooping up behind us unannounced. I have to check twice to make sure it’s him I’ve really heard. “Now, extract the rakes and move away!” He shoots forward unexpectedly and drops something into the pot. There’s a punch of light and a rapturous boom as the mixture tears apart, swallowing what he’s dropped, whole.

  “What was that?” I scurry backward, shielding my eyes from the flames.

  “So many questions from a man with so little belief.” The alchemist arches his brows.

  Wild black flames, now rise out the front of the hearth almost touching the ceiling. Masheck scrambles after a bucket to douse them out, but the alchemist puts up his hand and stops him. “All in good time, my son. All in good time.” In the reflection of their eyes, I see the sand in the cauldron liquefying. I dare not look at it directly.

  “Stand back,” the alchemist shouts, spreading his arms an eagle’s breadth wide. He pushes us both aside with such strength we nearly topple, dipping the long metal hook into the solution. He twirls it around, his nimble fingers working freakishly fast then pull it from the fire. “I’ll need a cloth or newsprint,” he shouts, as if he were a surgeon barking for his scalpel.

  Masheck jumps into action. He tears the tail from his shirt and stuffs it into the alchemist’s hand. Using it as a protective glove, the alchemist pats the blob of glowing glass, then rolls it in his hand, pressing his lips to the opposite end of the rod and blows. The glass expands.

  With his gloved hand, he cups the growing bubble until he’s fashioned it into an oversized aether bulb, twice the size of a human head.

  “Water,” he hollers, and I race for the bucket, returning just in time for the alchemist drop the fiery bulb into the water. It hisses and steams. Flashes of light spark and fizzle up through the air. “Now, for a touch of ultraviolet.” The pulls a leather pouch from his pocket of his cloak and dusts the bulb with its contents. I hold my breath as he spins it the air, sprinkling it liberally. Mauve dust billows up, forming a fat purplish plume above our heads. The alchemist coughs and flaps the plume away.

  “There we are.” He holds the still-blazing bulb up like a trophy, raising it startlingly high above the stone floor.

  I gasp at its thin transparency, at the purple-blue shadows of reflected flames, dancing off the sides of the shimmering dark-purple bulb.

  “Perfection,” the alchemist declares, clasping the bulbs in both his hands, despite the heat of it. “Now, to start the transfusion.” He winks then whisks away.

  “The trans what?” Masheck’s mouth jerks open.

  “Gather all who love her that are near,” the alchemist shouts back to us, over his shoulder. “Have them join us back at the room where she lay. If we are to coax Eyelet’s wandering spirit back into her body, we’ll need all the soul-power we can muster.”

  Chapter Five

  Flossie

  “That wench is on her last leg.” I thrust forward, muttering aloud, awkwardly jerking across the forest floor on my tentacles. The forest is quiet, brume-filled, and dark. I’ve not yet re-grouped with my followers. “She’ll need this more than ever now.” I yank the glowing pendant from between my breasts and stare at the luminescent liquid pulsing within the vial. “Urlick will do just about anything to get this back, I’m betting.” I twirl the vial. “Anything to save his little Eyelet …including saving me.”

  I stuff the perfect little bargaining chip back between my breasts and swing around, searching the skies for my disciples. Where are they? I shade my eyes and squint. I swear I’ve inherited the daftest souls in all the Commonwealth. I shake my fists. Instead of fleeing with me, they got themselves sucked up! What kind of idiot gives up the advantage when we’re the ones with the fangs?

  I glance down at my arms, and realize they are now almost completely translucent. My once soft, slippery blue veins have turned into thick, shining silver ropes. I draw my hand back, repulsed at myself.

  Quickly, I raise my skirts to find the fat, slithery tentacles that once replaced only my legs now also inhabit my thighs. They sprout straight out from my waist.

  “Oh, good Lord,” I gulp, and fall back.

  The end is nigh. Very nigh.

  I clutch my chest and my hand slides on through it. I squeak.

  What will be next? What frightening creature am I becoming?

  I look down again and frown, tearing away the tourniquets I bound ‘round my former thighs in the hope I’d be able to stop the Turn’s progression. “Fat lot of good these did.”

  I touch my head to make sure it’s still there and bony, not flaky and parchment-paper thin. I’m relieved to find that it is, though the hole in the back of it is still gaping.

  How very unbecoming.r />
  What’s this? I look up to see my fingers wiggling beyond my forehead. I can pop my hand straight through? “Oh, Lord,” I swallow hard. I must find Urlick and seduce him quick.”

  I jerk across the forest floor, pacing and wringing what’s left of my hands.

  I must find him and convince him of his love for me, and surely he will help. He will know in his heart that it has always been me.

  “Disciples!” I shout.

  Chapter Six

  Urlick

  THE ALCHEMIST ARRANGES EACH of us around Eyelet in a precise and meaningful order: C.L. next to Eyelet’s legs, representing her gumption, her unwavering refusal to be reined in. Iris at her side, her forever-constant companion, as loyal and true as Eyelet is with everyone. Masheck at her shoulder, representing her unyielding strength. Livinea at her head, a testament to her wise, yet currently absent mind. And I, next to her heart, for obvious reasons.

  “What about the rest?” I panic over leaving the remainder of the crew out of the ceremony. They’re not back yet from calming the people at the square.

  “This many will do just fine.” The alchemist stops bustling about the room. He pats my hand and places it over Eyelet’s chest. I draw in a short, startled breath. She’s cold—so frightfully cold. I’m not even sure she still draws breath.

  I bend, ear to her mouth, listening for signs of life. Her breath is very slow and shallow, as if she’s suspended in some sliver of existence between this world and the next, and her return depends on all of us. I pull back from the stone, slab, table where she lies, her eyes closed and deathly silent. “So how does this work?” I turn my eyes toward the alchemist, as he takes his place in the circle around we’ve formed around her. “What are we to do?”

  “We are to do nothing.” He smiles warmly. “It will be her doing, not ours, that propels her return to us today. If she is to return at all.” He speaks in a low, steady voice. “Though it will be the force of our collective wills that lures her back from the state she’s currently in.”

  I shudder at the thought of that, feeling struck by a bucket of cold water. The Alchemist takes his place next to Eyelet’s thigh, and requests we all join hands. Clasping Masheck’s and Iris’ hands together, he steps inside the circle and throws back his head, closing tight his eyes. “What hath just been joined, let none here put asunder.” He glares hard at each of us, making a round of the circle, then closes his eyes again. “Do not break this connection, until it is broken,” he cautions. There is a thread of worry in his tone.

  My breath comes uneven. “What do you mean by that?”

  “It will reveal itself in time, my son. Is everyone ready?” He waits for the collective, breathy, “Yes.”

  I speak it aloud, along with the others, but inside my heart beats unsure.

  “Very well then. The alchemist’s head tilts back from his shoulders. His face contorts, as if possessed by something otherworldly. “Let the retraction begin,” he sings. Both his arms snap up from his sides, and his body trembles. When his eyes spring back open, they glow with amber light. Their dull mossy green hue is gone. He whisks around the perimeter of Eyelet, inside of our circle, his arms outstretched, his fingers working at the speed of light. His movements are so quick; I am unsure if I’m watching hands, or a flickering figment inside an aether bulb, as they weave up and down and around Eyelet’s sleeping frame.

  Iris sucks in a wary breath. Her knees buckle.

  “Steady now,” the alchemist shouts, sensing her movement. “We must be strong in her absence, for her to return.”

  Iris rights herself. The alchemist swings around the end of the slab table. Ducking beneath our arms, he drags in a machine from behind a curtain at our backs, which I hadn’t noticed until now. The machine consists of a massive, black, box, covered in gadgets and dials, with scraggly wires protruding from either end. It’s a good thing he’d hidden the machine, for had I seen the it earlier, I may have demanded he halted the procedure before it began. The pulse in my wrists jump as he flips a switch, and turns it on. Garbled static rises and falls. He opens the set of doors on the front, and its working insides are exposed. Gears whirl and pulleys tighten. Steam chugs from a metal, trough spout on the top.

  He draws the machine closer, parallel to Eyelet’s arm, then slides around the back to cranks it up. The machine gasps and whirs. Dials whip about. Another set of scraggly wires crackle overhead. They lead from the main box to an odd-looking apparatus, made of twisted wire that hangs suspended on a hook high above Eyelet’s head. The whole thing looks like something out of a madman’s laboratory.

  I open my mouth to protest but can’t find my words, as the alchemist moves in, his whip-like movements fast as light. Snagging a syringe from a metal surgical table he rolls up next to the machine, he affixes it to a long segment of clear tubing. He then attaches the other end to the great gasping machine. A ticking timer starts. Bellows puff and moan as they creak, feeding air through the tubing.

  Without warning, the alchemist lurches forward and stabs Eyelet in the arm with the syringe. He drives it deep into the soft part in the crook of her arm, into the vein just below the skin. Strangely, Eyelet does not respond in any way. She doesn’t even flinch. It’s as though she’s devoid of pain, devoid of feeling, altogether. I’m troubled by that thought, and the thought of how helpless I feel all of a sudden. I have the urge to drop hands and strip the apparatus from her arm, but instead, I dip my head and silently pray that I’ve haven’t made a grave mistake, and set a madman loose on my loved one.

  The alchemist secures the needle in place with a strip of gauze he winds about her arm, then ties tight. “That should do it.” He looks to me, almost as though he’s sensed my discomfort. His burning, amber eyes are oddly soothing, in a mad scientist sort of way.

  He removes his hands from her and I catch my breath. Swinging around the side of the machine, he cranks on a handle, then pumps a pedal at his feet. The tangled wires snap and spark around us. I twist left and right, tracking them.

  The machine vibrates, beside me. I feel its inner workings shimmying in my bones, as it noisily chugs and hums and churns, smoking. The main big, black, box with a wire-cage window in front, a beehive of unexplained activity. Inside the box, a bevy of cogs and cranks, sputter and whirl, producing uncannily sinister sound. Another set of wires fed through the boxes side, hang out the other, all frazzled and twisted like a madman’s toupee. Above Eyelet’s head, suspended from a grappling hook, hangs an empty medical bag. An array of hoses, connected by valves, lead up to the bag from the side of the machine and then back down to the syringe in Eyelet’s arm, shunting unidentified liquids in a circular motion, like the function of the aorta in the heart.

  The alchemist flips a switch and a surge of blood draws up the syringe from Eyelet’s arm, through a set of tubes and into the bag over her head. Then the blood shoots down again, through the middle of the churning, whirling machine, where it comes out the other side a full shade lighter than when it went in. From there, the blood is force-fed back into Eyelet’s arm, via the same syringe that took it out. All of this is fueled by a pair of steam-driven pistons and a creaky set of bellows that gasp and wheeze as the blood is pumped. It all seems gut-flippingly archaic. An acrid taste floods my mouth.

  Whilst inside the bag, Eyelet’s blood sifts through a maze of crystal-like prisms, reflecting a kaleidoscope of dazzling colourful protozoa-type images across the wall of the lab. They sail over the stones, glinting pink to red, mauve to violet, as the gears inside the guts of the black box whistle and puff out smoke. Steam pours out of every orifice, as if the box were straining.

  Outside a storm is brewing. Wind rises up and slams against the walls. Between the storm and the machine, my heart beats frantic. I cannot wait for this to be over.

  In the opposite corner of the room, sits a large dome-like contraption, made of solid steel. It begins to rattle, regulator spin. “What is that?” I swing my chin toward it. The alchemist ignores me. He
reaches back and yanks on a throttle at the back of the black box, which strangely fuels the clattering dome. Then, he hurries over like there is no time to waste, and injects the bag with a fat syringe full of something vibrantly orange.

  “Answer me!” I shout at him as he passes. He reaches for yet another device. “What are you doing? What’s going on?” I track his erratic movements about the room. The storm rages outside. Thunder cracks and the winds thrash against the windows, and I jolt. There’s asudden whoosh, and the vein in Eyelet’s arm jumps.

  The alchemist adjusts a valve, sending Eyelet’s blood in the opposite direction through a small triangular metal tunnel in the rattling dome. The dome is lit by the alchemist’s homemade aether bulb. It lights up an eerily ultraviolet. From there, Eyelet’s blood is pushed back into her veins.

  Slowly, the edges of her lips begin to turn pink.

  “Oh, good, Lord,” I gasp, noting the changes. The alchemist smiles at me. Then he throws back his head and begins to chant—in a low guttural growl. “Oooooolah… Oooooolaahhhmannnaaaa…” The lights in the room flicker, then dim. The machine’s wires sizzle. A stench, like burning flesh fills the room.

  “What is that? What’s happening?”

  “Hush!” the alchemist breaks from chanting, long enough to scold me.

  Masheck and I share a strained, troubled look. I know not what to do.

  The alchemist continues chanting, his arms waving over his head. “Macha deeenah ballete…” He journeys the length of Eyelet’s body, threading his fingers through the air, dancing on the tips of his toes, knocking each of us slightly out of position as he flickers past, our backbones waving like saplings in a winter storm.

  “Call to her,” the alchemist says, his voice strangely demonic. “Call to her, let her know you need her back.” He turns wild eyes on me. They’re hypnotic and slitted like a serpent’s. “Call to her. Now!” he shouts.