The Elusive Elixir

by Gigi Pandian

  That was odd. In a section of solid stone, nonexistent joints of a brick shouldn’t have been able to crumble.

  Had someone purposefully defaced the building? Though it hadn’t been Nicolas’s home for centuries, the violation of the home he’d crafted infuriated me. Ignoring the sharp glare of a waiter smoking a cigarette on his break, I stepped onto the windowsill to see what was going on. The light backpack weighed heavily on my shoulders, reminding me how weak I still was.

  On the loose stone was an alchemical carving. A real one. Could this have been carved by Nicolas himself?

  The waiter muttered about uncivilized tourists as I tugged on the stone that bore the ouroboros. It didn’t give. Then I thought about the symbol itself. The ouroboros—the serpent eating its own tail, representing the cyclical nature of alchemy. Following the meaning of the symbol, I gave the stone not an outward tug but a clockwise twist. That set it free.

  Behind the ouroboros stone was a faded note on vellum.

  Addressed to me.

  My heart pounded in my ears and the voice of the aggrieved waiter faded away. The familiar hand of Nicolas Flamel had scrawled a note in old French: Dearest Zoe. If you find this one day …

  The rest of the note was illegible. No, no, no. This couldn’t be all there was! With shaking hands, I felt around behind the false brick. Nothing. I grabbed at the edges of the rough stone hole, getting nothing for my effort except a scrape across my knuckles.

  I pulled my hand away, ran my fingertips over the soft, faded paper, and willed my eyes to see text that wasn’t there. Was there anything left of the ink?

  The waiter had brought a compatriot from inside the restaurant, a regal woman with leathery skin. She was at least twice my size and carried a rolling pin in her hand.

  I could deal with the note later. I shoved the ouroboros brick back into place, making sure I heard a click, then jumped down from the windowsill and sped away from the house, the note from Nicolas in my pocket.

  Nine

  I walked to the university in a haze, passing elegant women expertly maneuvering cobblestones in perversely high heels, shopkeepers reminiscent of centuries past closing up shop for the day, and sidewalk cafés radiating the mingling scents of cigarettes, wine, and espresso.

  What had Nicolas wanted to tell me? And when had he left the message? It wasn’t before I left Paris during the war, was it? I’d visited his home then and hadn’t noiced the carving. Yet the vellum looked old. I hadn’t been in hiding while living in Paris before the war, so why hadn’t he sought me out if he was alive and in Paris? And if he was angry with me for leaving my apprenticeship so abruptly centuries ago, before I completed my training, why reach out to me at all? It didn’t make sense.

  Reaching the Left Bank, I saw groups of college students dressed up for a night out on the town. Evening was quickly approaching. With my distracted thoughts, I bumped into a young couple with their arms draped around each other. They were stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, a map in their hands. They folded the map and nodded at each other, but instead of walking toward a metro station, café, or bar, they knelt down and pried open the manhole they were standing on. On any other occasion, I would have been curious about a young couple climbing into the sewers, but not today. With a note from my mentor in my pocket and a gargoyle to meet, I continued on my way.

  I couldn’t stop thinking about Nicolas. If he was still alive, would he be able to help me with Dorian’s backward alchemy dilemma? No. Of that I was certain. He’d once warned me of backward alchemy. True alchemy is about personal transformation and requires a personal sacrifice to create the Philosopher’s Stone and the Elixir of Life. Backward alchemy, in his eyes, was the antithesis of alchemy’s purity. Nicolas wouldn’t even speak of it, except to warn me away from it.

  I stopped in front of a slanted Linden tree and steadied myself on its trunk. The bark was smooth and comforting under my raw fingers. Being with a small piece of nature in the loud and crowded city took the edge off of the troubling realization that even if I found Nicolas, he would fight me rather than help me if my quest involved backward alchemy. Being the purist that he was, I could imagine him insisting that Dorian was an unnatural creature who shouldn’t be alive. He would also be furious that I’d been so careless as to be recognized by Madame Leblanc, who was threatening to expose alchemy.

  I reached the university without walking into traffic or crashing into a light post, which was about as much as I could hope for at the moment. When I reached the professor’s door, I took Dorian’s book out of its three layers of taut plastic.

  “Bonjour, monsieur,” I said from the doorway. “I was hoping to show you the architectural woodcuts in this antique book. I think when you see them, you’ll understand why I’m so interested in seeing the gargoyle.” I nodded toward the gargoyle standing in the corner of the office. More than a foot taller than Dorian, and with rougher edges, the gargoyle wore a pained expression on his stone face. Dorian had taken to calling him his “brother” ever since we learned of his existence the previous month.

  “Chimera,” the professor corrected me with a stern frown. “The sculpture is a chimera, not a gargoyle. Let me see this book.”

  I forced a smile and handed Not Untrue Alchemy to the professor. Technically, the term gargoyle only refers to a carving that serves as a water spout, with the stone creature’s mouth and throat serving as the drainpipe. But the word gargoyle has become a general term for a range of stone creatures that perch on buildings. Even Dorian refers to himself as a gargoyle.

  “Of course,” I said. “The chimera. Do you mind if I open this window?” I moved to open it before he had a chance to reply.

  He looked up from the book. “I’d prefer you did not—”

  His words were drowned out by another sound. The buzzing of bees. The noise began softly, as a hum, but quickly rose to the level of a biblical swarm of locusts.

  At least a dozen bees flew into the room. They circled the professor’s hands. He dropped the book onto his desk and cried out as the stinging began. It took all of my willpower to stop myself from rushing to help him. Deep breath, Zoe. He’ll be fine.

  Professor Chevalier swore and rushed from the room. I donned gloves and whisked the book into a plastic bag with an airtight seal. Half a dozen bees were trapped inside with the book. The rest followed the professor.

  I closed the office door and locked it. I knew I didn’t have much time, so I’d make the most of it. First things first: I left a salve on the desk that would help with the bee stings.

  Next I slid Not Untrue Alchemy from the bag, careful to keep the bees inside. The book fell open to the page it always fell open to. These were the words that had once accidentally brought Dorian to life, when Jean Eugène Robert-Houdin had read the words as a dramatic addition to his stage show.

  I began to read the mysterious words aloud.

  Here in Paris, I felt the power of the words so deeply that I was caught off guard. My body began to sway as strongly as when I’d been on a fishing boat during an unexpected typhoon. I braced myself against the wall with my free hand and looked at the gargoyle, hoping he wouldn’t begin to shake as much as I was. Then he’d be sure to fall and shatter.

  The gargoyle didn’t move.

  I sat down on a nearby chair and cradled the confounding book on my lap. Reading from an alchemy book alone shouldn’t direct so much power toward myself. And certainly not this quickly. Alchemy involves practicing in solitude in one’s own alchemy lab, going through the processes of calcination, dissolution, separation, fermentation, distillation, and coagulation.

  But this book was backward alchemy, where shortcuts abound and one element is sacrificed for another. Alchemy can seem like magic, because we can’t see the mechanism of the transfer of energy under a microscope. But it’s not any different than theoretical physics. You don’t have to see science to believe in
it. Alchemists were early chemists, but because of “puffers”—the fools who only saw alchemy as a way to make money and sought favor with kings by transmuting lead into gold for political gains—alchemy was squashed, twisted, and discredited. Across time, whenever true alchemists have tried to come out from the shadows, it has ended badly.

  Still feeling like I was seasick, I focused my breathing. Think, Zoe. I read the incantation again. The gargoyle again failed to come to life.

  There was one more thing I wanted to try. I had a packet of tea with me, leftovers of the Tea of Ashes I’d made for Dorian before coming to Paris to stave off his backward transformation into stone. I’d saved the remnants of the ash-like substance that I’d created from the living plants in my garden.

  The gargoyle’s mouth was frozen half open, revealing a dark gray tongue and sharp teeth. I rubbed the ashes onto his stone tongue. The gray powder coated the rough surface, disappearing into the stone pores.

  I stepped back. Nothing.

  The sound of a buzzing bee interrupted the silence. One of the bees inside the book’s wrapping was frantically trying to escape. I shut the book and pushed it back inside. Let the bees have it. It wasn’t doing me any good.

  The buzzing subsided, but the room wasn’t silent. There was now another sound.

  Wheezing.

  My eyes flew to the gargoyle’s dark face. His gray eyes began to water.

  “Peux-tu m’entendre?” I asked. Can you hear me?

  The gargoyle wasn’t able to move his stone body, but his eyes were alive. I felt a jolt of pity as his sad eyes locked onto mine. Gray stone lips twitched. I wished I’d been wrong. I wished what the scholars believed was the truth, that this was simply a gargoyle carved by a stone carver with an offbeat sense of humor. Not this—a living soul trapped in stone.

  I also wished I’d been wrong about Dorian’s book. It had led me to the recipe for the Tea of Ashes and to Notre Dame, but it appeared to have served its purpose. It wasn’t a miracle that could save the gargoyles from reverting to stone.

  “Aidez moi,” the gargoyle croaked in a deep gravelly voice. “Help … Help me.”

  The last words were barely audible. The wheezing stopped. His lips froze, but for a moment longer his liquid gray eyes bore into mine. He blinked once more, then went still.

  Ten

  Dorian’s black eyes opened wide and he blinked at me.

  “Mais c’est formidable! It is true I have un frère—a brother!—and he is being held captive—” He broke off with a curse that had been popular a century ago and began to pace across the creaking hardwood floor. “Mais attendez … your visit to Notre Dame did not yet yield the answers we need, yet you are home.”

  I hadn’t had trouble leaving Paris and my connecting flight had touched down in Portland shortly after midnight. Dorian and I sat in my Craftsman house’s attic, which I’d half converted into an office for my online business, Elixir. I hadn’t slept at all on the flight. Flying affects my body’s natural rhythms more intensely than it does most people, because the planetary alignments go by too quickly. It scrambles my head. I much prefer to travel by car or boat, or on foot. I’d felt so alone on the long flights, fleeing both the country and the prospect of finding my mentor Nicolas, who I hadn’t seen since I’d run away from alchemy.

  “Did you fear they would arrest you for sending bees after the bad man who is keeping my brother captive?” Dorian asked.

  I sat down on a hefty crate I’d pushed into the corner next to the sloping ceiling. How to explain what had happened? “Not exactly.”

  “She comes home speaking in riddles,” Dorian muttered.

  Home. That was exactly how I felt. Like I was returning home. I was home. I was again reminded that this was the first time in decades that I felt I had someplace besides my trailer to call home. I was simultaneously comforted and terrified. I loved the friends I’d made since moving to Portland several months ago. But if I failed to unlock the secrets of backward alchemy, my newfound best friend Dorian would suffer a fate worse than death. If I failed to convince a man who once believed in magic that believing in alchemy wasn’t to be feared, I would lose my relationship with Max, my first chance at love in nearly a century. And now, if I dared return to Paris to finish what I’d started, I’d risk exposing my own secrets and the secrets of alchemy that the world wasn’t yet ready for.

  With Dorian in front of me, I couldn’t bring myself to tell him about the complicated accusation of murder from 1942. Telling Dorian of my own entanglement in a disturbing death from so many years ago wouldn’t help anyone. Nor could I tell him that I realized true alchemists like Nicolas Flamel might not understand that Dorian wasn’t inherently evil. I didn’t want to crush his hopes.

  “How bad is your arm?” I asked, watching Dorian’s awkward stance as he limped back and forth across the room, his clawed feet tapping on the floorboards with each step he took.

  “Ce n’est rien.”

  “In that case, move your left arm for me.”

  “I told you,” he snapped, “it is nothing.” He flapped his wings impatiently. “A kidnapped fellow gargoyle and the riddle of my book are much more important.”

  “I’ll figure it out. I’m closer than ever before, Dorian.”

  Dorian stopped pacing and studied my face. “What else is wrong? What are you not telling me?”

  “Why do you say that?”

  He narrowed his liquidy black eyes. “I have known you for long enough to have learned your expressions, Zoe. When you are sad, your shoulders fall. When you are angry yet pretend you are not, you purse your lips. And when you are frightened, you tug at your hair. You are frightened.”

  Apparently I would be a bad poker player. I put my hands into my lap.

  “What has you so scared, mon amie?” Dorian asked. “I have faith you will help me. Help us.” He hopped up onto the crate next to me—he was only three-and-a-half feet tall—and patted my shoulder with his wing. His wings were heavy stone but simultaneously soft and malleable.

  “I’m tired. That’s all. I’ve got killer jet lag.”

  “For someone so old and wise, have you yet to learn you are a terrible actress?”

  “You may recall I did fine on my own before you showed up in my living room.”

  “Yes. But you do much better when you do not lie.”

  I couldn’t argue with that. Since one of the core tenets of alchemy is purity of intent, that’s how I live my life. I don’t feel comfortable lying. Whenever I can avoid it, I do. When I bought the crumbling Craftsman house in Portland, Oregon, earlier in the year, I didn’t make up a story that I was a renovator or a house-flipper. When you act naturally, it’s easier for people to believe what they want to. Real estate agents filled in the blanks that made sense to their worldview. They believed I was a young woman who wanted a bargain and didn’t know what she was getting herself into. And my new neighbors assumed I was a good fit for the artsy Hawthorne neighborhood because I dyed my hair white to be trendy. In truth, I’m 340 years old, my hair turned naturally white nearly 300 years ago, and I wanted the falling-apart house so I could build myself an alchemy lab without people wondering what the construction was all about.

  “You’re an insightful gargoyle.”

  “Oui. I know this.”

  How could one refuse to answer an insightful, arrogant gargoyle?

  “Something happened yesterday,” I said.

  I gave Dorian a brief overview of the unexpected turn of events that had driven me from Paris, telling him about Madame Leblanc, who’d known me when she was a child, and the murder of my old shop assistant. “Madame Leblanc said that her policeman grand-nephew would figure out what I’d done,” I concluded, “and she’d figure out what I am.”

  Dorian’s eyes grew wide with horror as I spoke. “C’est terrible. Of course you made the right decision to leave P
aris. You could not risk yourself.” He jumped down from the crate and began to shake. A seizure? This was a new development.

  “Are you all right? Are you feeling yourself turn to stone all at once?”

  He shook his head. “I have had a thought most horrible. This woman—she might have attempted to put a stake through your heart!”

  I smiled for perhaps the first time since Madame Leblanc had confronted me at Notre Dame.

  “It is not humorous, Zoe. If other people fail to take her seriously, she might resort to violent action. You are a pale woman who has been alive for centuries. What was she supposed to think?”

  “I’m not that pale.”

  Dorian crinkled his forehead, causing his horns to wriggle. “All the hair on your body is white. People do not come much paler than you.”

  “You think she might think I’m a vampire? That’s crazy. Vampires don’t exist.”

  “Neither do alchemists, according to most people.”

  “Fair point. But what was I supposed to do? I couldn’t tell her the truth. Besides, she already told me her mother thought I was a witch.”

  Dorian sputtered. “This is worse! Being burned at the stake would be even more painful. Fire takes longer to kill. Your skin would blister—”

  “Hey,” I cut in, “nobody is getting staked through the heart or burned alive.”

  “You are the one who said she was after the truth.”

  “Which isn’t much better, I agree, but she doesn’t want to kill me—only expose me.”