The Elusive Elixir

by Gigi Pandian

  I woke up abruptly, with a gargoyle poking my arm with his claw and waving a bunch of fragrant roses under my nose.

  “The roses worked!” he declared.

  I rubbed my arm and sat up. My throat was so parched it took me a moment to speak. “I need sleep, Dorian.”

  “You have slept for many hours. You at least need to drink liquid.” He set down the roses and handed me a glass of water. I sat up and drank it, then lay back down and pulled the blanket over me.

  Dorian tapped me again.

  “I’m serious, Dorian. I need more sleep.”

  “Zoe.” The gargoyle gently tapped a claw on my forehead. “I do not wish to worry you, but you have been asleep for more than a day.”

  Thirteen

  Against the will of my aching body, I sat up. “I slept for a whole twenty-four hours?”

  “Oui. This is why I needed a strong scent to wake you.” Dorian waved the roses in front of my face again. “Your phone rang many times, yet you did not awaken. It was Max.”

  “Max? Did you—”

  “Of course I did not answer. He phoned many times. He must have missed you very much.” Dorian frowned. “But the ringing was most distracting. I asked Brixton to tell him you had horrific jet lag and needed sleep.”

  “A whole day?” At least it was one day closer to receiving the book from Paris in the mail. I stretched my cramped neck. My velvet couch wasn’t the most comfortable bed. “I slept for an entire day?”

  “Is your hearing affected?” Dorian shouted into my ear. “Yes! A whole day!” He raised his arms above his horns to pantomime the rising and setting of the sun.

  “My hearing is fine. At least it was until a moment ago.”

  “Ah, I understand. You were being incredulous at the amount of time you slept.”

  “Where’s my phone?”

  Dorian scampered across the room and brought it back to me. Ivan had left me a voicemail asking me to call him because he had something to show me, and my sort-of-maybe-boyfriend Max Liu had sent me several welcome home text messages. In spite of everything else going on, I couldn’t wait to see Max. In his last message he said he was working on a case today, so unfortunately I wouldn’t get to see him quite yet.

  I looked up from the phone and felt a pang of guilt that I’d been thinking of Max and ignoring a problem right in front of me. “Your left arm and leg,” I said, abandoning my phone on the coffee table. “The Tea of Ashes didn’t work?”

  Dorian hopped up onto the couch next to me. “Yes and no. They are easier to bend than before you returned home, yet I still cannot control them very well.”

  “I’m so sorry, Dorian.” I groaned. “I know what must have gone wrong. Brixton was the one who’s been keeping up the garden. The plants I sacrificed didn’t have much of my own energy in them.”

  “C’est rien. The book will come and you will capture a backward alchemist. Then he will tell you what we need to know to save me and my poor brother.”

  “I don’t know if it will be that easy.”

  “Oui. You will need assistance to get them to reveal their secrets. I have read many thrillers with ingenious methods of torture.”

  I gaped at Dorian. “We’re not torturing anyone.”

  “It is not difficult. And your basement is perfect. Brixton has returned the books to the library, but I can ask him to check them out again.”

  “Absolutely not. No torture.”

  “But the professor is probably torturing my brother as we speak! Chipping away at his stone flesh. By the time we rescue him, there may be nothing left of him!”

  “The professor doesn’t want to destroy the statue—”

  “Statue?” Dorian sniffed and stood tall. The dignified stance was only slightly marred by his limp and awkwardly hanging arm. “This is what you think of me? That I am nothing more than a piece of stone?”

  “Of course not. All I meant is that the other gargoyle is in stone form right now. And yes, the professor will probably take small samples of stone to test—”

  Dorian’s good hand flew to his mouth and his black eyes opened wide with horror.

  “He’ll be fine,” I added. “You were fine after your toe chipped off.”

  Dorian squirmed uncomfortably. “If you would be so good as to ship me to Paris in an express delivery crate, I could stage a hostage rescue.”

  “The book that I hope will lead us to a backward alchemist should be here any day now—”

  “No books arrived in the mail while you slept. Only advertisements. These Americans and their advertisements … ” He shook his head. “You are confident about this book?”

  “It sounds like a good lead. If there are any practicing backward alchemists left.”

  Dorian narrowed his eyes. “You suspect there are.”

  “I do. But until we find one—”

  “You are the smartest, bravest person I have ever met, Zoe Faust. Even more so than my father.”

  “Flattery won’t convince me torture is okay.”

  “No?”

  “No.”

  Dorian muttered something under his breath and hopped down from the couch. “It is almost eight o’clock in the morning. The market will be open. I have taken the liberty of drawing up a shopping list. Brixton was helpful, but he could only do so much.”

  Dorian used to slip meat products into his lists, hoping I wouldn’t notice.

  “No bacon?”

  He pointed a claw. “Smoked salts are even better.”

  “No cream?”

  “I have five pounds of raw cashews.”

  “Maybe my hearing was affected after all. I could have sworn you said five pounds of cashews.”

  He beamed at me. “Wait until you taste the new recipes I have created during your absence.”

  Three pints of lemon water, a mug of healing ginger and turmeric tea, and almond butter and sea salt drizzled on freshly picked fruit gave me the energy I needed to start a nettle infusion and pick up groceries.

  Making a full alchemical preparation, with the steps that distill the core essence of a plant into ashes, takes time. To extract energy from my nettles more simply, I poured hot water over a tangle of nettles in a mason jar and left it to steep on the back porch.

  I usually walked to the market, but the length of Dorian’s list and the heaviness of my legs led me to the truck in my driveway. My 1942 Chevy took a couple of turns of the engine to get started, but I’d taken good care of it over the years and it repaid my love with reliability.

  An hour later, I hauled in five bags of groceries. Dorian jumped up and down with glee. With his good arm, he pulled his stepping stool to the counter next to the bags.

  “You’re happier to see a kitchen full of food than you were to see me,” I said.

  He pulled his snout out of the bag containing grains and dried beans. “Would it offend you if I admitted to equal amounts of happiness?”

  I left him to his food and went to the other room to make my phone calls in private. With the time difference I couldn’t call the bookstore proprietor to check on the status of my book delivery, but I could call Max and Ivan. Max’s cell went straight to voicemail, so I tried Ivan next.

  Though Ivan knew alchemy was real, he didn’t know that my interest in unlocking Not Untrue Alchemy’s secrets was to save Dorian’s life. Everyone aside from Brixton and Tobias believed I owned a gargoyle statue that I liked to move around the house and had an interest in alchemy because of the business I used to run out of my Airstream trailer and now ran out of my attic. Ivan assumed I was passionate about understanding alchemy because I was an accidental alchemist who wanted to understand more. Ivan was a scholar, so that’s what made sense to his own worldview. Alchemy was a quest for knowledge.

  But I’d been too passionate in my attempts to understand the bizarre wood
cut illustrations in Dorian’s book. Approaching the problem from an academic angle, Ivan had insights that hadn’t occurred to me. These insights had helped me understand some of the book’s illustrations. I’d subsequently let my guard down and accidentally allowed Ivan to see that alchemy was real.

  “Dobrý den,” Ivan said when he picked up the phone.

  “My friend, how are you?”

  “Me? Never better.” The enthusiasm in his voice came through over the phone. I knew what it was: hope. His realization that alchemy was real had given him hope.

  “I’m glad to hear it.”

  “I have a newfound appreciation for alchemical riddles,” Ivan said. “I’m so glad you called. I wish you were back from Paris so we could talk in person, but this will do.”

  “That’s actually why I’m calling. I’m home.”

  Ivan paused for so long that I wondered if the connection had been dropped. “Where are you?” he rasped. “Can you come over?”

  “Are you all right?” I waited for a reply that didn’t come. “Do you need me to call a doctor?”

  “No, no. I’m fine,” he said. But the tone of his voice said otherwise. “Zoe, now that you are home, there’s something you must see.”

  Fourteen

  Books on chemistry, history, and alchemy filled the giant study in Ivan Danko’s house. Had he bought more research books in the month since I’d been here? I didn’t remember his library being so labyrinthine.

  I maneuvered around a pile of books on Chinese traditions in alchemy that partially blocked the study doorway. I couldn’t stop myself from straightening the precarious stack. It wasn’t the quantity of books that had changed, I realized; it was their organization. The bookshelves were only half full. Books that were once shelved in a methodical way were now stacked in haphazard piles. I tensed as I stepped over a toppled stack of leather-bound books to enter the room. Pages ripped from a disassembled book lay on the desk.

  “Ivan, what have you done?” My heart ached at the sight of the damaged books. As someone who collected antiques before they were antique, I hated to see so much knowledge and craftsmanship treated so poorly. “Practicing alchemy requires you to respect your materials. You’ve completely ruined this book.” I picked up the skeletal remains of what had once been a museum-quality book from the sixteenth century.

  He waved off my concern. “The opposite. Quite the opposite, I assure you.”

  My eyes fell from his sunken eyes to his scruffy beard. Ivan hadn’t looked healthy for as long as I’d known him, but his eyes held a desperate tint I hadn’t previously seen. His dress shirt and slacks were pressed and pristine as usual. It was only his surroundings that had changed.

  Still, this wasn’t like Ivan. Forced into early retirement from his job as a chemistry professor in Prague because of his illness, he liked to be in control of other things in his life, such as his library. He stressed the importance of order to properly organize his thoughts for his book on the history of early chemists—in other words, alchemists.

  “Is everything all right, Ivan?”

  “I’m so pleased you’ve returned. A photograph didn’t capture the necessary nuance, so I thought it best to wait to show this to you.” He took a labored breath but grinned as he lifted a hefty book with pages so dark they were nearly black. “Now that you can see it in person—”

  “You burned this?” The memory of the fire at Elixir filled my mind. The fire that disguised the murder of Jasper Dubois.

  “Not burned. I put ashes on the pages, as you did with Not Untrue Alchemy to reveal hidden meaning in the pages.”

  “That book is unique. I haven’t come across anything like it in the centuries I’ve been an alchemist.”

  “But,” Ivan said with fire in his eyes, “you were never looking.” He pointed at the charred pages of the sad-looking book.

  “What am I looking at?”

  “Don’t you see?” He jabbed a shaking finger at the blackened page. “The ashes reveal the page beneath, making the flying bees on this top page circle the dragon on the page below. That symbolizes—”

  “It’s a coincidence, Ivan. Alchemy books are filled with woodcut illustrations. Of course they’ll end up on top of each other like that.”

  “You don’t know that.” His Czech accent became more prominent as he became agitated. How could I balance helping him feel like all his efforts hadn’t been in vain with getting us back on track?

  “When I left for Paris to do my own research there,” I said, “you talked of reading your books in a new light as a first step on the path to alchemy, not experimenting on them in an attempt to replicate the bizarre codes from my backward alchemy book—”

  “You don’t have all the answers, Zoe. You said so yourself. You don’t fully understand alchemy. If you did, you could help me find the Elixir of Life more quickly. I’ve done good work to help you understand the strange book in your possession and also to help my quest for the Elixir. What do I care if I ruin books? Even if you’re right that I’ve destroyed them, what good are they to a dead man?”

  “But your book—”

  “I would rather live on than leave a book behind.”

  I squeezed Ivan’s gaunt shoulder. When it comes to ideas about what’s most important at the end of life, comfort is better than words. I’ve seen people deal with looming death in many ways. Some find consolation in what they leave behind for their children or the world, some wish to surround themselves with loved ones, and some push it from their mind altogether.

  “I’d at least like a few years longer,” Ivan continued softly, taking my hand. “At this rate, I might not have time to finish writing my book, even if I tried.”

  “I’m sorry, Ivan,” I whispered.

  “I know, Zoe. And I know why you have this drive to solve the riddle of this book.”

  I pulled my hand away.

  “Don’t be embarrassed, Zoe. I know you feel sorry for me. You wish me to be healthy again, as I do.”

  I bit my lip. Dorian’s existence wasn’t my secret to tell, and I did want Ivan to be healthy again. He was a good man and a rigorous scholar who could likely unlock alchemy’s secrets. But that would take time—more time than Ivan had. The Elixir of Life was something each person had to discover for him or herself. I couldn’t do it for him. And while I could play a small part in mentoring Ivan, saving Dorian was my first priority.

  “I do, Ivan. I really do. But applying backward alchemy to your own practice isn’t going to help you. It’s not true alchemy. Backward alchemy takes life in order to give it. That’s not right—”

  “I understand that,” he barked. “My books aren’t backward alchemy. I only wish to learn from that book of yours, not to use it. You’re the one who brought it to me in the first place.”

  “Ivan, I—”

  “Forgive me. I’m sorry I snapped at you. We can figure it out together.”

  “Without backward alchemy’s Death Rotation.”

  He smiled. “Let me show you the laboratory I set up in my garage.”

  To the average Portlander, it probably looked as if he was setting up a space to make home-brewed beer. Prominent on one table was a distillation vessel with an alembic retort to distill vapors, a round cucurbit for boiling, and a receiver to collect distilled liquids.

  “I never imagined I’d be putting what I read into practice,” he said, “so I’m sure I’ve got it all wrong.”

  “Not bad at all, Ivan. Not bad at all.”

  The doorbell chimed. Ivan went to answer it while I studied some handwritten notes in a notebook.

  “Thank you, Max,” I heard him say from the other room.

  “Max?” I hurried from the garage. Max Liu stood in the doorway holding a bag of food truck takeout in one hand and a stainless steel thermos in the other. He dropped them onto the floor and swept me up in a
hug. Everything else faded away. I’d missed his scent, his touch, and everything about him. He pulled back from the hug and cradled my face in his hands for a moment. His brown eyes held an intensity that combined delight, regret, and longing.

  I’d thought about Max so many times while I was in Paris, wishing he could have been there with me. Even though I knew he wasn’t ready to hear the whole truth about my past, I could be myself with him in so many important ways. I hoped he’d be ready to know the whole truth someday soon. But for now, it was easiest if I kept the alchemical part of my life separate. Max knew I was interested in alchemy, but he thought it was because of the alchemical artifacts I sold in my online store.

  It had taken me a long time to realize an essential truth: I could have connections with people who didn’t know I was a true alchemist. Thinking otherwise was a misguided idea born out of self-pity. Most human interaction doesn’t take place on the spoken level. Before I’d come to realize that, I kept myself shut off from anything beyond the most superficial of friendships.

  I’ll never forget the moment I embraced that truth. It was a day that had started out without hope. I’d been lost and was suffering from heat exhaustion in the south of India. A young family took pity on the strange, pale foreigner. They invited me into their modest clay home for a meal. That scorching, dusty day, I learned to cook dosas and poori as people on the Indian subcontinent had done for millennia, grinding the flour by hand, adding spices that killed germs and healed the body, and watching the bread bubble on an open fire. I taught their toddler English nursery rhymes that made him laugh and squeal with delight. I don’t think any of us under the thatched roof understood a single word we said to each other that day, other than our names. But I will always remember them.

  Max stroked my cheek and drew me into a kiss. As I lost myself in the embrace, I remembered the special evenings we’d spent together that spring, sitting together in Max’s backyard garden drinking tea, sometimes talking and sometimes simply reading in the twilight. The important thing wasn’t what we talked about, but the feeling of togetherness, easy comfort, and electricity.