by John Crowley
In the Houses of the Spring Quaternary they had fixed Mercury, and then combined him with old King Saturn, lead. In the fourth House, first of the Summer Quaternary, he had been sweated, and labor induced. In the fifth House (Nati, of children and the getting of children) they had reduced the product in a bath of Water-of-Life, and from it had generated a Monad, the Young King, who was both and neither.
Now to reduce the new substance, calcine and nigrify it, till it was indeed the first matter, without qualities.
John Dee worked his bellows judiciously, and added oak-wood to the fire, king of woods, as the old Welsh said:
Fiercest heat-giver of all timber is green oak;
From him none may escape unhurt.
By love of him the head is set an-aching,
By his acrid embers the eye is made sore.
In Valetudo Kelley took the boy for his servant, bound him, beat him for his waywardness. He would by the gods wipe the smile from his face. In the clammy underground to which he brought him (Uxor) he laid the fat heavy child on a bed or table and pressed and tormented him (at his behest, at his behest) until he gave forth his gold, spewed it horribly from mouth and anus, huge piles of gold-colored mess, coated with shining slime and cold to the touch when Kelley reached for it, while the boy, laughing, relieved of his burden, ascended free and escaped.
Only to be brought back again (sublimated, condensed, sublimated again, as John Dee’s fire consumed oakwood steadily) to Kelley’s awful workshop, unchastened. Kelley, sweating and weeping, did not know whether he beat him, ate him, fucked him; he drew oils, acrid butters, coruscating sugars from his body as it changed from white to red to blue to black.
At last he sickened, shrank; the silver body lost form. He ceased teasing and talking as he had done through all the tortures to which he had been subjected. Grew still, reproachful, sad. Died in that darkness (Mors) and Kelley lay down beside him in guilty despair, O my son. O my only son. The corpse blackened and stank; then dried and hardened like a stockfish, unrecognizable, mouthless, handless, faceless, no person at all.
Done, done, all done.
By Dee’s calculations the year within the athenor had now come to its shortest and darkest day, the day of the death and birth of the Sun, the cusp of Capricorn. He took the stone jar of Kelley’s powder, and he broke the seal. A wondrous odor filled the chamber; the serving boy stirred and touched his lips with his tongue. Kelley now knelt erect; he opened his hands as though in adoration. John Dee went to the furnace doors and opened them.
The athenor’s walls were nearly transparent in the heat; Dee could see activity within, as though he looked at a tent with a candle lit inside. With a hollow pin he punctured it, and through the pin, as through a reed, blew the seed inside.
Kelley (the other Kelley, the Kelley who had gone out from Kelley into the athenor) bent over the formless chaos of his son. All that he had done he had also suffered, everything the boy had lost he had also lost; and when the seed of transformation entered the hot blackened mass, it entered him too. O terrible: the summons to grow and change, the struggle to move and act! The seed working in him was like a sickness not a cure, he had not imagined it could be so fearful.
But he is alive, the Sun is born. Fiery blood coursing in his veins, skin changed from black to silver to gold, he smiles and laughs as though his death and rotting had been a game, he admires his own loveliness, tests his joints and takes steps, he is alive, alive-O. Why is he so small?
No he was alive, that was what mattered, there was to be no more death ever now. Kelley would feed him, of course; feed him as the Pelican feeds her young with her heart’s blood. He would grow, he would grow tall and lusty, they would gown him in red and wed him with the White Woman, his own mother, the Queen of Heaven; and their Son, at last, at length, would be the Elixir, filius philosophorum, Crown of Glory, Basilisk, Salamander, Lion of the Desert.
No. Why was he so small?
—God His grace to us be praised, he heard John Dee say. God has granted to His servants the fruit of time, the great fruit. O look, come look.
Kelley staggered to his feet. John Dee’s trembling fingers held the opened athenor. The hem and sleeves of his gown were blackened and ember-eaten. His face was radiant, red, golden; a sort of wind seemed to tremble around him and the crater he held out.
Kelley, uncertain what room he was in, looked into the vessel.
—Look, Dee said. He was near tears with glee and gratitude.
Down at the bottom a globule of gold gave off light, a tiny bright mass like a writhen body, perhaps twenty grains in weight.
They had achieved the first stage of the Work. They had always known it to be possible but they had never been able to do it or even quite to believe it was given to them or to any man to do: and now they had done it. They had made gold, sophic, wonderful.
—Why is it so little? Kelley asked. His throat was dry, his words a croak.
—There was no Multiplication of the seed, said Doctor Dee. Some barrenness. Some lack of vigor in it somehow.
Kelley blinked, staring. This? This was the end of all their promises to him? If he had hewed wood and hauled water for as long and as eagerly as he had strained to achieve the Work, he would have earned in wages more gold than this.
—Not enough, he said.
—No, said Doctor Dee. Not enough to make the Stone. Let us therefore be patient.
O God he would have to go back into that dark fiery country of copulation, decay and death, to find and free and kill another boy, or the same boy once again. His heart fainted within him. And the prize for which he had sold his immortal soul was gone, used up in an instant to make twenty grains of gold that would not have bought a minim of the red powder, not an atom. How would they finish the Work now?
—Did you think there was but one Seed? Madimi asked him, when at dawn he bent weeping before the globe in its frame to ask her help. Foolish man, did you think that there was but one Crater, one Stone, one way of working?
He stared open-mouthed at her. She had grown into a woman, or nearly; her breasts were full, her neck long, her golden hair afloat in some wind, the same perhaps that blew around the room, the broken athenor, the doctor’s white beard.
—There are small Stones and great ones, she said. There are Stones quick to make, and Stones that have been in the making since the beginning of time. The earth is a Crater itself, and within or on it the Marriage will take place, the Son will be born. Yet even that is not the greatest Stone.
As he watched, the woman in the glass began to undo her garment of red and white.
—What do you want? she asked them smiling. I have all in my gift. Did you think I trifle with you here? I have seen the foundations laid of the Heavens and the Earth, I know where every lost thing is hidden, I know every great thing and sin and shame, there is nothing I cannot do or say or be.
Her breasts were bare, her great dawn-colored eyes were wise and somehow lewd. She opened her skirts to him. Are you not twice-saved? she said to him. Have you not had favors of God that few men have had since time began? There is no sin for you, you may do as you wish, and have what you can.
They bowed their heads, afraid of her for the first time since she had stepped forth from the glass, a child.
—Would you reach higher than you have done? she said. Would you have a Stone greater than any yet spoken of? I will find it for you, it is hidden in a place I know. Would you have gold? I will bake it as bread, you will have a surfeit if you love gold. But if you would have what I offer, you must cast away the opinions of men.
She was near naked. Diana. Virgin. Waiting to be known.
—What do you want? she asked. Tremble not, gird up your loins. What would you know?
FIVE
On hot August days it was strangely cool inside Arcady, if you kept the drapes partly drawn and the striped canvas awnings open; it sat calmly in the shade of its trees as though with eyes heavylidded and half closed. At night when the air coo
led Rosie went around opening the drapes, letting in the night; sat there thinking before she turned on the lights.
“What color’s this?” she said to Sam, and held up to her an oblong yellow card.
“Yellow.”
“Right.”
“What else?” asked Sam.
Rosie turned the card over, expecting some object colored yellow on the other side, but instead there were two tiny doll-figures, and the word two.
“Two,” she said. “See?”
“My turn,” said Sam, and picked up a card from the pile. A big purple and a big yellow dot. Sam named them, and turned the card over. A scissors, cutting a string. With purple handles. Sam tossed it down without interest.
All day she’d been torpid and cranky. Rosie had tried to get her out to play, but instead she’d lolled in the dim living room, moving from the long leather couch to the floor to the tall chairs like a seal over rocks in a sea-cave. Then hours after bedtime she’d come down the stairs, wide awake, to the living room where Rosie sat thinking, and refused to go back, complaining of vague discomforts. Rosie felt her forehead. Hot? She couldn’t think where the thermometer was. Knowing she should be firm, she had not been; she let her stay.
“Now you go,” Sam said.
Rosie picked another card. They were a set Mike had given Sam the week before, some sort of educational activity thing. Sam had insisted on playing with it. Rosie had glanced at the description on the box but hadn’t grasped it. Colors, shapes, numbers, easy words. The one she picked up was a paintbrush spreading paint.
“What color?”
“Green.”
On the back was a green tree. Okay.
“Mommy,” Sam said. “Do we believe in God?”
“Well,” Rosie said. “Um. I guess sort of.”
“What’s God?”
“Well God is sort of like Mother Nature. The reason why there are things.”
“I love Mother Nature.”
“So do I,” Rosie said, glad to have finessed that one. “What’s this?” She held up a card that showed a little house, a chimney, a picket fence, a steeply pitched roof with the same scalloped shingles that the roof they sat under had. The picture was crowded with geometries to name, its secret reason, rectangle, circle, octagon, star.
“Do you love Jesus?” Sam asked.
Rosie stared at her. “What?”
Sam shrugged, withdrawing the question, and studied her next card. Three little dolls, and the word three. Its corner was clipped. Did that mean something?
“Mother Nature and Jesus could marry,” she said. “Because Jesus is a boy.”
“Sure,” said Rosie. She was looking at a card that bore the word Purple. On the back was a circus wagon, not purple, also made of tiny geometries, diamonds, squares, ovals, triangles. Like a sign of some kind, or a shrine.
“Your turn,” she said. She looked through the pile she had given herself. A lot of the cards had corners clipped; others had stripes, one or two or three, across the corner, where you might want to cut them, if you knew why you should. Some bore words, he, do, us, go. Sometimes a color card was all color, sometimes a paintbrush splash.
“Hon?”
“Does Daddy believe in Mother Nature?” Sam said. She held up her card. On one side a little doll walked over a bridge. On the other side, under it. “I win,” she said.
“I don’t know if he does,” Rosie said. What the hell was with these cards, anyway? She picked up the box from the floor and looked again at the back. The Way Onward, said the box. Stimulates your child’s sense of interrelationships while presenting the basic building blocks of perception. On the card she held was the word Rectangle. On the other side was a picture of the card that showed the little house with scalloped shingles and oval windows and diamond pickets. A picture of the card. The same little boy at the door, reduced in size, waving.
“Sam?” she asked. “You sure you want to play?”
Sam had fallen back against the pillows of the couch, her lips parted. Rosie stood, her cards spilling from her lap, and came to feel Sam’s forehead again. O good lord. That really is a fever. Sam’s eyes seemed clouded and absent. “Hon, I think you’ve got a fever. I’m going to go look for the thermometer and maybe some aspirin. Okay? Chewing kind. Okay? You rest.”
Rosie looked at Sam’s chest, no chicken pox rash; felt under her chin, no rising lumps of mumps, which anyway she’d had a shot for, or was that measles?
Rubella, that was it, that’s measles. German measles. Rosie searched in the medicine cabinet for the children’s aspirin and the thermometer. Since she had become a mom she had become reacquainted with the names of childhood illnesses she had forgotten since her own childhood. Rubella. Scarlatina. Beautiful names, somehow romantic, like the names of opera heroines or quattrocento painters. Impetigo, roseola. Where the hell is that aspirin.
St. Joseph. Why that name. Baby Jesus in his arms in the very ancient looking picture on the label. And the thermometer right with it, neighborly, like glasses and book, pipe and tobacco, things didn’t usually work out so well.
When she got back to the living room, Sam was breathing hard and staring at the rug. O please don’t let it be something. She had Sam open her mouth. What were you supposed to tell? No pains anywhere, Sam angrily brushed away her mother’s hands. But she did chew the tiny pink pill, and drank water thirstily.
“Let’s play,” said Sam weakly.
“Oh, Sam.”
Sam picked up her pile and looked down at them. “What’s that?” she asked, but not of them. She lifted her eyes to Rosie, but didn’t seem to see her, and down again at the cards; then she seemed to cast them away from her in spasmodic jerks, they slipped from her hands in a stream, colors, words, things, shapes and numbers. When they were all gone, her hands continued to jerk spasmodically, and then her arms and shoulders too. She seemed to have lost consciousness.
“Sam!”
Sam rolled over onto the couch face down, still twitching. Her head rolled against the fabric will-less as a doll’s. Rosie tried to lift her, make her stop, but she wouldn’t or couldn’t, her body was rigid, intent on its spasms, unseeing.
Then it was over. Sam seemed to surface as from deep water: her released limbs made a big soft dance motion, and her eyes relit.
“What did you do, hon?” Rosie whispered. “Did you do that?”
But Sam didn’t answer. She smacked her lips, and curled against her mother, an infant needing sleep.
“Hon?”
Breathing deeply, Sam slept.
Rosie lowered her to the couch. What in God’s name. She felt Sam’s head. Still way too hot. What was that. It had come and gone so quickly. Sam was prone to weird physical behavior, private self-involvement, inexplicable gesture. That was what it was. Was it?
She covered the sleeping child with a throw, and went to the phone. The number was where, in her book, her book was in her purse, where was her purse. Hell with it. She called Information, and only when she had the number and was dialing it did she think how late it was, and that the office would surely be closed.
Someone answered on the first ring.
“Dr. Bock’s office?” she asked, surprised.
“Well no this is his service.”
“Oh.”
“You can leave a message and the doctor will call you. Is this an urgent matter?”
“I don’t know,” Rosie said. A sort of darkness seemed to be assembling around her, through which it was hard to hear what people meant. “It’s my daughter, who Dr. Bock sees. Sam. She’s just had the weirdest symptom.”
“All right,” said the voice. “Would you like me to beep the doctor.”
“What?”
“I can send him a message where he is, to have him call in. Then he can call you. Can I have your number please.” Rosie gave it. “He’ll call you as soon as he’s talked to us.”
She hung up.
Sam still slept, the unwilled rising and falling of her breast quick
er than usual, making her appear, even more than she usually did asleep, to be in a kind of suspended state, kept alive by outside forces that pressed her lungs to take deep breaths, while her inert body lay heedless. Sleep. Rosie was still standing watching when the phone rang violently, still turned up loud for Boney’s and Mrs. Pisky’s old ears, it always made Rosie jump.
“Yes.”
“This is Dr. Bock. What’s the problem.”
“Oh okay, Doctor.” She looked around the corner at Sam still asleep. “Something weird, probably nothing,” she said, the very sound of the doctor’s brisk kind voice dismissed terrors; yet a strangling lump rose too in Rosie’s throat. She told him what happened.
“And you had noticed her getting a fever?”
“Yes, she seemed to be. Just before.”
“Any other symptoms of flu or cold? Ear infection?”
“She said she felt funny. No coughing or sneezing or anything.”
“Okay,” he said. “Okay.”
He’s going to say It’s okay, it’s nothing. Rosie knew it; it was as though she had already heard him say it.
“Can you bring her over to my office now?”
“Right now?”
“Yes. I can leave here shortly and meet you there. Is that all right?”
“Okay.”
He was gone.
Dr. Bock’s office used to be in the Ball Building in town, but not long ago he had moved out to a featureless mini-mall on the Cascadia road, a low-roofed air-conditioned complex he shared with two other doctors and a creepy Lebanese periodontist who liked to start up pointless conversations with her in the waiting room the doctors shared.
The compound was dark when she pulled in, except for a glaring floodlight keeping watch. Dr. Bock’s window was dark. She had got here first.
Sam, who had slept the whole way, narcotized by the thrum of the engine (her father was the same, a danger behind the wheel), awoke, round-eyed, mouth-tasting, where am I.