The Flaw in the Stone

by Cynthea Masson

  “We’ll watch, carefully,” said Saule. “We’ll monitor the manuscripts. We’ll insert Jaden and Arjan where necessary. We’ll create both palimpsests and lacunae. We’ll ensure Council seats are vacated.”

  They all sat briefly in silence. What had they done? What more would they be required to do? If only Payam had not run into the street, thought Genevre. How had he managed to reach Jaden without anyone noticing? She shivered in sudden recognition of a possibility. “Jinjing, did you see Payam run into the street towards Jaden? I mean the actual running part?”

  “No. When I first saw him, he was already standing with Jaden.”

  “That’s right,” confirmed Kalina.

  “Yes, us too,” said Melia. “When Ilex and I noticed Payam outside, he was already with Jaden.”

  “So no one observed Payam moving between two points — from the front door to Jaden? We’ve all merely assumed he ran into the street twenty minutes after we completed the ritual?”

  “Yes,” responded Jinjing. “What are you suggesting?”

  “If Payam snuck outside while we were occupied performing the ritual — rather than afterward when you were all looking directly into the street for a sign — if he were already outside at the very moment we completed the ritual, he may have disappeared through time right then. He may have left both our sight and timeline but entered Jaden’s. He may have been in her timeline far longer than twenty minutes. What we witnessed may have been Payam bringing Jaden back to our timeline.”

  “How could he manage such a feat?” asked Melia. “He is only a child!”

  “No,” said Genevre. “He is not only a child. He is currently an immature alchemical child.” Genevre thought back to the words in the manuscript that she had taken to be a metaphorical flourish. She fell to her knees. “The Prima Materia. The alchemical child, before maturity, before elemental corruption, is the Prima Materia. Without Payam already outside during the ritual, we would have failed. Alchemical children are the primary material required in the transmutation of time. They will be coveted for this factor alone. We can tell no one. No one.” She looked at Kalina. “Especially not your father.”

  Melia set the newspaper with its glaring headline onto the table: Germany Attacks Poland. Within two weeks of returning to Council dimension, Saule had risked another portal trip to Qingdao to bring Melia various outside world papers. Knowing Council meetings would swiftly follow the news, she stayed only a few minutes before leaving Ilex and Melia to contemplate the matter.

  “The outside world has been in turmoil since before the Third Rebellion, Melia. Another war was inevitable. We’ve no reason to believe the time transmutation had any bearing,” said Ilex.

  “We have no reason to believe it didn’t,” she responded.

  “You cannot blame yourself.”

  “But neither can I blame the Council,” said Melia. “Decades ago, they did what they thought right. But they were wrong. We’ve now followed suit.”

  Melia needed to rest. Her role in the successful transmutation had initially left her hopeful. After so many years and so many sacrifices, she had believed victory was in sight — the permanence of free will, the choice of mutual conjunction, the restoration of alliance between alchemists and rebels. Then Saule arrived with the papers. Now she felt exhausted and defeated. She needed reassurance that her actions were for the good of all and, someday, would be validated as such — even if outside world circumstances currently appeared to suggest otherwise.

  Of course, the long-term goal and outcome would remain elusive for another seventy-five years. She would have to carry the burden of her role until then. That thought almost too much to bear, Melia retreated partially into the shadows, handing Ilex the reins to control their body. She could still observe the world, but she could also catch her breath before proceeding. She knew Ilex would much rather spend time with Payam, no matter the additional energy required, rather than retreat to recover his strength.

  “Are you happy, grandfather?” asked Payam.

  “Quite content,” responded Ilex.

  “Me too,” said Payam. He then turned back to arranging pieces of an elaborate structure he had begun to build at the kitchen table.

  Melia watched him as he contemplated the pieces, carefully moving one and then another into tentative place. He had always been an industrious child — both productive and creative in his play. When not building worlds with blocks or stones or abandoned pieces of wood that he had collected from both streets and forests, he would read or solve intricate puzzles. Of course, above all else, Payam placed his love of alchemy, which he knew primarily as chemical arts — bottles and jars, water and fire, salts and compounds. Ilex and Melia taught him what they could, all that was appropriate for a boy of his age, all that was appropriate for a boy who would someday be positioned to change the tenets of alchemy forever after.

  “Payam,” said Ilex gently, “let’s go for a walk. You may return here later to continue your project. It’s time to collect a gift I have arranged for you.”

  “A gift!” Payam abandoned the structure and reached for Ilex’s hand. “Do we have to travel far to collect it?”

  The journey through the streets of Qingdao was longer than Melia expected. She had assumed Ilex’s offer of a gift comprised a walk to the small bakery a few minutes’ stroll away from their makeshift home. But Ilex walked directly past the shop, ignoring Payam when he politely requested a sweet bun. They walked for at least twenty minutes before Ilex turned up a narrow street of which Melia had no recollection from her months in this town. She contemplated emerging from the shadows to ask where they were headed — and why — but she decided to wait, as Payam was being made to do. She would be surprised along with her grandson. Mutual conjunction had to allow for independent thought and action on occasion; otherwise, this state of being would have become intolerable years ago. After one hundred and thirty-nine years, she and Ilex had experienced every possible emotional and psychological response to their shared existence — from absolute joy and love to utter despair and loathing for one another. Fortunately, the latter moments were few and far between. Otherwise she would have to question whether mutual conjunction was indeed preferable to singular victory or defeat.

  Payam had helped, of course. Children, no matter how conscientious, no matter the age or maturity, could not take care of themselves. Upon Payam’s arrival, he had necessitated for Ilex and Melia an intense form of cooperation and focus. Such cooperation had become paramount when Payam, having lived with them only a year, became desperately ill the day he managed to open a jar of Lapidarian honey and ingest over half of it before they noticed. They had been told that alchemical children had no need for Lapidarian honey; they had not been told an excess of it might kill him. Together they had nursed Payam slowly back to health using an alchemically rendered concoction in a base of juniper and sage oils. They fed him one drop per hour over a twenty-four-hour period and kept all jars of honey well out of his reach thereafter. This silent walk, led by Ilex to uncharted territory, was testament on Melia’s part to their ongoing collaboration for the sake of Payam.

  Finally, Ilex stopped in front of a nondescript dwelling and knocked. A man whom Melia had never met opened the door and smiled. “Come in, come in,” he said, gesturing. He led Ilex and Payam through a narrow hallway, across the kitchen where a woman was chopping vegetables, and out another door into a small courtyard. “Wait here.” Ilex and Payam sat on a stone bench while the man disappeared into a shed — his workshop perhaps — in the corner of the courtyard. A few minutes later, he emerged carrying a small embroidered pouch, which he handed to Ilex.

  “Thank you,” Ilex said, bowing slightly. The man smiled broadly.

  “You will find this piece to be one of my most exquisite — if I may be permitted a moment of self-indulgence.”

  “No need for modesty,” replied Ilex.

  �
�What is it, Grandfather? Is this my gift?” asked Payam. Melia had to give Payam credit for remaining quiet since his request for the sweet bun.

  “Grandfather!” said the man to Ilex. “You are so vigorous and handsome; I felt certain you were the boy’s father.”

  “I do not have a father,” said Payam.

  The man looked from Payam to Ilex, apparently worried he had caused offence. He closed his eyes and bowed his head slightly. “My humblest apologies for my rudeness and my sincerest sympathies for your loss,” he said. Given his gesture of humility, Melia was not certain to whom he addressed his regrets.

  “We raised him as our own. Payam has been with us his entire life,” Ilex clarified.

  The man looked at Payam, assessing him. “Ten years or so, then?”

  Payam did not respond; he focused on the pouch Ilex held.

  “No matter. Clearly, you are very mature for your age,” said the man.

  Indeed he is, Melia wanted to say. But, of course, she could not — would not — say so even if she were the one the man could see and hear. Payam appeared and often acted as a boy of nine or ten, but he was, in fact, twenty. Melia assumed this gift Ilex was about to proffer was to mark Payam’s upcoming twenty-first birthday. She and Ilex could only hypothesize that his aging had been slowed due to his alchemically manufactured bloodline and all that coursed through it — Quintessence and Lapis, Sephrim and Dragonblood. What could they know about the complications and intricacies of the alchemy and biology of such matters beyond what they had experienced for themselves or learned from Saule over the years? Kalina had begun to offer insights, but her development seemed markedly different than Arjan’s; by the time she had turned twenty-one, she was already living in Flaw dimension.

  When Payam was brought to their doorstep, he appeared to be a boy of five. Yet he could do little more than gesture and articulate with random sounds, having limited language skills for his first year with her and Ilex. Years had passed thereafter during which he seemed not to age at all either physically or mentally. And then a month would go by where he appeared to age an entire year. Her best guess would be that, since coming to live with them, Payam had aged approximately one physical year for every five that passed. But how could she know what the future would bring? She had no means of knowing what ratio of age — body and mind — would hold throughout the year, let alone the entirety of his life. No matter, as long as he appeared to be in his twenties upon his initiation to the Alchemists’ Council. According to Kalina, she had aged slowly for her initial twenty years; for the fifteen years thereafter, she aged more rapidly; by her mid-thirties, she appeared to be in her early twenties and had remained as such ever since. If he were to follow the same pattern, Payam would soon head into an intense growth period.

  As Melia regained her focus, she watched Payam sit patiently as Ilex explained the importance of the gift he was about to bestow.

  “This gift is your inheritance. It will forever bind you to us. Hold out your hand,” said Ilex, unknotting the pouch. Payam did as instructed, and Ilex emptied the contents of the pouch into Payam’s palm.

  Holding up his new treasure, Payam exclaimed, “Grandfather, how beautiful! So many strands of silver together!”

  “One of its cords belonged to your grandmother, and one belonged to me. Master Liu wove our two cords with two new strands — four elements forming one whole. May you wear it well,” said Ilex as he took the silver braided chain from Payam’s hand and slipped it over his head and around his neck.

  “What shall I string from it, Grandfather?”

  “For now, nothing. Someday, this chain will hold a pendant. You must endeavour to keep it safe.”

  “My pendant? A pendant like yours? A pendant like grandmother’s?” Payam reached out and held the Lapidarian pendant still worn by Ilex and Melia, still coursing with Quintessence after all these years.

  “Yes, a pendant like mine, if all goes well.”

  “You will become a good and prosperous man, Payam,” said the jeweller, who had created the future pendant-bearing masterpiece. “You will live a long life and make your grandparents proud.”

  Melia felt a fondness for Master Liu in that moment. Clearly, he too had admiration and hope for Payam. He too could picture a glorious future for her beloved boy, even if he did not know anything about the complexities of Payam’s path. Not until Ilex and Payam had said their goodbyes, not until they were home again, not until Melia had emerged from the shadows to enjoy tea and noodles that evening did a chill course through her. How could Ilex have arranged for the chain to be crafted without her knowledge of the matter? The only period during which being in the shadows had been so disruptive to time and thoughts was during her pregnancy. Only then had Ilex repeatedly suffered from lapses of awareness — gaps in the timeline — of this sort. And certainly they were not pregnant now; they had made the choice long ago not to engage in a liason that could lead to another pregnancy. How then had she managed to retreat so far into the shadows that she had been rendered unconscious? More disconcerting, how had she managed to return from this virtual unconsciousness unaware of time having gone missing? How — and she admittedly asked herself this question with penetrating trepidation — could she possibly have reached such a cloud of unknowing without being pushed into submission? In that fraction of a second, Melia feared for the stability of her bond with Ilex. And she trembled.

  Qingdao — Summer 1940

  No one had reason left to doubt Melia’s suspicion. The success of the transmutation of time had left her and Ilex vulnerable to memory lapses. Everyone else who had partaken in the ritual seemed unscathed. But Ilex and Melia were becoming fragmented — as if they were being pulled apart little by little with each passing day. The virtual conjunction through time of Payam and Arjan had somehow affected the literal conjunction of his grandparents. Given the lack of precedent outside the ancient Rebel Branch manuscripts for every aspect of the complicated current circumstances, no one could fathom a precise cause — let alone a solution.

  But one particular incident necessitated a request for help nonetheless. One day, Melia stood before a mirror and saw a reflection that startled her. Instead of seeing her own face or that of Ilex, she saw both at the same time. Their faces appeared side by side, as if their neck held two heads — like those images of the Rebis from outside world manuscripts housed at the British Library and elsewhere. Ilex, upon seeing the reflection, leapt backward in shock, thus wrenching Melia away from the mirror in the process. By the time she righted herself and peered into the mirror again, the dual-headed image was gone; in its place was the face of Melia alone.

  “We cannot allow this process to continue!” cried Ilex, clearly terrified. “What if we lose control completely? What if someone sees us transform from one body to two and then back again to one? We’ll not be able to leave the house — ever — not even to move homes at Saule’s request.”

  “Calm down, Ilex!” Melia insisted firmly. “I have to think.” She moved their body to a bench near the window and stared out into the street. She realized she was focused on the very spot where Payam and Jaden had met.

  “We need to talk with Saule,” said Ilex. “She’ll help us. She has always helped us.”

  “Of course. But we have no idea when Saule will next appear. The outside world war may make time away from Council dimension impossible for her. Still, we need to get word to her. We can ask Jinjing to return to Council dimension to bring her word.”

  “Are you suggesting we knock at the door of the protectorate? What if someone from Council—”

  “Payam!” Melia called out loud enough to be heard at the back of the house.

  “No!” protested Ilex.

  “If someone from Council is with Jinjing, Payam can pretend he knocked on the door in hopes of attaining a sweet.”

  They carefully outlined the instructions for Payam, and he was sent on
his first official mission. Two days later, Saule arrived. Within a few weeks, everyone who had played a role in the transmutation was engaged in finding a solution to halt the dissolution of Ilex and Melia’s conjunction. By the end of the month, they had devised a plan.

  They had concluded that what Ilex and Melia required was an infusion of Quintessence to strengthen their pendant. They put forward and rejected various propositions as to how such a feat would be accomplished: channel water (too weak), Lapidarian honey (Saule already secreted a jar per month — missing supplies would be noticed), fragment of the Lapis (its whereabouts could be tracked), immersion in the catacomb alembics (too risky), Lapidarian dust or the resulting ink (the inventory was too carefully monitored to confiscate the required amount). The suggestion of ink gradually led to the possibility of scraping Lapidarian ink from the manuscripts themselves. But that suggestion was deemed impractical: excising enough ink to be effective would not only be laborious and time consuming but cause extensive, readily noticable damage to the manuscript folios.

  “What of the bees themselves?” asked Saule one visit.

  “The bees? What do you propose? We let them sting us?” asked Ilex.

  “No. I wonder if we could transport some here. If we bring a queen along with them, they could form a hive and a perpetual supply of honey.”

  “No, that wouldn’t work,” said Ilex. “Melia and I repeatedly relocate. And bees cannot continually be transported without drawing unwanted attention to the transporters.”

  “Wait. I have an idea,” said Genevre. “I remember something — a ritual from the ancient manuscripts.”

  “A ritual from the ancient manuscripts is what got us into this mess in the first place,” complained Melia.

  “Then perhaps it makes sense to use another such ritual to resolve the dilemma,” suggested Saule. “What are you thinking, Genevre?”