The Accidental Alchemist

by Gigi Pandian

  His wings flapped in a single violent motion. Though the movement was fluid, as if the gray wings were thick feathers, the tip of his wing clipped the edge of the fireplace, sending a chunk of brick crumbling to the floor. He closed his eyes and squared his shoulders, folding his wings back to their resting place.

  “Je suis désolé,” he said. “I am sorry. I have control of myself now. I simply do not understand why anyone would leave France! But you are a grown woman who can do as she pleases.”

  “A grown woman who didn’t expect to find a gargoyle in her living room in the town she thought was finally going to give her a normal life.” I crossed my arms and looked down at the little Francophile.

  “If you are done being maudlin,” Dorian said, “we can have a more civilized conversation after we eat. What are you cooking for dinner?”

  “Dinner? I was going to make myself a simple vegetable soup.”

  The gargoyle’s black eyes darkened and widened. “Mais non! You cannot be serious!”

  “Sorry to disappoint you. But you were also going to tell me why you’re a castaway in my crate.”

  Dorian sighed and stretched his neck and shoulders from side to side. His movements were more controlled now. I suppose it must have been rather cramped in my shipping crate. “If I finish explaining about my book,” he said, “you will feed me a real meal?”

  “That’s rather presumptuous for a castaway.”

  He stopped stretching and locked intensely on my gaze. “Please?”

  How could one say no to a polite gargoyle? Especially if that was the only way to get this curious creature to tell me how he knew I was an alchemist and why he had traveled across the world to show me the worn book he clutched.

  “All right,” I agreed. “We’ll make dinner, then you’ll tell me all about this book of yours as well as how you found me.”

  “You drive a hard bargain, Alchemist,” he said, narrowing his eyes at me. The pupils of his eyes looked more like glass than stone. A fluid, moving glass. He extended his clawed right hand.

  I reached out to shake it. His hand was cool, but didn’t feel like stone. It was a little bit rougher than human skin, but malleable in the same way.

  “You have ham?” he asked.

  “Ham?”

  “Yes, the cured meat. Made from a pig—”

  “I know what ham is,” I said. “No, I don’t have any ham.”

  “Bacon, then,” Dorian said.

  “No bacon.”

  “Mon dieu!”

  “You only eat pork products?” I asked. This gargoyle was making me more and more curious.

  “Of course I eat more than ham and bacon.” Dorian sniffled, his little snout moving side to side. “But with a ham hock or a slice of bacon as a base starter, and a few herbs, I can create a masterpiece, regardless of the other ingredients you have available.”

  “I see,” I said, unsure of what else one could say to that. A talking gargoyle was standing in my living room lecturing me about cooking. Even for me, this was pretty weird. “I’m a vegan.”

  “Pardon?”

  “I eat a wide range of plant-based foods, but I don’t eat animal products.”

  Dorian swore in French and shook his head. “You at least have basic supplies?”

  “Fresh winter vegetables and a few herbs are in the kitchen already, and cooking pans, oils, and more herbs and spices are in my trailer outside.”

  I went to my trailer to retrieve a portion of my kitchen bounty, from a hanging bunch of dried cayenne peppers to newly ground garlic powder in a glass jar, which I carried inside using a copper saucepan. I’ve always been aware of the link between food and health, but didn’t always treat my own body as well as I treated the people I healed. It wasn’t until recently—a little over a hundred years ago—that I felt worthy of taking care of myself. I kept my cooking simple, but used pure, healthful ingredients.

  Dorian conceded the high quality of my home-prepared dried herbs and infused oils, after which he banished me from the kitchen. I sat down on the couch with his book on my lap, hoping my instincts were right to trust him in the kitchen. I wondered if the smoke detectors had batteries.

  Looking at the book more closely for the first time, the title gave me pause. This was an alchemy book. Translated from Latin, Non Degenera Alchemia would be Not Untrue Alchemy. What a strange title. What was the point of the double negative? Why wasn’t it simply True Alchemy?

  It took me a few minutes before I could bring myself to open the book. I hadn’t practiced alchemy in years. I hadn’t been ready. Not after what had happened.

  I breathed in a scent I knew well as I opened the book. I work with lots of old books, but in spite of the familiar scent of its binding—seventeenth-century calf-skin, I guessed—this one held unfamiliar secrets. I carefully flipped through a few pages. The title was in Latin, as was some of the text inside, but it didn’t look like the alchemy I’d studied. It also included something similar to the coded images used by alchemists, but these symbols weren’t quite like any I’d seen before. In the many woodcut illustrations in the book, the necks of the birds twisted to the left to an unnatural degree that reminded me of something seen in a horror movie. I shivered and shut the book. A woody scent wafted up to my nostrils as I did so.

  I had excelled in spagyrics, also known as plant alchemy, which uses alchemical techniques to extract the healing properties of herbs rather than the precious properties of metals. The general idea behind all types of alchemy is the same: transforming a substance into something greater than its original whole by making the corruptible into something pure.

  I feared I was beyond my depth here. I closed my eyes and clutched the gold locket I wore around my neck. The locket I always kept close to me yet hadn’t opened in many years. I hadn’t even wanted to think about practicing alchemy for decades. Not since Ambrose.

  Stop it, Zoe. It wasn’t your fault.

  I repeated my mantra of that past century a few times before opening the book again. Pushing all thoughts of Ambrose to the back of my mind, I tried to focus on the calligraphy of the title page. I wasn’t sure where to start. Many of my old alchemy books were packed in the shipping crates. It would take some time to locate what I needed. For the time being, I took a cursory look at how the book was organized and snapped a few photos of interesting pages with my cell phone. As I did so, I became more certain than ever that this wasn’t alchemy. The illustrations resembled alchemical symbolism only superficially, as if the person making the illustrations had never studied it. Perhaps that explained the convoluted title.

  I wasn’t sure how long I’d been absorbed in Not Untrue Alchemy when a heavenly aroma wafted out from the kitchen. Sage, rosemary, and onions. Dorian carried a hot casserole dish from the kitchen and set it down on a cork matt on the solid oak table. He ran back to the kitchen for the plates and utensils I’d brought inside earlier.

  “You made this with what I had in the house?” I asked, my eyes wide and my mouth watering.

  He grinned proudly. “Butternut squash roasted in olive oil with onions, sage, and a hint of rosemary. The sauce is lemon tahini, with cayenne-infused salt and toasted pumpkin seeds sprinkled on top. The fat from the sesame seeds used to make the tahini fools the senses into thinking there is a ham base.”

  “This is amazing,” I said.

  Dorian ate quickly but with refinement, serving himself a second helping before I was halfway through eating my first. I ate slowly, savoring the exquisite flavors. With the same ingredients I was planning on using to create a simple meal, Dorian had created a feast.

  “Pardon,” he said after a small burp.

  “That meal was incredible,” I said.

  “C’est rien,” he said. “It was nothing. I would have made something better if I was not so hungry.”

  “I haven’t eaten such a gourmet
meal in ages,” I said.

  “You will help me with my book?” he said, looking across the table expectantly.

  “You haven’t told me exactly what you need done with it, remember? If you’re looking for a translator, I’m not the best person.”

  “Mais oui!” he said. “Now that we have satisfied our earthly needs, we may discuss practical business.” He scrambled off his chair and returned a moment later with the book I’d left on the couch.

  “You are an alchemist. You can help me not only translate my book, but decipher it.”

  “I’m sorry to disappoint you,” I said. “Especially after you traveled all this way. But this isn’t an alchemy book.”

  “You are correct it is not a normal one,” Dorian said, “but there are alchemy tenets inside. The philosopher’s stone, Alkahest, recipes with the three essential ingredients of mercury, sulfur, and salt. It is all here. It is the same principles for creating an Elixir of Life, no?”

  “Yes, but that doesn’t mean—”

  “I,” Dorian said, cutting me off, “was once stone. This book is what brought me to life.”

  I stared across the table at the gargoyle. “That’s not possible.”

  The philosopher’s stone was the alchemical creation that enabled both the transformation of eternal life and the creation of gold. But it wasn’t something that could be used to bring an inanimate object to life. There was a natural order to things. Steps that had to be taken both outwardly and inwardly—planetary alignments, clockwise rotations, separating and rejoining elements in the proper order, connecting yourself to the processes.

  “The secret to immortality is personal,” I continued, “not something that can be granted to inanimate objects. Even if stories of the homunculus were true, it’s a transformation that doesn’t give a personality, a soul, or a mind of your own—meaning it can’t possibly be what happened to you. I’m glad you’re alive”—and I really was; the little creature was growing on me, especially after that meal—“but books can’t achieve that kind of transformation.”

  “Yet here I am before you,” Dorian said. “Regardez. I am telling you, this is no normal book. I know about you. I know you can do this.”

  “What do you mean you know about me?”

  “There is something strange about this book. A secret that you, of all people, would wish to know.”

  “Why me?”

  He sighed. It was a slow, sad, movement. “I saw what you were doing nearly eighty years ago, after you closed your shop, Elixir.”

  “How could you?” But as I spoke the words, I knew.

  “I was there,” Dorian said, “when you were nearly discovered. You, as the woman you claim to be your grandmother, were called in by un Commandant to help with a strange occurrence at a manor outside of the city.”

  I nodded slowly. I remembered it well. I was in bad shape, emotionally, at the time. It’s why I shut the shop for good and returned home to the U.S., buying a brand-new 1942 Chevy pickup truck, followed a few years later by an Airstream trailer. The truck and trailer allowed me to keep running.

  “You may recall,” he said, “that the estate had gargoyles. I had been brought to life some years before, and had come to know Paris and its surrounding areas well. I would often hide as stone, as I was that day.”

  “You were there,” I whispered. “Watching.”

  “I see it as clearly on your face now as I could see it then. You do not feel as if you belong. You never have.”

  It was so close to the truth that sadness overcame me. Dorian must have known that feeling, too. He was a gargoyle. In the shadows. Always watching, but never able to join in.

  “It was you who saved me from being discovered that day,” I said, staring at the little creature and seeing him in a new light. “You created the distraction by throwing pebbles off the roof, stopping me from telling the French police the truth about how I solved the puzzling crime, giving me time to think it through.” On that day eighty years before, I was recovering from an experience that had left me shaken and prone to acting without thinking. I would have been discovered had it not been for my anonymous savior who created a commotion on the roof.

  He shrugged. “We are alike, you and I. I have suffered the same fate. Of course I would do what I could once I realized what you were. I do not believe you understand more about why you are alive than I do. Alchemy is about one true thing, no? Yet it is not that simple. This book can help explain it. To both of us.”

  We stared at each other for several seconds before my phone chirped the soothing sound of a sandpiper.

  Dorian shook his head. “Americans,” he mumbled. “Never silencing their phones during meals.” He tossed his napkin on the table and began to clear the plates.

  I saw my contractor’s name on the phone’s screen and picked up. “Mr. Macraith.”

  “Eight in the morning work for you to get started? I like to get an early start on the day.” His voice was gravely, as I remembered, but even rougher than in our previous conversations. I hoped the jack-of-all-trades handyman was up for the large job I’d given him.

  “That works,” I said. “Thanks again for scheduling something on such short notice. I’m eager to get started fixing up this place.”

  “Until then.” He clicked off.

  Dorian cleaned the dishes while I spread out on the dining table with his book and a cup of chamomile tea. Dorian wouldn’t tell me more about the strange tenets in the book. “Simply have a look,” he said.

  Now that I knew how we’d crossed paths before, how could I say no?

  The fact that this wasn’t a straightforward alchemy book made it easier to focus. It allowed me to avoid dwelling on the old memories of alchemy that were trying to push their way to the front of my mind. I thought it had been long enough that I was ready for anything. I didn’t want to be wrong.

  I spent a short time searching for information online, before realizing that was a dead end. I then turned to unpacking my crates in search of alchemy books that might be helpful, but I wasn’t hopeful. I already knew what was in those books, and I doubted they could help me. But it had been a long time since I’d opened those books. I wondered what I would find if I reacquainted myself with their secrets.

  I fell asleep at the table with one of my alchemy books resting under my head. Not a good position to sleep in if you happen to like moving your neck without searing pain.

  I woke up at dawn. My body is so attuned to planetary shifts that I wake up with the sun, even when it’s a cloud-covered day and I’ve slept for only a few hours in an upright position. Since it was wintertime, shortly after the start of the new year, it was a few minutes after seven o’clock.

  I saw no sign of Dorian, even after a thorough search of the house.

  After taking an alternatively freezing cold and scorching shower that made me glad Charles Macraith would be arriving soon, I made myself a breakfast smoothie of blended fruits and vegetables. There was still no sign of Dorian. I hadn’t asked him where he slept—or even if he slept—so I wasn’t sure where else to look. He’d taken care of himself without being discovered before he met me, so I told myself not to worry. Perhaps he hadn’t liked my suggestion that he return to the shipping crate while the contractor worked on the house, and had hidden elsewhere.

  I had a little time before our scheduled meeting time, so I set out on a walk. Dorian’s meal and my morning juice had used up most of what I’d bought the day before, so I stopped at a small market to buy fresh produce.

  Though I’m attuned to plants and planets, I don’t have an inner compass. I got turned around rather badly and didn’t arrive back at my new house until shortly after eight o’clock.

  I walked up the narrow path overgrown with weeds, feeling the stillness of the day. I loved how the house was centrally located but at the same time set back from the street, giving me t
he privacy I liked. I didn’t see anyone waiting for me on the raised porch in front of the house. I was wondering when Charles Macraith would show up, when I realized he wouldn’t.

  Not alive.

  Lying on the ground in front of the rickety porch was the prostrate body of my contractor. The acrid scent of poison overwhelmed the fragrant oranges that dropped from my hand as I knelt over his dead body.

  four

  In the hours following the death of Charles Macraith, I was back in 1692. Between the whiff of poison and the suspicion directed at me by well-dressed men in positions of power, I was transported back to my first experience with death, when I was sixteen years old and the Salem Witch Trials were going strong.

  I felt an irrational sense of panic rise within me. Though I had no connection to the murder, I knew firsthand how easy it was for innocent people to get caught up in hysteria. A false answer is often easier than a complicated truth. Even if it destroys the innocent.

  The uniforms were different today, as were the formal attitudes about innocence before guilt proven beyond a reasonable doubt. But people were still fallible, victims of their own minds trying to make sense of things. And death was the same. A tiny amount of the right poisonous plant extract could fell a healthy man in his prime.

  I knew little of Charles Macraith beyond the facts that he was a man of few words, a skilled home renovator who charged a rate I could afford, and that he had only recently returned to work after an injury sustained on the job. How had he come to die on my front porch?

  As soon as I was certain he was dead, I didn’t touch anything else. I also stopped myself from entering the house to look for Dorian. After a few frantic moments of calling Dorian’s name and getting no response, I gave up and called the police from my cell phone.