by Gigi Pandian
“What are you doing?” Dorian’s voice startled me. “Why are you not looking at the pages from my book?” He stood behind me, clutching a baking dish.
“One of us has to make a living and keep a roof above us.”
“If you learned how to transmute gold like a proper alchemist …” Dorian mumbled under his breath as he scampered to the dining table.
The sweet scent of sugar hit my nostrils as I sat down at the table. “Where did you find the sugar?” I asked. “It can’t be maple I smell.”
He smiled with satisfaction. “The acorn squash is baked in caramelized onions, with a pecan puree stuffing, and lightly braised kale with garlic.”
I don’t know how he did it with the simple ingredients I had on hand. After another of the best meals I’d eaten in years, Dorian was clearing the dishes when there was a knock at the door.
“I wish,” he said, “you were not so popular.”
“The locksmith must be early.”
Dorian left the remains of the stuffed acorn squash on the table and went to the fireplace, where he stood still and turned to stone. It was a disconcerting sight.
I showed the locksmith the doors where I wanted new locks along with added deadbolts. He regarded the baked squash dish with hungry eyes as we walked by the table on the way to the back door. It was easy to see what his eyes were doing—the thick black eyeliner circling his pale eyes made every expression dramatic. I’d hired a Goth locksmith. He also had a handlebar mustache with perfectly curled edges. The mustache didn’t seem very Goth to me, but hey, this was Portland. Maybe he was a Goth-Hipster, a new trend I hadn’t yet heard about. Or was the proper term Hipster-Goth?
Just as I was coming to understand one new trend, a new one would inevitably emerge. I had long since abandoned trying to keep up. I liked to think I wore classic clothes that never went out of style—tailored dress pants in neutral colors with simple cotton blouses in warm weather, and knitted sweaters with my beloved silver raincoat in cold climates—but I noticed that sometimes I was considered more trendy than at other times. It was language that I was better at keeping up with. Because I was forced to move around so much, I had become accustomed to picking up local languages, including a language’s changing vernacular and speech patterns.
“There’s plenty of food,” I said. “Shall I get you a plate?”
An hour later, I felt a lot safer and I had a Goth-hipster friend for life. The locksmith was just starting out, he told me, so he lived on canned food and the occasional food truck meal. He said he hadn’t eaten a meal that tasty and satisfying in ages, and was shocked to learn the meaty-textured nut stuffing didn’t contain meat. I sent him home with leftovers.
As soon as he left, another visitor arrived at the door, leaving me no time to work on the pages of Dorian’s book. I sighed and opened the door for Brixton.
“Where should I start?” he asked.
“I let you off the hook, remember?”
“I feel bad about breaking in. Veronica and Ethan wanted to hang out, but my mom said I should do like I promised.”
There was no defiance in his expression. Where had this polite version of Brixton come from? I hesitated for a moment while I contemplated what to do about him.
“Thanks,” I said. “You can get started weeding the backyard. Everything along the edges of the fence. I’ll grab gloves from the trailer and show you what to do.”
“The whole fence?”
“I thought you wanted to help.”
“Yeah, I do. It’s just … Nothing. It’s cool. I just thought maybe you’d want to tell me more about alchemy, so I don’t, like, go asking other people about it. You wouldn’t want that, right?”
I doubt I had been that intelligent—or manipulative—at fourteen.
“All right,” I said. “Here’s your first lesson. The heart of alchemy is transformation. Something new is created based on how you transform existing elements. A perfect example is this garden. Right now it’s full of weeds, but through your efforts you’re going to transform it into something new.”
“I’ve got a better example. Turning lead into gold. You said you don’t, but that’s what you guys do, right?”
“Some alchemists have tried to turn lead into gold, but I’m a plant alchemist.”
“How did you buy this house, then?”
“I have a job, like everyone else.”
“Why aren’t you at work?”
“What kind of question is that? I run an online business.”
“Can I see the website?”
“Maybe after you practice some alchemy in the yard.” I dreaded what a fourteen-year-old would think of my outdated website.
He mumbled something under his breath, but donned the gloves I handed him and watched as I showed him how to pull weeds from the root. He had a lot to do, which would give me time to research the pages of Dorian’s book.
I spread the photographs on the dining table, again struck by the fact that the images and text weren’t like anything in my own alchemy books. I wished I hadn’t lost touch with the alchemists I’d known. Without personal contacts, it would be close to impossible to find a real alchemist. Though there were many people who considered themselves alchemists, most were either scholars or spiritual alchemists. Neither category would understand what had happened to Dorian. And I didn’t know how much time I had.
Before I could decide if I should join an Internet discussion group of alchemists, a frantic pounding sounded at the front door.
“Zoe!” Brixton yelled. “Let me in!” My newly secured doorknob shook but didn’t open.
I jumped up and opened the door for him.
“I didn’t mean to pry,” he said, rushing past me into the house. “Really, I didn’t. I was just looking for a snack.”
“What’s going on, Brixton?” I felt his fear. He wasn’t joking around.
“Poison! I found poison in your trailer.” He thrust the bottle into my hand.
I gasped, then I saw what he’d handed me. “This,” I said, laughing as I let go of my tension, “isn’t poison. It’s asafoetida. A spice.”
“No way. It smells like—”
“I know. One of its nicknames is ‘Devil’s Dung.’”
“It’s food?”
“Sure is,” I said, getting my laughter under control.
“Why would anyone eat this?”
“As soon as it’s heated in a dish, it transforms itself and brings out the flavors of other spices. It also helps digestion.”
Brixton swore. “I, uh, kind of messed up your trailer. Some bottles fell and broke when I ran out of there. Sorry.”
———
While Brixton cleaned up the mess he’d made in the trailer and got back to weeding, I walked to the market to buy the items on Dorian’s list. I chuckled when I got to the bottom. He’d added bacon to the list, as if I wouldn’t notice. I didn’t object to other people—or gargoyles, for that matter—eating whatever they wanted to. But I was a single vegan woman living alone. I had enough secrets to cover up. I wasn’t going to buy animal products for my secret guest.
When I got back, a few weeds were gone, but there was no sign of Brixton in the yard or the trailer. I found him in the kitchen. Dorian was showing him how to safely light an old gas stove with a match, and Brixton was rolling his eyes as if the gargoyle was treating him like a child.
“Did you find everything on my list?” Dorian asked in an innocent voice.
“Nice try.”
The two of them seemed content, chopping food for dinner, so I left the kitchen, taking the photographs from Not Untrue Alchemy to the dining table. The disturbing bird images again made me want to look away, but I forced myself to examine the woodcuts. The twisted, broken necks stirred a feeling of apprehension deep within me. Along with my revulsion was a flicker of recogniti
on, but the flame quickly faded and I was left with nothing.
Coded symbols such as these allowed for secret alchemical teachings to be passed down from one generation to the next. The pelican, for example, symbolizes self-sacrifice, which is a code for distillation. But the birds in this book weren’t familiar to me. Instead of elegant pelicans, crows, peacocks, and phoenixes, these birds had twisted shapes and looked more like dodos and pterodactyls.
In the past, coded messages were often publicly displayed, carved onto buildings during alchemy’s heyday in the Middle Ages. The markings could describe alchemical operations, such as a dove representing the purifying transformation turning from the Black Phase to the White Phase and the phoenix representing the final alchemical operation resulting in the philosopher’s stone.
But here in Not Untrue Alchemy, I couldn’t easily identify the significance of any of the illustrations. I made out an ouroboros—a dragon eating its own tail—on one page, but the dragon’s body wasn’t curled in a circle to symbolize eternal re-creation as one would expect. Instead, the creature was contorted and looked as if it was writhing in pain.
Distressed shouts interrupted my thoughts.
I ran into the kitchen. Brixton clutched his hand and Dorian held a cell phone.
“He was recording me!” Dorian screamed.
I took a deep breath. And another. I now understood Brixton’s apparent change of heart.
Dorian held the phone in his clawed hand. The image displayed on the screen showed a gargoyle cooking in my kitchen.
ten
“Make the video play, Zoe.” Dorian was close to shouting as he held the phone in an unsteady hand. “The touch screen of the phone does not respond to my fingers.”
“It would help if you handed me the phone.”
“Non.” The grip of his clawed hand tightened around the phone. “You can make it play with the phone safely in my hand.”
I glanced at Brixton, sulking in the corner of the kitchen with his arms folded, then tapped the screen of his phone in Dorian’s hand. The video on the cell phone screen clearly showed the gargoyle chopping vegetables as he explained to Brixton how to use aciduated water to stop chopped vegetables from turning brown.
“Brixton,” I snapped. “What did you do?”
“He scratched my hand!”
“You would not give me your phone!” Dorian said. “What could I do?”
“I’ll tend to your hand, Brixton,” I said, grabbing the salve I’d applied just two days before on the cut he received while breaking into the house. “But what did you do?”
“Nobody believed me! What was I supposed to do?”
“You don’t realize what you’ve done.” I was past anger. I was disappointed. And scared.
Brixton heard the change in my voice. “It’s not even posted yet,” he said quietly, looking down at the 1950s linoleum floor.
“You’re telling the truth?”
He nodded, still not looking up at me.
My shoulders relaxed and Dorian recited a prayer of thanks in French. I had forgotten I was holding the aloe salve to treat Brixton’s scratch.
Brixton watched me as I treated the wound made by Dorian’s claw. “Why doesn’t it sting?”
“Not everything good for you hurts.”
“Thanks,” he mumbled so quietly it was barely audible.
“You don’t even need a bandage this time,” I added.
“He would have killed me if you hadn’t come in.”
“He knows not what he says,” Dorian said, flapping his wings in what could only be described as a huff. “I would never hurt a child.”
“Only an adult who was here to fix the house,” Brixton said, his voice defiant.
Dorian gasped. “You cannot think—” His head whipped between the two of us. “Zoe, you do not think I was responsible for that poor man’s murder, do you? You cannot think I would do such a thing.”
Before I could decide what to do about either of them, a burst of knocking sounded at the front door. Wonderful.
“Stay here,” I said. “Both of you.”
Looking out the peephole in the front door, I saw a young woman with long blond hair, several strands in messy braids woven with flowers at the ends. She held a plate of cookies in her hands. Friendly new neighbor?
“I bet it’s my mom,” Brixton said from behind me. “She said she wanted to thank you for not pressing charges against me. I never know if she’s going to follow through on anything, so I didn’t know if she’d really show up.”
She knocked again. Brixton stepped past me and looked through the peephole.
“Yeah,” he said. “That’s her.”
A quick survey of the room assured me Dorian was gone, so I opened the door. Brixton’s mom’s smile was powerful enough that under normal circumstances it would have brightened up a room, but at that moment it was only strong enough to make the tension bearable.
“Zoe!” Instead of handing me the platter of cookies in her hand, she set it on the floor and enveloped me in a warm hug. “Thank you for looking out for my pumpkin.”
“Mom,” Brixton said.
Brixton’s mom let go of me and gave her son an even bigger hug. Even on the chilly overcast day, she was barefoot. She stood on her tiptoes as she hugged her son. Before letting go, she kissed his forehead, causing him to turn bright red. Even if what Blue had said was true about Brixton’s mom not always being there for her son, Brixton certainly wasn’t lacking in physical affection.
“I’m Heather,” she said. “And these—“ she paused and picked up the tray of cookies, “are my famous vegan oatmeal cookies.”
“You told your mom about my being vegan?” I asked Brixton. I hadn’t realized he’d paid attention to that fact. And, more importantly, I wondered what else he’d told his mom and others about me. Had he told the truth that he hadn’t uploaded the video of Dorian on his phone?
Heather gave me an even bigger grin. “Brix, you didn’t tell me that!”
“Um, yeah,” Brixton said. “Now you two can be BFFs or something. So, can we go now?”
“I’m not a strict vegan,” Heather said. “That would be tough, seeing as I don’t cook much. These cookies are the one thing I do well. The dinner you’re cooking smells delicious.”
The scent of the food Dorian had been cooking did smell mouth-watering. He was using a common herb combination of marjoram, rosemary, and thyme to bring out the flavors of the winter vegetables. I also recognized the scent of other herbs that were transforming the dish into something greater than the sum of its parts. If I hadn’t been worried about that video, I would have been a lot more curious about the meal.
When I hesitated, Brixton gave me a strange look. “Yeah, Mom,” he said. “Zoe is a great cook. Isn’t that right, Zoe? Because who else could be cooking in your kitchen?”
“That’s sweet of you to say,” I said through clenched teeth.
“I hope my baby isn’t causing you too much trouble,” Heather said.
“He’s really taken to gardening, even though some stinging nettles scratched his hand. Isn’t that right, Brixton?”
“Can we go, Mom? I just need to get my phone. I left it in the kitchen.”
“I’ll come with you,” I said. “I need to check the stove. Heather, please make yourself at home in the living room. I’m still unpacking, so don’t mind the mess.”
Dorian wasn’t hiding. Not exactly. He stood in the corner of the kitchen, unmoving. He looked exactly as he had when I first opened the crate: a sleeping stone statue. The only difference was that instead of an alchemy book in his hands, he held Brixton’s cell phone.
“What the—” Brixton said with a start.
“We’re alone, Dorian,” I said quietly. “Brixton’s mom is in the other room.”
Gray stone shifted. The movement
was subtle and fascinating. I hadn’t been this close when his transformation from stone to life had taken place before. It was like watching an avalanche at a quarry. Granite-colored sand granules shifted in a cascading effect until stone had morphed into thick gray skin.
“No way,” Brixton whispered.
Dorian rolled his head from side to side and stretched his wings. “You must delete it,” he said, handing me Brixton’s phone. “I cannot use the screen of the phone with my fingers. Mobile phones were much better when they had real buttons.”
I found the video file and deleted it before handing the phone back to Brixton. He was still staring at Dorian. I had to push him out the kitchen door.
Once Brixton and his mom were gone, I made sure all the curtains were drawn and the doors and windows locked. I tried one of Heather’s cookies. She wasn’t exaggerating about how good they were. She’d used a sweet and savory combination of dried cherries and salted walnuts. I followed my nose back to the kitchen, where Dorian had resumed cooking. He stood on the stepping stool, stirring the contents of a Dutch Oven pot with a wooden spoon.
How could he be so calm after the close call?
“Dorian, what—”
“Un moment, s’il vous plaît,” he said, holding up his clawed index finger. He lifted a spoonful to his snout, nodded to himself, then added a shake of sea salt. He placed the lid on the pot, rested the spoon on the counter, and hopped down from the stool to face me.
“I will require,” he said, “an apron and a spoon rest.”
“An apron?”
“Yes, you did not appear to have one. Quite uncivilized.”
“About Brixton—” I began, caught between being somber about the near-disaster of a video of Dorian going viral and the absurdity of imagining a gargoyle in my kitchen wearing a frilly apron.