The Accidental Alchemist

by Gigi Pandian

  “Mon dieu,” Dorian whispered. “Why does it not open? And why must you touch your necklace after you press each stone?”

  I hadn’t realized I was doing it, but he was right.

  I pushed on the highest stone I could reach, then turned and rested my back against the wall.

  “You know what the locket means to me,” I said. “I can’t lose someone else I care about.”

  “Your brother. Brixton reminds you of him, n’est pas?”

  “I suppose he does.” I clenched my fists in frustration. “Why won’t this open!?” I whirled around and banged my fists against the stone wall. Pain shot through my forearms, but I didn’t care.

  Dorian pulled me away.

  “It will not help anyone for your arms to be bloodied,” he said.

  I sighed and slumped down against the beam.

  “Turn off the flashlight,” Dorian said.

  “We’re not giving up—”

  “No, but the shadows from the light confuses things. I can see better in the dark. I will look to see if there is a mechanism we have missed.”

  The darkness that enveloped us was complete. I saw nothing, and heard only my own breath and the light sound of claws tapping on stone.

  “The other man in the locket,” Dorian said softly, “you are thinking of him as well?”

  I didn’t answer immediately. As I listened to Dorian tapping on stone, the darkness gave me the courage to speak. “His memory was what I was running from,” I said, “when you first saw me in Paris, helping the Commandant.”

  “He died because he had not found the Elixir of Life you had found?” Dorian continued to examine the wall as he spoke.

  “The opposite, actually.” I laughed ruefully in the darkness. “It was because he found the Elixir of Life that he died in the manner he did.”

  “C’est vrais?”

  “It would have been better had he died of old age. A natural death, I could have handled. I would have grieved, but it would have been a natural death. Not like what happened.”

  “Did he die of the plague, as your brother did?”

  “It’s worse than that.”

  “Merde,” Dorian said. “My claw is caught in the stone.” He paused, and a rustling sound filled the darkness. “Ah! It is free.”

  “Is it the lever?”

  “No. Nothing has moved. Yet the map shows clearly that this is the second door!”

  “Maybe we’re looking at this in the wrong way.” I clicked on the flashlight, this time shining the light toward the ceiling. “If it’s a mechanism that triggers the door, it doesn’t have to be part of the door itself. It could be anywhere around here.”

  I stood up to take a closer look at the wooden beams running across the low ceiling. I methodically traced each of the beams. Four metal objects shone as the light passed over them. The simple hooks looked like they had been placed there to hold oil lamps to illuminate the passage.

  But one of them was different from the rest.

  I stepped closer to get a better look. I know metals. This particular hook wasn’t solid zinc iron alloy like the rest. It had been painted black to look like the other hooks.

  I reached up and tugged on the hook. I was rewarded by the sound of a latch clicking.

  “You have found it!” Dorian said. He scurried to the thick beam and shoved. This time, the beam gave way, revealing a narrow passage of darkness. He hurried inside, carrying the map and my sweater with him.

  “Wait a second,” I whispered. “We don’t know if it will close behind us and trap us. We need to find the mechanism on the other side, so we can get back.”

  Dorian pointed to a visible lever. “On this side,” he said, “they have no use for disguise.”

  “Let me see the map,” I said, taking it from Dorian’s outstretched hand. “Damn. There are two branches of this tunnel.”

  “We shall split up?”

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  Dorian snatched the map back, grumbling to himself as he studied it. We followed the narrow passageway for several dozen yards before the tunnel forked. I shone the flashlight in both directions.

  “To the right,” Dorian said softly, consulting the map, “is the shorter distance.”

  “Both directions go on for quite some distance,” I whispered, “so the right is as good a choice as any.”

  I clicked off the light and took a deep breath. “We should be careful from here.”

  “Agreed. Give me your hand. I will lead you through the darkness.”

  In spite of myself and the situation, I laughed. I was being led by a living gargoyle through a secret section of tunnels underneath Portland. I remembered Brixton saying “My life is too weird.” I could relate.

  “This is amusing?” Dorian asked.

  “You’ve heard the expression that someone laughs so they don’t cry?”

  “Oui.”

  “This is one of those situations.”

  We walked in silence, in the cavernous darkness, for at least twenty minutes. Dorian periodically whispered for me to duck or to be careful as I stepped forward. As we walked further into the tunnels, the air grew close and stifling. Dorian maintained a firm grip on one of my hands to lead me. With my other hand, I felt along the wall. The only sounds were our light footsteps and the sound of my heartbeat.

  Dorian’s hand was neither rough nor smooth, neither warm nor cold. It felt like I was holding an ocean-worn rock, warmed to the temperature of its surrounding environment.

  As we rounded a corner, the air quality shifted. I saw no light, but I felt a gentle breeze.

  “Where are we?” I whispered.

  “Zut! We have reached the end!”

  “The end?”

  Dorian pulled me further. I hadn’t switched on the light, but a dim light spread out before us. We stepped forward into a room with a metal grate above. Light poured into the room from above. As my eyes adjusted, I became aware of a rhythmic sound.

  I groaned. “The river. We’re somewhere along the Willamette.”

  “It appears this is another disguised entry point.”

  “I can’t reach the grate,” I said. “If I lift you up, you should be able to reach it.”

  He nodded, and I cupped my hands to boost him up with his good leg. By holding him on my shoulders, he was able to reach the grate.

  “Rusted shut,” he said. “This has not been used in many years.”

  “We went the wrong way.”

  “Come,” Dorian said. “There is no longer the need to be quiet as we retrace our steps.”

  Using the flashlight this time, we were able to move more quickly. Still, it wasn’t fast enough. I held the flashlight in one hand and my locket in the other.

  “We will find them,” Dorian said. “Have faith.”

  “Faith doesn’t save people.”

  “You are a good person, Zoe Faust. Whatever happened, it could not have been your fault.”

  “You’re wrong. Because of me, both Thomas and Ambrose died. That’s why I first gave up alchemy and ran from everything—including myself.”

  “What you told me of your brother was not your fault. Failing to save someone from the plague is not your fault.”

  “But that’s not what happened to Ambrose.” I clutched my locket more tightly. “I should never have let him talk me into practicing alchemy again.”

  “What happened that is so terrible?”

  “I already told you that after Thomas died, I left the Flamel’s house, unaware I had discovered the Elixir of Life.” I walked more quickly than Dorian, so he wouldn’t see my face as I spoke. “After I knew what I had become and returned to the Flamel’s house to find it burned to the ground, I felt as if I was cursed. I didn’t think I deserved to live, but I at least wanted to help
others. I used my herbal skills of plant alchemy to do so. I was never good at making gold, so I sold healing tonics to survive. I gave away more than I sold, so I barely survived. I could never turn my back on a needy person. There were so many of them …”

  I tried to shake off the memory of so much suffering. Though I had helped many people, there were so many more I couldn’t save.

  “The man in the locket was someone you could not help?”

  “Ambrose,” I said. “When I met him, I was an emaciated wreck, curing others while I lived on boiled meat and potatoes, barely surviving myself. I had learned that I was nearly as human as everyone else—feeling sick when I ate poorly, bleeding when cut, blistering when burned—but I hadn’t felt worthy of healing myself. Not until I met Ambrose. He was a fellow alchemist, so he recognized me for what I was.”

  “Ah!” Dorian said. “So the tragedy is that he found the Elixir of Life, yet still died?”

  “Worse. It won’t make sense unless you know what he did for me. When we met, though Ambrose was a practicing alchemist, he hadn’t yet found the Elixir of Life. I fell in love with him, and he with me. He helped me realize my life was worth living. That’s when I began to eat a plant-based diet, which helped me heal my body and feel alive again. I believed my life was worth living again, so I wanted to feel alive in every way. We worked together for many years, happy in our shared alchemy lab. But he had a son. Percival.”

  “The son did not approve of you?”

  “I didn’t approve of Percival. Ambrose was devoted to his son, but I saw him for the mean-spirited man he really was. Ambrose tried to get Percival interested in alchemy, but Percival is a perfect example of why the world isn’t ready for alchemy’s secrets. Percival was only ever interested in quick fixes. He took opium to excess, and ate and drank with a similar indulgence. He never held a job for long, because he always knew his father could make him gold. Whenever I tried to broach the subject with Ambrose, he wouldn’t hear of it. He would believe nothing bad about his son. Ambrose was the most brilliant alchemist I’ve ever met, but Percival was his weakness.”

  “This is what I understand it is to be a parent.”

  “Maybe so. I should have seen it coming. Maybe then I could have prevented it.”

  “What happened?”

  “Working together in our laboratory—me working with plants to create healing elixirs and Ambrose working with metals to create the philosopher’s stone—we complemented each other and increased each other’s learning. Ambrose created his own philosopher’s stone that led him to the Elixir of Life. In spite of my protestations that it wouldn’t work to transfer it to another, Ambrose tried to transfer it to Percival. When it didn’t work, Percival became irate. Cutting corners, he tried to create it for himself, envious that his father and I would live while he would die. Percival continued to age, becoming a bitter old man who wasted away and died. Ambrose couldn’t take it. Knowing he’d caused his son so much pain and that he would go on living—Ambrose went insane.”

  “Mon dieu.”

  “I tried to get him help, but he was taken away and placed in a mental institution. He couldn’t live like that. He killed himself.”

  “I am so sorry, Zoe. But you should also realize you are lucky to have found Ambrose at all. To have found that even briefly, for this I am envious.”

  “Believe me,” I said, wiping away a tear with my sleeve, “you don’t need to be envious of my life.”

  “I have never met another like myself. My father was the only one who knew my true self. The blind men I worked for believed me to be a man, like them. They believed me to be disfigured, and this is why I wished to stay out of sight from others.”

  Guilt washed over me. I hadn’t considered that Dorian’s life had, in some ways, been lived in even more isolation than my own. “We’ve both lived lonely lives.”

  “Yet,” Dorian said, “I still wish to live.”

  We walked in silence for a few minutes, the weight of Dorian’s words hanging in the air.

  “How much further do we have to go?” I asked.

  “Merde,” Dorian whispered.

  “What is it?”

  “Quiet,” he whispered sharply. “Turn off your light.”

  I clicked off the light. “What do you see?”

  “Wait here.”

  “We’re not splitting up.”

  “I shall be back momentarily.”

  “Wait—”

  “There are two more passageways I see,” Dorian said, “neither of which are marked on the map, yet there is light ahead. Remain here.”

  I crossed my arms and waited impatiently as Dorian’s footsteps faded.

  A few minutes later, he still hadn’t returned. I began to tap my foot anxiously. Where was he?

  A faint tapping noise sounded. I stood still. The noise continued. It wasn’t caused by my fidgeting.

  In the darkness, I wasn’t sure which direction Dorian had gone, so I couldn’t tell if the sound was coming from the same direction. Keeping the light off, I edged forward, following the sound.

  As I crept forward, the noise grew louder. It sounded like someone hitting metal. Or maybe someone’s bones being hit with a piece of metal.

  I gave up stealth in favor of speed. I turned on my flashlight and ran toward the sound. I ran for minutes, down the narrow passageway of heavy, dusty air. I nearly tripped on a pile of boxes stacked on the side of the narrow tunnel. My lungs heaved, but I kept going.

  The tunnel jogged left at a sharp angle. As I rounded the corner, two lamps illuminated a larger section of tunnel. Jail cells lined one wall. Brixton, Ethan, and Veronica were trapped in one of the cells.

  On the outside stood a woman in a distinctive red shawl. It was Olivia.

  thirty-seven

  Veronica stopped banging on the iron bars of the jail cell as soon as she saw me. After a few seconds of the harsh sound echoing through the tunnels, the sound ceased. All was silent.

  Olivia raised an eyebrow at me, while the kids stared open-mouthed from behind the bars of the Shanghaier’s cell.

  I mentally kicked myself. Everything that applied to Sam Strum also applied to his aunt Olivia. Olivia needed money for her medical treatments. Olivia was at the hospital at the same time as Charles Macraith. And sharing a house with her nephew, she would know about his local history research findings about the Shanghai Tunnels.

  “Well,” Olivia said, “are you going to just stand there, or are you going to help me rescue the children?”

  “Rescue them?” I repeated.

  Olivia pursed her lips. “Did I give you too much credit by thinking you were an intelligent young woman?”

  “Mr. Strum locked us up,” Brixton said.

  “It was so creepy!” Veronica added.

  “Wait,” I said. “Sam locked you up?”

  “Give the lady a prize,” Ethan said. He stood with his back against a brick wall on the far side of the cell, mimicking a casual stance that was betrayed by the nervous twitches of his hands.

  Veronica elbowed him. “Ms. Faust is here to help—um, aren’t you?”

  “I am,” I said, eyeing Olivia.

  “She’s not working with her nephew,” Brixton said.

  “I didn’t know what Sam had done,” Olivia said sharply. “Are you going to just stand there, or help me unlock these cell doors?”

  “Where’s Sam?” I asked.

  “He wouldn’t hurt them,” Olivia said. “He just needed them out of the way. You don’t have to worry about him. He won’t be back.”

  I wasn’t so sure. Regardless of what I thought, we had to get ourselves out of the tunnels. We were so far from fresh air that I didn’t know what would happen if we stayed there too long.

  I joined Olivia at the metal door. “What have you tried so far?”

  “Brute for
ce. It didn’t work.”

  I looked at my cell phone. No reception.

  “Mr. Strum took the key with him,” Veronica said.

  I tugged on the door. “What happened?”

  “The last time we were here exploring—” Brixton began.

  “Spelunking,” Ethan cut in.

  “Yeah, spelunking,” Brixton said, rolling his eyes. “Well, we found some evidence that looked like there was modern Shanghaiing going on. Well, not Shanghaiing, exactly. Smuggling, though. That’s almost as cool, right? There was like a truckload of boxes from China. We thought Mr. Strum would think it was cool, ’cause of his interest in this stuff. So this morning when we got to school, we went to find him before classes started.”

  “To tell him about what we found,” Veronica added.

  Brixton gripped the bars. “He was totally into it. Said we should all ditch school today so we could show him what we found.”

  “We thought he was cool!” Veronica said, stamping her ballet flats on the dusty cell floor. “A teacher ditching with us. That was going to be, like, the best story ever. Instead, he locked us up in here! Right after we showed him the hidden boxes! I couldn’t believe it. We totally thought it was a joke at first.”

  As she spoke, I knelt down to examine the lock.

  “When we saw that it wasn’t,” Brixton said, “I tried to hypnotize him.”

  I glanced sharply at Brixton.

  “I, uh, read about hypnosis online,” Brixton said. “But anyway, it didn’t work. He left us here.”

  “Does anyone have a pocketknife?” I asked.

  “Tried it already,” Ethan said, and Olivia held up a broken pocketknife.

  Where had Dorian gone off to? He would be able to pick the lock, but he couldn’t reveal himself openly. If only I had the map he’d run off with, I could have made my way out of the tunnels to get help. The tunnels stretched on for miles in so many directions that I wasn’t confident I could find my way out without the map.

  “Olivia,” I said, “how did you end up here?”