The Lady Alchemist

by Samantha Vitale

  Sepha thought hard about the trace amounts of copper that might be somewhere in that pile of straw. She focused on exchanging the copper for flecks of shining golden dust. Placing her hands just so along the alchem’s outer rim, Sepha squeezed her eyes shut.

  It was silent. It was dark.

  Straw into gold.

  There was a strange, stirring sense of something before her, and Sepha opened her eyes. She did not see the straw.

  She saw a dark-haired, sallow-skinned homunculus, his lips cast in what might loosely be called a grin, except it showed altogether too many teeth. He opened his mouth, tongue outstretched, and said in a horrible, guttural voice, “You are going to die.”

  Sepha stumbled backward in alarm. The homunculus—who should not be here, how did he get here—stared at her with a snarling leer. Something malicious glittered behind his dark eyes.

  But no, that couldn’t be! Homunculi didn’t think or plan or feel. They weren’t good or bad. They couldn’t be malicious!

  “I—what?” Sepha cried.

  The homunculus’s voice box worked up and down as he tried, again, to talk. “You—will—die,” he repeated in a strangled voice.

  Nearly sure this was a hallucination, Sepha responded weakly, “Maybe not!”

  To be talking to a homunculus—and to hear him talk back—was so utterly ridiculous, so impossible, that she could hardly believe it was happening at all.

  The homunculus shook his head. “No maybe,” he said slowly, as if each word took monumental effort. His unnatural, cruel grin closed as he licked his thin lips and said, “Will.”

  Sepha’s heart pulsed erratic and feather-light against her ribs. “Are you going to kill me?”

  He threw back his head and let out three long laughs that sounded as if he’d swallowed them and spit them back up. He looked her straight in the eye—which homunculi did not do—and said, “Not me. Madame.”

  Well, obviously, Sepha thought. Was he just here to remind her she was going to die, as if that was something a person could forget?

  “Why are you here?” she demanded, emboldened by this blip of anger. She glanced at the cell’s metal door. She hadn’t heard it open, and now it was shut again. Damn it all. “Who let you in?”

  The homunculus worked his mouth into a sneer. “Not let in. Not sent. I decided. I came.”

  “That’s a lie,” Sepha snapped, before her mind caught up and she remembered homunculi couldn’t lie. But they weren’t supposed to speak, either, yet here this one was. Speaking.

  The homunculus shook his head. “Not.” He was easing toward her, and although his head didn’t even reach her waist, Sepha backed warily away. There was something wrong with this homunculus. Something broken. Something evil, a small voice inside whispered, but she ignored it.

  “Who owns you?” she tried again.

  “No!” the homunculus shouted, a rough and grating sound. He balled his hands into fists and thumped his chest. “I own. No master.”

  “No master?” Sepha repeated. “What happened to your master?”

  The homunculus’s mouth twisted into a leer more vicious than the last. “Gone.”

  Something about the quirk of his eyebrows, about the way he worked his tiny hands as he spoke, sent shivers down Sepha’s neck. He made her think of creeping things lurking out of sight, and of death unlooked-for. She swiveled her head quickly, just to make sure there was nothing lurking out of sight, and looked back at the homunculus just as quickly. He was not a thing one left unobserved.

  Had he—had he killed—

  To avoid asking the question that had leapt to her lips, to avoid hearing the answer, Sepha reverted to an easier, more immediately relevant question. “Why are you here?”

  “You will die,” he said again, his mouth working grotesquely as it went against its own nature. “I save.”

  Sepha stared blankly at the tiny man, and he stared back at her, his eyes as intelligent as they were cruel. This homunculus who talked—who owned himself, who thought and planned and decided—had appeared inside a cell that was designed to keep alchemists in so he could save her?

  Sepha blinked rapidly. She couldn’t understand all of the impossible things contained inside this one tiny person. Her eyes wandered to the huge transmutation alchem behind him—something she could understand—and the pile of straw she’d placed at its center. It was unchanged, of course, completely unaffected by her weak attempt at transmutation.

  Then her eyes flicked toward the thing she’d been trying to ignore: the titanic mountain of straw, which loomed so high that the top was, from here, out of sight.

  Would she have been able to transmute that much straw into gold in one night, even if she could perform the transmutation? Alchemy took time, focus, and energy. If she worked from now until noon and was successful on each transmutation attempt, she wouldn’t even be able to work through a third of that mountain.

  “I am going to die,” she whispered, the realization finally settling in her bones.

  “Yes,” came the guttural answer, making Sepha jump. “But I can save.”

  “How?” she asked. Her voice sounded harsh and desperate. “Can you get me out?”

  The homunculus clicked his tongue and shook his head. “No,” he said. “Cell. Wrong walls.”

  “Then how?” Sepha asked.

  As if he’d been dying for her to ask, the homunculus grunted, “Watch.” He stretched his hands toward the straw piled in the center of the alchem, as if warming them by a fire. Then a wild look came over his face, and he shouted something garbled and foreign, which was all the more terrifying in his guttural voice.

  Sepha watched, transfixed, as the air closed around the straw like a curtain. It swirled like the haze that rose from the cobblestone streets on a hot day, then unfolded to reveal a small, gleaming lump of gold.

  Sepha recoiled. Suddenly, the homunculus’s strangeness had a name. “Magic!” Sepha gasped. That wild, howling panic took over, and she scrambled to the cell door. “Magician!” she shrieked, pounding on the door, and then kicking, hurling herself against it. “There’s a magician in here!”

  But the sounds were strangely deadened, and the door didn’t budge. No one came.

  No one had come, and no one was coming.

  Sepha turned and pressed her back against the door. The metal was a familiar coolness against her bare hands. Her eyes found the homunculus, and he smirked at her.

  “Done?” he asked.

  Forcing a bit of steel into her voice, Sepha said, “What do you want with me, magician?”

  He held out his hands in a placating gesture. “To save.”

  “Why?” Sepha asked. It was too easy, too fair to be anything but foul. “How did you even find me?”

  “Wicking Willow,” he said, as if that was a real explanation. Then, “I save you.” He shrugged. “You help me.”

  Sepha went still. “Help you how?”

  “Give me firstborn child.”

  The words threaded thinly through the air, flitting into Sepha’s ears and straight back out without staying long enough for her to comprehend their meaning. For a full minute, she and the homunculus stared at each other without speaking.

  Then she said, weakly, “Whatever do you need a child for?”

  The homunculus’s eyes made a full circuit of the room before he answered.

  “This,” he said at last, thumping his chest, “not my body.”

  “I don’t understand.” Sepha felt hollow. Brittle. Her voice ought to echo, to vibrate like a beaten drum, and she ought to shatter from the sound of it.

  The homunculus growled, frustrated. “I … not … homunculus,” he said. Each word seemed to be more of a struggle than the last. He paused to catch his breath before continuing. “I … was … magician. I died. Came back. Need … body.”

  “But—” Sepha began, and then stopped. A hundred questions vied for supremacy, momentarily rendering h
er speechless. “You came back? From the After?” she asked at last.

  He nodded but did not explain.

  “But you have a body already,” she said, gesturing at him.

  “Limited,” he said, working his face into a disgusted grimace. “Dirty. Feeble.”

  “But you took that body!” she said, a little more boldly. “What’s to stop you from taking another? Why do you need a baby from me?”

  “Magic … has … limits,” he grunted. “Cannot take. Must be … given.”

  “But you must know I can’t, I could never. And you, a magician—” Sepha sputtered. Trying another tack, she said, “I’m only seventeen. Who knows how long it will be before I have a baby? Maybe I never will! I can’t promise you something I might never have in the first place!”

  “Die, then.”

  He muttered at the small lump of gold and magicked it back to straw. With an arch glance, he muttered something else and opened a hole in the air. One of his legs had already disappeared through it before Sepha cried, “Stop!”

  The homunculus smiled that brutal, bestial smile, and the hole disappeared with a sound like a breeze.

  Sepha’s mind was starting and stalling, and she stood, mouth open, trying desperately to get her thoughts in order.

  A magical contract. That’s what the homunculus was proposing.

  Teacher had told them a hundred tales of what could happen to anyone foolish enough to bargain with magicians. As treacherous as the magicians who made them, magical contracts were loopholes wrapped in traps. They were power and control and mischief, chaos and tricks and deliberate misunderstandings. And since the homunculus—the magician—would be fulfilling his side of the contract immediately, he would hold all of the power. He could even change the terms, if he thought she was playing him false.

  Not that she could play him false. Magical contracts turned people into automatons until they either met the terms of the contract or died. For there were only two ways to sever the bond that magical contracts created: fulfillment or death. And since magicians were so much more powerful than everyone else, the magician was never the one who died.

  “There is nothing more dangerous than a magical contract,” Teacher had said, “and no one more treacherous than a magician.”

  But if Sepha didn’t bargain with him, she would die, and the mill would lose its contract with the army. The mill would go out of business, and the town would lose its main source of income. She would be dead, and so would the town.

  And she would never be a Court Alchemist or anything like it.

  She had to make this work.

  “You need a body,” she said at last.

  He nodded.

  “What if,” she said, “what if I can make one for you? By … by alchemy?” She wasn’t sure if it was possible and had never heard of anyone who’d done it before. But homunculi were the products of alchemy, weren’t they? And they were … alive.

  “Human body,” said the homunculus.

  “Yes.”

  He stared at her, and there was something shrewd and cruel in his expression. “You will have firstborn child,” he said, pronouncing each word with a great effort, as if he wanted to get the terms of the contract precisely right, “in exactly one year. Create empty, living human body for me with alchemy by then, you keep child.”

  At this, Sepha became thoroughly flustered and said, without thinking, “A year? But I haven’t even—” She paused, cursing inwardly, and continued, “I mean, I don’t even have a boyfriend. I’m not having a baby anytime soon, I can assure you.”

  “I turn straw to gold,” the homunculus said, narrowing his eyes, “you will.”

  Sepha opened her mouth to argue, to offer a new bargain, but then closed it again. The homunculus wouldn’t accept any other payment. She could tell by the set of his jaw, the ferocity of his gaze. It was this or no deal at all. A year to do this thing for him, or else her life would end at noon tomorrow, and Three Mills would go under soon thereafter.

  But if she agreed, then having a child would be part of her contract. Meaning that if she didn’t want to have a baby a year from now, she’d have maybe twelve weeks to create a body before her contract forced her to do something unthinkable.

  Was twelve weeks long enough for her to learn how to create a body? Well … she’d learned how to do all of her other tricks within days, once she’d started trying.

  And we already know you’re wicked enough to consider it, said the snide voice.

  The snide voice was right. She’d been wicked enough to end Mother’s life. Which meant she was certainly wicked enough to gamble on the life of someone who wasn’t alive quite yet.

  And anyway, she had a knack for alchemy.

  Wicked, disgusting girl, whispered the snide voice.

  “Fine,” Sepha said. “I agree to the bargain.”

  The words had no sooner left her lips than a strange wind swooped around the two of them, swirling between and through them. A weight settled around Sepha and sank into her chest, coalescing into a hard, smooth something that came to rest beside her heart. She only felt it for a moment before the sensation receded into the background of her mind, like a sound she could only hear if she focused very, very hard.

  A magical contract, and she would carry it with her until she fulfilled it. Or died.

  The homunculus seemed to have felt the same thing she had and clasped his hand to his chest. Shaking his head roughly, he toddled toward her and took her right hand between both of his. He muttered more of those garbled words, and her palm seared suddenly hot. She snatched it away from him, crying, “What was that for?”

  “To find you,” he said with a grin. Sepha glanced at her aching hand but couldn’t see any marks. What had he done?

  He muttered something at the small pile of straw and it sprang back to gold, as if that were the state it preferred. Then he strode to the mountain of straw.

  The impossible homunculus drew himself up and cried out in a large voice. The air, as a huge, sluggish mass, closed over the straw. Then, with a great, ear-popping pressure, it snapped back.

  Where the straw had been, there was now a much smaller, more lustrous pile, which gleamed metallically in the orange light. Sepha didn’t need to touch it to know it was gold.

  The homunculus turned toward her. “One year,” he said. He opened a hole in the air and leapt through it.

  He was gone.

  And she and Three Mills were saved. In a manner of speaking.

  The sunlight was bright white and hot after the orange glow of the alchemists’ cell. Sepha stood, squint-eyed and grimacing, on the courthouse steps.

  Like yesterday, the entire town had turned up to stand in the square. There was a rumbling hum, spiked with staccatos of worried shouts, as Sepha’s townspeople waited to find out what would become of them. The millers were right up front, so hollow-eyed with exhaustion that Sepha suspected they’d been in the square all night.

  Unlike yesterday, Sepha had good reason to believe that whatever the Magistrate said would turn out well for her.

  It had hardly been an hour since Sepha had heard the sliding sound of metal on metal and the groan of Cell Two-Seven’s heavy door on its hinges. The Military Alchemist from yesterday had poked her head into the cell, let out an incredulous “No!” and dashed away, leaving the door wide open.

  Moments later, the Magistrate’s skeptical Court Alchemist appeared. He stared slack-jawed at the mound of gold, then whirled around and left without even glancing at Sepha. In a matter of minutes, Sepha had been ushered up into a plush courtroom antechamber, given a hearty breakfast and a bandage for the scabbed-over cut on her temple, and ordered to wait there for the Magistrate. The clock on the wall claimed the time was quarter-past-twelve, although Sepha could hardly believe it.

  Then the Magistrate herself had appeared, looking for all the world as if she were having tea with a dear friend and not facing a girl she’d all
but sentenced to death the previous day.

  “Well,” said the Magistrate.

  “Well,” Sepha echoed. This time, she did not bow.

  “Thuban is livid,” the Magistrate said. “He seems to think that what you did is impossible, even though you have clearly done it. He even went so far as to accuse you of magic.”

  Sepha flushed and didn’t trust herself enough to say anything. Her newest secret was on the tip of her tongue, and she just knew she’d let it slip if she said a single word.

  “Of course, I told him that was ridiculous,” the Magistrate continued. “By now, I’ve heard several firsthand accounts—more reliable than your father’s, that is—of your alchemical acumen, and so I believe you are reasonably well established to be a real alchemist. As such, it is impossible for you to be a magician.”

  Sepha nodded. It was impossible to be both an alchemist and a magician. She didn’t know why it was impossible; she only knew that it was.

  The Magistrate squinted at Sepha for a moment, as if staring straight into Sepha’s soul and assessing what its value might be, and said, “I don’t know how you did it. But you came through on your end, so I shall have to come through on mine.”

  Out in the town square, the crowd’s buzzing ceased as Father was led onto the platform. He looked triumphant, as if he’d known all along that Sepha could do the impossible. Her body went tense as he approached. But she needn’t have worried. They were onstage, the objects of positive attention, and she was, for now, below Father’s notice. He didn’t even look at her.

  “My friends,” began the Magistrate, and her tinny voice echoed ends-ends-ends throughout the square. The sound brought Sepha back to center. “I have never been more pleased to announce that my suspicions were groundless!” She paused, probably expecting cheers, but the crowd was silent, breathless. “You see standing before you the most gifted alchemist I have ever seen. True to her word, she has produced pure gold from straw! Please join me in congratulating Sepha Filens of Three Mills, our country’s first ever Lady Alchemist!”

  Finally catching on that they were not about to see a gruesome double execution, the crowd erupted with applause. Renni, Sepha’s foreman, burst into tears. The Magistrate turned to Sepha and grasped her hand, giving her a well-practiced smile that didn’t reach her bespectacled eyes.