Six

Inside my makeshift alchemy lab, I tried to focus. In the past three months, I’d made fourteen glass vessels explode, sent seven streams of green liquid shooting up to the ceiling—with a stiff neck from cleaning the ceiling to prove it—and had created four tinctures with scents so noxious I couldn’t use the basement for days.

This wasn’t how things were supposed to go.

In the eighty years since I’d pulled away from practicing alchemy, I’d lost my touch. Big time. Processes that were once second nature to me were now faded memories. When I recalled those years working side by side with my beloved Ambrose, my partner in both life and in alchemy for four decades, I felt as if I was watching an out-of-focus film about someone else’s life. I’d continued working with herbs for food and herbal remedies, so my gardens always thrived, my dried herbs transformed boring soups into vibrant ones, and my tinctures and teas were effective remedies.

As for the more complex transformations I’d rejected for causing more grief than joy, such as unleashing the philosopher’s stone—that’s where I was blocked. I was unable to reach the white phase of a transformation where new energy rises from the ashes.

I reached for the locket I kept close but rarely opened. It was enough to feel the carved gold. I already knew every detail of the two faces inside, one a miniature portrait from 1701, the other a black-and-white photograph from 1904.

It didn’t matter whether I worked in my alchemy lab with the plant transformations that used to come so easily to me, or whether I sat at my dining table surrounded by books that could shed light on the coded instructions in Not Untrue Alchemy. Nothing was coming back to me.

In the past three months, since meeting my unique friend, I hadn’t made nearly as much progress on his strange alchemy book as I’d hoped. Perhaps my biggest failing was that I no longer knew how to find any true alchemists. I had wasted quite a bit of time that winter trying to find someone who could help, only to come up empty. I’d never finished my alchemical training, so there were missing gaps in my knowledge of the history of alchemy.

The thing about alchemists is that they love codes. After reading every word of the book myself and having the Latin translated by an expert, I felt I knew less than I did when I started. The Latin clearly stated that to reinforce the words, the practitioner must look to the pictures.

Retired chemistry professor Ivan Danko was helping me translate the coded messages hidden in the woodcut illustrations of the book. But despite his passion for alchemy as a precursor to modern chemistry, his assistance wasn’t the same as having a true alchemist at my side. Ivan thought of our work as a scholarly exercise to understand history. He didn’t know the true reason for my interest, nor did he know that alchemy was real. It was understandable that he devoted more time to his own historical research than to helping me with Not Untrue Alchemy.

And because I had to use so much strength to create the “quick fix” Tea of Ashes that kept Dorian alive in the short term, I didn’t have the time and energy to fully devote myself to the larger issue of a solution that could cure the gargoyle for good. I knew there was a better solution within reach, though. I pulled Dorian’s book from the shelf. It fell open to the same page it always did. The page with the Latin that had brought Dorian to life. The book had to hold the key.

This image of a basilisk had always disturbed me. The creature with the head of a bird and the body of a serpent was nothing unusual in coded alchemical illustrations, but this basilisk was different. His serpent’s tail was wound counterclockwise and hung down at an unnatural angle. Yet instead of writhing in pain, the creature was void of expression. Too void; he was dead. His stiff body clung to the sole turret that remained in a wasteland of castle ruins. Through the union of a bird and a dragon, the basilisk symbolized the blending of mercury and sulfur.

I was distracted by a sweet scent. I glanced around my lab, wondering where it could be coming from. I looked up to the ceiling, where some of my exploding experiments were still embedded, looking rather like constellations. It was a fitting image, since alchemists look to the planets in the heavens for guidance about when to begin different transformations. I wondered if any flowers had germinated on the ceiling and made a mental note to take care of that. But for now, I turned back to the book.

Birds are highly symbolic to alchemists, because an egg is the perfect vessel, hermetically sealed and representing the whole universe. Different birds symbolized different alchemical processes. For example, a self-sacrificing pelican signified distillation, and a phoenix represented the final phase that produced the philosopher’s stone. In this way, alchemists could instill their teachings in codes that could be passed down through illustrated books that only the initiated would understand. During the height of alchemy in the Middle Ages, coded messages carved into public buildings were the norm.

Other animals were used in alchemical codes as well. Toads symbolized the First Matter (itself a riddle), and bees signaled purification and rebirth. However, the bees in this book didn’t seem to have gotten the message. In the woodcut illustrations in Non Degenera Alchemia, the skies were full of bees swarming in a counterclockwise direction, with rogue bees stinging the eyes of the people and animals on the ground. I shivered.

I turned the page to get away from the disturbing basilisk illustration, only to come to an even more disturbing one. This page showed the Black Dragon, which symbolized death and decay, and was a code for antimony. Antimony was Isaac Newton’s favorite substance, because of its starlike crystal shape, which he thought could explain light and the universe. This Black Dragon was picking his way through another set of ruins. Death surrounded him, yet he appeared to be alive. Fierce flames escaped the dragon’s mouth. I slammed the book shut, wondering if I was subconsciously avoiding working with it because of its psychological effect on me.

Something had to change. I couldn’t keep this up much longer.

The book had shaken my ability to focus, so it would be pointless to either work in the lab or try to translate the obscure symbols in the book’s woodcut illustrations. A knot formed in my stomach as the images from Dorian’s book swirled through my mind. I had to get out of the house. Away from the book.

I nearly ran from the house as I left to take a walk to clear my head. I walked through Lone Fir Cemetery, a peaceful park not far from my house. I couldn’t stop thinking about the strange scent from my bookshelf. I knew I must have imagined it. Books might become moldy and begin to smell stale, but not sweet. And even if my plant transformations had resulted in plant seedlings sprouting in the basement, they wouldn’t give off the aroma I’d smelled. Clove-scented honey. That’s what the sweet scent had been! The scents of spring that surrounded me in the cemetery made it impossible to ignore the memory.

I hurried home and went straight to the bookshelf in the locked basement. I again pulled Not Untrue Alchemy from the shelf. I brought the pages to my nose and breathed deeply. I inhaled the musty, woody aroma that I found in most centuries-old books. Underneath the obvious was the distinct scent of honey. This was where the scent was coming from. Dorian’s book.

I’ve worked with a lot of old books, but I’d never encountered anything like this morphing sweet scent. I wondered if Ivan had.

I hadn’t seen Ivan in several weeks. He’d come down with pneumonia at the tail end of winter, which hit him hard because he suffered from a degenerative illness. He didn’t like to talk about the specifics, so I didn’t know what was wrong with him. After getting back on his feet, he’d been intent on making up for lost time in his own research. I’d brought him a healing garlic tincture when he was sick, but I had respected his wishes and left him in peace to catch up on his own research now that he was well. But this wasn’t the time to be polite. If Dorian’s book was truly changing, this was a breakthrough I couldn’t ignore.

I reached for my phone.

“Dobrý den,” Ivan’s voice said on the other end of the line, and when I identified myself he switched to English. “I’m so glad you called, Zoe,” he said in his Czech accent. “I wanted to thank you for the tincture you brought me when I was sick.”

“I hope it helped.”

“Do you want to know something about being Czech?” he asked. “People often think my accent sounds Transylvanian. They encourage me to dress up as Dracula for Halloween. Especially a young girl who lives next door to me. Her name is Sara. She wears a scarf around her neck each day. I thought it was a fashion statement for a seven-year-old finding herself, but I learned from her mother it was because she was protecting herself from Dracula. One night, when her parents did not realize what she was doing, she watched an old black-and-white Dracula movie, and it made her think she lived next door to a vampire.”

With Ivan’s graying hair and scruffy beard, I couldn’t imagine him as the romantic Hollywood version of Dracula. But there was a stoic strength to Ivan. He didn’t dwell on his health problems, instead undertaking an ambitious research project he wanted to finish before he died. His light blue eyes always shone with intelligence and determination. No, I couldn’t see him as Dracula. But I could see him as Vlad the Impaler.

“Thanks to your garlic tincture,” he continued, “Sara says there’s no way I could be Dracula.”

I laughed. “I hope it helped your infection too.”

“That it did. Děkuju. I’m back to work on my book. Sara has christened herself my research assistant, fetching me the books in my home library I can no longer climb to retrieve.”

“About your library,” I said, “I have a question for you.” I paused and chose my words carefully. “Have you ever encountered an old alchemy book that smelled sweet, compared to the more typical moldy smell?”

He chuckled. “Once, at the Klementinum, a patron was banned for sprinkling a rosewater perfume on a foul-smelling book.”

“What about the scent of honey?”

“Honey?” Ivan hesitated, and when he resumed, there was a change in his voice that caused my skin to prickle. “It’s curious that you mention honey. I think I may have something that would interest you.”

I gripped the phone. “You have a book like that?”

“I remember it because of the unnerving nature of the woodcut illustration.” He paused, and I could picture him shuddering. “I hadn’t thought of it until you mentioned honey, but now I see it clearly in my mind.” As he spoke, the tone of his voice changed from casual to agitated. “Perhaps it’s best to leave it alone.”

“Why?” I asked, the tenor of my own voice reacting to his worry.

“It’s an image I don’t know that I will ever forget, Zoe,” Ivan said hesitantly. “I don’t know if you want to see this.”