thirty-two

In the morning, I found five text messages from Brixton on my phone. I felt bad that I hadn’t thought to check the previous night. I texted him back that everything was fine, but we didn’t know who had framed Blue. I asked him for Ivan’s email address. It was a school day, so hopefully he’d be awake and heading to school. His last text message had come in at two o’clock in the morning, so I wasn’t sure.

Two minutes later, Brixton texted me Ivan’s email address—along with a passive-aggressive text thanking me for keeping him in the loop the previous night.

———

After a quick oatmeal breakfast to warm up, I met Ivan in Washington Park. He received my email on his phone and told me where he was, inviting me to join him. He said I could find him at the park’s International Rose Test Garden. I wasn’t sure why he would be at a rose garden in the dead of winter. Unlike the lush cemetery grounds I’d walked through earlier that week, the barren landscape of a winter rose garden gave me a cold, foreboding feeling. Dark clouds hung low in the sky, but the rain held off for the moment.

Ivan stood next to the brittle branches of a row of roses, their thorns more prominent for the absence of leaves and flowers. Though he wore a fedora, thick scarf, and a coat with the collar turned up, he was easy to spot. He was the only person there.

“You wonder why I come here in winter?” he asked.

“You appreciate the solitude?”

“It reminds me,” he said, “that death is natural. My body is failing me, but I do not wish to feel sorry for myself. Sometimes,” he paused and ran his fingers over the gnarled remnants of a rose bush, “I need a reminder.”

“Would you like to talk somewhere inside, where it’s warmer?” The chill in the air penetrated my coat. I could take it, but it didn’t seem to be a good place for someone with failing health.

“The air is good for me.” Ivan rubbed his hands together and shook out his shoulders. “Shall we walk?”

We walked side by side through the desolate rows of branches that had once been beautiful roses. I hadn’t yet figured out what I should say to Ivan. I had to strike the right balance between getting the help I needed from Ivan and not revealing why I needed it, or why there was such urgency.

“I’ve been thinking about the woodcut illustrations you showed me,” Ivan said as we entered the Shakespeare Garden. “They are unlike anything I have come across in my research.”

“It’s an interesting puzzle, isn’t it? I was hoping you could help me figure out what the book is about.”

“I miss an academic challenge, but would it not make the most sense to wait until the police have recovered the book itself?”

“I’m anxious to get started,” I said. “It’s the one mystery around me that I feel like I have some control over.”

“This,” Ivan said, “I can understand. Helplessness can lead to despair. Did you bring the images?”

I removed the printouts from my inner jacket pocket. Ivan took them from me. He stopped walking and examined them in silence. I couldn’t tell if the frustration evident on his face was because of the tremor in his hands or what he saw in the images.

“What do you know of the history of the book?” he asked.

“I only found it recently, so when it was stolen I hadn’t yet discovered its origins.”

“And you found it—”

“In Saint-Gervais,” I said, sticking to the truth as much as possible. That was the French town where Jean Eugène Robert-Houdin had been living when he brought Dorian to life. “I wouldn’t be able to find the seller again. I didn’t realize at the time what a find it was.”

“That is unfortunate. Also unfortunate that someone stole it by accident, not realizing what they had.”

I nodded but didn’t speak for a few moments. Had it really been an accident? A crime of opportunity, that happened to result in the most precious item in my new house being stolen? That was too big a coincidence, wasn’t it? Whoever took it had to know of its worth. The question was whether the thief took it for its monetary value—or if they wanted it to bring creatures like Dorian to life.

“Non Degenera Alchemia.” I pointed at the photograph of the title page. “Strangely convoluted, don’t you think? Even for an alchemist.”

Ivan laughed. “Not Ignoble Alchemy. Yes, very unnecessary. But alchemists have never been known for their simplicity. There are hundreds of words used to describe prima materia. Hundreds! The sun, the moon, water of gold, shadow of the sun, the garden, lord of the stones—the list goes on and on. No, it’s not the obfuscation that I find fascinating about this book. What’s most interesting here is that the book does not list an author.”

The absence of an author wasn’t common, but wasn’t itself enough to signal that something was especially strange about the book. But along with the bizarre illustrations, I wondered why the author hadn’t at least used a pseudonym.

However, that wasn’t the most interesting thing Ivan had said. He translated the book’s title as Not Ignoble Alchemy, whereas I’d translated degenera into untrue. That was an approximation, as any translation is. And my ecclesiastical Latin wasn’t the best. Degenera could also mean something closer to degenerate or ignoble. But even if I’d done a sloppy translation of the title, that didn’t help.

“I wish it was real,” Ivan said. He spoke so softly that the wind nearly carried away his words before I heard them.

“I examined the book. I’ve been working with antiques for long enough that I know it’s real. Hundreds of years old.” Based on the style of Latin, and my observations of the book itself, it wasn’t created before the Middle Ages, but dating the book could help me uncover its secrets—if I got it back.

“You misunderstand me.” He pulled his scarf more tightly around him as the wind picked up, careful not to lose hold of the photographs in his hand. “I meant that I wished the theories expressed by the alchemists of history were true accounts of what could be accomplished with alchemy. That they could stop death.”

Unlike the rose bushes that surrounded us, Ivan wouldn’t return to life with the spring. “Even if it were true,” I said, feeling my locket through the fabric of my sweater, “would you really want to live forever? It sounds lonely. So very lonely.”

“That’s not a sentiment I’d expect from someone your age. But you’re right. Forever? No, I don’t wish that. Right now, I would settle for living to my sixtieth birthday. Blue’s teas have been part of the changes I’ve made to spend my last years as happily as possible. A few more years of good health is all I ask. That would be enough time for me to complete the book I’ve been working on.”

“Related to alchemy?”

“About the intersecting history of alchemy and chemistry that scholars have missed. Isaac Newton is the focus of many books on the subject, and so are other famous alchemists, but many others have been forgotten. I suppose you could say I’m writing about the unsung heroes of science. Max and I have talked about it at length at Blue Sky Teas.”

“That’s why he was worried you might have done something drastic to get your hands on my alchemy books.”

“He’s seen me on some of my bad days, desperate to complete the book but thinking I would not have time … Come, let’s continue our walk and mull over the meaning of these strange illustrations. You didn’t come here to hear the problems of an old man.”

“Maybe,” I said, “but I don’t see any old men around here.”

“Ha! I knew I liked you from the moment I saw how you held your own with Olivia. She’s not as bad as she seems at first—” He broke off. “Aha! I know what it is that was bothering me about these illustrations. I wonder if the person who carved these woodcuts did not realize the final image would be flipped once printed.”

“You think they’re accidentally backwards?” What had that made me think of? I took the stack of photographs from his hand and flipped through them. “That’s not the only reason these illustrations are creepy.”

“No,” Ivan agreed, “but that is the thing that stands out. One cannot tackle all research problems simultaneously. You start with the ones that are easiest to identify, and then peel back the layers—”

“Ivan! I don’t think this was an accident.”

“They are clearly backward—”

“Because it’s backward alchemy.” The fear I had been keeping at bay returned head-on. I looked up at the dark sky that was threatening to burst. “The title, as you translated it, is Not Ignoble Alchemy. I had translated it as Not Untrue Alchemy. Those two things aren’t different on their face, but there’s a subtle difference. Something ignoble exists, but dishonorably. I think we’re looking at alchemy’s ‘death rotation’—that’s why it’s not only the counterclockwise motions that make the images look off. The distorted animals in these illustrations are dead.”

“To symbolize the death rotation of backward alchemy. Very clever.”

“But working backwards isn’t possible,” I said.

“I’ve read about some alchemists who tried it because it was quicker, but none of them claimed to have been successful, unlike the many alchemists who claimed to have succeeded at proper alchemy. Perhaps that explains the absence of an author identifying himself.”

I couldn’t tell Ivan what I had meant by my words. It was, of course, physically possible to follow the steps of alchemy backwards. But it wasn’t right. It wouldn’t lead to transformation and creation. Only death.

Earth, air, fire, and water. Calcination, dissolution, separation, conjunction, fermentation, distillation, coagulation. They all have a phase in alchemy, but the death rotation turns the process on its head. No good could come of it. Everything it created would eventually be undone.

“Sacrificing one element for another to complete a transformation,” I said, feeling numb from the realization more than the cold. “Rather than striving for perfection, those alchemists were circumventing it. That would explain why any such transformations would deteriorate over time …” The full impact of what this would mean for Dorian was sinking in. If I was right, I could work with the book—but to do so, I needed that book.

“This is an interesting puzzle you’ve brought me,” Ivan said. “It is delightful to speak with someone who feels so passionately about a theoretical exercise. I hope the book is returned to you soon so we can uncover more of its secrets. Do you realize the implications this book could have, if we’re right?”

I realized, then, that this was much bigger than Dorian and myself. Not in the way Ivan thought. This wasn’t about a theoretical history. There were real alchemists out there who had performed alchemy’s death rotation. I had proof. It wasn’t only Dorian this was affecting. Gold itself was crumbling.

I hadn’t connected Dorian’s deterioration with the thefts of gold statues from European museums, but now that I knew what I was dealing with, it was obvious. The journalists were wrong. There were no brazen thieves who broke into high security museums and left gold dust in their wake to taunt the authorities. There weren’t any thieves at all. The gold statues were crumbling on their own. Turning to dust. The life force of the gold statues was fading—just as Dorian’s was.