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Erik led me to a part of the city once populated by clusters of emigrants: Russians, Eastern Europeans, Irish, Portuguese, Greeks, Indians, Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans. The various cultures had staked invisible boundary lines throughout acres of tenement buildings, and the numerous languages, religions, customs, and cuisines rarely intermixed. Erik turned into an alley threading through an area that locals and visitors had called Little Delhi.
The Dead Wars had affected this area, too, but many signs, in both English and Sanskrit, had survived. I recognized fading images of Hindu deities, mandalas, and the other commercial images still adorning the few intact storefronts and doorways. When I said I read a lot, I wasn’t lying. It wasn’t always dime novels, either.
The sun’s rays fell in thin, watery streams between the closely packed buildings, and the gloom heightened an already thick atmosphere of dread and doom. Occasional sets of stairs descended from street level to basement entrances lining both sides of the alley. Erik trooped to the bottom of one of those stairways without looking to see if I would follow, as though he knew that curiosity had me hooked. If that was what he thought, he was entirely right. He stopped before a heavy basement door and rapped on it in a peculiar rhythm.
“Secret code?” I asked, intrigued. Earlier, he’d accused me of reading too many sensational novels, but here he was, acting out his very own mystery caper.
He put a finger to his lips in the universal gesture for quiet. When nothing happened, he rapped on the door again. After another brief pause, something on the other side of the door responded, scraping and clicking. A small square peephole opened at eye level. Two dark eyes set in brown skin peered at us from beneath a pair of white, woolly-worm eyebrows.
“Hello, Cy,” said the man behind the door. He spoke with an accent that sounded like a blend of nationalities. British and Indian, I supposed. “It has been a while since we have seen you.”
“May we come in, Doctor Dwivedi?”
The dark-brown gaze on the other side of the door shifted toward me. “Who have you brought with you?”
“This is Serendipity Blite.” Erik waved at me. “You might’ve heard of her father, Cardinal Blite.”
“Serendipity? What a remarkable name,” Dr. Dwivedi said, but he made no response in regard to my father.
“Mostly, I go by Sera,” I said.
Dr. Dwivedi studied me, and as he did, the longer hairs of his eyebrows twitched like antennae. I returned his bold stare as he debated letting us in. Finally, he chuckled, and a friendly spark glinted in his eyes. Charmed by his expressive eyes and warm laughter, I smiled at him. Until he closed the peephole with a sudden and decisive clunk.
“What happened?” Had I offended him somehow?
But no, the door clinked and clacked as the locks disengaged. Apparently, Dr. Dwivedi had decided to let us in. “Why did he call you Cy?” I whispered as we waited.
Erik motioned to his seeing eye. “Cyclops.”
Before I could respond to that, the door opened to reveal a small, brown man with a shock of white hair and a thick mustache that complemented his furry eyebrows. “Welcome to the College of Kimiyagari, Miss Blite.” He tilted his head in a polite bow. “Tell me if you’ve ever heard of such a place.”
Dr. Dwivedi led us into a dark basement, and his dim lantern illuminated a dank, empty space reeking of mildew and soured water. Nothing in the basement lent a clue about what kind of place or what kind of people Erik had brought me to meet. I shook my head in answer to Dr. Dwivedi’s question. “The majority of my day, so far, has been mostly a mystery. This place is yet another one.”
Dwivedi offered a kindly smile. “Kimiyagari is the study of the making, the elemental creation, at the heart of all things. It is the exploration of the unknown processes that sustain both this world and all the others we haven’t yet discovered. A seemingly magical process of transformation, creation, or combination, but there is nothing magical about it. Magic is only science that is not yet explained or understood.”
“Are you talking about alchemy?” I asked.
Dwivedi frowned and glanced at Erik “This word brings too many closed-minded associations with it. The things we study here require openness to every possibility.”
Afraid of offending him further, I refrained from saying anything and simply smiled and bobbed my head.
Dr. Dwivedi led us up a flight of stairs to a landing and through another door into a cozy lobby full of blazing sconces and chandeliers. More gas lighting. Had the residents of this place traded Moll Grimes for the fuel, or had they found their own source? I put that on my growing list of questions that probably wouldn’t be answered that day.
The wizened alchemist stopped us in front of a strange brass door with no handle, and he fiddled with a lever on a tall switch attached to the floor. Something mechanical clanked and groaned behind the walls. The floor beneath us shook. “An elevator?” I asked, not a little bit awed.
“Yes.” Mr. Dwivedi bobbed his head. “This one was designed by the original inventor, Mr. Otis himself.”
A pair of brass doors slid apart, and Dr. Dwivedi shoved aside a folding gate. He motioned for us to enter the tiny chamber. When the three of us had squeezed in together, Dr. Dwivedi rotated another lever on the interior wall, turning the indicator as far as it would go. Number ten, the top floor, I presumed.
“Where are you taking us?” I asked. “We haven’t even told you why we’ve come.”
“I am taking you to the heart of the college. Whatever it is you have come for, that is where we begin.”