Two: Earth

Bits of roof and wood slats rained onto the cart. The ox bellowed and ran, as much as oxen do, and one of the men screamed. I screamed. I couldn’t tell one from the other as I stared at the burning house, my ears filled with the peppered explosions of bone oil and wood finishes. I had sought to leave Mother’s legacy behind, not burn it to the ground. If I got away from these men, what was I going to do?

Another smaller explosion followed, and the screams of the man abruptly cut off. I sank as low as I could into the cart, curled in on myself, and tried to understand the ache in my chest as shingles and their fat, handmade nails slapped across my body. The cart hit a root, and the left side jumped into the air. My torso slammed into the right wall, my legs still held by the chains. The house…the shop…my extracts…all of Mother’s work…

The home that was my prison. Gone.

I refused to be killed by idiocy. When the cart bumped again and I was flung to the back, close to the inserts of my manacles, I grabbed the wooden frame with one hand. I used the other to untie the first pouch from my sash. Using two fingers on the outside of the bag, I cinched a clump of the red granules to the top and undid the tie, being careful to let none of it touch my skin. Blocking the breeze with my shoulder and trying desperately to not let the rocking of the cart spill the contents, I rubbed the top of the pouch around the edges of both ankle manacles.

There was a cracking noise, hopefully too low for the remaining man to hear as we crashed along the path. I couldn’t see the reaction, but I didn’t need to. Instead, I counted as I tied the pouch back to my sash with shaking hands and, at twenty, brought my ankles sharply together. There was no clang. Instead, the two sides of the manacles collided into a spray of metal filings and grainy red crystals. I’d already turned my head, but metal fragments still beat into my left cheek. I cringed and brought my hand, the one that had been holding the frame, to my face. It came back wet. Well, I was already covered in blood. A bit of my own wasn’t going to make much difference. I scooted to the end of the cart and peered over the edge.

When had we stopped moving?

“Get back, girl.” The man came around from the side, his voice low. He had a dagger in his hand that remained pointed at me as he climbed into the cart. I pushed back. It wasn’t the knife I was afraid of. He said “girl” the way the villagers said “witch,” with a swish at the end, and used enough disdain to curl the word into illegitimacy. When people spoke with their lips sneered up and their eyes narrowed, it didn’t matter what they said. The effect was always the same, and this time, it felt sharper with the screams of the burning man in my memory.

“I’m not a girl.” I’d meant to enunciate each word and sound brazen, but it came out in a squeaky jumble. I had to get away before his words eroded my confidence and I became unable to think. It happened, sometimes, though not in recent memory, mostly because I’d not risked venturing even into Thuja, the village that bordered our land, for the past three years.

The man snorted, the dagger tracking dangerously close to my face. I ripped the third pouch from my belt, pulled open the strings, pinched the bottom of the leather, and with a flick of my wrist, threw the entire contents in his face.

He coughed first, as I leapt over the side of the cart and backed well away, then rubbed his eyes with fisted hands. In the moonlight, I could see the yellow granules clinging to his skin and clothes like pollen, When, furiously blinking, he tried to wipe himself clean, the yellow stuck to his palms and fingers.

“What is it!?” he yelled through gritted teeth. “Your trick won’t work!”

“Alchemy isn’t a trick,” I muttered, though I doubted he heard me. He brought a hand up to his face and scratched the skin around his cheekbones. A yellow film had formed there, and it pulled his skin tightly together. He scratched harder. The strokes of his nails became feverish and caught the edge of the film. It peeled off, taking his skin with it. It was horrific to watch, and yet, yet…a part of me couldn’t help but be proud. Those were my extracts. My alchemy. I might not be good with a sword, but I could definitely defend myself.

“You useless piece of chattel!” His face bled, and still the extract continued to form sheets on his skin. It covered the right side of his face and down his neck. I took another four steps back. The novelty had worn off, and I wanted to run—gods how I wanted run and not watch the obscenity that was taking place. Unfortunately, he could still catch me if he wanted to, and if that pigment got on me as well… It was best for him to think I was too afraid to bolt, and let the pigment run its course well away from my own skin.

As if he had just remembered his legs, the man jumped from the cart and grabbed for me—foolishly, for I was well out of his range—but his hand pulled back, and instead, he raked his nails over his other hand, now coated in yellow. I shuddered and swallowed bile. The man screamed—a horrible, dying hare scream—and I couldn’t force myself to look away as he fell to his knees and cursed me, his partner, and a host of men and women whose names were not familiar. He…he looked like he was melting, although he wasn’t, not really. More like binding to himself as his skin sloughed off… I looked away. He’d forced my hand. He had. He’d tried to kidnap me.

The screams turned to a whimper as he fell to his side. He curled up like a bug, moaning and clawing. His noises became throaty as he gagged on his coated tongue. I took a step back, then another. He didn’t even look my way. I had thought my heart might stop pounding once the man was down, but it still rammed about in my chest, reminding me I’d been dragged from my home, chained to a cart, and all of this had been meant for Mother, my mother, who was missing.

Missing, with witches looking for her. With a grandmaster witch looking for her.

She was a woodcutter. What business could the grandmaster witch have with her that warranted thugs and kidnapping? And when had the witches erected a guildhall? Did the alchemists have one now too? I’d been cut off from the world for half a decade, but guilds were consistent. Unchanging. Maybe some of the rules had slacked, but they did not kidnap people.

My hands still shook, so I shoved them into my pants pockets. My chin still trembled, so I clamped my jaw. The logical thing to do was to go back home and see if I could salvage anything, though I did have jars of bone oil stored throughout the various outbuildings, and everything was still burning. I might end up combusting along with the house.

Still…

No.

I didn’t want to go back there. Hadn’t I been trying to get away from those suffocating buildings for the past five years? Hadn’t I put my life on hold long enough? Who knew what memories, what guilt, was waiting for me there, ready to bind me again to my mother’s house like I’d bound the man with the fungal pigment? This was Mother’s mess, and I wasn’t going to clean it up for her. Not this time.

I was going to the capital.

I was going to the alchemical fair.

I tore myself away from the tree and the wet stench of blood and ran into the forest, my bandolier of fungal pigments slapping against my chest. I ran past redwoods and tan oaks, maples and hemlocks, stumbling toward the Thujan lake, the smell of Mother’s burning house behind me.

I would not be a woodcutter’s unguilded apprentice for the rest of my life.

It was time to be an alchemist.