I wasn’t aware of leaving my earthly body, or even of the passage of time. All I was aware of for the first few moments of arriving inside the painting was an overwhelming sensation of love.
Love from Perenelle’s sacrifice to resume this dangerous process she didn’t undertake lightly, because she thought it was her best chance at saving my life.
Love from my brother, who Perenelle had painted with so much love. Thomas wasn’t here in this painting with me, but the alchemy that had transformed raw materials into vibrant pigments was from the farmhouse where Thomas and I were living. Everything was connected.
Is that how I also felt love from Max? Or was I right that I sensed him nearby.
“Zoe.” His voice was a whisper. Or was it a shout? It was all the same.
But I was sure of one thing: Max was here in the painting.
And I knew how we’d both gotten here. Perenelle always wore her full skirts with plenty of hidden pockets, which Adam wouldn’t have known to search. She had her alchemical paints with her when he kidnapped her.
“Max?” I called back. The sound rippled, as if through water, both silent and a scream.
I looked out of Thomas’s eye, orienting myself. My sight was simultaneously crisp and blurred. It was difficult to focus. If I hadn’t seen Perenelle’s paintbrush touch the canvas, I wouldn’t have realized I was a reflection in Thomas’s eye.
Where was Max?
Feeling the natural elements of the paints surround me, I directed my intent on seeing them. I closed my eyes and reached for the core alchemical elements: sulfur, mercury, and salt. They were all here.
I opened my eyes and found myself looking into a mirror. No. This wasn’t a mirror. It was an earlier version of myself. The young woman who’d escaped Salem with my little brother, fled to dirty London where I’d made herbal tinctures for the ailing, and been offered an apprenticeship with Nicolas Flamel. It was Zoe in the French countryside I was looking at. The young woman next to Thomas in the painting.
Perenelle had painted this portrait before Thomas died of the plague, and his mortal body had died the following year. The paints brimmed with energy and life. A sulfurous red vermillion in the hearth. A mercurial brightness of the white light shining through the window onto my face. A mix of blue lapis lazuli and yellow ochre that created the green of my dress. Burnt ashes for the black that cast a shadow in my eye, rising like brimstone…
That wasn’t a shadow. It was another person reflected in my eye.
Max.
Of course. Perenelle hadn’t the time to paint full portraits of either of us with the small amount of alchemical paint she had with her. But she’d captured our essences with the quick, masterful brushstrokes that brought us into the world of the portrait.
“I see you,” I called to Max.
“Where are you? I feel your presence, but I can’t…”
“Look to the reflection in Thomas’s eye,” I said as I leaned forward to see him more clearly. I couldn’t move from where Perenelle had placed me.
“I can see Perenelle when I look out of the painting, but here… I’m in a fog. I taste the earthy sweetness of flowers, feel the coolness of metals, and smell ashes. But I can’t see beyond shapes inside here.”
“Don’t worry. You haven’t been practicing your tea alchemy as long, but your senses are doing great.”
“How long have we been here?”
“A few…” I began before trailing off. I had no idea. The concept of time was something I once understood… wasn’t it? Time... “We have something important to do. We need to stop something bad from happening.”
“Poison,” Max said. “We have to stop poison from being released through the paint.”
That was it. How could I have forgotten? The ashes were so thick in here they created a fog. Had the poison already gotten out? Had we been here for years?
“Zoe?” Max called. “Can you hear me?”
“I can.”
“I didn’t mean for things to end like this for us. I was going to—” He broke off, but quickly regained his composure. “I always thought we had time. But I was a fool to think we could get a happy ending.”
“Don’t say that.”
“There was so much more in life I wanted to do with you.” Max’s words were filled with both hope and despair.
“We’re getting out of here,” I said, but before I reached the end of my sentence, I knew I was wrong.
“You don’t believe it yourself.”
I didn’t know how to answer. I was confined to a tiny reflection, but I was surrounded by love. Had Max spoken seconds ago, or years ago? How could I possibly know?
Feeling the heavy weight of moving my head, I looked out of the painting. Perenelle was still there. And the door was opening. Adam was walking inside. He hadn’t aged, so not much time could have passed.
I turned back to Max. “Perenelle will get us out once it’s safe.”
“I don’t think that’s going to happen. Look.”
I pulled my gaze from the small form of Max’s reflection back to the outside world. Adam’s movements showed me he was screaming, even though his voice sounded like a whisper through the veil of the painting.
He held a glass test tube filled with a granulated substance. I couldn’t tell what it was, but I knew in every fiber of my paint-created body that it was poison. Adam tossed it into Perenelle’s eyes.
She screamed, and this wail I could hear. The howl pierced the two worlds and nearly shattered my eardrums and broke my heart.
Adam had blinded the woman whose life was color and who was the one person who knew Max and I were inside the painting.