Alexandra Seidel

I

Blood, all day blood. This is how I learned to write. This is how the story begins, the first words. She told me to use the carving knife on my own skin, reach through and feel what lies beneath.

I love you, sister, and you will do this for me, she said.

Before the study of secret runes and sacred ratios, I wanted to be a musician. I might have bled myself on the strings to birth the song, but my sister would hear nothing of it.

You will be an alchemist with me, she said, and so it was.

 

II

The girls were born on the solstice—one into the longest night, and one just after. For three years they grew together, played together, became mirrors to one another.

Every year after, their mother cried.

 

III

We used to love the stories of chimaerae, me and Etia. All those wild tales of fire. When she made me work so hard through the first few months of our apprenticeship, I thought I might grow to hate her or become bitter. But at night, when she had bandaged the skin where my knife had broken it, she would tell me chimaerae tales. I always fell asleep cradled in my older sister's arms.

It took me less blood than I had feared to learn the scripting. It was a year to master it, really much less than was average, and I saw pride in Etia's eyes when the master told us this.

What made her reach for the stories again even though my skin was healing, I do not know.

Have you ever thought about what it would be like, having two heads like a chimaera does?

I stopped brushing out my hair. What it would be like to breathe fire? I said.

No, no, not that, Etia said, weaving my hair into a thick braid for the night. Having two heads. What would that be like, what sorts of thoughts would you think with two heads?

She was done with the braid, fixed her work with a ribbon of crimson. Then she ran her hands along my shoulders and arms. I flinched as my skin was still raw and deeply scarred from the scripting, and she saw it at once.

Etia looked at me through the mirror. You are hurting still, she said.

It's nothing, it will heal.

Perhaps I should have never suggested that you learn it on your own skin.

Didn't you hear? It takes everyone else longer. I think it's because they just do it on paper.

Etia smiled at me, but her smile turned sour. I would never want you to hurt. I have an idea.

And with her idea, it all began, so very slowly at first.

“You want to buy a live bullsnake?” the trader at the market asked me. Her eyes were wide, but the idea had taken seed in my head. I would not be swayed.

“Master, will you teach me how to make strengthened gold thread today?” I asked as the idea budded, ready to bloom.

The night it flowered fully was a solstice night. The entire city was out celebrating—no one would ever know what we did in the abandoned workshop.

You will only ever be able to wear long sleeved robes after this, my sister said.

I don't care about that, I replied and looked at the bullsnake in her cage, tasting the air with her tongue; perhaps she knew better what was coming than I did.

Oh, but you are afraid to kill the snake? my sister said, a candle flame twinkling in her right eye.

Etia, I know we both wanted this but...

Etia's hands are stronger than my own. I have not ever mastered the art of breaking free of her grip. Yes, we both do. Have you forgotten that we promised we would never leave each other alone?

And then she reached for a knife, my carving knife, and went to the bullsnake's cage. She cut the snake's head clean off, and we worked all through the night to get the carving done, get the skin to fit just right.

When I woke the next morning, I could feel every movement in our master's house through my new skin.

 

IV

When her daughter left to become an alchemist, the mother did not understand. Had her youngest child not always loved the harp, played songs as if the ghosts of muses lived inside her hands?

But the girl said she wanted nothing more to do with string, and ever since that moment, her harp would not speak another sound.

 

V

It was all my fault. I was clumsy and spilled acid over my sleeve. Ordinarily, I wouldn't have given it any thought at all, but the master was there.

“Oh dear, clean it with water, quick,” our master said and was pouring water from a jar on my arm before I could so much as protest. With a deft gesture, he pulled my sleeve up. “Oh, what have you done!” he said.

He became rather much louder than usual, and his tirade ended in dismissal, of course. Any alchemist knows how valuable a reputation is, and not one among the lot would ever tolerate an apprentice that might ruin theirs.

You must not cry, my sister said, carrying one of only two bags with our entire belongings in them. We can still get you what you are missing.

I believed her. There was not a time in my life that I did not believe my sister.

“You have a caramel colored goat?” My sister had suggested it, said it would go best with the other skins. The farmer looked at me like I was slow, but I had the coin to make her doubts disappear.

The lioness was more difficult, but Etia knew to find things and people in the lower parts of the city in a way that I could only ever dream of.

I think she bought the feline from a sailor, but I cannot be sure. I never saw a face, could not even say if it was a man or a woman taking our money. In the cage, the animal was sedated, and it would not wake again, not really.

This place is too small for us, Etia said, her arm including all of the small shed we called home in a swiping gesture. And you will soon be able to take bigger.

No one will bother us here, you said that was all important.

So I did. Oh, little sister, the skin on your face, it will hurt so much even after the pain is dampened. Let me pull it off for you, she said.

Her hands moved quick, the quickest hands to ever learn the scripting. It was the familiar feeling of my carving knife, just like back when I learned to write. I was reminded of how she would always braid my hair, each and every night before we climbed into bed together.

The face of the lioness had to be adjusted to my bones, but my flesh had to be adjusted to the beast's flesh. To finish all of it, get all of it just right, was work of three days. The drugs lost some of their effect by the second day, but by then, Etia had begun work on my vocal chords, and if I cried, if I screamed, only she knew of it.

On my tongue she scripted the words for fire. You must be careful when you speak now, she said with a smile. Her smile looked different than I remembered from before, but that could just be because my eyes were different now, cat eyes, slit in the middle to eat light like sugared candies.

The goat will be a perfect fit, Etia said on the evening of the third day. I was sitting in a corner, lying down would have hurt too much.

When my sister said it though, I had to look up, and my new eyes saw the goat. I did not know how to handle the skin of a lioness, and so I felt the sting of her instincts through my entire body, felt the vibrations echo in my bullsnake skin.

I tried to speak, but my voice was changed, and all the words I had were fire, hot and bright.

Nothing was set aflame, but Etia's eyes caught the brightness. I took the knife from her hand, and with one quick stroke, the goat's head was ready for the scripting.

Then we shall finish this tonight, my sister said, and the lioness inside me nodded.

After the lioness, the goat's heat was a simple matter. I used my hands to draw the proper words over my flesh, over the bullsnake skin that was already my own, and over the lioness skin, so that all three would be well bound.

I pulled the golden thread through my skin, tight as love.

On the morning of the fourth day, I walked to the mirror.

There, Etia said, but for the first time since forever, I could not see my sister's face.

Where are you? I wanted to ask, but I had no more human voice, my voice was that of a chimaera now, and I had no idea how to use it. The only sound I made was a groan, and a soft bleating from my other head.

But I am here, I heard Etia, her voice so faint, so very faint.

I looked deep into the mirror. I saw pieces of her, the fire in her eyes was the fire in my lioness eyes, the way she moved, was the movement in my bullsnakeskin, and the horns of my goat head reminded me of the tilt of her neck...looked like a broken neck of a three year old child...

This is the last thing I will ever write. I will send you this notebook, Mother. See in it all me and Etia have accomplished! We are together now, she and I, in this body that was forged in pain. I know what it is to be a creature of two heads, and so I can carry these two, just like you carried us inside you. Mother, can you stop crying now?

 

 

A is for Alchemy