Enter The Alchemist

Following the alchemist inside, Gwynn is at once hit with the overwhelming smell of metal and burning wood, with hints of salt and teakwood.

The way from the door to the first of many worktables is carpeted with sawdust and metal shavings, and hemmed by more papers and towers of books.

The adjacent room is large, like a conservatory, but so filled with mechanisms and chemicals that it appears more confined.

It is an amalgam of library and laboratory. Scrolls and books mingle on tables and desks with brass instruments, surrounded by steam and cogs. An Aelophile is perched on a large volume open to a page of scientific jargon and Latin, hissing with steam, curved pipes and rotating protrusions glinting in the lantern light.

Within wardian cases, bronze gears spin like constellations, polished and brilliant.

Goggles with multiple lenses and large leather gloves hang on table edges or hooks on the wall, frames flashing with residual electricity.

Most of the larger instruments are powered by the enormous steam engine in the corner, huffing like a small metal dragon, melting nearby beeswax candles.

Disheveled piles of papers inscribed with alchemical symbols teeter on table edges, wayward scraps drifting down and crumpling underfoot. Those that remain on the table fall victim to careless spills, stained and burned to the point where they are almost unrecognizable, at which point their owner collects them in a large leather bound volume full to near bursting and in considerably better condition.

The alchemist bustles past them to one of the crowded tables and bends over a pile of open books. She goes back and forth between volumes, discarding some for others, and scribbling notes on blank pieces of paper before returning to the first tomb.

“I’m sorry,” she murmurs, without glancing up. “You’ve caught me in the middle of an experiment. But I would be happy to discuss your employer’s alchemical pursuits in a minute.”

Gwynn glances uncertainly at Isabel, who seems absorbed by the bright colours in a decanter on a nearby table, and the frosted jars full of shimmering metal shavings next to it. She turns her attention to Gwynn, distressed by his expression.

“What is the matter?” she asks.

“What is alchemy?” Gwynn whispers.

“It is the science of turning base metals into gold,” she whispers to Gwynn, when the alchemist has vanished into the adjacent room, muttering, with her nose in a book.

Gwynn glances curiously at the pile of dark grey curls of metal on the table. Isabel smiles and stands with one hand behind her back, the other reaching for the metal.

“Watch,” she says, and casts the metal into the spark bright tip of a gas flame. The metal flares star white, burning Gwynn’s eyes, for several moments, before falling away into nothingness.

“Magnesium,” Isabel supplies, when Gwynn looks at her quizzically.

The alchemist reappears with a new book and her gloves discarded. The hand she extends is warm to shake, as though she is still wearing the gloves. Isabel takes her hand second, and politely inquires after her name.

“Oh, I’m sorry. We weren’t properly introduced, were we?” the alchemist says, drawing her hand back. “My name is Katerina, but I despise it and no one has ever used it. For all purposes, call me Rina.”

Art by Jullie Dillon

Text by Lucie MacAulay