“Faster!” bellowed the alchemist, without bothering to turn around this time. “What’s wrong with you? Have you forgotten how to walk? Useless!”
The alchemist’s boots rang out sharply on the pavement, so that more than one child—sleeping in the darkened rooms above the street—had their dreams punctuated by the sound of ice picks, or knives clashing with other knives, or hammers coming down on glass.
The alchemist could hardly contain his excitement. If it had been up to him, he would have sprouted a pair of wings and flown to the Lady Premiere. But that was impractical, of course. Falcons’ talons were almost impossible to find nowadays, and the cheaper pigeons’ talons were almost useless for growing wings: The one time he had made a potion from them, his client had reported no more than a pair of long, limp feathers that sprouted halfheartedly from his shoulder blades.
So they walked. Or rather, the alchemist walked. The boy seemed to drag, inch, ooze along like a gigantic slug. For the eighty millionth time, the alchemist wished that when he had gone to the orphanage to select an apprentice, he had selected someone—anyone!—else. Even the girl who was missing both arms would have been preferable.
“Faster!” he screeched again.
It was only the second time the alchemist had left his little ramshackle apartment in more than a decade. The first time he had been forced to go select a new apprentice from the orphanage, after the last one had had an unfortunate accident with a transfiguration potion and had been turned into a mouse—just as the alchemist’s scrawny, always hungry tabby cat had come swishing in through the cat door. That apprentice had been hopeless too: really, an absolute pig. Even his death had been messy—little mouse parts scattered everywhere. The alchemist shuddered to think about it.
In general, the alchemist saw no reason to venture beyond the comfortable limits of his home and studio. Work was everything to him, and he had his apprentice to run the errands necessary for the job. The alchemist was a scientist, not a foot messenger, always darting to and fro. He preferred to spend his time on his trials and experiments, tinkering with the old recipes, trying out new ones—all in search of ever greater, deeper, bigger magic.
Besides, the alchemist despised people. He tried to avoid interacting with them whenever he could. They did not respect him. They did not respect his science. They referred to him as a hack or, even worse, as a magician.
Even thinking the word made the alchemist choke a little reflexively. A magician! Ha. Clowns—that’s what they were. Illusionists, smoke and mirrors, card tricks and birthday parties.
The alchemist was the real deal. He worked in potions and transfigurations. He turned frogs into goats and goats into mugs of tea. He made people grow wings or third legs. Recently he had mastered a tincture that would make a person disappear entirely.
His was an ancient art, one that had been passed from generation to generation, in whispered secrets and dusty volumes and jotted notes, now nearly faded to illegibility, scrawled on sheets of vellum.
Long ago, when he had still gone out into the world more frequently, he had shivered and shriveled inside whenever he heard the word magician shouted at him from the open windows, whenever he looked up and saw children pointing to him with expressions of delight, calling, “Do a card trick! Do the one with the ace that disappears!” As though he was no better than a trained performing monkey.
Well. All that would soon change.
The alchemist knew that the potion he had mixed for the Lady Premiere was something special. It was undoubtedly his most powerful magic yet. He had been perfecting that particular brand of magic for years, ever since he had come across the promise of its results, written in the margin of an ancient volume of spells and potions.
The little poem was only three lines long, but the words seemed to carry the power of their promise. They pulsed with energy. The alchemist remembered how the poem had even appeared to glow slightly on the page.
The dead will rise
From glade to glen
And ancient will be young again.
Below these lines an additional note had been written:
The Most Powerful Magic in the World (use sparingly).
The meaning was clear enough. The magic could restore youth to the old and bring the dead back to life: ancient, dangerous, powerful magic.
It had been a complicated and difficult magic to make and control. Just the ingredients required had, at first, been enough to discourage him. A perfect snowflake! The laughter of a child! A summer afternoon! The alchemist had never seen a spell quite like it.