A far wilder magic, p.28
A Far Wilder Magic, page 28
She remembers how she dragged Evelyn to her feet, how she went limp against her like an overtired child clinging to their mother. “One moment, I was petrified. And then, suddenly, I didn’t feel afraid anymore. I didn’t feel anything anymore. Nothing felt real—not even me. I just did what I had to do. I got her out of the lab and into the bath. All she said, over and over again, was ‘I’m sorry.’”
After that, Margaret went to the kitchen and filled a bucket with water. She climbed the rickety stairs and didn’t look for any monsters in the dark. She went into the lab, still hazy with smoke, and emptied the whole bucket onto the floorboards. It sloshed over her bare feet and soaked into her nightgown when she knelt. She scrubbed and scrubbed until her hands and knees were raw and bleeding, until there wasn’t a single trace of the alchemic reaction left.
“What did you do with…?” Wes asks.
“I buried it in the woods.”
His face pales.
“Do you understand now?” Margaret can’t be sure if she sounds convincing or desperate. “Once, I believed all the lies. That alchemy is for the greater good. That it’s the path to redemption or perfection or truth. But it isn’t. It paves the road to hell. I saw it that night. It almost killed her.”
“Margaret, what she did…” He hesitates. “I don’t know what exactly she did, but whatever it was, it wasn’t alchemy that possessed her to do it. It only enabled her. It was her choice to tamper with that transmutation, and if she knew it was that dangerous, she never should have exposed you to it or left you to deal with the aftermath.”
But it wasn’t her choice. Because if it was, if the woman her mother became crawled out from some rotten place within her, then Margaret doesn’t know what to do. She doesn’t know how to suck that poison out. Alchemy corrupted Evelyn. It had to have. Otherwise, what kind of person did that make her? What kind of mother?
She can’t watch it happen again. Not to someone like Wes. “I need air.”
Wes makes a strangled noise as she darts from the lab. She’s drenched with cold sweat and her head swims and her rib cage pushes against her lungs like a corset. Even though the sun is beginning to set and the clouds are beginning to darken, she can’t stay in this house for another minute. It will kill her; she knows it.
She grabs the gun mounted on her bedroom wall, pulls on her coat, and shoves open the front door. Margaret didn’t call for him, but Trouble bounds to her side, his tail anxiously wagging. The sun languishes low on the horizon, oozing red light like a sliver of bloody meat. The wind hisses through the trees, calling her.
“Wait!” Wes shouts from the porch.
He’s struggling with his shoes, only one sleeve of his trench coat on. The wind whips his hair against his face, then rips away his voice. She can only faintly hear him shout her name over the rattle of the dry, red leaves.
“Let’s go,” she whispers to Trouble.
He whines but follows close behind as the shadows in the tree line lengthen toward her and swallow her whole.
* * *
Margaret runs until she can’t think of anything but the exhaustion in her limbs, until her entire body is buzzing with cold and adrenaline, until it feels like every breath shreds into her lungs like nettle. All that matters is that she is far, far away from that house and all the memories she wishes she could scrub away like a chalk circle on the floorboards.
When her legs threaten to give out, she collapses onto a rock. Trouble, panting hard, settles down beside her. Loyal and steadfast as ever, he’s the only one who hasn’t left her and the only one who won’t. He lays his head in her lap and sighs out a warm, relieved breath against her hands. He didn’t deserve to run so hard for her sake.
Margaret bends over and places a kiss on the top of his head. “I’m sorry. Are you okay?”
The trees stand sentinel around them, shivering in the wind. The light that filters through the canopy is thick and bloodred. On some level, she knows she made a mistake coming out here alone. She’s seen what kind of damage the hala can inflict. But these woods were once her home—her sanctuary. While they haven’t been hers for weeks, the manor feels as dangerous as any beast right now. She’s glad of the miles she has put between them.
Margaret lifts her hair from the back of her neck and leans back until the cold of the stone beneath her seeps into her skin. She lets her hair fall and pool in the grass. Overhead, the brightest stars wink to life in the violet sky, each one shining cold and ruthless silver. Her eyes flutter closed.
And then the telltale smell of sulfur begins to rise around her.
Margaret, Margaret, Margaret.
She lurches upright.
The temperature plummets. When she shudders out a breath, it mists in front of her face and the world behind it shimmers like a mirage. With the smell of alchemy thickening around her and her worst memories picked raw, she’s so addled she can hardly tell what’s in her head or not.
Coming, coming, coming.
A growl rumbles in Trouble’s throat, and his hackles rise. The fallen leaves hiss and rattle.
Here. The sound echoes all around her. Here, here, here.
A branch snaps like bone. Her vision shivers again. Somewhere in the thicket, a set of blank, marble-round eyes gleam in the darkness.
With only two days until the Cold Moon, its magic has never felt so potent—or so malevolent. It hums over her skin like electricity.
Hide, she thinks. She has to hide.
She flips the safety catch on her rifle and chokes up on Trouble’s collar. A few meters off, there’s a dip in the earth that leads down to a creek bed dammed with leaves. It’s the only shelter they have out here, unless she wants to wedge herself into the flame-hollowed trunk of a redwood. If it finds her there, she’ll have nowhere to run.
“Trouble, come,” she whispers.
She slides down the embankment, wincing at the twist of her ankle. When she hits the bottom, cold earth seeps into her back, and her boots sink into the muddy creek. Black water burbles slowly around the soles like blood from a wound. Over the sound of its murmuring, all she can hear is the hammering of her heart and Trouble’s labored breathing beside her. Margaret gently closes her hand around his muzzle. She tips her head back, if only to avoid his offended look.
Finally, there’s complete silence.
She sighs shakily in relief—just as a creeping swath of decay curls around the embankment like long fingers. It dissolves the earth like fire licking across kindling, like rot fissuring an overripe fruit. Shining liquid puddles in the furrows until it dribbles down, down, and patters onto the top of her head.
Here.
Margaret bites down on her tongue to stifle a whimper. Another branch cracks in the clearing. Caput mortuum showers her like ash from a wildfire sky.
Please leave, she thinks. Please, please, please.
She dares to look up. It is staring directly at her. Margaret scrabbles backward, strangling a cry of fear. The hala stands perfectly still, but the trees seem to arch away from it, groaning and crackling like stiff joints. Its gaze, solid white and miles-deep, sucks her in until her thoughts sharpen into a horrible, metallic shrill.
Its black lips part to reveal a crooked grin of teeth. Trouble growls.
“Trouble, stay!”
She fumbles with her gun, but it may as well be a twig in her hands. What good will an unalchemized bullet do? It’s not even the full moon. But if she does nothing, she will die, and where will that leave Wes? Swearing, she raises the scope of her rifle to her eye. Margaret fires, and the bullet shears through the fox’s shoulder, just shy of a vital point. It doesn’t scream or bleed, but a shudder wracks its body as if its bones are realigning themselves.
She staggers back a step and trips over a root. She strikes the ground, spattering herself with cold creek water. Before she can catch her breath, Trouble tears up the embankment, baying and snarling.
The hala doesn’t seem to move at all. It is there, and then it is not. She only sees it again when its teeth sink into Trouble’s shoulder. He yelps, thrashing as he goes down.
“Trouble!”
Her hands tremble, but she keeps the crosshairs trained on the hala. She doesn’t think, just acts. She pulls the trigger again and again and again, until she empties the magazine.
By the time the smoke clears, the hala is gone. A few wisps of white fur float on the breeze. Over the ringing in her ears and the distant roll of the thunder, she isn’t sure if the whimpering is hers or Trouble’s.
Trouble.
He lies motionless, his copper fur like a smear of blood in the grass. She throws down her gun.
“No, no, no.”
Margaret repeats it like a prayer as she crawls to him. God has never heard her before, no matter how much she begged. After what her mother failed to do in her lab, after everything she’s endured in his name, she’s not sure he’s even out there or if he cares about them at all. If the Katharists are right, they are imperfect humans, reflections of an imperfect god. What interest could they hold to him? But if he has any kindness, any scrap of it, he’ll let her keep Trouble. Just this one thing—the only thing that’s truly hers.
Margaret lays her head on him and lets out a strangled sob as she feels his belly rise tremulously against her ear. Silver liquid and blood dribble from the ragged puncture wounds on his shoulder, but he is alive. Thank God, he’s alive. The wound is deep enough that she’ll need to give him stitches, but it’s nothing she can’t handle herself.
“Trouble,” she whispers. “Are you alright?”
His tail gives a weak, answering thump against the earth. For the first time in what feels like years, she weeps. In guilt and fear and relief. The hala let him go.
Rain begins to fall, shearing through the bare branches overhead. In the distance, she hears something barreling through the woods. It’s too clumsy to be the hala circling back. It sounds like an entire herd of deer trampling through the underbrush.
“Margaret!”
Wes.
“Margaret?”
She buries her nose in Trouble’s scruff. Now that she’s scraped raw, now that she’s bared her soul to him, nothing remains but a feeble, stubborn anger. Anger that he dredged up her mother’s work. Anger that she was too much of a coward to trust him or face his compassion. Anger at herself because she can’t hold her feelings back anymore. With everything crumbling around her, how can she maintain her walls? She doesn’t want them anymore.
She doesn’t want to be alone.
“I’m here,” she calls softly. “I’m here.”
25
As Wes sprints toward the sound of Margaret’s voice, all he can envision is that thing and its horrible eyes. Its teeth sinking into her neck. Her golden hair drenched in a spreading pool of blood. Fear and rage both sting the backs of his eyes. If anything happened to her …
No, he can’t lose someone again.
Panting, he tears through the woods until he finds her kneeling in a clearing with her arms around Trouble and her rifle abandoned in the creek bed. He grabs it, then lays it down beside her.
“Margaret.” He’s never heard his own voice like this, ragged and desperate. “Thank God you’re alright. I was so—”
When she turns to look at him, there’s lightning crackling in her eyes. It takes him aback. “What are you doing out here? It’s dangerous.”
“Clearly!” Over the past three weeks, Wes has watched her withdraw time and time again. He’s so sick of letting her push him away. He’s so tired of watching her drown. “I heard you blasting something full of bullets. What the hell happened? And why did you run from me?”
Thunder rumbles in the distance. Margaret doesn’t answer him.
As he kneels beside her, shuddering at the mud squelching beneath him, he sees that her hands are covered in a pale liquid that sparkles like crushed diamonds. Coincidentia oppositorum. It oozes from a wound at Trouble’s shoulder. His stomach bottoms out. “Is he going to be alright?”
“Yes.” She strokes Trouble’s ears restlessly. “The hala bit him.”
It’s made an alchemical reaction of her dog is what it’s done, and they’re lucky it didn’t do worse. “We need to get you both home. I can make something to help him with the pain.”
Margaret doesn’t move, even as the rain falls harder. She looks so frail like this, the rainwater glistening on her skin and plastering her coat to her body. He wants to reach for her, to shake her loose of whatever spell has taken hold of her. He wants to scoop her up and carry her back, if only to feel her heart beating against his. But there’s a whole ocean between them he cannot cross.
“Margaret,” he says quietly. “We’ve already established that I’m thick, so you’re going to need to explain this to me. You’re angry with me. I want to do better, but I can’t if you won’t talk to me. So please, talk to me. Please don’t shut me out again.”
“You looked just like her. These past few days, you’ve acted just like her. You care about abstract things, your ideals and your ambitions. But do you see the people right in front of you?”
It stings, admittedly, because it sounds like a question Mad would ask him. That means it’s probably got a core of truth to it. “Of course I do. I see you.”
She flinches, and at last he knows he’s hit on it. “I told you I would do anything in my power to help you achieve your dreams. Do you remember?”
The memory of that night is still hazy, as though it’s trapped behind a rain-streaked window. But that much he remembers. “As well as I can.”
“Then listen to me when I tell you that no good will ever come of what you’ve unearthed. You want to help people, and all that research can do is hurt.”
“Then I’ll burn it all the moment we’re home if that’s what you want. I don’t care about the research. I only care about it if it’ll help us win—if it’ll help you, and well … I guess I’ve made a mess of that. I’m sorry. I’ve never been good at giving you what you need.”
“That’s not true, Wes.” Margaret stares resolutely at Trouble. “But you’re correct that the transmutation circle you drew, once it’s complete, will be able to kill the hala. That manuscript is the only record of how to do it, as far as I know.”
“Oh.” Wes isn’t sure he wants to know the answer, but he has to ask. “I know you said you didn’t know what your mother made that night. But what was it supposed to be?”
“It was supposed to be the prima materia. She performed what she thought was the second step of the magnum opus. What you were attempting to do is the first.”
The magnum opus: the great work. The creation of the philosopher’s stone. With it, it’s said an alchemist can live forever—and create matter from nothing like a god.
“And I take it you’d rather not let anyone see it through to its end,” he says.
For a moment, he thinks she will shut the door on him again. She has that look in her eyes he knows all too well. There are times when a girl wants you to chase her and times when she wants you to leave. And as much as it’ll gut him, he will walk away if she asks him. Her expression softens. “That’s right. I would do anything to stop it.
“My mother wasn’t always the way she is. But when I was about six years old, my brother fell ill and died in his sleep. After that, my mother threw herself into her work. She spent all her time acquiring and translating ancient apocryphal texts. Once she found Mutus Liber, she was able to piece together the process for the creation of the stone.”
The philosopher’s stone is a footnote in most textbooks, relegated to background reading or a bullet point on a list of alchemical taboos. Ancient alchemists devoted themselves to research on the prima materia—the divine spark buried in the darkness of matter, one of his teachers had intoned—with the same intensity of an ascetic saint. They believed distilling that divine substance and fashioning it into the philosopher’s stone was the key to the prison of materiality.
No one had ever succeeded, though, and most who tried went mad. Eventually, the Katharist church decreed it a heretical pursuit, an offense against God himself.
Wes can almost understand how the quest for the stone would drive someone to single-minded self-destruction. Only the most desperate or power-hungry people would ever hope to achieve such a thing. “I would’ve expected your mother to be more pragmatic. Most people say it’s a myth. Why would she devote her life to something like that?”
“Because she believes it can bring my brother back.”
“What?”
If the stone can theoretically create anything, down to the very last atom, who’s to say it couldn’t bring somebody back from the dead—or more accurately, re-create them from nothing but memory? Disgust sours his stomach. Even God couldn’t get humans right. Would whatever the stone made even be human, or would it be an empty vessel without a soul? A mass of carbon wearing her brother’s face?
“It became her obsession. I think she blamed herself for what happened. She stopped eating and sleeping most days, and then she stopped coming out of her office for anything at all. My father tried to shield me from the worst of it, but I don’t think he could bear it alone. He left, and he never came back for me. He never even wrote.”
What kind of parent would leave his daughter alone with someone like that? “Margaret, you don’t have to spend your life waiting for someone to come back. You don’t have to stay anymore.”
She hugs herself around the middle. With the water pearling on her eyelashes, he can’t tell if she’s crying. “But I do. I have to believe she isn’t changed forever. I can get her back. I can’t give up on my own mother. Would you?”
“No, I wouldn’t. But not because I’m holding on to who she used to be.”
“I’m doing it because I love her.”
“I know,” he says, even though he can’t understand why. “But she hurt you.”
“Not on purpose. Never on purpose.” Her voice wavers. Although the rain has begun to slow, both of them are soaked through. Rainwater drips from the ends of her hair. Her lips are pale, and her eyes are feverishly bright. “I don’t even know if she remembers the night she tried to perform the second step. But I can’t stop remembering. Every time something reminds me of it, I feel like I’m in that room again. I feel like I stop existing except for how afraid I am. I’m sorry you keep having to see it happen.”
