Her gown stole its color from the sea. Silken, its weave was so fine it caught the banquet’s torchlight. As she danced, bright streaks raced down the loose skirt in rivulets to the seafoam lace that rippled just above the floor. Her gloves were midnight, with buckles blinking like comets passing in the dark. Her shoes were clouds, skimming the stone’s surface. Her eyes were twin fires.
The alchemist watched her twirl about the hall. Her eyes flirted with his own, glanced and held and flicked away as she turned and turned again. He smiled into his drink. His robes were some halfway point between amber and mud. It was a contrast to the tide of silks and linens that flowed around him, but not so much as his master’s wardrobe.
He glanced over at the old wizard, whose patchwork robes provided a mosaic of color matched only by the court jester’s rainbow leotard. The two were engaged in their own kind of dance. They jerked and splayed their limbs in a pattern that occasionally fell into time with the music. Some of the guests stopped and stared, but most ignored the display.
“Do you think she’ll realize she’s dancing alone?” whispered a cronish voice from just behind. The alchemist started, turned about. A familiar old spinster stood at his shoulder.
“Would she stop if she did?” He asked. Her smile parted the grooves of her wrinkles.
“Would you start if you had a partner?” She offered her hand. It was slender, yet her grip was strong. They stood, hands clasped, until the instruments trickled away and a polite applause spattered about the hall.
Dancers made way for their replacements. The seamstress spun once more in her shimmering dress, then bobbed her way through the crowd. As she passed the alchemist, she nodded to her own master and took his free hand for but a moment. He felt the smallest pressure at her touch, a silent encouragement. He squeezed hers in kind, and watched her eyes twinkle in the flickering light.
* * *
A din of revelry drifted through the waxing night. It followed a pair of footprints down a garden path, past leaves painted inky black by the gloom. The footprints led to two figures seated on a bench, one wrapped in a fine silk gown and the other in tattered robes.
“Was tonight your unveiling?” The Alchemist asked.
The seamstress chuckled before replying.
“You think my masterwork will be a silly old dress?”
“Silly! One may as well call the stars jewels.”
“One might say that’s a compliment.”
“Jewels merely reflect the light around them. The stars shine with a brilliance of their own making.”
“Perhaps.” She stood, walked a slow circle about the bench. “Perhaps they really are reflections of the sun once it’s set.”
He studied her silhouette, face turned to the glittering crystals above.
“I don’t believe it,” he whispered. She cast him a wry smile.
“What of your masterwork? How are you planning to impress a guild of mad potion-makers?”
“This is slander! Any child with a handful of herbs can make a potion.”
“But you are all mad?”
“Stark and raving, yes. I’ve no idea how my master has avoided the sanitarium for this long.”
She laughed loud and long. The force of her joy shook the leaves around them.
“Very well,” she said. “How do you expect to join such an elite group of brilliant lunatics?”
He grinned. Standing, he drew out his tinderbox and struck a nearby torch alight. The flame sputtered and sparked awake as it pushed back the writhing shadows. He sat on the ground under the light and emptied his pockets onto the gravel in front of him: two squares of parchment, an inkwell and pen.
She sat across from him, smoothed out her skirt. He motioned to one of the scraps of parchment.
“Write something,” he said.
“Anything?” She asked.
“Anything.”
She popped the inkwell open and dunked the pen. She held it poised as she thought. Any breeze that stirred the branches around her fell away. Muted blooms hung weightless in an unwavering light.
The garden sighed as she leaned down and wrote a single word on the parchment.
The alchemist drew out a glass bottle filled with a clear liquid, and two small horsehair brushes. He uncorked the bottle and set it between the two scraps, then dipped each brush with the clear liquid. After a deep breath, he coated the parchments, doing his best to mirror each brush stroke.
Finished, he corked the bottle again and set it aside. He blew lightly on the wet parchment, and as the liquid dried, her name appeared on the second square, in a familiar looping script.
She gasped, snatched them up, and held both to the light.
“They’re exactly the same!” She breathed. He rose to join her, studying the words in turn.
“It’s meant to carry messages across great distances, but it’s terribly inefficient.”
“How far can it travel?”
“As of now? Perhaps from one end of town to the other, and at that distance it would take most of a day for the pages to dry. Besides—” his fingertips brushed the backs of her hands as he took them from her and crushed them into a fine dust.
“So, I suppose Anholm is a few miles out of reach.”
“Oh, yes, Anholm would be impossible. Simply scheduling when to apply the solution would be its own little nightmare. Why? Do you have family there?”
“No.” The torch lapped up the shadows in her face as she studied the foliage around them, enough to see her eyes, din and grey. “The spinsters’ guild has offered me a fellowship for a year and a day.”
“A year and a day.” He absently tugged on the frayed cuff of his robe. She saw his eyes narrow into an expression she knew well: he was calculating, planning. She took his hand and gave it a gentle squeeze. He blinked in surprise as she drew him down from that dream world of equations he was so oft to get lost in. “If I send you my prototypes, would you help me test them?”
She giggled, nodded, and kissed him on the cheek.
These two sat with their fledgling sun until the distant hum of revelry began to fade. They followed their own tracks back to the warmth of the banquet, and enjoyed another hour’s worth of food and drink before drifting away, towards their own private jewels held close within walls of stone.
* * *
Her letter was carried on the first breath of autumn. It breezed through her first few days of the fellowship, pausing for a paragraph to describe the old guildhall in all its stoicism and its matriarch in all her rigidity. It then fluttered back and forth between the other girls before landing softly on her farewell – And what of you, my dear?
He watched his own letter trundle its way across the cobbles. It recounted the formulae and solutions he decanted and infused. He’d scratched it onto thick sheets of parchment and stuffed it in a box, alongside the latest version of his work: a bottle of clear liquid and a stone tablet engraved with a number of runic symbols, one of a matching set.
She wrote her second letter by candlelight. The words had hung heavy in her mind while she spun and wove in the daylight. When she finally touched quill to page, her thoughts poured down in fat drops. She wrote of the freedom allowed within the guild hall, like every day was as their last night together.
His reply bled onto the page like a fresh wound. It spoke, not of potions and formulae, but of her. It brushed her palms and teased out her laugh and lingered, just for a moment, on her lips. It whispered of the ache of her absence.
The letters flitted between the guildhall and the laboratory with breathless abandon. Each fed into the next with little enough pause to think, until the night the alchemist described his unveiling.
* * *
The lord’s entrance hall was stark and bare. Ghost impressions of tapestries clung to the dust on the walls. Scratches marked the floor where tables had been moved. The windows were shuttered, giving the room the close, still air of a cave in summer. A smooth circle of polish had been worn by generations of dancing feet. If he looked closely, the alchemist almost thought he could see the scuffs she had left behind.
The local magus guildsmen were small in number but grand of heart. Scarcely two-dozen men were milling about the empty space, filling the hall with echoes of scientific conjecture. They all wore similar leather cloaks, in shades of soil and charcoal. All except one, the eccentric old wizard now leading the alchemist into the fold. They welcomed him with a polite applause and a dozen handshakes.
The gathered academics asked him little questions about his masterwork: was it chemic, physic? Did it have practical applications, or was it merely a scholarly pursuit? They knew he could not rightly answer until the unveiling was finished, but curiosity loosened their tongues.
The only fanfare accompanying the lord’s entrance was the voice of a servant, dry and cracked. The lord himself had weathered brutally with the year’s passing. His eyes had dulled to the color of slate left too long in the sun. His frame was bent, weak. When he sat in his gilt chair, it was with the clatter of old bones.
Those eyes regarded each face in turn. They shifted, one to the next, like a mason laying bricks. Finally, they fell on the alchemist. The lord nodded, and he stepped forward.
His master had imparted a number of lessons, but the most important skill he taught was in the school of theatrics. To present a finding such as he’d made took careful consideration. Many an apprentice fell into the trap of excitement, stepping forward with the great proclamation of their discovery. Such a statement was made in grave error, for it left the audience to wonder at the flaws of such a grand idea.
The alchemist began his presentation with certain philosophical principles that served as the bedrock of his invention: that wind traveled in currents, and such currents could be harnessed by means both chemical and runic. He described the solutions he’d used to craft such a harness. He listed the runes needed to chain one to another.
He watched with satisfaction the guildsmen around him, as each realized the magnitude of his discoveries. They whispered to each other. One even gasped.
He brought out two tablets and two sheets of parchment. One he held, quill in hand. A servant took the other and displayed it for the lord, but his eyes did not waver. The alchemist pawed at a bead of sweat on his brow, then broke away from the unrelenting stare. He scratched a word onto the parchment and waited for the runes’ telltale glow. When the lord’s gaze fell to the tablet at his hand, it was as a boulder coming to rest after a sheer drop.
A single name bled onto the second parchment.
The lord stared at that name, unmoving. The alchemist dared not breathe, as if such a sigh could unmoor a mountain. The lord’s facade cracked into a smile. With a nod, the dam shattered and the hall was flooded with the cacophony of acclamation.
* * *
His cloak had the color of fresh soil. The leather was worn at the elbows by use. It hung loose about his shoulders, draped like cloth over a mannequin. He tugged at the cuffs, patches she’d mended time and again. Even from behind, she saw his firm stance. A rock for the surf to break against.
The flow of dancers swelled with the music. It rose and swirled in the torchlight shine. She could feel the dancers’ steps polishing that stone floor, and almost burst with anticipation. But she did not move. She stood as still as the alchemist. A strange apprehension gripped her heart.
“You wait for him.” The old spinster said.
“What do you think he waits for?” She looked down at her own cloak. It was dark and mottled, like charcoal after heavy rain. It was hardly pretty wrapping for the gown beneath, but that was the point. An unveiling required a certain kind of theatrics.
“Why, someone to dance with, of course.” She winked at her apprentice.
The seamstress stepped forward. Her cloak dragged across the cobbles. He turned, as if he knew her by presence alone. His smile flared, hot as a sunburst. He did not notice her cloak, so lost was he in her eyes.
She did not wait for the song to end. She took his hand and waded into the crashing tide. His steps faltered, unpracticed. His brow furrowed as he mouthed the count of it, the mathematics of song. She tilted his head up, held his gaze. When he’d finished blushing, he fell into her step.
The music’s cadence rose to a fever, and she knew it was time. She spun until a space unfurled amidst the dancers. She undid her cloak, one button at a time, never losing step with the music. With a flourish she threw it off. He gasped. His eyes swam, obsidian jewels breaking a current.
Her gown was parchment. It crinkled as she spun and ruffled as she bounced. It was a thousand letters, folded and layered so that two names showed through, names preceded by dear and love.
He kissed her then, and in that embrace a fire burned so fiercely in her chest it poured out into the hall. A gale blasted through, shattering windows and blowing doors to crack against walls. The torches blazed in reflection of her joy.
Corey Laisure 