Catalyst

by Loren Rhoads           

Alondra DeCourval placed the letter on the shrine at the center of her lab equipment.  At the shrine’s heart stood a photograph of her as a girl with Victor on King Suryavarman’s mausoleum at Angkor Wat, eyes shielded against the rising sun.  It had been more than a decade since her guardian had been strong enough for that climb.

Her shrine consisted of knickknacks he’d bought her on their travels and things she’d stolen from his house when his sons threw her out:  the skeletal brujo from Oaxaca, a memento mori leached of amusement now; a gold-backed brush twined with strands of his silver hair; alchemical books from his library.  Just trash, really, unable to embody all she was losing.

Spite tempted her to fling it all into the furnace, especially the new letter from Victor’s oldest son.  Michael wrote that his father was completely bedridden now; dazed from the blood-thinners, Victor was too unsteady on his feet to risk a fall.  The old man asked for her, but Michael didn’t encourage her to come.  In Victor’s final days, his sons wanted him for themselves.

Alondra slumped on her work stool.  Today was the fortieth day since she began this last-ditch effort to save Victor’s life.  If she couldn’t work the magic, Victor would die.  How could she live without him?

Though she’d asked the question with increasing frequency in recent days, the answer remained stunned silence.  Victor had taken her in as a teenager, protected her from her family, shielded her from the world.  He gave her a home, until his sons made her unwelcome. He’d been everything to her:  tutor, protector, confidant, father, best friend.  When he was gone, she wouldn’t even have his name.  Contemplating her existence after his death made her feel that someone threatened to peel away her skin.

Exhausted, Alondra pulled on asbestos gloves to open the furnace.  Inside, the fire burned low, a baleful red glare.  She removed the clumsy gloves and picked up the three-foot tongs to lift out the crucible and its precious contents.

The majisterium had progressed through all the steps:  introduction of the sulfur to the argent-vive, the cold pangs of hatred, the flames of love, courtship, marriage, distillation, and refinement.  The rubedo inside the crucible was the final step.  Forty days of fasting and privation boiled down to this moment.

Alondra wondered if she should have dressed more appropriately, something in keeping with the solemn grandeur of the occasion.  Instead of an alchemist’s robe, she wore jeans that hadn’t seen a washing machine in weeks and a handmade green sweater unraveling at its hem.

The tongs slipped.  She lost her grip on the bulbous crucible.  It dropped to the concrete floor and cracked along its seam.

As Alondra watched the majisterium spatter, curses scorched her thoughts.  Then the prima materia ate through the tops of her clogs to gnaw her feet.  She collapsed to the floor to tear off her shoes.  Only the tiniest droplets had reached her skin, but she had no time to worry about them.  The concrete steamed as the universal solvent ate its way through the floor.

 Alondra snatched up an asbestos glove.  She used one of the crucible fragments to collect up the solvent, scooping it back into the biggest section of the broken vessel.  The floor had to be stabilized now, or she, her equipment, and the whole debacle would tumble down into the sculptor’s studio below.

When further disaster had been averted, Alondra treated her poor feet.  Blisters streaked her skin.  She’d bear the scars the rest of her life, talismans of failure.

Fury swept through her:  that someone so necessary as Victor should die, that she was far too stupid to rescue him.

It didn’t matter that winter punished Prague; she had to get out of the lab.  Anything was better than spending another hour amidst the fumes inside.  Alondra bundled up as best she could with three pairs of socks to pad her blistered feet and two pairs of gloves to ward off frostbite.  She braided her red hair and stuffed it under a gray wool cap.  Shouldering into her wolf fur coat, Alondra fled the Malá Strana.