The Alchemical Child

Chapter Three

Sage cycled down an avenue of trees, their bare branches snatching at her coat and satchel. She could hear Students' chatter and the tremor of the bells from the lawn, but peddled harder so that the gravel hissed and crackled beneath her tires. The arch leading into the city rose suddenly as the trees stunted then faded, its golden words—ipsa scientia potestas est—passing overhead when Sage turned onto the main street and began the long ride home.

As one of the oldest constructions in the city, the University was built at its very centre, circling a hawthorn tree which grew in the grandest courtyard overlooked by the Alchemical Library. Its branches spilled above the University's domes and pillars so that in springtime, white blossoms tumbled through the air as heavily as the snow in winter. Mossy brick cascaded down into the front lawn, which could only be trodden on by Scholars, Students, and Stewards. The latter two came and went in their white and black dress. Spectres and their shadows drifting along the same stone corridors.

Slipping down a side-street, Sage rode through the Artisan District, the air smelling sulphurous from freshly-glazed pottery and wood-stoked kilns. She slowed at the window of a horologist, the faces of a thousand clocks staring back at her. Their silver hands ticked through the seconds, synchronous until she looked deeper at their cogs, which turned to a tune of their own. All precise yet every one distinct. No clock quite like another, even as they showed the same hour on their thousand faces.

It was well before teatime, but the lamplighters were already illuminating the street. Sage kicked off from the pavement, then faltered at the sight of a figure pressed against the corner of the shop. She was fae, dressed in rags and without shoes, her long toes strikingly scarlet against the gutter she stood in. There were no adornments on her ears or around her neck, though her skin looked so thin that Sage suspected even the slightest pressure would break it. On her right hand, she was missing two fingers.

The fae's eyes were downcast and her lips pressed together, but even without words, Sage knew what she wanted. Twisting to open a pocket on her satchel, she withdrew a hunk of bread and cheese wrapped in a handkerchief. The bells had distracted her from lunch, but she was no longer hungry. She shuffled onto the pavement and held the food out to the fae, who accepted it with care not to touch Sage's hand.

"Goddess bless you," the fae mumbled, her face still lowered to the ground.

Sage continued cycling until the end of the pavement, then wheeled her bicycle through a public garden before emerging onto the eastern embankment. The path was wide and empty along the river, the winter's wind across the water keeping most wanderers to the city streets. Today, it was blissfully quiet, even with the bells struggling against the wind that whipped Sage's hair out of its bun.

She smiled, letting momentum speed her bicycle down the trail towards home. Crumbling cottages tangled in ivy flickered past, a wooden bridge in the distance teetering up from the mud like matchsticks floating on ashen waters. There were no fae crossing into the city this evening, although Sage could see the faint cast of a bonfire leaping up from the village on the other side of the river.

The sun hadn't quite set yet and, in the fading light, Sage saw a glint like quicksilver in the water. Glancing around again to check she was alone, she turned abruptly onto the bridge. Her tires squealed and the wood groaned beneath her bicycle, which fell clumsily against the ragged deck while Sage clambered down to the mudbank.

Beneath the bridge was a little inlet where a tide would gather and swirl before surging out again into the river. Pieces of detritus, carried by the water, were sucked from the tide into the mud, which had slowly grown over time into a scrap pile of strange and singular oddities. More than one part of Sage's clunking bicycle had been exchanged for a polished piece of scrap that she had discovered there.