The Alchemical Child

Chapter Five

Sage had informally designated the second floor as her workshop. It was the largest and brightest room in the house, though that meant very little within its cramped, musty walls. The workshop overhung the river, giving the impression from the outside that the house was moments from sliding top down into the water. Windows looked out at the embankment, all four stained red as hot coals so that in the morning, the room appeared aflame.

Two staircases took up the back half of the room; the first rising from the kitchen and the second leading to the attic. The other two walls were lined with cabinets and shelves, every one crammed with tools and metals, books and oddments, and in the middle of it all was a desk, likewise buried beneath a muddle of ink-splattered diagrams.

Brushing aside a pile of sigil tracings, Sage set the grimoire on her desk. Although the ceiling was low, she had designed a pulley system to light its overhead lamp. Sage tugged a rope and the lamp came rattling down. She lit the two wicks floating in oil, raised the lamp again to the ceiling, then turned to glare at the grimoire.

It was a horror of a book, moth-wing pages making its dreadful thickness. Hermes struggled up to the desk, but was too short to peer over the grimoire. He chirped, snagging a pencil in his beak and then flinging it onto the cover.

"Thanks," Sage muttered, slouching into her wooden chair. There had once been a pillow, but she had accidentally set it on fire last month while soldering Hermes' new claws—he had wanted to dig up hail from the flowerbeds.

Opening the grimoire to its contents, Sage was immediately confronted with paragraphs of cursive, small-print German, and resisted the urge to hurl it into the river. Instead, she flipped to the first chapter a little harder than necessary, and a page slipped from the grimoire, fluttering down into the dust.

Sage gasped. She had never ripped a page from a book before, even during her final exams when all sigils had started to look identical. But peering closer, she couldn't see a tear mark on its delicate spine. Snatching the paper from the floor, Sage brought it into the light. 

It wasn't written in German, and it wasn't from the grimoire. It was from a children's book, titled at the top of the page as The Hawthorn Tree & Other Fables. Holding it closer to the lamp, Sage could see there was handwriting on the reverse; somebody had scrawled a letter.

A word to the Wise, Sage read, before the letter fell from her trembling fingers. Hermes dove to the floor after it and pierced a corner with his beak. He shook his head, trying to dislodge it, but the paper flopped over his wings in his panic.

"Stop it, Hermes." Sage plucked the letter from the bird's beak, peering again at the first line in the dim light as the words began to fuzz. It couldn't be a coincidence. Yet she refused to look at the end of the letter, even though it was short and hastily written.

A word to the Wise. It was how her sister had addressed notes to her when they were children.

Their parents had always told them that they were the two halves that made up their whole heart. Valerie was born first, red-faced and screaming. A dauntless soul ready to fight for what she wanted. Many years later, Sage arrived, moon-eyed and doubtful before she even thought to cry.

"Braver than your being, wise beyond your years," their mother had whispered when kissing her daughters goodnight. Valerie first, Sage second. "Always be there for one another, my loves, because you will need both to survive in this wide world of ours."

Valour of the heart and wisdom of the mind. Valerie and Sage.

A word to the Wise, the letter read, I'm not sorry for what I've done. I'm not sorry for what might happen next. I'm only sorry for the trouble these changes could cause you, and I hope you'll forgive me. But Goddess knows you've read enough to see that change is only a letter from chance. I did what I did for the promise of a better world for us all. I know that one day, you'll understand that in both your mind and your heart. With love and Valour.

It wasn't a coincidence. Valerie had hidden a letter for her sister inside the University. She had strolled into the Alchemical Library and between its bookshelves. She had visited the city.

And she hadn't visited Sage.

Betrayal wasn't a sharp enough word for the feeling that lanced through Sage's lungs. Her vision had turned dark around the edges and she couldn't get enough air. She could hear Hermes' little feet clacking on the table. Up and down and up. She tried to count his hops but couldn't form the numbers in her mind.

Hermes nibbled her finger and she gasped in a breath. The letter was crumpled in her fist and, without another glance, she thrust open a drawer and locked it inside.

The grimoire lay beneath her hands, and she could read the words a little clearer now. Picking up her pencil, she began to translate the chapter into her notebook. It was a slow and numbing process, but that was what Sage wanted. One word at a time, she continued to write.

Eventually, the sun began to rise, bloated and weak over the river. Light seeped over Sage's hands like scarlet ink, staining papers and pencil shavings. Her head was pillowed on the grimoire's cloth cover, its stale scent set deep into her hair and coat.

Hermes perched on a windowsill, crowing at the sunrise and aching Sage's head. She had fallen asleep sometime before dawn, and her nightmares had been plagued with dead princes, frostbitten fingers, and an endless stream of questions.

But as the clock downstairs ticked into morning, there was only one question that survived in Sage's mind.

 What had Valerie done that needed to be forgiven?

A/N I'm not sure that I can write a single story without at least one mysterious letter haha. More will be revealed on Friday! See you then :D