October 3rd (I think), 1492, somewhere in the middle of the ocean.
We have been at sea for weeks, and haven't seen land since we left the Cape of Africa, some weeks ago. Miguel says we should've arrived days ago. I keep wondering if we've just missed it, sailed past without realising, and are now adrift on the vast open ocean to God knows where.
Two have died on the Pinta so far, and half of the crew suffers from scurvy. Diego's teeth have started loosening. Mine, blessedly, are still firmly attached, but my bones ache something fierce.
We are hungry, the rations shrinking daily, as there are little fish and seabirds this far out. I no longer dare stealing off my master's plate before I bring it to him. My master grumbles that he will not be able to distill a pure essence of atál, with the last concave vial broken in last night's storm. I just hope the weight of all the equipment won't sink us before we even reach our destination. This creaky boat is older than any man who sails on it, even old Juan. I am running out of ink.
Pedro closed his journal and stuffed it safely under his bunk with his last pen. The tip was wearing, but there were no more geese to be slaughtered. His stomach grumbled involuntarily at the thought of geese. He clambered out to the deck, salt wind pulling at his tangled hair. He'd given up combing weeks ago.
The sea was a shade of blue that didn't exist at home, a cerulean brighter than the sapphires his master transmutated. Ahead of them sailed the Santa María, the largest of their expedition, but no less old or creaky. And next to them, the Niña, the newest of the three, but still a third-hand acquisition. Despite their matching new sails of splendid white adorned with a red cross, their ships seemed barely fit to sail the Mediterranean, let alone the open ocean. Clearly, no one expected them to return.
The restless crew managed the ropes, worked on repairs after the storm and played dice, one eye always on the horizon. Master Luís and Captain Pinzón were nowhere to be seen, presumably locked themselves in the captain's cabin, bent over maps and calculations. High up in the rigging, just below the Castilian flag, was Miguel, legs dangling over the highest beam, golden hair whipping around his head. He grinned down at the deck and waved.
Tentatively, Pedro put his feet in the rope ladder they called the shroud, and then on the ratlines. He didn't dare look down, and with every step up, the sway of the ship and brutal wind intensified. Clinging to the mainmast, he inched up the ship at an excruciatingly slow pace, with every single sailor on deck suddenly more interested in the rigging than their dice. Miguel had shown him countless times, but he simply had the agility of a beached jellyfish.
Miguel pulled him up for the final bit, and secured him tightly between himself and the mast, rolling his eyes. "You're such a chicken."
"I am a scholar," said Pedro, his eyes screwed shut as he clutched the violently swinging mast. "An alchemist. Not a monkey."
"You'll only get more sick if you don't open your eyes, you know that."
"I know."
"Do you think we'll find it? Tivín?"
"I'll be glad if we find land at all, at this point," said Pedro.
"It all sounds like chasing fairy tales to me, you know. Some rocks of the stuff fall down in the Indies and all you clever men decide there must be a whole island of it out there."
Despite the lurch in his stomach every time he glanced down, he had come to appreciate the sight, Miguel's arm firmly behind him for support, with the white sail swelling beneath them, blue ocean as far as the eye could see, clouds drifting in the sky.
And birds. Tiny white specks near the horizon.
"Miguel, look."
The sailor squinted, shielding the sun from his eyes. He gasped and jumped up, the entire beam shaking like a seesaw, making Pedro shriek and wrap himself around the mast.
"Birds!" Miguel shouted, pointing north, climbing even higher.
The crew veered up and several scaled the foremast rigging faster than Pedro could ever hope to move on land. The door to the great cabin slammed open and Captain Pinzón strode onto the deck, head craned up towards the billowing sails and the men moving across the rigging like tightrope walkers. Signals went up towards the Santa María and the Niña, and with a great creak, the entire ship turned towards the speck on the horizon that was undoubtedly land.
A painting inspired by the ships from Columbus's first voyage. The Pinta is on the far left.
***
October 6th (though my master is convinced it is the 7th -- it is not. I have counted), 1492, Tivan Islands.
I believed sea sickness would be the worst of it, but I was wrong. Since touching land, I have knocked into a dozen palm trees and have been violently ill several times -- so bad I cannot even bring myself to eat the fresh fruit that falls off the trees every time I knock into one. Miguel thinks it is hilarious.
It seems that Tivin is not simply one island either, but instead a cluster of smaller ones and remarkable circular reefs. The natives speak a language none of us have never heard before, but with some exuberant hand waving, pointing, and stick drawings, Admiral Cristóbal Colón has managed to deduce that what we seek is at the centre of the islands, the largest and the tallest one. They seem to have recognised the one piece of atál we brought
Unfortunately, the reefs mean that we can only continue to sail our own ships with great difficulty, as evidenced by the Admiral's attempt to sail the Santa María into the cluster. It ran aground yesterday. We managed to save it from sinking and patched it up as best we could, but we were forced to leave it behind, with a part of its (already reduced) crew.
I have been booted out of my bunk to make room for the Santa María's painter, who has been deemed to be of greater importance. I sleep on the deck now. At least there is Miguel.
The Admiral now sails the Niña, and each ship has acquired a native guide. Ours is a young woman, whose name I have trouble reproducing, but the crew has taken to calling her Ysabel, the same name as my sister's, who probably thinks I'm dead by now.
He snapped the journal shut and hid it under a stack of parchment as he heard footsteps coming his way. Master Luís de Alva halted as he noticed Pedro, bent over a crate by a tiny porthole to catch the only bit of light that reached the belowdecks makeshift laboratory, a quill in his hand and a pot of ink next to him.
"What are you doing?" His girth dominated the small space, his gilded buttons nearly popping off his coat.
"Er..." Pedro glanced at the parchment, containing endless supply lists. "I'm cataloguing our supplies?"
His master raised his eyebrows and his double chin. "Did I order you to meddle with these priceless instruments? No? Then go make yourself useless elsewhere."
Behind his back, Pedro moved his journal into his satchel, and gestured to one of the crates with his other hand. "It seems most of our distilled alcohol has evaporated."
Master Luís turned a bright shade of lobster and pointed at the trapdoor. "Out."
Pedro scrambled onto the deck, the trapdoor slamming shut behind him, unable to suppress a smile. He sat down next to Miguel, who was sprawled out on the sunny deck.
"How will you ever become an alchemist if all you do is anger your master?" asked Miguel, without opening his eyes.
"I don't need him," he said, revealing a heavy borrowed tome in his satchel. "He was never planning to teach me anyway. He just needed cheap labour. So I teach myself."
Miguel's lips curled into a smile. "Read it to me."
"It's boring. You'll fall asleep."
"Exactly."
Pedro slapped his arm. "Well, most of it is rubbish anyway, since it was written before we even knew atál existed."
At the mention of atál, he caught movement in the corner of his eyes. Ysabel watched him with curious black eyes. She stood at the prow, watching the crew instead of the islands or the half dozen small and fast outrigged boats that sailed along with them.
Miguel cracked open an eye. "What do you think of her?"
"Ysabel?"
"She seems mostly fascinated with my hair." He blew a blond lock from his face. "But, I don't know. It's as if she's invisible, always watching, and no one pays attention to her because we assume she doesn't understand a thing."
Pedro frowned, meeting the young woman's piercing gaze. "You think she knows what we're saying?"
"Maybe," said Miguel. "I just think it's odd. If strangers showed up at your doorstep, would you welcome them with open arms?"
"It's called hospitality."
"I still think she's odd."
Pedro sighed. "All right, I'll go talk to her."
He pushed himself up from the deck and joined Ysabel at the prow, looking out at the magnificent islands dotting the sea around them.
"Hello," he said.
She repeated the word back to him, a glimmer of amusement in her eyes. Her skin was darker than even his, with his Moorish mother, contrasting against her brightly coloured wrap dress which left her entire arms indecently bare - but considering the temperature, he couldn't blame her. The men wore even less, and he himself was often tempted to shrug out of his shirt.
Ysabel turned towards the sea as well.
"Do you understand me?" he asked.
She gave him a blank look and turned back to the sea.
He shook his head. "Of course not. I can't just come up and ask you, can I?"
Ysabel pointed out at the sea and spoke, with a pronunciation so bad he could hardly make out the word. "Island."
He grinned. "Island."
She pointed at the nearest one and said a name, and the next, and the next. Until, from the horizon, one large flattened peak neared them, and she fell silent. He knew, without words, that that was their destination, the island called Tivín by the rest of the world. The small boats kept their distance.
"Which one is that?"
She didn't need to know his language to understand his question. "Itanakui Vatau."
The Tivan Islands.
***
October 8th, 1492, Tivin.
Since Master Luís confiscated my last drop of ink, Miguel has managed to sneak me a pot from the Admiral's supply. I owe him (he insisted that I write that down, even though he barely knows enough letters to spell his name, so he can't know if I did).
Domingo and his friends are assigned to carrying the laboratory equipment up the mountain, but my master refuses to let them touch any of it. He doesn't trust them, because he says they're criminals. I suppose they are. Domingo killed a man in a pub brawl and his three mates tried to break him out of jail afterwards. I like them.
Still, it means that the one who had to lug all of these priceless instruments up a steep and very slippery mountain, is me. Everything hurts. And I'm very sure I've seen some of these in my mother's kitchen as well, priceless indeed.
I believe the island, Itanaiku Vatau, which we call Tivín, might be a holy place for them, too sacred to walk on. And yet, they allow us to come ashore. I can't be sure if they watch us with fear, anticipation or anger. Or perhaps none of those.
Ysabel is learning Spanish quicker than I would've thought possible, so maybe Miguel is onto something with his theory. I have picked up several words from her language, but it is not easy. Father Juan has been trying to bring the faith to the natives, but with little success so far. There is something about these people, the ones who live here. They seem to disappear into thin air. They seem to know everything we've been doing. And they have this look about them, this intensity in their eyes. Perhaps it's
"Are you scribbling in that book again?" Miguel leaned over his shoulder and pointed at the page. "Is that my name? Are you writing about me?"
"You asked me to, remember?"
Miguel shrugged and pulled the journal from his hands. "It's time to go. We're supposed to go get their magic juice."
"It's not magic. It's alchemy." Pedro packed his bag, stuffing a borrowed treatise on conversion of solid state into gaseous state into his pack. "It's the transmutation of one substance into another, through strictly scientific methods."
"Still sounds like magic."
"It's not like we sell our souls to the devil."
Miguel pushed the journal into Pedro's pack, before lifting his own. "True. I suppose if that was all it took, someone would've done it ages ago."
Pedro rolled his eyes and started the climb, his limbs still sore from dragging a laboratory worth of equipment up to the base camp. Ysabel walked in front of them, join by one of her people. They were the only two to set foot on the island with them. All the others had watched from a distance how the foreigners climbed out of their massive ships and reached the rocky shores. The language they spoke was rolling, like the merciless sway of the ocean, with deep pitches to make his ears strain, and the only word he could make out repeatedly was ateyalui.
Master Luís, not carrying a pack, soon fell behind. The Admiral kept a better pace, but halfway up, he too fell behind.
By the midday, Ysabel had stopped at a rim, and Pedro found out why the island seemed flattened. At its centre was a crater. A rocky bowl sloping down. And at its bottom was a pulsating silvery light.
Ysabel, right next to him, pointed. "Atál?"
Breathless, Pedro nodded. Massive amounts by the looks of it. Pedro started on his way down, but she didn't move. "You're not coming?"
She shook her head. Her companion retreated as well, waiting on the rim. Her expression was clear. She didn't want them to go.
Pedro hesitated, glancing at Miguel who had an equally worried expression. "We have to go down there. We can't have come all this way an not bring back any atál."
"I know," said Miguel. "I just really hope this isn't going to blow up the whole island with us on it."
"Atál is not explosive." Pedro hoisted his pack and walked down. "As far as I know."
"Comforting."
The rocks were bigger than they looked from a distance, making for a difficult hike. The silvery glow got brighter as they neared, but never blinding. Pedro had never seen this much atál in one place.
The pulsations originated from three large oval-shaped sources, bathing them in liquid silver. Around it lay pieces of atál, the ordinary, non-pulsating kind.
"Can I touch it?" Miguel asked.
"I suppose. Atál doesn't react to touch. You need chemical reactions to activate it."
Miguel nodded. "Right, what's the worst that can happen?"
"Your hand gets transmutated?"
"Thank you, Pedro. That was a rhetorical question." Miguel readied himself. "Together?"
"All right."
They reached out. A pulsating sensation went through Pedro's limbs, like a heartbeat. The tips of his toes tingled, in a way they never had with ordinary atál. It almost felt alive.
A huffing pulled him from his trance. Master Luís looked even more red than usual, but his eyes shone with greed and the silver pulsating glow. Behind him followed another part of the crew, carrying saws and makeshift pickaxes. Miguel looked startled, stepping back.
"This is excellent, boy. Excellent. We will be the wealthiest men in the world." He signalled to the men behind him. "Chop these into pieces. They're too big to carry to the ship in one piece."
"Master, wait," said Pedro, stepping in front of the pulsating glow, still touching it. "There's plenty of atál just lying around."
"And leave these?" Master Luís laughed. "Glowing atál? It doesn't even matter what it does, but it'll be worth kingdoms, entire continents. Why would I leave this?"
Pedro was at loss for words. "It feels alive."
"Alive? Ha. Your fish dinner was alive this morning and you didn't have an issue with that. Now get out of the way, boy." He tossed a pickaxe at Miguel. "Start hacking."
"No," said Pedro, but he knew it wouldn't help.
A tall sailor swung his pickaxe and the oval behind Pedro cracked. It shattered, into a million pieces. Like an eggshell made of glass. Exactly like an eggshell.
A force flowed into Pedro, and in the blink of an eye, in one endless moment in between heartbeats, he understood the universe. He saw how everything fit, how the very core of existence clung together in different shapes to form each and every substance and object and living thing. And he changed it.
With nothing but a thought, he changed the air around the eggs into stone. The air charged with lighting and a tornado came headed for them, straight towards the island. Clouds gathered and the sky darkened.
The crew fled.
And the pulsating grew weaker and Pedro felt something die.
He fell to his knees and the storm dissipated.
October 22nd, 1492, Tivan Islands
We have left the island of Tivín well over one week ago. The crew has gathered more plain atál than they ever could have dreamed, and no one has brought up the storm, or the layer of stone around the remaining eggs -- for I am convinced that that is what they are, eggs. What sort of creatures live inside, I still don't know. Miguel claims it looked like a small dragon, before it faded -- or transmutated -- into air. I have no other name but atal creatures for them.
I transmutated air into stone, with my bare hands, with barely a thought. I still have trouble believing it. But this changes the entire alchemical theory. Every book will have to be rewritten.
So far, no one has thrown me overboard, I believe out of fear for another tornado.
***
October 23rd, 1492, Tivan Islands
Ysabel came to the ship once more. She has told me her real name, and this time I can remember and pronounce it. She is Ma'atanuaia. She has shown me one of the creatures I have tried to save. I have tried to draw it, but I am afraid my talent is insufficient. It is not corporeal per se. And I suppose it does look a bit like a dragon, with a good dose of imagination. She has shown me things I could never imagine. The creature transmutes water into air in your lungs, and I have swum with a great white-spotted whale in the warm tropical ocean, touched its soft skin, until my hands wrinkled. Several of the islanders went to hunt it afterwards, each with the ability to transmute water into air. More subtly, I have seen them transmute the bright colour of the clothing into the green of the jungle, almost disappearing from sight unless one knows where to look.
The possibilities with these creatures seem endless, but they do not seem to bend to anyone's commands. Ma'atanuaia says they will just as readily make a bird breathe water as a person, or turn a rock into smoke if it might want as such. I have never known a rock to have wishes, but then, I have never met a creature quite like this.
Miguel says I should put down my pen and enjoy the sun with him, but I do have the entire theory of alchemy to rewrite. And I fear one lifetime will not be enough.
Annotation by Prof. A. Hernandez: This account by the alchemist Pedro del Rey is the first glimpse we get into the remarkable ecosystem created by the creatures called atal, allowing the fluid transmutation of elements based on its companion's needs. Research confirms that the first impact of a meteorite containing atal organic matter happened in the year 1419, 73 years before the expedition lead by Columbus reached Itanaiku Vatau, "the island that fell from the sky". The surrounding islands cluster is thought to be the result of meteorite debris hitting the surrounding water and transmutating it into earth on contact.
***
Word count: 3430 (give or take)
Ok! Very last minute entry. This story came to me much more naturally than the rest, but unfortunately I had to rush it at the end. I've had an incredibly busy 2 weeks, and even busier weeks to follow (I'm switching to a new workplace). On top of that, this was a much longer prompt, and we had only two weeks to write it.
In case you hadn't figured it out, the genre for this prompt was Alternate History, specifically about Columbus's voyage going East instead of West. I've had a rough time adjusting to that idea, because I cannot imagine the person I perceive Columbus to be, to have ever not sailed West. So I tried giving him enough of a reason: magic stone fell from the sky. It was also an opportunity to look into alchemy, albeit not as thoroughly as I would've liked. The four picture prompts are included. And I've checked with the HF team that the use of magic is allowed.
So, in short, I wish I'd had more time to work this out, but regardless, Pedro is one of my favourite characters I have ever written, and he came to me entirely unexpectedly. So I hope to do him justice one day with a proper story of his own. With or without magic.
Thank you for reading!
Alice