I tried to picture myself, two years younger, sitting on a bench halfway up the span of risers, laboring over my entry and exit strokes. Struggling to even out my interlinear spaces. Debating the balance between my ascending and descending flourishes.
Along with all of that, I would have glanced left, right, and over the shoulder of the student in front of me, desperate for some assurance that my emerging style looked sufficiently different from theirs. That my work would stand out.
I couldn’t remember doing any of that, yet I must have spent hours—weeks—during my Fundamentals year developing and practicing my own style on a slate, to keep from wasting ink and parchment as I developed the flare and grace of every stroke. As I’d tailored the curves, slashes, crosses, and vertical and horizontal lines. I’d drawn the shapes over and over. I’d written and erased, and written again, until my hand formed the symbols spontaneously as soon as I’d thought them. And though I could remember none of that process, its result remained.
Lead, I thought as I stared down at the parchment on my desktop. My right hand drew a tall, narrow cross with a hook shaped like a lowercase letterhextending from the bottom half. And though that felt complete, my quill kept moving, extending the curve below the end of the cross and curving it under, then back up and out, to form a distinctive curlicue.
I drew the symbol for copper—a simple stick figure, with only a round head and arms, though my quill added flourishes on the ends of the horizontal cross line.
And salt, a perfect circle with a horizontal line through it, only my quill thickened the sides of the circle and the ends of the horizontal line, so that the symbol looked thinner on the top and bottom than on the sides.
So many alchemy symbols came to my mind without effort. My hands drew them in my own signature style without hesitation. And yet…
My focus strayed to the leather-bound journal open on my lap, hidden from view.
I knew, from some instinctive corner of my absent memory, that I’d written them. But I could not read a word of my own writing.
Movement from the risers caught my eye, and I glanced up to see that a student in the third row had raised her hand. Professor Robards was across the room, advising a boy in the first row.
The student met my gaze, and my pulse spiked. I couldn’t ignore her now that she knew she’d been seen.
Varrah. I remembered her because I’d read her name aloud from the roll book, three class periods in a row. And because while her right eye was deep brown, her left was a pale green.
Heterochromia. My brain supplied the term as I slid my journal back into my satchel and rose from my seat. I climbed the first two risers to stop in the aisle beside Varrah’s table, where she sat alone, though most students sat in pairs.
“Hello.” I sank onto the bench next to her. “How can I help?”
She hesitated, blinking at me for one oddly weighty moment.
“I don’t think I’m doing this right,” she finally said, and the distinctive sound of her voice—the way it seemed to echo in two slightly different pitches—triggered my sudden understanding.
When I called the roll, Varrah always raised her hand rather than answering aloud. I’d assumed she was just shy, but that clearly wasn’t the whole story.
“Oh!” I gave her a friendly smile. “You’re from Eria? The unified provinces?”
She nodded warily, and I realized why she was sitting alone. “And they’re all being absolute cods about it?” I said with a subtle glance around the room.
“It’s okay. I’m accustomed to it,” she whispered, and her voice seemed to tickle my eardrums. The feeling wasn’t unpleasant, but itwasstrange.
I tried not to stare at the thin vertical scar directly over the center of her throat. It was faint enough to be undetectable from more than a couple of feet away, but now that I’d noticed it, my gaze felt drawn to it.
“Well, give them a chance,” I whispered. “Sometimes it takes people a while to get used to things they’re unfamiliar with. I’m not saying itshould. I’m just saying…don’t count them all out yet. It’s still the first week.”
“Were you lonely, in the beginning?” Varrah asked, and an ache blossomed deep in my chest.
I could not remember my first weeks at the Alchemary, but with two of my childhood friends also attending, I likely had not been lonely.
“My mother was,” I confided in a soft voice. “She was the only member of her cohort from the kingdom of Lysëa, and she told me that she felt very out of place at first. But she came to love her time at the Alchemary. And to make many good friends.” Though my father liked to ignore the truth of that in order to dwell on her departure.
“May I be so fortunate,” Varrah said. Then she gestured to her slate. “I’m picturing a vertical symmetry between the symbols for tin and lead.”
Listening to her took a lot of concentration. Not because I couldn’t understand her, but because there was a very real risk of getting caught up in—trappedby—the ethereal quality of her voice itself. It was eerie and hypnotic.
“But…is this too thick, for the scythe?”
“Scythe?” I studied her slate. “That’s actually supposed to be reminiscent of a crescent moon,” I said. “As in the symbol for silver. It’s built into the symbols for quicksilver, tin, and lead.” Reading through the most basic of my own notes had been sufficient for me to relearn the alchemical table and the origin of the symbols. “But yes.” I tilted my head, squinting at her writing. “Itdoeslook rather like a scythe. And I think your instinct with the style is strong. This would be much more distinctive if you could master a truly thin ‘blade.’ Especially as you move toward the points on each end. Let it get a little thicker in the center, maybe? To give the symbol some weight? That will require a bit more pressure in the middle of the stroke, and a slant of your wrist at the start and finish.”
Her eyes lit up, and she swiped a cloth over her slate, then bent over it again with her chalk, which had been carefully sharpened to an effective, slanted point. “Like this?”
