It was the sights as well. Tables, and stools, and copper piping. Parchment, bound notebooks, and charcoal pencils. The furnaces, one bricked into each of three corners of the room, and a fourth towering like a castle turret toward the ceiling.
Athanor.
The name of the specialty furnace bloomed from the dark recesses of my mind, unbidden. I could not remember learning it, yet I knew it, just as I knew that it was kept burning at a constant, low temperature, in order to…
But then came the limit of the imageless memory: one fact liberated from the prison of my mind, while countless others remained bound in chains, behind locked doors.
Yet even with no memory of ever having done so, I suddenly felt like I could easily step into the room, slide onto a stool at an empty table, and know in exactly what order I would pull my notes from my satchel and begin setting up my supplies. I knew how I would lay out my writing utensils, arrange my pipettes, and organize my thoughts into orderly lists of tasks, testable theories, and goals.
The mental skit had the feel of a ritual I’d performed a thousand times.
Though my understanding was that each student had been assigned a single lab table, and presumably a specific, requisite number of supplies, Wilder had projects in progress at three different stations. Powdered substances sat on scales. Brightly tinted liquids bubbled in bulbous beakers suspended above flames of varying heights and colors. Two different alembics dripped distillations into vials suspended by thin iron and copper frames. Hourglasses of various sizes stood on all three tables, positioned next to specific tasks.
As I watched, Wilder spun from one table to the next, where he bent to peer into a small hourglass on its level. Then he seized a glass pipette and used it to add several drops of oil to a flame burning beneath a distinctive bulbous, flat-bottomed vial filled with a simmering scarlet fluid.
Awe filled me as I stared around the room. This was a student space, yet its supplies were of the finest quality. The glass was thinner, smoother, and clearer than I remember ever seeing in my mother’s apothecary shop in Innswood. A cabinet across the back of the room held row after row of beakers and vials. Scales and burners. Alembics, retorts, and receivers. Mortars, pestles, and crucibles. And a substantial array of hourglasses in every conceivable size, their sand ranging in color across the rainbow, and presumably ranging in texture as well.
Wilder hummed as he worked, grinning faintly when a color pleased him or the level of a flame looked just right. I couldn’t help but smile as well. He looked so practiced and efficient. So comfortable in the lab, doing a dozen things at once, and…
He turned to grab a scale sitting at the end of one of his tables, and his eyes finally found me.
“Great writhing caduceus!” he swore softly, free hand clutching at his chest. “You startled me, Amber. What the hell are you doing, haunting the lab like a ghost?”
I laughed. “If I am a ghost, thenyouare possessed.” I gestured at the chaotic, if fascinating, display spread out before me.
“We are quite a pair,” he agreed with a contented nod. “Come in and close the door.”
I pulled the door shut behind me, sparing a moment to look through the gorgeous stained glass panel set into its center, at eye level. Blues, and reds, and greens, each brighter than the next, all of them thin, crystal clear, and stunning.
“When you said to meet you here at dawn, I assumed you’d be running late.” I had never in my life known Wilder to get out of bed unprompted. In fact, both his mother and his brother used to complain that he would keep the hours of an owl, if he were allowed, and that if they forced him awake during the morning, he would drag his feet about the house like a spirit wrested from its own grave.
I saw no sign of that indolence as Wilder rushed across the room and back, grabbing supplies and mixing chemicals with hardly a glance at the notes lying scattered across all three tables, in places perilously close to open flame.
“In fact, I was late,” he admitted, setting three flat-bottomed bulbous vials on the edge of a table. “But that was six hours ago. I’ve since more than made up for it.”
“You’ve been here all night?”
“Of course not! I didn’t start until eleven, and even then I got decidedly little real work done, because Keryth and Lennox were hunkered over their clumsy little grade-one tincture, trying to discover why it had congealed like milk left on the table overnight. I finally had to run them out of the lab myself.”
“And how did you do that?”
“I ‘accidentally’ vented a suspension with an aroma not unlike the excrement of a cat who has consumed the aforementioned curdled milk.” He laughed as he turned back to the storage cabinet for a third alembic. “They couldn’t clean their supplies and flee fast enough.”
“Wow,” I breathed as I set my satchel on an empty stool. “You make alchemy sound so glamorous.”
“Itisglamorous.” He set the alembic down and seized my waist, pulling me close so that his words brushed warm and damp against my earlobe. “It is vital, and thrilling, andstimulating,” he whispered, and sparks trailed up and down my spine. “And even when it doesn’t progress like you hoped, it’s still the second-most fun one could ever have in a laboratory setting.”
“Secondmost?” I pushed him back but couldn’t resist a grin at the shine in his blue eyes. I took an exaggerated look about the room. “I feel the inexplicable need to scrub every surface in the room, in case you’ve had themostfun there, with some girl whose name I’m suddenly grateful to have forgotten.”
Wilder laughed, one hand splayed over his heart. “Tonight, my passion has been only for alchemy. You have my word.”
A little thrill of satisfaction settled into my gut, flaring into the soft warmth of a banked coal.
“Thank you,” I said as he lurched toward the table on his right just as the final grains of a bright blue powder drained through the top half of a small hourglass. “For helping me. I was up half the night studying, as I have been all week, and while everything I read makes sense—it settles into place quickly and logically—the sheer volume of what I have yet to cover feels insurmountable.”
“Oh, I assure you, it’s…mountable.”
“Surmountable,” I corrected.
