“They don’t. It is chosen for them, by other alchemists.”
He clears his throat. “And how is that done?”
“Well.” Isla leans against the table and smiles at him, light winking against the rims of her glasses. “I’d worry first about becoming an alchemist, yes?”
Ari sequesters himself in the gallery’s cozy corners, and there, surrounded by shelves of books, he learns the periodic table of alchemical elements and compares it to chemistry’s periodic table. Isla quizzes them on how7and Pb both denote the element lead, and how>and Ag both denote the element silver, and how modern alchemy has folded neatly into chemistry and accepted into its ancient pantheon all elements that have since been discovered. He learns which elements complement one another, which stay inert and calm, which cause explosive reactions.
He learns that any transmutation is possible so long as both sides of the equation are perfectly balanced, but also that limitations exist within this rule. A living thing, for example, can be changed into a nonliving thing, but never the other way around. The energy of a soul is a uniquely powerful, fragile, and transient thing, imperfect in a way that inorganics are not. And once a soul is gone, it can never be restored, rendering the transmutation equation permanently unequal. Wood, therefore, can be transmuted into steel, but steel cannot be transmuted into wood. Skin and flesh cannot be healed by water and air. The dead cannot be brought back to life. Imperfection can always move toward perfection; but perfection, like the divine state of moksha, is eternal.
Ari struggles to retain each day’s onslaught of information. He has always known his academic intelligence to be fairly average, that he is not one of those people who can skim a textbook the night before an exam and ace the test the next day, or write a report that sets the class’s curve. Zan is the one who always calls out answers. Dominique scores the highest on exams.
Ari, meanwhile, reads slowly, takes several tries to understand a new concept. But what he lacks in born ability, he makes up for with the sheer determination of hard work. The others do not carry the weight of their families’ well-being with them—they have been recruited from higher classes, are used to private schools and rigorous exams and studying alchemy only for themselves. But every difficult lesson reminds Ari that the monthly stipend being sent back to his family in Surat is dependent upon his academic performance here. He asks Isla so many questions that she often waves him away in annoyance. During study sessions at the sun-dappled oak tables, he seeks out Dominique, who patiently walks him through difficult concepts. And even though the black car is parked outside for him at 6:00P.M.every evening, even though everyone else has left hours earlier, Ari refuses to go until he has committed every bit of that day’s assigned reading to heart.
“Why does he always stay so late?” one boy says to Zan as they pass Ari on their way out for the night.
Zan shoves Ari hard in the head with two fingers. “Because his family doesn’t get to eat if he fails tomorrow’s test,” he replies, and they laugh quietly to each other.
Dominique glares at their backs, then touches Ari’s hand gently. “Don’t worry about them,” she says.
But Mr. Rudra likes this trait of Ari’s, and keeps the gallery open until Ari is ready to leave, until he staggers home at midnight and collapses in his bed, his mind overflowing with alchemical formulas.
Sometimes he dwells on Isla’s lazy smile and coy answer to his question.
I’d worry first about becoming an alchemist.
He has little understanding of what exactly Lumines does, or what this organization needs alchemists for, but the thought of letting his family down is more than Ari can bear. All his effort and sacrifice over the past year, for nothing. So the threat of shame keeps him up at night and wakes him up early each morning.
If Sam were in Ari’s alchemy class, she would be the top student.
Ari knows this with absolute certainty. In regular school, he watches Sam with awe and envy as she retains information seemingly without effort. She will sit through an entire class without taking notes, staring off into space, then repeat back the teacher’s words verbatim when Ari asks for herhelp with the lesson. She will memorize entire chapters of their textbooks after a single readthrough, can refer to it as if the pages are open before her. How he covets her pristine mind. And yet she will leave exams unfinished, will put off homework until five minutes before class begins. Ari fights hard for every A+ on his report, but Sam’s grades always languish near the bottom of the class. Ari can’t understand it at all. Even though she shows up every day, she participates in school as if there is nothing it can offer her.
During a test one afternoon he notices her daydreaming again, her eyes fixed on some unremarkable section of white classroom wall, idly twirling her pencil. His gaze goes to her paper. Only ten minutes are left in the class, and her paper is still blank.
When he’s sure the teacher isn’t looking, he whispers “Hey” in her direction and, when she glances at him, slides his own paper to the side of his desk.
She blinks, seems to come back to herself. Then she shakes her head politely at him and turns back to her own exam without glancing at his answers. He watches as she fills out her paper until the bell rings.
“You don’t have to help me,” she tells him in the hall after class. “She’ll fail us both if she catches you.”
“But why do you do that?” he asks her.
“Do what?”
“Sabotage yourself. You should be at the top of our class.”
She looks confused by his assessment. “Why would I be?”
“You’ve got everything memorized.” He taps his head. “You know every answer off the top of your head.”
“My answers aren’t usually the ones teachers want.”
“Well, what’d you write down for the question about the butterfly effect?”
“What’dyouwrite?”
“That it’s the concept of every action in life leaving a ripple in the world,” he replies, “that small actions we take can therefore create huge effects.”
“Oh. I just left that one blank.”
