Ari
One day, after their usual lesson with Mr. Rudra, Isla gets up from their table in the study and calls for Ari to come with her.
Ari glances around at the others, who are all sitting with their textbooks, working through essays on the reactive properties of alkali and alkaline earth metals, before getting up and following in her wake. He finds her standing, arms folded, beside a black door at the back of the study.
“Hi,” she says.
“Hi,” he answers. He looks warily around. “Am I in trouble?”
Isla doesn’t answer him. “Follow me,” she says instead. Then she takes out a key and unlocks the door. It slides to the side without a sound, revealing a winding corridor.
Ari’s heart suddenly starts beating faster.
“Well?” she says, looking back at him with a raised eyebrow.
“What do you mean?” he asks.
She nods at the corridor behind the door. “Are you going to follow me or not?”
There is something tense in her voice that he hasn’t heard before. She’s anxious today, even though her expression seems calm. Ari stares at her, waiting for more clues, trying not to be afraid of the fact that she seems afraid.
He approaches her. She brushes his elbow with her fingertips, and he shivers at her touch. “Come on, then,” she says, and walks in.
They make their way along the curved path. The air is cooler in here, nipping at his cheeks. The walls are adorned with long monochromatic lines that make him feel as if the corridor is narrowing. His eyes turn to the circles engraved in the floor.
No, not simply circles. The patterns in the wood are alchemical formulas—resembling the bonds between elements in chemistry, yet written not withlines connecting periodic table elements but overlapping circles that form Venn-like patterns. He has memorized hundreds of these structures in his textbooks, and his walk slows as he recognizes some of them.
“Hurry up,” Isla says in a clipped tone. He snaps out of his daze, turns his eyes away from the circles, and quickens his steps to match hers.
At last, they reach the end of the corridor, where it opens up to a room. Ari’s eyes go to the inscription in the stone above the arched entrance.
ORA ET LABORA
“Pray and work,” Isla says, noting his gaze. “This is our temple and oratory, wherein we labor.”
Ari whispers the words to himself and feels a strange sense of familiarity, as if he is back in Surat, stepping inside a temple with his family and entering a sacred space.
She guides him inside. The room is a large, circular space lined not with books but with shelves of glass equipment, boxes, and jars of liquids.
Mr. Rudra is here, seated and waiting, taking a shimmering white pill. At the sight of Ari, he tosses him a black coat.
Ari takes the coat hesitantly. “What are we doing today?”
Mr. Rudra swallows the pill with some water, smiles, and straightens.
“Your first transmutation,” he replies.
A real transmutation.Ari suddenly feels scared. “But—I haven’t finished the elemental transmutation course yet.”
“You’ve done enough coursework. It’s time we moved you into the next phase of your education. Our competitors will not be waiting around patiently for you to mature into an alchemist.”
Competitors.It is the first time Ari has considered that there might be other groups of alchemists out there, working against them. The thought sends an ominous shiver through him. Competitors—for what?
Ari looks at the round table between them as Isla sets out several objects: a glass of water and a shaker of salt; a fork and a potted plant; and a small glass jar filled with what looks like shimmering, silver-white powder, its color gleaming in certain slants of light. It is this last thing that Ari’s eyes linger curiously on. Even without touching it, something about the substance calls to him, as if it knows he is here.
“This will be harder than you think,” Mr. Rudra says. “So we’ll start slowly, and see how far you get.”
He sets the glass of water in front of Ari. Ari looks at the other objects, his eyes resting again on the jar of white powder.
