Suddenly Mr. Rudra’s hand shoots out and presses flat against Ari’s chest.
Ari gasps. Then—pain explodes in him, and he sees nothing but a flash of white. A strangled cry breaks free from his throat. The feeling is indescribable—as if a hand is inside his chest, squeezing his heart, pushing organs and muscle aside. He tries to pull away, but it is as if the man’s hand is stuck to him, like opposite ends of a magnet. He can’t bear this—he’s going to die—
“I can pull it forward in you,” Mr. Rudra says. His words are firm and harsh. Ari can barely hear him through the pain. “But you have to take it. It will respond to no one else but you.”
But Ari feels like he has been set on fire, like he’s being operated on while awake, and his body tries desperately to escape.
Mr. Rudra holds him for a half-second longer. To Ari, it feels like years. And then, at last, the man releases him. Ari collapses backward as if he was suddenly let go. His hand knocks the glass over, and water spills across the table. He tumbles to the floor, hitting his back hard against the tiles. His entire body has broken out in a sweat—he presses his fingers into his palms and feels the slickness there. He’s trembling violently; his teeth chatter.
Over the edge of the table, Mr. Rudra watches him, his face patient and unbothered, waiting for him to stand back up. Isla has tightened her lips into a thin line, and her eyes have that tense glow about them again. She looks at Mr. Rudra, but the man shakes his head.
“Archimedes,” he snaps at Isla.
Isla comes around the table to Ari’s side, bends down, and offers him a hand.
“Come on then,” she says, her voice gentler than he’s ever heard it.
He manages to take her hand. She pulls him to his feet, then returns to her place behind the table, where she takes a pitcher and pours more water into the glass.
“The first transmutation is always the hardest,” Mr. Rudra says. “Try again.”
Ari sways. His knees wobble, and he has to lean against the table to save himself from the embarrassment of falling again.
“How—” It’s difficult for him to get the words out through his chattering teeth. “How—do you—”
“How do you bear the pain?” Mr. Rudra guesses, and Ari nods. “As Itold you, as you yourself said, alchemy is adaptive thinking. You are new to this world, unwounded by it. Think of yourself suddenly transported to some bitterly cold or hot place. Your body will tremble at the change, no? But hours later, you’ll grow accustomed to it, and that heat or cold will feel less severe. Humans are remarkable in that way. With time, with practice, you will acclimate to the pain, and it will dull. But in order for that to happen, you must subject yourself to it repeatedly.” He holds a hand out, gesturing at the glass of water. “Again.”
Ari takes a deep breath and tries to gather his scattered thoughts. The pain has stripped everything from him, and for a moment, he can’t even remember the composition of water, can’t bring himself to visualize the geometry in his mind. He closes his eyes and tells his body to calm down, that he can do this. He dips his fingers slightly into the water again. Gradually, warily, his body returns to him, and in the darkness of his thoughts, he begins once more to envision what he must do. He pictures the structures, the circles, then the latticework of ice into which they must transform.
Then he searches for his soul. There is only darkness.
Again, Mr. Rudra’s hand reaches for his chest. Everything in Ari wants to shrink away from it, but that part of himself that works hard, that wants to give it his all, forces himself to stay put. The man’s hand presses flat against his shirt—
The pain is somehow worse this time, perhaps because Ari anticipates it, and he screams. Again, his thoughts wash out into blinding white. The circles and lattice disappear, all the countless theories and pages and texts he’s read evaporate, all his late nights and extra hours vanish, everything he’s worked so hard on and so laboriously for during the past few years is rendered useless in this instant. He can’t think of anything.
I can pull it forward in you. But you have to take it.
He searches desperately for the light in him. He searches and searches but cannot concentrate hard enough; the pain is too much.
Mr. Rudra’s hand withdraws again.
Again, Ari stumbles backward, catching himself only at the last second before he ends up on the floor. His hands grapple for the shelves on the wall, and there he steadies himself, shaking uncontrollably, his grip rattling the glass jars. Isla watches him, but doesn’t comfort him this time.
Mr. Rudra’s eyes are emotionless. “Again.”
Again.
And again.
Ari subjects himself without question to the torture each time, tries in vain each time to grasp the soul within himself and pull it forward, to make it do as he commands, and fails. His shirt is drenched with sweat—sweat soaks through to the black coat he wears. The light in the room changes. He tries and tries. As the hours progress, his concentration deteriorates, his stamina weakening until at last Mr. Rudra sits back in his chair and sighs.
Ari sits down too. He can hardly feel the chair beneath him, his body is so numb. Mr. Rudra looks up at the windows lining the top of the room, and Ari looks too. It is pitch-black outside. He has no idea what time it is.
“Go home, eat, get some sleep.” Mr. Rudra stands up. “Your soul’s too spent to be used right now. We’ll continue tomorrow.” The man steps around the table, his hands folded behind his back, and leaves the lab without a backward glance.
Ari stares at the unused items on the table, the salt and the plant and the fork. Perhaps Mr. Rudra thought that they would have progressed through all of this today, and here Ari is, failing even to complete half of the first assignment. All those hours he’d spent here, making his way through the books, and yet when it came time to put it to use, he’d acted as clueless as a child. He thinks of his mother, his family, of being sent home empty-handed. He’s too exhausted from the pain to hold back his tears.
Through his blurry vision, he sees Isla approach him. “We’ll try again tomorrow,” she says.
