“Good,” Will murmurs. The whispers start up again.
They make their way around the tiles, and she gets them right every time. Tungsten. Salt. Nickel. Copper. The longer they go, the faster she gets, the more streamlined the feeling in her body, until she can barely tell where her own body ends and the tile begins. All is from one, everything seen and unseen, and she understands this now, savors the deep knowledge that resonates within her, never wants it to end.
At last, she hears Will approach her, then feels his hands pulling the blindfold off her eyes.
She squints in the afternoon light, the feeling in her body suddenly disrupted. The roaring in her ears cuts off, and the real world sounds eerily quiet. Her eyes dart down, away from the glare through the trees, then toward her spectators. And there, she sees Diamond Taylor standing some distance from the others, the woman’s arms folded across her chest, those dark circles still under her eyes, regarding Sam with a tilt to her head. It reminds Sam a little of the critical way her own mother sometimes glances at her, and her body reacts accordingly, going rigid with the anxiety to please.
There is only one difference. All of Diamond’s attention is fixed on her.The glare of it is almost more than Sam can bear, and yet she can’t imagine having enough.
Will’s hands are folded behind his back, and for the first time, a small, thoughtful smile touches the edges of his lips.
The pleasure of his approval surges in Sam’s heart. In that instant, she knows she will do whatever it takes to get it again.
At last, Will looks away from her and turns his attention to the professor. “You’ll have a new student tomorrow morning. Make sure she catches up with the others.”
Suddenly Sam realizes that maybe Will hadn’t set her up to fail, after all. He had chosen this test to prove her worth to the others. To start her on a more equal footing.
Will lifts a hand. It is an immediate dismissal, and as if snapped out of a daze, the other students file away back down the hall, in the direction of their classroom. Diamond has already left. Sam hadn’t even noticed the woman turn away.
As the others clear out, Will straightens. “Diamond doesn’t typically show up for evaluations of apprentices,” he tells her.
Sam had been an exception. The special treatment sends a pleasant tingle through her.
“Did I pass?” she says hesitantly.
He studies her with a sober expression. Finally, he says, “No untrained apprentice has ever passed that test.”
Never. So, itwasan impossible test, and yet Sam had done it.
“What—” She halts, then starts again. “What does that mean?”
“It means that tomorrow, I want you to come here again. I’ll send a driver for you.”
She swallows hard and looks down at the tiles, the tide of ambition in her now quavering in the face of reality. Today she had told her mother that she was going to study with Ari after school, and her mother, busy doing odd jobs, had nodded without paying her much heed. But how long could she get away with that?
“You don’t like this plan,” he says, noting her expression.
“I…,” she says in a low, hesitant voice. Shame wells in her chest. “That is, when I first came to find Diamond Taylor, I came because I needed money. My mother and I—we’re not doing well. She can’t keep going alone.And I can’t spend all my extra hours training here without getting paid. We have to make rent by the end of the week.”
Her voice trails off as she becomes too embarrassed to ask outright for money.
Will looks unconcerned. “Yes, we’re aware of your home situation.” Then he reaches into the pocket of his coat and takes out a thick white envelope. He hands it to her.
She looks at him in surprise. He had been carrying this the entire time, as if he’d known she would pass her test today. Her fingers skim the edge of the envelope, breaking the seal, and for the rest of her life, she will remember this moment in luminous detail, when she finds herself staring down at more money than she’s ever seen in her life.
“Two thousand dollars a week,” Will says to her. “More, once you have learned enough to start working for us. Will that suffice?”
“Yes.” She falters again. “I—”
“You are with Grand Central now,” he says. “There will be many things to fear, but money will never be one of them again.”
When performed at near absolute zero, for instance, a transmutation behaves like a wave. In the lab, one will see that it loses its identity and, much like helium, turns into a superfluid, a substance with zero viscosity that can flow without any loss of kinetic energy, everywhere all at once.
The Quantum Mechanics of Alchemyby Hypatia, 2003
