Ari
One afternoon, when Ari’s car picks him up, it doesn’t take him to the library.
Instead, the driver heads west, exiting the freeway into a part of the city with clean, wide streets and lush green lawns. Ari cranes his neck, his chest tight. He’s never been taken west before. He recently mastered a series of advanced transmutations in the lab, wove steel filaments into the structure of a fern, changed the fur of a dead squirrel into needles of silver. For the past week, Isla didn’t call him into the lab at all. Surely he hadn’t disappointed? Zan’s disappearance still lives in the back of Ari’s mind, and with dread, he wonders if he has also done something to upset Mr. Rudra, whether he is in trouble.
“Where are we going?” he asks the driver, but the driver, who has never spoken to him, just meets his gaze once through the rearview mirror and continues on.
At last, they arrive in the heart of Beverly Hills and pull up to a building resembling a château overgrown with ivy, where an attendee in a black suit greets him at the door and invites him inside. Ari can tell immediately that the man has taken sand; his face is so beautiful that it looks almost inhuman, his skin so radiant that he nearly seems to glow.
Inside, Mr. Rudra is waiting for him on the second floor. This place does not look like a setup to punish Ari, and Ari tries not to look apprehensive, but when he speaks, his voice is tight.
“What am I doing here?” Ari asks.
Instead of answering his question, Mr. Rudra turns to address a tailor who has come over to inspect Ari. “Something tasteful,” he tells the man, who pinches Ari’s sides and stretches a measuring tape around his waist. “Reed’s not looking for a doll.”
At the name, Ari’s apprehension gives way for a small thrill. “Am I meeting Alexander Reed?” he asks when the tailor hurries away.
Mr. Rudra nods. “So I hope you’ll be making a good first impression.”
The tailor and his assistants wheel out hangers full of clothes—sharply trimmed suits and crisp collar shirts, designer trousers and polished loafers. Mr. Rudra offers his thoughts in a relentless train. Too tacky. Too muted. Good only for a funeral, is that what they want to convey to Mr. Reed? Ari listens, nodding along as if he understands.
At last, he tries on a mint-green shirt woven so finely that the silk seems to float against his skin. A suit the color of a forest at dusk, thin cream lines running vertically through the fabric that one only notices when looking closely. Ari stares at himself in the mirror and feels like he has stepped out of his body and into something new, as if he himself has been transmuted.
Mr. Rudra regards him with a thoughtful frown. In that expression, Ari sees an insecurity—a fear, wondering if this look is enough. And suddenly he realizes that Mr. Rudra is afraid of Alexander Reed, that he has been picky all afternoon with these outfits because he is scared to disappoint the man.
It has never occurred to Ari that Mr. Rudra might be afraid of anything.
“It’ll do,” Mr. Rudra says at last, and the tailor lets out a sigh of relief. “Will you have it ready by the end of the week?”
The tailor nods. When he hurries away to prepare the invoice, Ari asks, “What am I meeting Mr. Reed for?”
Mr. Rudra folds his arms against his chest and regards Ari with a critical eye. “I think it’s time,” he says, “for us to evaluate you in a more official light.”
A tingle runs up Ari’s spine. He looks at the man in surprise. “Am I graduating?”
“You’ve exhausted all that you need to learn in a group setting.” Mr. Rudra regards him with a critical eye. “From here, your education turns into a true apprenticeship.”
On the night of Ari’s big debut, he showers and dresses in his nice new clothes. When he emerges from his room, Mr. Rudra has a small entourage of people with him. They descend on Ari—a makeup artist, adding a sheen of powder on his eyelids and a soothing lotion on his cheeks; a designer,checking his clothes to make sure they are tucked in and fitted to a tee; a hairstylist, perfecting his dark curls so that they shine in the light.
At the end of it all, Mr. Rudra bends down to him and takes something out of his pocket.
Ari stares down at a small, white pill, its surface shimmering under the light.
Sand. At last, he is allowed to take it.
“It damages an alchemist’s soul more than it does a typical user,” Mr. Rudra explains. “Keep your consumption of it modest.”
Ari feels a thread of fear, but as his eyes turn back down to the pill, the fear is replaced with curiosity. In his hand he holds the philosopher’s stone, the most important triumph in all of alchemy, one that has the potential to transform him into the best version of himself.
Who will that be?
Somewhere in the back of his mind, he sees a vague memory of his father’s face, brows furrowed in bitter disappointment. His mother’s frown, her hands against his cheeks. What he is about to do is a violation to his spiritual well-being, and a rejection of their teachings.
But they sent him here. And it’s been years since he has offered up his prayers.
He pops the pill into his mouth. It’s small and smooth enough that he can swallow it in one go, without any water.
Mr. Rudra smiles. “Now you’re ready.”
