Magic was taboo on Earth. Orin had told me I would be hard-pressed to find anyone who believed in magic, let alone someone who practiced it. Science was king and ruled above everything, dismissing anything that resembled the unknown as parlor tricks. Most of the resources we found were just people who wanted to believe in magic, but didn’t actually know anything about it.
Hacks who claimed to be witches were nothing more than regular people siphoning power off the earth around them. Alchemy was a different animal. What we needed was to find someone who knew how to manipulate natural properties, turning them from raw energy into focused power.
After a few weeks of running into dead ends and a few dicey situations that nearly ended in bloodshed, we finally found someone that seemed promising. We met a man while browsing the occult section at a book store. He told us about a group that seemed to be serious about what they referred to as “the craft”. They weren’t easy to find and didn’t take kindly to outsiders, but we’d found a starting point.
We went through a series of people who knew someone that knew something about the people we sought. It wasn’t easy to stay positive when all we seemed to get was a runaround. From talking to Lonzo, they were faring much better in their quest. They’d located the woman who was with Delia the day we saw her enter the train station. Lonzo found out she was a nurse working for a psychiatric hospital; he got a job there as a janitor to get closer to her. He believed she was the key to locating Delia, and I had to admit his plan was solid.
Orin and I walked into an antique store owned by our next contact. The last person we’d spoken to called her the “high priestess” and insisted she was the one who would finally give us the answers we were looking for. I’m not sure which of us was more skeptical, but neither of us was willing to admit we were slightly nervous about the entire situation.
“Hello, boys.” A soft, melodic voice called from somewhere ahead of us. “Are you from around here?”
Orin cleared his throat as though preparing to respond, but before he could say a word, a woman with waist-length hair stepped around a large wooden armoire. She was so blonde; her hair was almost white. She was younger than I’d expected her to be, but something about her told me she’d lived more than her fair share. More than that, both of us recognized the woman we’d been searching for. She wasn’t an obscure stranger. She was Orin’s wife.
“Of course, you’re not from here, I’m only kidding.”
“Alice? What are you doing here?” Orin asked, taking in her strange attire.
She wore a long white gown accented by a rich purple sash. The necklaces hanging from her neck were adorned with various charms and amulets. A headpiece made of braided silver and gold rested atop her pale hair like a crown.
“There’s a lot you don’t know about me, Orin. I guess it’s time you learned some of my secrets.”
The fact that the answer to our questions had been in front of us the entire time left a sour taste in my mouth. If she’d had any inkling we were looking for her, she never let on. It was nearly impossible for me to reconcile the happy homemaker I’d seen so many times with the ethereal woman who stood before me in that moment.
“We’re seeking some answers regarding alchemy.”
“You’ve come to the right place.” She paused to look at Orin sadly. “We have much to discuss.”
She led us to the back of the store where a dilapidated cupboard rested against the wall. Holding aloft one of the amulets she wore, the cupboard shimmered and shook slightly. A wave of her hand opened one of the doors that appeared to be clinging on for dear life. I exchanged a look with Orin as a bright light erupted from inside the cupboard. When it dissipated, I couldn’t believe what I saw.
“What would you do if someone wanted to buy this piece?” Orin asked our host.
His mind worked differently than mine. I was still trying to decide if the staircase had always been inside the cupboard, or if the amulet had somehow revealed it.
“Trust me, this cupboard has served its purpose for over one-hundred years without a single customer showing the tiniest bit of interest in it. Come, there are people I want you to meet.” Alice gestured for us to enter the cupboard.
Once inside and down a few steps, Alice turned and repeated the gesture that created the bright light moments before. The doors snapped shut and a golden glow traced the perimeter until it was sealed from the inside. Without another word, she maneuvered past us and descended into the darkness. I looked to Orin and he took the lead, following the mysterious woman he’d married down the stairs.
“Where are we going?” I asked as I ducked my head to avoid hitting it on the low ceiling.
“To my workshop.”
That was more cryptic than I’d hoped for, but I had just followed a woman into a cupboard so I couldn’t complain. When we reached the bottom of the stairs, we stood in a cluttered room. Walls lined with shelves covered every inch of available space. There were bottles of colorful liquids, boxes with peeling labels, and various unidentifiable apparatus. A large wooden table stood in the center of the room. It was empty save for a set of scales and a mortar and pestle. It reminded me of the apothecary in Almandine.
“First, I need you to tell me why you’ve come.” Alice circled her table, grabbing ingredients from the shelves as she went.
“Wait, first, tell us what you meant when you said we weren’t from around here,” Orin insisted.
Alice stopped long enough to deliver an eyeroll in our direction. “The art of alchemy is tightly woven into the art of magic and mysticism. I felt a tear in the lining the separates our world from the others. I’ve felt that tear more than once, so I know there are more of you, or someone else came first.”
“Unless you’re much older than you appear, I came to Earth when you were just a child.” Orin explained.
A slow smile spread across her face as she touched one of the charms on her many necklaces. “You were the first tear I felt. It’s been, what? Thirty years since you arrived?”
“Something like that, yes.”
“Trust me, I have lived more lives than you can imagine. Today, I am Alice, but through the years I’ve been known by many names.”
“You asked why we had come, Orin is here because he fell in love and remained on Earth. My men and I have come to rescue our princess. Without her, our world will die.”
Alice didn’t respond. She continued placing ingredients on the table until she felt satisfied that she’d gathered them all. She looked at us as though she’d forgotten we were there.
“And what world is that, Taeren?”
“Riona.”
Alice smiled. “Ah, Riona. The world that never should have been.”
I had no idea what she meant, but I knew I was about to find out. Somehow, I felt Alice held answers to questions that only the queen would have known back home. She grabbed an effervescent green liquid and tilted it until the tiniest drop landed in a glass vial, she added a sprinkling of a gritty substance that may have been copper, and two drops of mercury. The contents of the vial swirled and foamed. Alice moved quickly to pour the mixture over a smooth black stone. I watched in fascination as the foamy mixture appeared to eat away at the stone; as it dissolved the stone, it turned into a deep green powder. She swept the powder into a small vial and corked the top.
“What is that?” Orin asked, never taking his eyes off the tiny vial.
“You’ll see,” Alice told him as she moved on to other ingredients.
“What did you mean that Riona shouldn’t have existed?” I pressed.
“Sophronia shouldn’t have created it, but she did.” Alice sighed and set down her tools. “There was a time when women were not treated as equally as they are now. The alchemical arts were for men, everything was for men, except child-rearing and homemaking.”
The idea of a world ruled by men was confusing to me. I’d gathered that Earth treated women with the façade of equality, but that men tended to take charge. In Riona, things were the opposite. Men certainly weren’t treated as second class citizens, but we were under no circumstances considered superior to women.
“Sophronia decided to do something about it. She wanted to prove to the world that women were not only equal to men, we were capable of accomplishing great things.” Alice began to mix a new set of ingredients. “The official word was that she went mad and had to be locked away, but those of us who knew the truth were given an amazing gift. We knew that if we could harness the power of alchemy, we could do anything.”
Alice continued to combine ingredients I couldn’t name; some reacted similarly to the first, others became liquids or vapor. Each time she got the reaction she was looking for, she bottled it into a small vial and set the new mixture on the far side of the table. I couldn’t help but be slightly irritated by her apparent indifference to the conversation.
“What are you doing?” I asked with more force than I’d intended.
Orin cleared his throat and gave me a stern look. We were in her space, I should have been more respectful. I just couldn’t help but wonder why she was flitting about mixing random things together even though she seemed to know exactly why we were there.
“I’m getting everything ready. The philosopher’s stone is powerful, but we’re going to need more than that to keep them from breaking through.”
She continued to weigh and grind ingredients. I had no idea what she was talking about. Of course, by now I knew the amulet I’d foolishly given to Delia was a mystical stone that somehow gave eternal life to Riona. That didn’t mean I understood how or why it worked.
“What’s breaking through? Where?” Orin asked the more pressing question.
“Don’t you know? Your enemies are following you to Earth.”