1
Snow drifted from the gray sky—slowly at first, lazily, the sort that was caught on eyelashes and tongues. Ramsay gripped her mother’s hand as she crunched across the frozen dirt, ice like glass shattering beneath her boots. The thin white trees were covered in knots that looked like dozens of eyes watching as they passed. Puffs of steam left her mouth as she breathed hard, trying to keep up with her mother’s long strides. Ramsay’s many questions had been ignored. She was only told to hurry, don’t stop now, they were almost there. Ramsay complained that she was cold, but Amelia only tightened her grasp.
“Come along,” she said, voice gentle. “It’s almost time.”
They crossed a frozen river. Her father had always told her not to walk along the river in the winter. The surface was too thin. It could crack, and she could be washed away, never to be seen again. Her mother let go of Ramsay’s hand and told her to wait there, right there, right where she was. Ramsay pulled on the ends of her shirt nervously while she watched her mother walk to the other end of the riverbank, back onto the solid ground of snow. She stood in a clearing of the trees and looked over her shoulder at Ramsay with a loving smile.
The snow began to fall faster, then—hard enough that Ramsay had to shield her eyes from the ice that stung her cheeks. The world became a white blur. The snow turned red. It fell to the ground, drops spreading like blots of ink. The blood dripped from Amelia’s cheeks. Her smile faded as the screams began.
2
Ash was lost in thought, as usual, when he saw the alchemist he wanted to meet. Gresham Hain strode through the beige stone corridor with purpose, surrounded by a group of chattering scribes. Ash had only ever seen Hain in grainy black-and-white photos in the texts he’d written, but it was definitely him. He was a pale-skinned man nearing his sixties, but his back was straight, frame muscular, and though his hair had turned a stark white, it was full, gray stubble on his jaw. Ash had heard that Hain sometimes visited the college. The man was an advisor to House Alexander, but he was technically still a professor, though he rarely taught classes or took on apprentices. Ash had often imagined this moment—imagined finding enough courage to march up to Gresham Hain and tell the man his name.
As Ash watched Hain striding toward him, his anger grew. The rage became a mirage of heat that glowed from his skin, a second pulse inside him. Ash’s hands clenched into fists. Ash hated Hain, hated him enough to want to scream at him and hit him and—
“Excuse me,” Ash said. His voice cracked. “Sir Hain, I’m—”
Hain walked past, speaking to a scribe. He hadn’t heard Ash—hadn’t even spared a glance. It was like Ash wasn’t there. A scribe gave Ash an odd look and seemed moments from asking him why he was standing in the middle of the corridor, and didn’t he have anything better to do with his time? The anger faded and died until it was replaced by numbness. Ash bit down on his teeth, ducked his head, and walked in the opposite direction.
* * *
It was a cold, nasty morning. A misty rain hung in the air. Ash knelt in the dirt beside a stone bench as he patted a new layer of soil. Each flower, every plant had its own energy. The wilting hydrangea there, for example—Ash could feel that it had a calm, slow, rhythmic vibration, perhaps an acceptance of death, transforming from one state of the physical into the next. Its petals were shriveled and brown. Ash held it in his palm as he looked over his shoulder.
The campus was shrouded in a thick yellow-gray haze, stone buildings disappearing in the fog. The students and professors were in class, no one else in sight. Ash looked back at the flower and shut his eyes. He imagined the hydrangea in full bloom—pictured in his mind every detail, from the velvety softness of the petals to the dew glistening and dripping onto his hand. Alteration was tier three, but it wouldn’t require much alchemic power for something so small. Energy sparked inside of him, a flint lighting flame. He felt the heat grow under his brown skin, spreading through him—
“You don’t have much love for this job, I see.”
Ash stood and whirled around, heart hammering. He let go of the flower and dropped it to the dirt. It was in full bloom, just as he’d imagined, dew on his hand. Frank stood behind him in his usual workwear overalls, hands in his pockets. The man was almost seven feet tall, but he snuck around like a cat. Ash couldn’t be convinced that Frank wasn’t also secretly practicing alchemy and hadn’t simply materialized out of thin air.
Ash gave what he hoped was a charming, sheepish grin worthy of forgiveness. That grin, plus his floppy brown curls and big brown eyes, had gotten him out of trouble before once or twice. “Saw that, did you?”
Frank was often in a foul mood, but it was made even fouler now. “You must not have any love for your freedom, either,” he said.
“I didn’t know anyone was here.” But even Ash knew that was a sorry excuse.
“Maybe you could try explaining that to the Kendrick,” Frank said, not even the hint of a smile on his face. Ash sometimes felt that Frank took it upon himself to be a fatherlike figure a little too much.
“You wouldn’t call the reds on me, would you?” Ash asked. “You’d be down an assistant.”
“I made do without you before,” Frank said. “I’ll be just fine without you again.”
The two stood in silence for one long moment, staring each other down. Ash was used to being on his own, and he wasn’t very fond of obeying anyone—but Ash needed this job, and besides, Ash appreciated Frank and his gruff straightforwardness. It was a breath of fresh air, in a place like this.
“Sorry,” Ash said. “It won’t happen again.”
Frank eyed Ash as if he wanted to continue his lecture, but thankfully he only gave a nod before he carried on across the lawn, disappearing into the haze. That’s often how the man operated: like an unaware energy that had forgotten it was no longer alive, walking from one dimension and into the next. Ash sighed, dusting his hands off on his cotton overalls, and pushed the wobbling barrow in the opposite direction, back toward the greenhouse.
Ash had been technically hired as a domestic of the college to fold sheets and wash dishes in the kitchen, but Frank, for some unknown reason, had taken the boy under his wing in the past few months, asking for his assistance with various groundskeeping tasks. Even if Ash was annoyed at the man, he was also grateful. He preferred to be outside, hands in the dirt, than in the shadows of the college’s corridors, hiding from the gaggles of laughing students and the professors with their cold stares.
It wasn’t quite that they eyed Ash like he was mud tracked onto expensive rugs, or that they insulted him in the halls, though that did happen, too, a whispered sneer about the state of his clothes and hair, and oh, yes, the one girl who had laughingly said that Ash would be cute, if he wasn’t so short and didn’t smell like fertilizer. It was more that, for the most part, they didn’t even look at him at all. It was as if Ash was invisible to them, or that he didn’t exist; that he wasn’t even worthy of enough attention to show disgust, let alone respect.
Ash had applied to Lancaster. Just a year before, he had saved enough sterling from his part-time job at the docks to send off an application and take the entrance exams. He’d worked hard for years before that—hours of studying alone at night, bent over texts, because he’d convinced himself that he could have a shot at becoming a student of the college. Any and all financial need would’ve been met if he’d been accepted, and he would’ve greatly increased his chances of passing the license examination. Ash had tried to earn an alchemist license before on his own, without studying at Lancaster, but the sheet of paper had been designed to only allow an elite few to pass with its endless, ever-changing questions about random trivia focusing on the history of alchemy and technique of various tiers. The exam didn’t let Ash show what he could do, prove that he deserved to pass—and so he’d failed each of the three times he took the test.
With a license, Ash could find a job in alchemy, doing something he actually loved—and with the money he earned, he could’ve applied to any of the eight Houses. His life would’ve changed. But it quickly became clear that it didn’t matter what Ash did, or how talented he was, or how hard he worked. He would never belong. Thank you for applying to the Lancaster College of Alchemic Science. Unfortunately, due to the high number of applicants … The thought alone filled Ash with shame, the fact that he’d believed someone like him could make it into some fancy college for magic.
It was a cruel irony that Ash ended up working at the college instead. That was something alchemists often wrote about in the texts he’d read: the infinite universe as understood through the finite human brain was a tapestry of threads that often paralleled one another, synchronicities sometimes appearing as cosmic jokes. Ash hated his job and the constant reminder that he wasn’t seen as good enough, but it was the only one he’d been able to find that offered a decent enough wage. And Hain. Yes, that had been a part of Ash’s decision to apply to the college and to take this job, too. But now that he had seen Gresham Hain in person, Ash realized that he was too much of a coward to meet his father. Meeting Hain had been his only accomplishable goal in life, and now even that he couldn’t achieve. It was a depressing realization.
The barrow squeaked as Ash pushed it along the path lined by buildings, toward the campus gardens and the glass greenhouse. Ash’s stomach grumbled as he entered. He couldn’t help it—he was often hungry, especially after practicing alchemy. Ash and Frank kept their tools hung up and leaning against the far wall, and long tables held pots of seedlings that were Ash’s babies, cared for until he planted them in the ground. Ash exchanged the wheelbarrow and gloves for a rusting watering can. He heaved it up into a sink, water gushing from the faucet and into the opening until it was full.
The campus buildings had ornate white stone and stained glass windows along green paths of damp grass and dirt that lined the main courtyard and its lawn. Ash had practically every room and office memorized. He knew that Vanderbilt Hall’s dusty, shadowed, and mostly abandoned classrooms were where students sometimes liked to shut doors and have their fun, from the sound of giggles and groans; that it was better to avoid the Trumbull Tower late at night, when certain energies had a habit of playing the piano that was left in storage, taking pleasure in startling whoever was near, laughter echoing through the realms whenever Ash jumped at the sudden banging of keys.
Ash also knew that the Giddings Library held some of the rarest texts on energy alchemy: electrodynamics, manifestation, nonphysical explorations of the quantum, and more—all once known as magic. Ash had always had an unquenchable curiosity for the science of magic. He wasn’t a student nor a professor and so would swiftly lose his job if he were ever caught, but sometimes he couldn’t help but stay on campus late at night and steal through the stacks long after the library closed, learning what he could by moonlight.
Magic was an outdated term, used rarely, though Ash found he liked the energy of the word. Magic. The word implied universes unknown and adventures undiscovered, power unfulfilled and possibilities that were endless. Magic was once thought to only be gifted to the unique or special, the chosen ones. Now it was commonly known that every single person in the world had the capability to become an alchemist.
Legally, however—the House Alexander had created the law almost a century before that only licensed alchemists were allowed to practice energy of the higher tiers. The first tier was legal for all—it was the energy of existence, of breathing and blinking and feeling, not something any human could really help. The second, the tier of channeling more energy past a standard measured point, was still legal without a license, too. It was the kind of alchemic practice that was usually seen among artists and musicians and dancers and athletes—the sort of alchemy that would have an audience whispering that the performer had a certain glow as they performed.
Tier three and upward, however, required a license. Ash tried and failed to ignore the bitterness that spiked in his chest. Yes, emotions such as anger and resentment were energy, too, and he was embarrassed that he couldn’t figure out how to transmute and release these emotions so that he wouldn’t feel so trapped by them. All the texts he read gave the same instructions, but no matter how he tried, he struggled to accept where he was in life and find joy in small pleasures. There was still so much potential he had, so many impossible dreams he hadn’t yet reached. Attending Lancaster, receiving his license, finally being looked at with respect. But that was all they were. Impossible daydreams.
As Ash arrived at Boylston Hall, he realized he’d been distracted by his many thoughts and taken too long on the walk from the gardens. He only had a few minutes before the bell rang and the corridors filled with students, something he preferred to avoid. Ash dragged the watering can up the steps, pushing open the heavy front doors with his back.
Not all the buildings of Lancaster were extravagant—Ash had been surprised to see the faded wallpaper and scuffed floorboards of various Halls, the college at times keeping its older charm—but Boylston was the main manor of the campus. It was practically a fortress towering over the courtyard, filled with a mixture of offices and lounges and classrooms, with shining white marble floors and golden ornamental wallpaper. Ash’s first destination was a sitting room for guests. He watered the large-leafed monstera in the corner before he moved on to the administrator’s office where five older adults sat at their desks, barely giving Ash a glance as he watered the pothos plants, careful not to let a drop fall onto the stacks of papers. In a small private library for instructors, where Ash couldn’t help but stare at the titles of each of the cracking faded covers, he watered the hanging philodendron.
Ash was just thinking to himself, rather proudly, that he’d managed to whip through this errand without the bell ringing when he entered the lounge. It was usually empty at this time of the day, but now, for some unknown reason, there were students. One sat at the chess table on the side, playing a game by herself, while two more students sat on the sofas in front of the dim fireplace, speaking lowly. They all wore the college’s uniform of plaid pants and tucked-in, buttoned-up shirts and ties. Ash stopped at the door’s threshold. It slammed shut behind him on its own, grabbing the students’ attention. They glanced over with some surprise, then gave Ash the familiar look—the oh, it’s no one realization, eyes sweeping from his face and down to his shoes, before they turned away again, back to their conversation and solo chess match.
Ash hesitated. He knew firsthand how cruel the students of Lancaster could be when they were bored, and even worse was that, no matter how much he wanted to, he couldn’t fight back—not if he wanted to keep his job. But Ash had already pissed Frank off enough for the day, so he took a deep breath as he walked to the spider plant on the fireplace’s mantel, raising the watering can above his head with trembling arms.
“Anyone could travel to a realm of another density,” one boy on the sofa said snidely. He was interchangeable with any number of students on campus. He had yellow hair and light-colored eyes and an air of wealth about him. He raised his chin as he spoke, as if he had an implicit understanding of his own worth that Ash wasn’t sure he would ever find for himself. “Haven’t you read the teachings of Henry Bates?”
Ash’s ears perked up. He’d just finished a text by Henry Bates a few nights ago. Over a century before, the man had theorized that, because the universe was a complex woven system of infinite realms, and humans were a part of this universe, then humans could also travel to those realms, leaving their physical bodies behind—if they had enough alchemic power to do so, anyway.
“Yes, of course I have,” the other brown-haired student said. “You aren’t the only one attending this college.”
“It sometimes feels like I am.”
The stories Ash heard painted the higher realms as universes containing an endless number of worlds and dimensions, too infinite for the human mind to comprehend. Ash had tried to reach the higher realms, but this was tier-six alchemy, the most difficult form of all, and he’d only ended the night with a headache. Some famed alchemists claimed to have been successful over the past few decades, but there wasn’t any way to prove that they were telling the truth. There were the darker stories, too—tales of alchemists who’d lost their minds in their attempts, caught between dimensions and unable to return to the physical realm.
“I’m not saying it’s impossible,” the student argued defensively. “Only that it would take years of training if it was. The physical body is too much of a manifestation in this reality to drop it and enter the nonphysical realms easily.”
He was repeating lines from a text Ash had read a year or so ago now, by another scholar whose name Ash was forgetting. Ash slowly lowered the watering can as he listened.
Copyright © 2024 by Kacen Callender
