The Alchemist and the Witch
Christopher Stasheff
Anno Domini 1682
THE WIND howled around the log cottage, straining at the eaves and rattling the shutters and the door. It made the pine trees that were gathered around the cottage moan and sway. It pushed at the chinking between the logs, then swirled up to test the shingles of the roof. Finally, it swept panting down the chimney.
Inside the cottage, Amer heard it and turned to close the flue. The wind struck against the metal plates and stopped in surprise, then began to rattle and beat at them. Finally it gave up and turned back up the chimney, shrieking with anger.
Amer looked up as he heard it. He sighed, shook his head, and clucked his tongue, thinking that the wind would never learn. He finished the seam of the brass tube he was working on and laid down his torch.
“Master,” said Willow, “wha’cha makin’?”
She was a globe of light in a large glass jar. If you looked closely, you could see, within the globe, a diminutive, very dainty, humanoid form, but only in rough outline.
“A blowpipe, Willow.” Amer looked the tube over carefully. He was a good-looking man, but overly solemn for one in his early thirties.
“Wha’cha gonna blow through it?”
“Air.” Amer puffed through the pipe, checking to see that there were no leaks. Outside, the wind heard him and swept against the cracks and crevices of the cottage with a blast of redoubled fury at a being who dared mimic it. But Amer paid it no heed.
“Well, of course you’re gonna blow air through it,” Willow said, disgusted. “What else is there to blow? What I want to know is, ‘Why?’ ”
“To make glassware.” Amer went over to the hearth for a look at the kettle of liquid glass that was bubbling thickly over the flames. He found the fireplace filled with smoke from the glowing coals and opened the flue to let it out.
With a joyful shriek, the wind bounded down the chimney again. A second later, it came tumbling back out, coughing and spluttering with the smoke.
“Oh, I like glass!” the ball of light sang.
“It is attractive, isn’t it?” Amer closed the flue and dipped the pipe into the glass. He lifted out a lump of the amorphous mass and began to blow gently into the pipe, swinging it in slow, cautious circles. Gradually the glass took the form of a globe.
“It’s magic!” Willow breathed.
“No, just practice.” Amer shook the pipe, and the globe slipped to the side. Then, with a wooden forceps, he drew it away, so that the narrowing tube of glass connected globe and pipe. He broke the tube and placed the finished object on a pile of sand on the floor, to cool.
“It’s pretty,” Willow said doubtfully, “but what is it?”
“An alembic,” Amer said. “It’s for boiling solutions and channeling their fumes where I want them to go.” He dipped the pipe into the glass again, and soon, test tubes, flasks, beakers, and all the rest of the paraphernalia so vital to the alchemist had joined the retort on the sand pile.
“Oh, they’re lovely!” the ball of light enthused. “But why are you making so many?”
“Because I have to replace all my apparatus,” Amer explained. “The goodfolk of Salem town made that necessary.”
The citizens of Salem had, with great civic zeal, destroyed all Amer’s glassware in the process of razing his house. Due to the unselfish dedication of the goodfolk of the town, Amer had lost everything—laboratory, wardrobe, notebooks, and dwelling—which ten years of work and wonder had won from the New England wilderness. Barely escaping with his life, he had found his way at once to this hidden spot deep within the mountain forest, and in defiance of the rain and wind which had until then been undisputed masters of the forest, built a small house of logs and reproduced as well as possible his lost notebooks.
There was more to do, of course. There was always more to do.
Taking up a knife and a stick of wood, Amer went to the armchair by the fireplace, sat down, and began to whittle.
“Now wha’cha makin’?”
“A model of a human skeleton, Willow.” Amer made a careful scrape along the tiny wooden bone with his carving knife, held back the piece to evaluate it, compared it with the drawings in Galen’s text on anatomy beside him, and nodded, satisfied. He put it down and took up the next roughly cut blocky bone and began to whittle its details.
“Wha’cha makin’ that for?”
“To better understand human anatomy, my dear.”
“Why in firedamp do you want to understand that?”
Amer smiled. “So I can write a book about it.”
A miniature skull began to grow out of the wood under his knife. On the table at his elbow lay a diminutive rib cage, a pelvis, and an assortment of other bones. There was also a large stack of drawings and pages, all written in the alchemist’s hand. Amer was preparing his own text on anatomy.
“Oh,” said the ball of light, “I’m writin’ a book, too. I’m gonna call it Bizarre Behavior of the Bipedal Beast.”
“Indeed!” Amer looked up from his work. “And where are you finding your information?”
“From watching you. You’re about as bizarre as they come. Let’s see . . . ’makes little skeletons . . . ’ ”
Amer smiled, wondering what his little captive was using for pen and ink—or paper, for that matter. He, of course, had never heard of electricity, let alone the concept of rearranging electrical charges that store her words. “You’re not exactly a conformist yourself. Will-o’-the-wisps aren’t supposed to write books, you know.”
“Must be the company I keep.”
“Touché.” Amer smiled. “I am a trifle eccentric, I suppose.”
“No ‘suppose’ about it. You do a lot of things people aren’t supposed to do.”
“Do I really!”
“Uh-huh.” The ball of light bobbed. “Like, for one thing, they’re not supposed to go messing around with smelly ol’ potions and things. They’re also not supposed to catch will-o’-the-wisps and keep ’em in bottles!”
“Beakers,” Amer corrected automatically. “You wouldn’t want me to be lonely, would you?”
“Yeah,” the will-o’-the-wisp said pensively. ‘‘That’s another thing people aren’t supposed to do.”
“What? Be lonely?”
“Uh-huh,” said Willow. “They’re supposed to live in towns, or maybe farmhouses, with other people—but not high up on mountainsides, all alone.”
“Well, yes,” Amer conceded. “I must admit that’s true. But the people of Salem didn’t want me there, Willow.”
“Aw, I’ll bet they did. You just think they didn’t.”
“No,” Amer said, frowning, “I’m afraid they made their opinion quite clear. They burned my house and notebooks, and broke my instruments. I barely escaped with my life.”
“No!” Willow said, shocked.
“Why, yes,” said Amer mildly.
“But why, Master?”
“Because,” said Amer, “Samona told them I was a warlock.” He frowned. “Actually, I don’t think they’d have taken action on her unsupported word—she’s never been terribly well-liked, except by the young men, and then in the worst possible way. She must have had some help, some others telling the goodfolk that I had made a pact with Satan.”
“Master!” Willow gasped. “You didn’t, did you?”
“Of course not, Willow. I’m an alchemist, not a warlock.”
The will-o’-the-wisp sounded puzzled. “What’s the difference?”
“A warlock gains magical powers by selling his soul to the Devil,” Amer explained. “An alchemist gains magical results by studying the phenomena of nature and mind.”