“You may as well come along, September. You were expected, and the expected ought to do what they’re told. It’s only manners.”
“But the casket in the woods… I don’t have much time… It took so long to get here!”
“All that tomorrow, my dear! You can’t worry on a full stomach!”
The whole colorful throng of them, Rubedo and Citrinitas arm in arm, A-Through-L prickly and guarded, Saturday walking silently just behind September, his eyes huge and wary, September herself, and Doctor Fallow leading the way, crossed the square to one of the largest buildings. Thready clouds hid its roof up above the crowns of the trees. It seemed far too big for the little folk.
Doctor Fallow waggled his bushy eyebrows, winked twice, pinched his long nose, puffed out his cheeks, and spun around on one foot. Rubedo and Citrinitas did the same-and all three of them sprouted up like nothing you’ve seen: swelled, grew, stretched, until they were taller than A-Through-L and of a perfect size to enter the huge building.
“I… don’t think I’m of a girth to walk comfortably in there,” sighed Ell. “Though I’m certainly of a height. I shall wait outside. If anything proves wonderful there, do yell out the window.” He settled down, heavy with radishes, to nap in the courtyard of Doctor Fallow’s office.
As they passed through doors and down hallways, the spriggans swelled up and shrunk down to fit each passageway. September and Saturday sometimes had to crawl on their bellies and sometimes could not even see the top of the door frames above them, and they had to scale the staircases like mountain climbers. The building could only be comfortable to a spriggan. Finally, the spriggans settled into something smaller than they had been when they entered-but taller than they had been at the feast-and opened the door to a great laboratory full of bubbling things.
“The heart of our university,” said Doctor Fallow expansively. “Only broadly speaking a university, of course.”
“We don’t have classes, really,” said Rubedo.
“Or exams,” said Citrinitas.
“And we’re the only students,” they said together.
“But no work is more important than ours,” finished Rubedo.
“You’re… alchemists, right?” said September shyly. She remembered, “The practice of alchemy is forbidden to all except young ladies born on Tuesdays” and spriggans, who were exempt from everything, if the Green Wind was to be believed.
“Exact as an equation!” crowed Doctor Fallow.
“Then I should tell you I was born on a Tuesday.”
“How marvelous!” exclaimed Citrinitas. “I am so weary of running all the student committees myself.”
“And what use I could make of an assistant! The volume of papers is monstrous,” said Rubedo ruefully, glaring at his wife.
“Now, now, let’s not be hasty,” said Doctor Fallow, raising his hands for silence. “The young lady can have no more than the most rudimentary understanding of the Noble Science. Perhaps she would rather be a rutabaga farmer. I hear the market is very good this year.”
“It’s… turning lead to gold, right?” said September.
All three spriggans laughed uproariously. Saturday flinched-he did not like people laughing at September.
“Oh, we solved that long ago!” Rubedo chuckled. “I believe that was Greengallows, Henrik Greengallows? Is that right, my love? Ancient history has never been my subject. A famous case study even reported a method for turning straw into gold! The young lady who discovered it wrote a really rather thin paper-but she toured the lecture circuit for years! Her firstborn refined it, so that she could make straw from gold and solve the terrible problem of housing for destitute brownies.”
“Hedwig Greengallows, my dear,” mused Citrinitas. “Henrik was just her mercurer. Men are so awfully fond of attributing women’s work to their brothers! But, September, you have no idea how freed we all felt by Hedwig’s breakthrough. It is tedious to spend centuries on one problem. Now, we have several departments. Rubedo labors at the task of turning gold to bread, so that we may eat our abundance, while I am writing my dissertation on the Elixir Mortis-the Elixir of Death.”
“It seems to me,” said Saturday shyly, “that the country of Autumn is a strange place to conduct experiments. Nothing here changes, yet alchemy is the science of change.”
“What a well-spoken boy!” exclaimed Doctor Fallow. “But truly, the Autumn Provinces provide the most ideal situation for our program. Autumn is the very soul of metamorphosis, a time when the world is poised at the door of winter-which is the door of death-but has not yet fallen. It is a world of contradictions: a time of harvest and plenty but also of cold and hardship. Here we dwell in the midst of life, but we know most keenly that all things must pass away and shrivel. Autumn turns the world from one thing into another. The year is seasoned and wise but not yet decrepit or senile. If you wrote a letter of requisition, you could ask for no better place to practice alchemy.”
“What is the Elixir of Death?” asked September, running her fingers along several strange instruments: a scalpel with a bit of mercury clinging to it, scissors with a great mass of golden hair caught in the shears, a jar full of thick liquid that shifted back and forth from yellow to red.
Citrinitas brightened-if that were possible. She clutched her three-fingered hands to her breast. “Oh, nothing could be more fascinating! The Elixir of Life, as you will certainly know, is produced via the Chymical Wedding, a most secret process. The resulting stuff makes one immortal. The Elixir of Death, more rare by far, returns the dead to life. I expect you’ve heard the tale of the boy and the wolf? No? Well, it was terrible: The boy’s brothers betrayed him and cut him all up, but his friend the wolf got himself a vial of the water of Death and fixed him right up. It’s quite a famous story. Death herself produces the Elixir, when she is moved to weep-not a frequent occurrence, I assure you! I am trying to synthesize it from less… esoteric ingredients.”
“And the casket in the Worsted Wood? Where does that fit in to all these strange studies?” said September shrewdly.
“Well,” said Rubedo uncertainly, “the Worsted Wood lies at the heart of the Autumn country. None of us go in. The geese here, they migrate each evening, and one of them said a girl was on her way who would want to enter the woods, and we felt sorry for her.”
“You are certainly welcome to, though none of us can truly recommend it,” said Doctor Fallow, rushing his words. “We confess-we made the casket. One of my undergraduate projects, I’m afraid! Quite a long time ago. You’re the first to show any interest in it since, oh, since Queen Mallow claimed her sword here, I expect.”
September started. “It’s Queen Mallow’s sword?”
“No, no, I didn’t say that, did I, girl? I said she claimed it. You can’t claim something that’s already yours. If it’s yours, it’s yours, eh? The casket is really quite clever. I received first marks for it. How shall I explain? It is both empty and full until one opens it. For when a box is shut, you cannot tell what it might contain, so you might as well say it contains everything, because, really, it could contain anything, see? But when you open it, you affect what is inside. Observing something changes it, that’s a law, nothing to be done. Oh, you’ll see in the morning! How splendid you will find it!”