“I don’t think I’ve told you,” said Beth, “how great a teacher you are.”

Isabelle didn’t reply. Of course she didn’t. It had been an hour, and Beth still hadn’t adjusted to her master’s paralysed form perched on the table watching her. Could Isabelle hear her? Was she conscious? Aware of her surroundings? Was she panicking, trapped inside her own body, or was she calmly listening to Beth as she waited out the time until the paralytic wore off? Or had something gone wrong already, unseen by Beth and Jack, that meant she would never be the same again?

Those were the thoughts that chased each other through Beth’s mind over and over as the time ticked past. She knew Isabelle wasn’t dead, at least: her skin was warm to the touch, and while her pulse was gradually slowing it was still over fifty beats a minute.

Temperature readings were awkward to take. Isabelle’s mouth hung helpfully open, but there was still something strange about putting a thermometer into someone’s mouth while they didn’t react in the slightest. She’d said she hated taking her temperature earlier; was she still uncomfortable every time Beth did it?

Jack had made an excuse and left. He was uncomfortable around an Isabelle who stared and said nothing, Beth supposed. So was she, if she was brutally honest. But Isabelle didn’t want to be alone. There was a chance she was awake in there and in need of someone to talk to her.

“Because it’s true,” Beth said. “You are easily the best teacher I’ve ever had. You understand me. None of my other teachers ever understood me; they always just said I wasn’t good enough or I didn’t try hard enough. Even Gordeau always seemed so surprised whenever I did something well. But you always seem to believe I’m going to be as good as… well, as you.”

She laughed. That still seemed an absurd idea. Something that Isabelle was just saying to make her feel better. It seemed impossible to be as good as Isabelle was. “So… yeah. Thanks. It means a lot.”

Beth fought to avoid cringing. She never normally said that sort of thing out loud to anyone. She wouldn’t have done it now if Isabelle had been able to respond. But it was true, and maybe it was what Isabelle needed to hear right now. Not that she knew the first thing about what was going through the other alchemist’s mind and what she needed.

She glanced at the clock. Still another three minutes before she needed to take the next set of readings. And she’d already worked her way through the list of tests Isabelle had set out, some more awkward than others. In another hour or two they could try some of them again to see if anything had changed, but there was no point now.

She wished Jack would come back.

“I don’t know how to do this,” she admitted to Isabelle. “How to talk to someone who can’t talk back. It’s hard enough having a conversation with a person who can reply. What am I supposed to do, tell stories? I don’t know any stories that aren’t children’s tales.”

What did she know? The answer to that was clear: alchemy. She could talk about alchemy for hours. The two of them had done that on a few occasions, occasions Beth treasured, especially now she was beginning to absorb and learn enough that she could actually contribute rather than just being lectured to.

“I was thinking about what you showed me yesterday,” Beth said. “It makes more sense now. It’s just that the way the blackroot combines with purified moonshade essence comes from two different interaction principles at once, and I couldn’t understand which of them dominated the effect. But it doesn’t have to be either of them, does it?”

That was why the combination was so versatile, according to Isabelle; with the slightest of adjustments, it could be used to create two very different substances. Or three: with sufficient precision, it was possible to create a perfectly even blend of the ingredients which had altogether different properties from both.

Beth’s next challenge was to achieve that sufficient precision. She’d always prided herself on how neatly and precisely she could work, how she could produce some of the most difficult concoctions she was taught without a mistake. But this was altogether a different level. Nine attempts yesterday had failed because of a tiny fraction of a drop of liquid. She almost doubted it was even possible.

The thing that kept her from doubting was, naturally, that Isabelle had demonstrated the creation with seemingly no difficulty whatsoever. It had taken her twelve attempts to get it right when she’d first tried it, apparently, and she’d been a much more experienced alchemist than Beth was now at the time. That was, she’d been fourteen.

It hurt sometimes, remembering that the reason Isabelle was so absurdly talented was that she’d as good as grown up in her grandfather’s alchemy lab. That alchemy had been her entire life. Beth often wondered whether she’d be as good or even better by now, given the same advantages.

Part of her doubted it, though. Precision could be improved. Her knowledge of ingredients and their combinations could be improved. Things she now had to think about could become second nature. But there was still something Isabelle had that she didn’t.

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In a word: originality. Oh, she could make minor modifications to existing recipes, like what she’d demonstrated on her first day here. But coming up with something entirely new? If someone had asked her to produce something like the paralytic, she wouldn’t have known where to start. She’d been turning it over in the back of her mind for a substantial portion of this hour, and still didn’t know where to start.

Maybe that would come with time. Isabelle would have said so, were she able to talk right now. Beth wasn’t so sure.

“Sorry,” she said. “I keep getting lost in my thoughts and forgetting I’m supposed to be talking to you. Anyway, readings time.”

She picked up the thermometer and inserted it into Isabelle’s mouth, trying to be as gentle as she could without invalidating its readings. Not that she knew whether Isabelle could feel pain or discomfort in her current state, but it felt wrong to do anything else. She noted down the value, but as she was taking Isabelle’s pulse, she heard the door swing open.

While various people high up in the Administration Department had access to the lab, few of them ever used that access. But she still started, knowing that what Isabelle was doing was unlikely to be approved of by the powers that be. I’m too valuable to risk on testing, Isabelle had said when it came up, making quotation marks with her fingers.

They’d both been disgusted by the obvious implication of that: Jack was not so valuable.

It was in fact Jack who’d opened the door. “Hey, Beth,” he said. She liked the way he said her name. “Sorry for ditching you earlier.”

“It’s okay,” she made herself say.

“I’m here now. If you’d like a break?”

“I wouldn’t,” Beth said. That wasn’t entirely true – she would have appreciated doing something else for a while – but she couldn’t stand the thought of going about her business elsewhere, knowing that Isabelle still sat here motionless. “But – I’d like it if you stayed.”

“Then I’ll stay,” Jack said easily. It was that simple.

And he did stay. It was much easier after that, with two of them. They could have actual conversations where both sides responded – though what they didn’t say always felt more significant than what they did say. Jack was no alchemist, but there was still plenty of small talk to make and plenty they could learn about each other in between taking yet more readings. The data was unexciting: no significant changes beyond the gradual slowing of Isabelle’s pulse. And no obviously visible changes either.

Lunch was complicated. They wanted to eat together, but only one of them could leave the lab at a time, and there was strictly no food allowed within the lab. In the end they settled for Beth making them both sandwiches and then taking turns to sit just outside the lab, leaning against its open door, and eat.

It was another hour or so after lunch had been eaten that Isabelle blinked. Beth wasn’t sure she’d seen it at first; she and Jack were discussing food and not watching Isabelle that closely. It was just a hint of motion out of the corner of her eye.

But it was the first hint of motion in four hours, and Beth’s gaze immediately snapped to her master. No movement. Had she imagined it? She thought for a minute she had, but then it happened again. A slow flutter of eyelashes. “It’s wearing off,” Beth said at once. It was actually wearing off. Isabelle was going to be okay.

The rush of relief was almost overwhelming.

“Of course it is,” said Jack. “She’s Isabelle.” But he was smiling too, and Beth knew that she hadn’t been the only one worried.

Isabelle blinked again, faster this time, and then raised her eyebrows. Small facial movements. The paralytic’s effect was fading gradually, Beth deduced, and that was all Isabelle could do for now. It was morbidly fascinating to watch her slowly recover her ability to move. She opened her mouth fully, shut it again, and then with an effort said “Did you miss me?”

The words were distorted, stretched out into a strange form, but comprehensible.

“Yes,” said Beth. “Yes, we did.”

She was rewarded with an attempt at a smile, which came off more as a ghastly grimace.

“Are you… what was it like?”

“I’ve had worse.” It was hard to read the body language of someone who wasn’t yet capable of moving normally; Beth had no idea how bad that implied it had been.

“Can we do anything for you?”

“Water,” Isabelle said.

Jack was faster than Beth was, and there was plenty of water in the laboratory. He had a full cup in his hand within seconds. “Wait. Can you – “

It was pretty clear from the way Isabelle was trying to roll her neck that she couldn’t currently hold the cup and drink from it on her own. “Set it down. I’ll wait.” Her voice was sounding closer to normal now. “Thank you. Beth, can you record observations?”

Beth decided that Isabelle using a four-syllable word when there were simpler substitutes was probably a good sign, and grabbed the nearest quill. It was hard to approach something like this scientifically. Part of her admired Isabelle’s commitment in being able to analyse her own recovery from paralysis like this, but another part of her was deeply disturbed by it.

It was the fear that Isabelle could do the same with someone who was genuinely suffering. That she could watch Beth or Jack in agonising pain and record observations.

“This is an interesting way of learning about my own biology,” Isabelle said, succeeding in rolling her shoulders. “I think I can talk properly now. Stars, not being able to say anything all that time was torture on its own.”

That word made Beth tense. She could imagine. “You were conscious, then?”

Isabelle nodded. “Sight and hearing were normal. But touch was gone altogether. I still can’t feel my legs. I didn’t appreciate how nice the feeling of clothes on your skin and your hair brushing your face is until now.”

She seemed fine. Beth wasn’t convinced. She was acquainted with the dark places that thoughts could go when you were trapped in your own mind. What darkness was there in Isabelle that had haunted her these few hours?

“Thank you both for your help,” Isabelle said, swinging her arms tentatively back and forth. “I’m glad I have you two to rely on.”

Beth didn’t feel like she’d really done anything, but it meant a lot to hear that.

It meant a lot that Isabelle had actually succeeded and that none of the awful things Beth imagined had come true.