Chapter One

DISTANCES UNSEEN

Where shall I begin?

Memories are a peculiar thing, after all, a lesson one quickly acquires as an alchemist. Ask yourself what you were doing five months ago, five days ago, or better yet five hours ago. Go on. Take a minute. Recall reality.

Alas, memories are not the transcripts of our past we imagine them to be. Most life is lived in the in-between, in those long, forgotten stretches walking to work or tossing and turning in bed.

So, you ask, what are memories? Many an alchemist has written many a thesis on the matter, but I believe the question can be answered with but a single, simple maxim. Memories are the moments that make us who we are.

I cannot tell you everything that happened to me that afternoon the letter from Mr. Day arrived. That is where we begin our tale, yes? The day I first received correspondence from the victim? You have a very dignified nod, your honor.

As I was saying, I cannot tell you everything that happened that afternoon, but I do remember my last appointment of the day, an appointment with a man who, for reasons of confidentiality, I will call Walton Dupree.

Walton arrived at my office five minutes late, looking lost. This is how many of my clients first appear. Lost because they want an excuse to turn around and leave before we have begun. Lost because they are afraid of being found. Lost because my upstairs office is quite difficult to find and often confused with that of the attorney across the hall.

In Walton’s case, I suspected it was all of the above.

I recall his nervous introduction: “I’ve never seen a psycho-alchemist before.” He stopped just inside my door, gripping the rim of his bowler hat with both hands. “My wife thinks it’s unnatural,” he said, “the things you do here.”

I stood up from behind my desk, made my way toward him, and agreed with his wife. “It is unnatural,” I replied. “So are the clothes on your body, the walls of this room, your glasses. Tell me, what’s wrong with the unnatural?”

He did not have an answer—only an uneasy smile.

“Come, take a seat.” I gestured toward my couch, a velvet chesterfield of deep burgundy, seating myself on a worn leather armchair. I should tell you my office in Dellmere is richer than I am, as are most of my clients.

Even Walton was a man of means, though he did not wear his wealth. He sat down across from me, but I cannot say he made himself comfortable. Walton’s continued discomfort was as plain as the heavy bags under his eyes.

“I’m just not sure I should be here, Mr. Ortez—sorry, Alchemist Ortez.”

“Just Ortez is fine,” I assured him. “You made the appointment, Mr. Dupree. Why don’t you tell me what’s ailing you, and I’ll tell you whether you should be here. Not that you should ever regret seeking help. All of us need a little assistance from time to time.”

Walton held out for a few more seconds, but while his answers were stuttered with uncertainty, I could tell his body wished to stay. “I’ve been having this nightmare,” he said finally, “over and over again, going on a month now, the same damn nightmare. I get them now and then, nightmares, but not like this.”

“Nightmares are a symptom,” I said. “To end a nightmare, one must remedy the underlying cause. Do you know what that might be?”

He looked me square in the eyes, letting me read him not as an alchemist but as a fellow human being. “I haven’t the faintest clue.”

I rose with the certainty he lacked, walked over to the tall mahogany cupboard against the wall, and opened wide its opulent double doors. How shall I describe the inside of my cupboard? In a word, full. Every shelf is packed to the edge with glass bottles, row after row of them in every color, organized and labeled, by category, by function, by level. I fetched a red one from the top right shelf.

“I believe I can help you better understand this problem of yours, Mr. Dupree, if you would allow me to try.” I held up the elixir. “This is an oneiric stimulant. It will put you in a lucid dream state, allowing you to revisit your nightmare, only this time you will be in control, and I will be there with you.”

“You’re going to experience my nightmare with me?” he asked.

“That’s exactly right.” I retrieved two more elixirs and a mnemonic conductor from the bottom shelf. “Unless you’ve committed a grave crime, whatever I see stays between us. Confidentiality is a promise to which I am bound, both professionally and ethically.” The reason we are calling him Walton Dupree. “What do you say?”

Walton considered my offer carefully, staring over my shoulder at the rainbow of potions, and yet it was not indecision I read on his face. Simply, some choices must be made slowly in the way a rare elixir must be carried delicately. The second hand on my brass clock had completed two full cycles by the time Walton mustered a quiet but assured “Okay.”

I poured two precisely portioned vials, handing them to him one at a time. “Drink the red one first, then the blue. Your head might hurt a little, but the feeling shouldn’t last more than a minute. Trust me, there are far more painful elixirs in that cupboard.”

Walton did not feign resistance again. He swallowed his elixirs like everyday medication, like a man who was done with pretenses and ready for answers. I swallowed my own and uncoiled the mnemonic conductor. Once we were connected, I told him to lie down and close his eyes.

“I want you to listen closely to me, Mr. Dupree.” I spoke slowly, softly, letting him absorb every consonant, every vowel, each inflection. “Listen to the texture of my voice, the cadence of it, the small details. Now, I want you to imagine yourself on an island.”

It was my turn to close my eyes. I searched for Walton as if stumbling for a lamp in the dark, for no two rooms are ever quite identical. I found him more easily than most, waiting, open to me. Thoughts and places and people blurred Walton’s vision like rushing water before bursting into sudden clarity. Now he was standing barefoot on a deserted island, toes curling in the sand, his loose-fitting black suit flapping in the breeze.

“I want you to imagine trees,” I said.

A bundle of palm trees popped into his field of vision.

“Look at the water. Watch it lapping the shore.”

Walton observed the soft, foamy waves that never quite reached his feet.

“You see other islands in the distance not unlike yours.”

And where once there had been only the turquoise ocean stretching into the horizon, now there appeared a scattering of similar islands. Walton squinted, trying to determine if anyone else was out there, on one of those islands, or if he was all alone.

“Hello, Walton. May I call you Walton?”

He whirled around, kicking up hot sand, and saw me.

“Ortez.” He looked surprised. “Am I asleep?”

“You are in a lucid dream state.”

“Right. I didn’t realize you would actually be here in person. I thought you meant more, I don’t know, in spirit.”

“Both, my friend.” I patted his back. “Come, let us find your nightmare.”

“I sailed to an island like this once,” he said, “in the waters near Bel Mados. I work in the shipping business, don’t know if I mentioned that. But this—this isn’t my nightmare.”

“This is simply where we enter, a lobby to your mind, a foyer for your dreams.”

“Oh.”

“Why don’t we head a little deeper into the island,” I said, “and while we do that, I want you to think about your nightmare like you would a destination, like a place we might visit.”

I took the lead as we walked into the oasis of palm trees, through the feather-soft ferns that brushed our legs and outstretched elbows. It was a particularly pleasant island that Walton had created.

“It’s beautiful here,” he said with some relief.

“Nightmare thoughts, Walton.”

He dropped his head, exhaling as if it had been deflated. And before I could compile a more reassuring response, I kicked something solid.

I knew immediately it was neither the trunk of a palm tree nor merely an inconvenient rock. The hard object was bigger, unmovable, and buried underground. We brushed off handfuls of sand like frost from a window until we could feel the rough texture of wood scraping our palms. Walton looked at me knowingly, but I knew not what he did, not yet. And then we found the rusted, hand-sized metal ring. It was a hatch.

The hatch rumbled, sand bouncing off its surface, revealing more of the hidden door.

The look Walton gave me said enough, but still he added, “If it’s all the same to you, I would prefer not to go down there.”

“Which is precisely why we shall,” I said. “Come. And remember, you’re in control this time. You are the king of this domain, Walton, the god of everything you see here.”

Walton, who already possessed the posture of an eggplant, slumped further still and sighed his lips like an opened drawer.

I bent down and gripped the handle. “Help me with this hatch, will you.”

In truth, the hatch door was impossibly heavy, literally so, for until Walton was ready to move onward, I was powerless, an observer, an advisor. This was his dream, not mine. But we heaved the thick door open together, Walton and I, or at least I acted the part. We looked at each other and then down the dark hole we had revealed, but not all was dark. Soft light beckoned us from beyond our view, past the rickety ladder I tested with a half-weighted step.

I went first into the underground passage. The ground below was rocky and uneven, the walls an endless archway of roughly laid brick. Sitting abandoned on the stony surface ahead of us was our answer to the question of light. A single oil lantern pierced the tunnel like an oncoming train. I picked it up as we made our way forward.

“Rather cold in here, isn’t it?” I held the lantern outward.

Walton said nothing as he dutifully kept pace. It grew colder still as we continued down the tunnel with no end in sight. What I thought was white sand blew in through a crack in the wall, until it melted in my hand. Snow. I would tell you it was snowing outside, but outside does not exist in dreams—only the space of the dreamer.

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Walton walked past me as I scooped up a white handful, his breath a quick cloud in the luminous glow of our lantern. The cold unfazed him. He expected it. We were nearing his nightmare, or perhaps we were already in it.

With Walton now taking the lead, we reached our destination in no time: another ladder leading up to another hatch. “This is it,” he said.

I followed him through the hatch door, which he pushed open on his own. We arrived inside an unassuming storage room with an unassuming inventory. Shelves packed with pickled goods, a bag of flour on the floor, a barrel, a crate—but nothing of nightmares.

“Through here.” Walton led me to the skinny staircase at the end of the room. We walked up it and out a proper door for a change, entering into a candle-lit hallway. Hardwood planks groaned beneath our steps. An oil painting of a conservatively dressed family hung on the wall that welcomed us: a father, a mother, and their only son, each pale face paler than the last, save for their rosy cheeks, that scarlet smudge of innocence—or perhaps inebriation.

“This was my family’s house,” Walton said. “The one I grew up in, I should say. It’s not my home anymore.”

“Fascinating.” I took in the details.

“Is it?” he asked.

“Oh, yes.”

Outside the window at the end of the hall, a blizzard raged against the peace of night.

“Tell me about your parents,” I said.

“My parents?” He spoke of them like a forgotten detail. “They were fine. They were fine as parents, at least. Their relationship with each other was another matter. I would say it was unhealthy, but non-existent is more apt. There was certainly no love between them.”

“Was that difficult for you as a child?”

“Difficult? Most children had far more difficult lives than the one fate bestowed me. Disappointing, I suppose.”

Our conversation ended abruptly as a shrill voice rang through the house like a shopkeeper’s bell. “Walton, children, dinner.” Her tone was more instructional than invitational, as was the look on Walton’s face: half dread, half exhaustion, the look of someone reliving his nightmare “over and over again.” Those had been Walton’s words.

His words now: “Let’s just get this part over with.”

I followed him down the hall and through a darkly trimmed door. The dimly lit room we stepped into could only have existed in a dream, extending into space where hallway should have been. Everything was the color of charcoal: the wiry chandelier hanging from an invisible ceiling, the tall open cabinet, the plates inside it, the not-so-silver silverware the woman arranged neatly on the table, and of course the table itself, the centerpiece of this strange dining room, built long enough to feed a small circus. There were only four charcoal chairs.

“You brought a guest?” She was a rather round figure, not unlike Walton, but where he bobbled about, she carried herself with discipline, with a discerning frown and a furrowed brow.

“Alchemist Ortez, meet my wife, Magda. Magda, meet Alchemist Ortez. He’ll be staying for dinner.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Dupree.” I extended a hand.

Magda looked me up and down much like a cut of meat. “Children.” She raised her voice. “Would one of you fetch an extra chair. We have a guest this evening. And Walton, close that window, would you? It’s a bloody icebox in here.”

Walton was already walking toward the window. A flurry of snow blew inside as he slammed it shut. Behind him, two young girls wearing matching dresses entered the dining room. They were exactly identical, save for the fact that one was holding a chair.

“My daughters.” Walton took a seat at the head of our absurdly long table. “Twins.”

“I see that,” I said.

The girl with the chair found a spot for it near her father, setting it softly onto the rug. I took my seat and thanked her. Magda took hers in the distant chair opposite her husband. I could scarcely make out the details of her face in the weak light. The twins, meanwhile, hopped onto opposing seats halfway between their parents in seemingly choreographed unison, facing one another like mirrors freed of their two-dimensional existence.

“Girls, would you serve dinner,” Magda said. “Our guest first, please.”

One daughter lifted the cover off a large serving platter as the other retrieved my plate. I could not make out the food from here, but I could hear Walton’s whispered warning: “I’m sorry.”

And as I gave him a confused look, unfolding and draping a charcoal napkin over my lap, small hands returned with dinner, placing a modest portion down before me. I reached for my fork, took a gander, and—it was an ear.

A severed, uncooked human ear, in a red sauce, with a sprig of rosemary.

“I’m so sorry,” Walton repeated as his daughters set down two more well-plated ears for their parents, their timing perfectly synchronized.

The wind outside howled louder as the old house moaned a tired complaint.

The girls began eating their ears first, with their hands, red running down their tiny fingers. Magda used a fork and steak knife, sawing back and forth through rubbery skin.

“I usually eat mine too.” Walton stared at his dinner.

“I’ll admit it’s a lot to digest,” I said.

He shook his head, more at himself than at me. And then the wind really picked up, battering Walton’s childhood home until the entire house swayed. I could see him clinging to the edge of the table, bracing himself.

The window he closed minutes earlier shattered. Candle flames twisted sideways. The snow outside had piled higher than we could see, and now it poured into the dining room, forming glittering white ramps to nowhere.

“Walton!” This time Magda more than raised her voice. “I told you to close that damn window!”

Walton turned to me. “This is the part where I panic.”

The walls continued to creak. Snow continued to pile in.

“Walton!”

He pushed himself up from his seat and motioned for me to follow. Magda glared on as we walked past her. Both daughters still had their heads down, devouring ears.

The end of the dining room opened into a spacious foyer with a curved stairwell, a broken vase, and a front door that had literally blown off its hinges. It slid slowly down an expanding hill of snow like an abandoned sled. The house was falling apart.

“Right about now is usually when I run up here,” Walton explained as I followed him up the stairs into a new hallway lined with closed doors. We walked to the one at the far end and stopped suddenly. Rather, Walton stopped, or perhaps was stopped. He idled as if unable to take another step, unable to turn the knob before him.

“Are we going through?” I inquired.

“I don’t know if I can,” he said. “The dream has never let me.”

“That is why you came to an alchemist, Walton.” I rested my hand on his shoulder. “We put dreams in their place.”

Sweat trickled down his temple. Even in the darkness, his eyes glistened through his glasses.

“Do you know what’s on the other side?” I asked.

“I don’t,” he exhaled. “Truly. Every time I try to open it, just as I twist the knob and catch the first slip of light from the other side, I’m struck with such terror that I wake up. I’ve never seen what’s waiting.”

“I told you we would find an underlying cause for your nightmares,” I said. “That cause is on the other side of this door.”

“I know, but—”

“But what?”

“I’m scared.”

“Fear is a bully, Mr. Dupree. The more you give in, the more it taunts you. Come, we both know you’re stronger than this door.”

He wiped his forehead with the back of his trembling wrist. “Okay. Fucking hell. Okay.”

Walton opened the door.

Summer light warmed our chilled noses and icy fingers like a hot bath. Even before Walton closed the door behind us, I could no longer hear the winter storm we left behind, though we were not alone in that golden-hued bedroom. Two boys were bent over something on the sun-faded rug.

I knelt to get a better look at them, and yet I already recognized the smaller boy with brown hair. Dreams have a way of telling us things. I examined him closely, Walton as a child. The other boy, blonde and gangly, touched his shoulder and pointed at some tiny, secret detail on the most impressively intricate model ship I had ever seen.

The boys could not see us.

“Who is he?” I stood back up and turned to adult-sized Walton for an answer. Droplets dangled from his eyes, breaking into racing tears. I was not sure he heard my question.

What happened next is hard to describe. Like a panic attack, only the feeling was overwhelming remorse and longing and realization, a wave of emotion so strong it obliterated clear thought and returned us to the rushing water. A dam inside Walton had broken, and we were swept up in it, soaring headlong through the blue blur between dream and reality.

My old mentor once told me that people are delicate constructs. Tough exteriors, she said, but break them at their foundation and watch them come crashing down. For it is only then that they can build themselves anew. That is the job of alchemists. We do not fix people. We break them. We push them off their highest cliffs, set their childhood homes ablaze, open the doors they had carefully locked. And it is usually in that moment that they wake up, for few elixirs can contain a person when the crack is deep and true.

Walton blinked at the ceiling of my office. I sat up straight and removed the copper halo from my head. I gave him a minute as we settled back into reality.

“He’s my business partner, Jaymes.” Walton evaded my gaze, staring somewhere far beyond the juniper walls of my second-story practice. “We’ve been friends since we were children. Not just friends. We did everything together. We went on adventures, we started a business, and… more than that.” He paused, carefully considering what words he could speak next. “I’m a married man, of course, and Magda is a good woman, despite her rough edges. She’s lived a hard life, harder than mine.” The tears from Walton’s dream now appeared in reality, running down his cheeks unchecked.

I leaned forward. “Sometimes we follow in our parents’ footsteps even when we mean to walk the other way. We’re all products of our upbringing.”

“It sounds so obvious when you say it aloud.” He put the question to me: “Are you a product of your upbringing, Ortez?”

“In my own way,” I said.

“Right. You’re an alchemist.” Walton lowered his chin. “I remember now. It was something he said a month ago. We were sailing home from a business trip in Briarmont when we saw these whales crashing through the surface—these magnificent, impossibly massive creatures. One flipped up its tail and for the briefest of moments was completely midair. Jaymes turned to me. I still remember his exact words.” Walton spoke as if it were a question I might be able to answer for him: “Why are the most beautiful things always beyond our reach?”

We talked a while longer as Walton ruminated on choices that were as exhilarating as they were terrifying, but I could not tell you which hallway Mr. Dupree would walk down next, which doors he would open and which he would leave shut. For a moment of realization is just that. The truth offers no further instructions, and neither could I.

On his way out one particular door, the one through which he had entered my office, Walton dropped a heavy sack of coins into my hand. I did not count them then, but I would later discover it was twenty stellings, double my fee.

“This feels too heavy,” I told him.

He clasped my hand with both of his, closing my fingers over the coins. “I know I don’t look it, but I am a very wealthy man, Alchemist Ortez. Just take my stupid money.”

And so, hesitantly, I did. “Thank you, Walton.”

He followed up with a quick smile, and then Mr. Dupree was gone. I closed the door behind him and walked over to my desk, treasuring in my small way the session that had transpired, for not all truths are as easily glimpsed, and not all glimpses are gratefully welcomed.

But now it was time to wrap up for the day.

I am a man of many mundane rituals, one of which is to read new mail before heading home. It is letters from patients mostly—future patients with inquiries, past ones offering gratitude or, on rare occasions, regret. But I could sense even before opening the sole letter I had received that day that it was neither, that the thin envelope I held up and examined was something else, something unusual. For one, the return address was in Aurora.

I pulled open my desk drawer, searching for my silver letter opener, only to find another object rattling inside. An old coin from my summer stint in Tianma, from the adventurous season I spent there seven years earlier. I held the button-sized copper rupa in my palm, letting it take me back for a fleeting second. I found the letter opener buried in a back corner of the drawer.

I sliced open the curious letter.

Contained within was a single piece of paper and—I had to examine the printed slip closely—a train ticket. I unfolded the paper and noticed immediately the immaculate penmanship. I looked at the logo in the letterhead: a pickaxe inside the circle of a sun, its simple line-drawn rays emanating strength and structure. The Day Company, it said. I read the letter.

Dear Alchemist Ortez,

My name is Everett Day. You may know me as the chief proprietor of The Day Company. We have a situation that could use the skills of a talented psycho-alchemist, and you come highly recommended to me by a former patient of yours, whose name I shall keep confidential, as it was a delicate matter for her.

Our situation is also of a delicate nature, and I can disclose more details upon your arrival in Aurora. Enclosed with this letter is a train ticket, compliments of The Day Company. Your accommodation and living expenses would also be covered for the week that we require your services. As for payment, we would offer ten thousand stellings, half of which will be given to you upon your arrival, the other half when your work here is done.

Alchemist Ortez, though I understand the disruptive nature of my request, I would ask that you make your decision hastily, as there is some urgency. Nonetheless, it is a sensitive and challenging matter we are dealing with, and as in all things, we require the best.

Yours faithfully,

Everett Day

It was the first time Mr. Day had communicated with me, and I was taken aback, dare I say flattered. The most famous entrepreneur on the continent had requested my expertise. It was the promise of adventure. It was money, a lot of money. It was the letter every dreamer hopes to receive and never does. It was also a big decision—important appointments would need to be rebooked, patients would be upset—and one that I had to make “hastily,” according to the chief proprietor. I almost struggled to believe it and yet had no reason not to. The train ticket appeared genuine enough.

I left the letter on my desk and turned to the view outside my bay window, to the bustling streets of Dellmere. The summer sun still hovered high above the city’s forest of chimneys as evening approached. I watched them for a while, the people passing one another along the cobblestone road below, ambling between work and home, between their routine destinations. Simply between. A horse pulled a carriage one way as an automobile zipped the other. It was not the first such vehicle I had seen in Dellmere, nor was it the first impressive invention to come out of The Day Company.

I had never been to Aurora.

And like Walton, I peered into distances unseen, wondering if decisions are ever truly made, or if I was but a number on a clock, existing between a wound-up past and a future into which I could only predictably tick. Wondering if this moment would be one that I remember.