The winter mornings in London were a thick, grey dampness that smothered the city, blurring the church steeples and muffling the sounds of commerce under a wet, woolen blanket of silence. But inside the Brentwood home, the air crackled with a different energy. Lysander, now four years old, sat on a specially designed high stool before the hearth, not playing, but reading.
The book in his small hands was not a children's picture book, but a worn, leather-bound volume of Robert Boyle's "The Sceptical Chymist." His small fingers traced the lines with intense concentration, his eyes moving rapidly across the complex Latin text. It was a performance, meticulously staged and carefully rehearsed. He was not reading for pleasure; he was constructing his narrative.
"Good heavens, Lysander, you'll strain your eyes in this poor light." Clara stood in the doorway, wiping her hands on her apron, her eyes reflecting the now-familiar blend of awe and unease.
Lysander looked up, carefully modulating his expression to one of childish absorption. "It talks of air, Mother. And how it possesses weight."
"Weight?" Clara took a step forward, drawn in despite herself. "But… it is invisible. How can something unseen have heaviness?"
"Here." Lysander pointed to a diagram of the experimental apparatus. "He uses a mercury tube. When the air is removed, the mercury falls. It proves the air has pressure."
Clara's eyes were wide. Her son's words, spoken in that high, childish voice, were as if an angel were reciting texts on cosmology. "Who taught you this? We have not read this together."
This was the danger. The true challenge was not in comprehending the concepts, but in presenting this comprehension in a way that seemed miraculous, not diabolical. Lysander offered a small, guileless smile. "Sometimes… the words just come into my head. When I look at the letters, they form pictures in my mind. Pictures of the things they speak of."
This was his story, his primary tactic. He was not learning; he was remembering. He pretended knowledge descended upon him through inspiration, as if he were a vessel for universal truths rather than the product of a previous life. It was a dangerous lie, but safer than the truth.
"Pictures…" Clara whispered, tasting the word. Then she shook her head, a tremulous smile on her face. "I must tell your father. You are… a true marvel."
When Edmund returned home that evening, they sat together at the table, and Lysander explained, in carefully curated childish words, the principles of atmospheric pressure. Edmund listened, his mouth slightly agape, his eyes shifting between his son's face and the complex manuscript.
"But… why do we not feel this weight, Lysander?" Edmund asked, challenging, testing the boundaries of this miracle.
"Because it presses on us from all sides, Father," Lysander replied swiftly, using the analogy he had prepared. "Like a fish in the deep sea. It does not feel the water's weight, for the water is all around it. We are fish in an ocean of air."
A heavy silence fell over the room. Then Edmund laughed, a booming, astonished laugh. "Fish in an ocean of air! By God, Clara, did you hear that?" He clapped a heavy hand on Lysander's small shoulder, his face alight with a pride so fierce it was almost painful for Lysander to behold. "A genius! We have a genius for a son!"
This was the goal. This was the carefully manufactured product: Lysander, the child prodigy. His "genius" was a shield, a legitimizing framework for the anomalies of his behavior and knowledge. It made him special, not frightening; a blessing, not a curse. And it was a reputation he would need, a currency to spend when the time came to approach a man who valued intellect above all else: Alistair Finch.
The conversation inevitably turned, as Lysander subtly steered it, to the practitioners of such philosophies.
"It is remarkable," Edmund mused, sipping his ale. "To think men can deduce such things through reason and experiment. Though some take it too far, into realms best left alone."
"Too far?" Lysander asked, feigning innocent curiosity. "How?"
"Alchemy," Clara said, the word a hushed, disapproving sigh. "Men playing God, trying to transmute lead into gold, seeking elixirs of life. It is a sin against the natural order."
"But is it not all natural philosophy?" Lysander pressed gently, using Boyle's own arguments. "Is understanding the nature of metals not like understanding the nature of air?"
"It is a different path," Edmund said, his tone growing serious. "The man on Elm Street, Finch… his pursuits have a stink of sulfur and hubris about them. True philosophers like Boyle seek to understand God's creation. Men like Finch seek to usurp it."
Lysander stored every word, every nuance. He was building a profile not just of Finch, but of the world's perception of him. He needed to understand the chasm between the respected natural philosopher and the ostracized alchemist if he was to build a bridge across it.
Later, as he lay in his bed, the house silent around him, he allowed the mask to slip. The performance was exhausting. The constant calculation, the careful pruning of his vocabulary, the feigned moments of childish confusion—it was a heavier burden than the physical helplessness of infancy. He was an actor on a stage where the audience included the two people who loved him most, and he could never drop character.
He thought of Elara. With her, the performance was different. It was not about feigning ignorance, but about revealing just enough of his true self to intrigue her without terrifying her. Their conversations at the fence were the only moments of genuine, if fractured, connection. She was the one person he did not have to pretend to be stupid for, only… age-appropriate.
He clutched the small, twisted piece of metal Old Jem had given him, his "luck-piece." It was cold and solid in his hand. A real object in a life that felt increasingly like a fabrication. He was forging a genius, constructing a prodigy, all to arm himself for a confrontation with a ghost from a past that was also his future. The path was laid out before him, a tightrope stretched over an abyss of disbelief and danger. And he had no choice but to walk it, one carefully placed, four-year-old foot after the other.