Weeks bled into months. The damp chill of winter gave way to a tentative, muddy spring. Lysander maintained his routine, the intense study sessions for his parents' benefit, the clandestine philosophical exchanges with Elara at the fence. But beneath the surface, every nerve was stretched taut, listening for a ripple in the pond he had disturbed.
He continued to frequent the market with Clara, always finding a reason to pass by Gable's print shop. He would wave at the old man through the window, and Mr. Gable would wave back, his expression a permanent fixture of bemused wonder. But there was no message, no sign.
Doubt began to gnaw at him. Had he overestimated his own allure? Had Finch simply dismissed the story of the "alchemist child" as the tall tale of a fanciful printer? The inertia of his plan was maddening. He was a general whose entire strategy relied on the enemy taking a very specific, very unpredictable bait.
Elara, with her preternatural perception, noticed his tension.
"You are like a mainspring wound too tight," she observed one afternoon. They were sitting on their respective sides of the fence, she weaving a complex braid of colorful threads, he ostensibly reading a simple book of fables. "You are here, but you are not here. Your thoughts are elsewhere."
He looked up, startled by her accuracy. How could he explain that his thoughts were in a grimy house on Elm Street, waiting for a summons that might never come? "I am thinking of… a puzzle," he said, which was true.
"Is it a puzzle with pieces that are missing?" she asked, not looking up from her weaving.
"Something like that. I have laid out the pieces I have, but I am waiting for another piece to… reveal itself."
She nodded, as if this made perfect sense. "Sometimes, when I cannot find a missing gear, I stop looking. I clean my tools, or I draw, or I go for a walk. And very often, when I stop looking so hard, I find it. Or it finds me."
Her simple wisdom was a balm. He took her advice. He forced himself to be present during his lessons, to truly listen to Theodore's rambling stories, to focus on the mechanical problems Elara presented to him. He immersed himself in the slow, patient rhythm of her world, a world of tangible problems with tangible solutions.
And then, it happened.
He was returning from the market with Clara, his hand in hers, his mind deliberately quiet. A boy, perhaps ten years old, dressed in clothes that were too large and noticeably stained with soot and strange chemical burns, stepped into their path. He had a nervous, rabbity look about him.
"Are you the boy?" the urchin asked, his eyes darting from Lysander to Clara and back again.
Clara tightened her grip on Lysander's hand. "What boy? What do you want?"
"The one who talks of the Prima Materia," the boy said, the foreign term sounding awkward in his rough accent. "The master has heard of him. He wishes to see him."
A cold thrill shot down Lysander's spine. The master. There was only one man in London who would be called such by a boy who smelled of sulfur.
Clara's face paled. "Absolutely not. You will leave us alone." She tried to step around the boy, but he stood his ground.
"The master said to give this." The boy thrust a small, sealed note into Lysander's free hand. It was on surprisingly fine parchment, and the seal was a crude, homemade impression of an ouroboros, a snake eating its own tail. The symbol of eternity. Of cycles. The irony was so sharp it felt like a physical blow.
Before Clara could protest further, the boy turned and scampered away, disappearing into the crowd.
Back at home, a fierce argument erupted, the first Lysander had ever heard between his parents.
"You cannot be serious, Edmund! That man is a danger! He consorts with devils and poisons!" Clara's voice was shrill with fear.
"And our son is clearly touched by God, Clara!" Edmund countered, his voice a low, forceful rumble. He held the unopened note. "He has a mind we cannot comprehend. Perhaps this is its purpose! To speak with other great minds!"
"Great minds? Alistair Finch is not a great mind; he is a corrupted one! He will twist him, Edmund! He will see his… his difference and he will exploit it!"
Lysander sat silently, his heart pounding. This was the crucible. His parents' love and fear were at war, and the outcome would determine his next move.
"Let us at least see what the man says," Edmund said, his tone final. He broke the seal.
The handwriting was a spidery, hurried scrawl, yet elegant in its way.
To the parents of the child called Lysander,
It has come to my attention that your son possesses a singular intellect and an interest in the Arcana of the Natural World that is uncommon for his years. I am a scholar of such matters. I should be most interested to make his acquaintance, to discuss these philosophical principles in a manner befitting his apparent comprehension.
I assure you, my intentions are purely scholarly. The pursuit of Knowledge is a sacred charge. I would see if the boy is a kindred spirit in this pursuit.
Yours in Intellectual Curiosity,
Alistair Finch
Elm Street
The note was a masterpiece of manipulation. It was respectful, flattering, and framed the meeting in the loftiest of terms. It played directly to Edmund's pride and Clara's hope that their son's strangeness had a divine, or at least intellectual, purpose.
There was a long, heavy silence.
"He sounds… educated," Edmund said slowly, the anger gone from his voice.
"He sounds clever," Clara whispered, her fear now mingled with a reluctant curiosity.
Lysander looked from one to the other. He knew he had to speak now, to tip the balance. He used the one tone he knew they could not refuse: not the voice of a prodigy, but the voice of their earnest, curious son.
"Please," he said, his voice small and filled with a genuine longing he did not have to fake. "I should so like to meet another scholar. I have so many questions. And he has the answers."
That decided it. The image of their lonely, brilliant son, finally finding a peer, was too powerful to resist.
Two days later, holding his father's hand so tightly his knuckles were white, Lysander stood before the hunched, grimy house on Elm Street. The air was thick with the familiar, acrid tang. The green-stained chimney seemed to leer at them.
This was it. The moment he had been working towards since his consciousness had slammed back into his infant body. He was not here as a victim, not as a supplicant. He was here as a fellow phenomenon. He took a deep, shuddering breath, the poisonous air filling his lungs.
He was about to step into the lair of the man who had destroyed his life. And he was going to do it with a smile on his face.