But I, who'd seen the change in Virgil's complexion,
said: "How shall I go on if you are frightened,
you who have always helped dispel my doubts?"
And he to me: "The anguish of the people
whose place is here below, has touched my face
with the compassion you mistake for fear." (Inf. IV, 16-22)


Circle I
Limbo


Ten Years Ago

Somewhere outside East City...

"Who the devil are you?"

The visitor, a young man of sixteen, ignored the indignant demand as he peered curiously at his surroundings. It took little more than a cursory inspection to see that the old house was in dire need of repair. The size of it suggested a far more opulent past, but the garden had grown weed-choked and wild; the dingy brick walls were streaked with drippage from the leaky tin gutter that ran along the roof. The massive shutters, thrown back from the windows, were rotting away, pock-marked with perfectly equidistant holes... powderpost beetles, or perhaps termites. The young man couldn't be certain without a closer examination, and in any case, entomology was not his strength amongst the zoological sciences.

His gaze drifted past the shoulder of the one who had shouted, towards the first floor windows. Below the lifted panes, dusty lace curtains hung slack like things withering in the heat. Indeed, as the boy turned to the old man glaring down at him from across the threshold, a single bead of sweat roved lazily down his spine. He lamented the dirtying of his best suit, but it seemed the weather had denied him any say in the matter.

The master of the house, the young man decided, was much like the house itself. Despite his age, he cut an imposing figure. A wizened face peered out from under an untidy fringe of blonde hair, so pale it was almost white, as ashen as the curtains hanging in the windows. His eyes, a strange burnished colour like rust, were so heavily lidded and so weighed down with wrinkled folds that it was almost like talking to someone half-asleep, yet the young man could discern the house's master was quite alert. Even his manner of speech suggested some latent strength. If the young man were one to make premptive judgements –– which he wasn't –– or if he were given to formulating theories based on empirical evidence - which he was –– then he would have anticipated his arrival being met with the croak of old age. However, the old man's voice was more like a sergeant major's, formidable and impatient and distinctly upper class.

In the time it took the young man to paint a thorough portrait of the house and its inhabitant, barely a second had elapsed, not even long enough for the bumblebees to bounce to their adjacent flowers. He soaked up the minutia like a sponge. The young man supposed it was consequent of his ability to take comprehensive stock of his surroundings, to file the information away, and to summon every detail on a whim in the interim. It was imperative, whether consciously or not, that one observe the vast as well as the infinitesimal in order to create an image that rang true above all else. Even if his ability tended to discompose and discomfort, it was his to use as he saw fit. Besides, he cared for others' opinions of him. The benchmarks of detail were stored without fail in the vast granary of his mind, and crucial evaluations for the future made with ease upon consulting the archive of his memory.

He was an alchemist, after all.

Or, rather... he had every intention of becoming one.

"Good afternoon," the young man began, doffing a small grey trilby. "Master Hawkeye, I presume? Formerly of Eastern Polytechnic?"

The old man, one Berthold Hawkeye, sneered, ochre-coloured eyes narrowing in suspicion. "Who wants to know?"

If the visitor felt umbrage at the old man's rudeness, he gave no indication of the fact. Replacing his hat on his head of jet-black hair, he replied smoothly: "A recent graduate of that worthy institution, sir."

Distrust turned to doubt. "A graduate, eh? You can't be older than fifteen."

"Sixteen, sir. I earned my degree almost four years ago."

"In what discipline, boy?"

"Physics. The branch of science concerned with the nature and properties of matter and energy."

Master Hawkeye stared at him, hard. There was a probing quality to the alchemist's eyes, intended, no doubt, to unsettle, though the young man merely gazed demurely back. He supposed he had to concede a certain logic in the old fellow's scepticism. Though the would-be alchemist was tall and smartly-dressed –– he would not settle for anything less, considering his company –– he presented a pale, sickly character. He was whey-faced and painfully thin. A diseased miasma clung to him like the sweat from the high, hot sun. He had watery indigo eyes parted in permanent half-lidded consideration that many mistook for being indicative of dull-wittedness. It came as little surprise, then, that Master Hawkeye had misguessed his age as well as his intention; the old alchemist was hardly the first, though the young man took the judgement in his stride. He firmly believed preconceived ideas and prejudgements lent him an edge in dealing with others.

The young man could use ignorance to his advantage. Master Hawkeye was no different: another potential wellspring of ammunition.

"What kind of energy is present in an unlit match?" the alchemist asked brusquely.

The young man replied with nary a pause for breath. "Chemical."

"When one leaves wine exposed to the air, the ethanol in the drink reacts with oxygen to form what?"

"Ethanoic acid."

"What type of fusion reaction predominates in the sun?"

"Deuterium and a single hydrogen proton to create helium-3."

"Pions and Kaons belong to which category of sub-atomic particles?"

"Mesons."

"Recite the maxim of Paracelsus's Philosophia Sagax in the original Xerxian."

"Alterius non sit qui suus esse potest. 'Let no man belong to another who can belong to himself.'"

"Why are you here?"

"I have come to learn alchemy," said the young man, unmindful of the sudden change in subject.

Master Hawkeye's lip curled, showing a row of browning teeth. "Indeed? I have turned away every upstart pup who has dared started sniffing around my doorstep."

"I am aware of that." Then, the young man added, somewhat insolently: "You possess a certain reputation for immoderate criteria in selecting apprentices."

Rather than rail against the slight, the old man nodded a quick affirmation, taken aback somewhat by his visitor's candidness. He pressed on, his words cold: "Then what makes you think you, boy, have what it takes, when I've rejected scholars and academics of the highest standard, world-renowned practitioners of this sacred art."

The young man's heavy lids lifted slightly. "Because," he began simply; he felt his mouth curving into a thin slash of a smile, "I am better than them."

Hawkeye glared at him. "Many prospective students have come before me with ingratiating smirks and outspread hands, like some unctuous merchant in a bazaar. They offer their promise and their brilliance and their skill, competing as they do in a marketplace. But I have a right to remember how barbarically they behave when they grow drunk on the power alchemy can give them."

He breathed out through his nose, and Berthold Hawkeye started, not expecting the quick retort: "Drunk, careless, slipshod... inelegant. Call it what you will, sir... they fear the alchemical knowledge you offer." The young man went on softly, but firmly: "And theirs is a fear stuck like a barb in the mind. Someone wise to their bravado is wont to attach strings to those barbs and make puppets of the foolish men and women who play with that which does well to defy their understanding. The power of alchemy controls the fearful. Only the strong can take that power for themselves."

The young man tried to quench that thrill rising in his chest at seeing the old alchemist so rattled. But before Master Hawkeye could offer a rebuttal, a small voice sounded from inside the dilapidated foyer, along with the slap of bare feet on hardwood floors. "Papa, who are you talking to...?"

Despite his meticulous self-possession, the young man couldn't keep himself from arching an eyebrow at the sight of a tiny girl, no older than eight, toddling between the legs of the infamous and, reputedly, unhinged alchemist.

There was a long moment where the two newcomers did nothing but regard each other in silence.

The girl, boyish in physique, on the problematic side of malnourished, seemed to flounder in her ill-crafted, flower-printed dress, so much so she looked to the young man like a sentient stretch of wallpaper. The face peeking over a threadbare stole was pale and freckled. Her cheeks were blanched from her troglodytic life inside the house and her eyes partially obscured from the bangs of her short blonde hair, honeyed where Master Hawkeye's was bleached. She smiled in the way young children often do when they're masking nervousness.

She reminded him of a butterfly, but not the monarchs he used to skewer belly-up on index cards as a child. Of the living variety, with wings beating the summer air, alighting upon flowers, as pretty as painted silk and as delicate as rice paper.

Her eyes were crimson, quite unlike any colour the young man had ever seen before. Like two red lotus blossoms.

"I ordered you to stay inside the house," growled Master Hawkeye.

The girl peered up at the old alchemist –– her father, the young man realised abruptly: how interesting. "You said I could play outside..." she protested meekly.

The young man got down on one knee, until he was head-height with the child. "It's no trouble, sir," he assured the girl's parent, as smooth as plate glass.

Before Master Hawkeye could respond, stormy blue eyes met amber, and the young man smiled at the child. "Hello." He held out a hand. "What's your name?"

The girl stared at him, drifting closer to her father's trousered leg. She regarded him with a measure of calm and composure surprising for such a tender age, but then again, perhaps her exile in the old alchemy master's company had forced her acquaintance with a certain maturity. Indeed, as she sized him up, she seemed a child in stature only. As she observed him quietly, her gaze was almost as analytical as her father's.

However, the longer his hand remained outstretched, his pale, unblemished palm almost glowing in the noonday sun, the wider the girl's eyes grew. The young man's cautious smile lengthened, flashing his teeth briefly in a motion his sister had once described as being deeply unsettling. He supposed there was a certain truth in the observation, for unease seemed to blossom from within the girl as she met his grin head-on. Her hands quivered, and she wrung the hem of her tatty dress.

"Papa," she whimpered, blinking owlishly. "I don't like him."

"Riza..." Master Hawkeye rumbled a warning.

"Riza," repeated the young man, mulling the word over. "That's a very pretty name. Hello, Riza. It's very nice to meet you."

The girl ignored him. "Make him go away... he's scary."

Observant, indeed. The young man laughed good-naturedly, the sound ending in a rather harsh, discordant hiccough. A bout with pneumonia had turned his voice gravel-rough, an irritant, certainly, as he had an unparalleled fondness for the beauty and structure of sound. His proneness to falling ill had forced him to indulge his musical proclivities by alternative means.

In the brief moment following his laughter, the young man thought back to what the old master had said regarding the power of alchemy. In a way, teaching alchemy was comparable to taking on a student of music. The curricula necessitated the teaching of certain stringent disciplines while tempering the rigidity with the liberty of improvisation. Alchemy, like music, entailed an appropritation of the agoraphobic fear of true, unbridled freedom. An alchemist's ability to withstand pain, to harness terror, to transmute that terror into control, constituted true power. It was almost spiritual, holy, even it was masochistic, in a way, the piquant coupling of pain and pleasure he found so unerringly delightful, though he suspected he was the only one who thought about things in such a manner.

And the young man believed there was nothing easier to control than a person who trusted you, be that the alchemy master to his apprentice, or a shy, sad little girl to her father. They who placed their hope in your hands also placed their respect. What was truly fearsome, what was truly exhilarating, about such delusional trust, was the prospect of a betrayal they didn't wholly anticipate, hidden within the white void of truth.

Well, the young man mused, a betrayal not anticipated by the elder, at any rate. The girl, on the other hand...

Something about her bug-eyed distrust suggested she saw right to the core of him.

But rather than annoy, he found it amusing, and remarkably refreshing. He couldn't help but admire her powers of intuition.

Master Hawkeye raised a hand as though to box the girl's –– Riza's –– ears, for her impertinence. Before the old man had the chance, however, the would-be apprentice rose to his feet in one fluid movement, cutting through the motion of the blow before it manifested as such.

"I can see my company is not welcome at this time," he said brightly, eyes pinched in a well-meaning smile. "And I would hate to upset the young lady of the house any further."

Berthold Hawkeye sneered, searching, perhaps, for some deception in the young man's ascetic face. Finding nothing, the elder Hawkeye grunted noncommittally:

"If you're discouraged from study by the mindless whining of a single child," he said in disdain; the girl averted her crimson eyes in shame, "then you have no place under my roof, or partaking of my tutelage."

The young man, midway through doffing his hat in a gesture of polite farewell, paused. His heavy-lidded eyes grew hard. Cold. For a moment, the sweltering afternoon seemed touched with frost. "Perhaps," he conceded. Then: "Although, I can hardly keep my own council sharing a home with one so wise to flashes of cruelty, now can I?"

"I care not for––"

"Beg your pardon, sir... but I was not talking to you."

A band twitched in the old man's face as he rooted his jaw. The little girl at his feet looked up at the cocksure young alchemist with equal parts wariness and warning. The sixteen-year-old tipped the brim of his trilby to her.

"It was lovely to make your acquaintance, Miss Riza. I do so hope our paths cross again some day."

Master Hawkeye snorted in derision. Without so much as a by your leave, the alchemist turned and slammed the door in the young man's face. The last glimpse he caught of the once-venerable Hawkeye household was a flash of rust-red eyes, wide and earnest, though not, he realised, frightened.

Of her father... or of him.

What a remarkable young lady.

The young man turned on his heel and proceeded back up the uneven dirt path, over the viaduct at the edge of the property, down the hill towards the village center. Choking dust swirled in the dry, hot air, tussling the tail of his black hair, drawing his attention to the side the road, where a small pond lay baking in the afternoon sun. Butterflies, painted-ladies and viceroys, perched on the bright lotus flowers, drinking deeply of the nectar; their probosces extended like so many delicate black straws. Together, the young man and the insects swayed in the mid-July breeze, the motion all quite hypnotic. The combination of the intense red florets and blazing summer light shone brightly against the flat scum of the pond's surface, the explosion of colour dazzling to his eyes.

Reaching out a hand, standing absolutely still, the young man waited for one of the butterflies to alight on his skin. When one did, he held it there awhile, relishing the minute tickle of its legs and the soft brush of two furry wings. The splash of red clambered over his fingers, the heel of his thumb, his palm, planted itself there, like a tiny red bloom folded from origami.

With a self-assured smile, the young man's fist closed, crushing the insect in his hand. Its body seemed to hold no substance, disintegrating into red and black dust, like ash.

He wiped the mess on one pristine handkerchief, and proceeded up the path.

"Alterius non sit qui suus esse potest," he murmured.

"'Let no man belong to another who can belong to himself...'"

To Be Continued...