"I've heard of alchemists before," said Dolly. "They can supposedly turn lead
into gold."
As Winslow spoke, he picked up several colored stones from a table and fumbled with them. "We alchemists have known how to turn base metals into gold since before you were born. But our purpose--our dream, if you will--is something altogether different."
"And what is your purpose?" Dolly inquired.
"A perfect world." Winslow stared at Dolly with piercing eyes. "The elimination of all that is evil."
Dolly realized that she had heard words similar to those before...
"You think of good and evil as metaphysical concepts," Winslow went on. "To us alchemists, they're measurable quantities. Each one of us is born into the world with an equal measure of good and evil in our souls. Which side we choose is up to us, but they are always there, pulling us in one direction or the other." He held up his right hand, and the light of a nearby lamp reflected off of his jade ring. "My ring contains a special stone created by my great-grandfather. With it, I can cause a person's good side to temporarily become dominant."
"That's what you did to me," Dolly reflected. "That's why I couldn't help but tell the truth about the love potion."
"Exactly," said Winslow, leaning against a table. "Now, Dolly, imagine if everyone in the world suddenly became good. There would be no crime, no war, no hatred, no prejudice, and most importantly, no reality TV."
"What a wonderful kind of day," Dolly mused.
"This has been the dream of the alchemists from the beginning," Winslow continued. "To that end we have exhaustively studied the magical properties of nearly every known element and compound. However, this is a very time-consuming process, involving a great deal of trial and error. This is where you come in, Dolly. You are all that remains of the Wicasta. With your innate magical sense, you can unlock secrets in an instant that otherwise would require decades of alchemic research."
Stepping over to an old wooden desk, he opened a drawer and pulled out a slip of creased paper on which were written a list of ingredients and instructions. "Take this potion, for instance." He handed the paper to Dolly, who started to read it with interest. "My people have been trying to prepare it correctly for hundreds of years. All the factors--the purity and balance of ingredients, the temperature, the heating time--have to be exact in order to achieve the desired potency. If anything is off in the slightest, you end up with something like the stone in my ring. That's why I need you, Dolly. With your talent, you can detect any loss in potency during the preparation."
"The Cleansing Stone," Dolly muttered, lowering the paper. "What is it good for, may I ask?"
Winslow plucked the paper from Dolly's hands and laid on a table in front of an unlit gas burner. "The Cleansing Stone is the key to a power greater than that of God Himself," he proclaimed pretentiously.
"That's silly," Dolly responded. "Nothing is more powerful than God."
Winslow smiled sheepishly. "Let me rephrase that. With a Cleansing Stone in your hand, you have access to a power that God either does not possess, or is unwilling to use--the power to extinguish the evil in human souls."
Dolly felt herself becoming nervous, or perhaps intimidated.
"Theologians and philosophers have struggled with the problem of evil since the beginning," Winslow continued. "If you assume that God is all-powerful and loves His children, then you must ask yourself, why does He allow evil to run rampant on the earth? Why must even those who do good deeds and say their prayers at night suffer from the lawlessness and corruption around them?"
"I never thought about that," said Dolly, looking at the floor.
"With a Cleansing Stone, you will never need to think about it." Winslow reached down and rubbed the top of Dolly's head. "What do you say? Will you help me to create a perfect world?"
Dolly pondered for a moment, then raised her head and smiled. "I will, Mr. Winslow."
"Excellent." Winslow reached up and grabbed a glass container from a top shelf, which was about even with his ears. "Let's get started, shall we?"
The Cleansing Stone potion took roughly an hour to prepare. While Winslow carefully mixed ingredients in a vial atop a gas burner, Dolly watched the process like a young hawk, giving him advice on how much of each ingredient to add and when to raise or lower the temperature. As the jade-green mixture bubbled and boiled, she began to feel more and more uneasy, as though she were abetting in the creation of a monster. The kind of magic she saw in it was unlike anything with which she was familiar.
"Turn off the heat...now," she instructed Winslow, who complied. Carefully lifting the vial with a pair of plastic tongs, he slowly emptied it into a square bronze mold, then replaced it on the burner.
"There it is, Dolly," he said proudly, gazing down at the steaming green substance. "All we have to do now is wait for it to solidify."
"How long will that take?" asked Dolly. "I'm hungry."
"It should be solid by morning," Winslow told her. "In the meantime, let's join the others and get some donuts."
----
"It was believed that the Wicasta died out during the 17th-century witch hunts," Winslow related. He was seated along with Maria, Nadine, Mrs. Prufrock, Alan, Prunella, and Dolly at a table in a Dunkin Donuts shop. "But now, thanks to Hannah Proctor's locket, we've found a survivor."
Dolly hardly noticed that the others were talking about her; she was too busy ravenously gobbling up one donut after another. "Oh, I do so love donuts," she mumbled with a full mouth.
"You'll get fat if you eat too many," Prunella warned her.
"Then I shall be a happy fat girl," said Dolly, taking a large bite out of a chocolate cruller.
"I'd like to know more about this project of yours," Alan requested.
"I'd rather keep it a surprise until it's done," Winslow responded. "It's very sensitive. I have competitors, you know."
"You said this magic sense is only passed down to females," Maria noted. "We have something like that in our family. Only the girls are born with tails."
"It's something genetic, I suppose." Winslow wiped the sugar from his lips with a napkin, then reached into the box for a maple bar. "The Y chromosome must prevent men from growing tails or developing Wicasta powers."
A pimple-faced poodle girl in a fast-food uniform approached their table. "Can I get you anything else?" she asked.
"More donuts!" exclaimed Dolly.
Prunella groaned with delight. "Are you really eating them, or just making them disappear?"
----
Later that day the group arrived at the Salem Mairzydoats Hotel, where Winslow had booked a room for Mrs. Prufrock, Dolly, Alan, and Prunella (he had invited the Harrises to spend the night at his house). Dolly was awestruck at the lavish furnishings of the hotel's reception area. "It's like a castle!" she cried.
"Yeah," Alan rejoined. "Only a king could afford to live here."
Dolly's amazement grew as she and the others entered their room, which featured three beds and several seascape pictures on the walls. "Oh, it's heavenly," she remarked. "Why should anyone want to stay here for only a night?"
"Two reasons," quipped Prunella. "Food and clothing."
While Alan and Prunella discussed homework and Winslow's mysterious project, and Mrs. Prufrock filed her nails and tried on some new bead bracelets, Dolly discovered the unspeakable joys of room service.
"How can I help you?" asked the young chipmunkish man who appeared in the doorway.
"I would very much like some donuts," said Dolly eagerly.
"We don't serve donuts until morning," explained the hotel employee. "Continental breakfast, six to nine a.m."
Dolly was undaunted. "Then I shall have ice cream instead."
"The shop on the first floor has ice cream bars for sale," the employee informed her.
"Then go and fetch me one, thou knave," said Dolly, growing impatient.
Mrs. Prufrock laid a hand on Dolly's shoulder and pushed her back. "I'm sorry about my, uh, niece," she apologized. "We're working on her social skills."
"I can bring her an ice cream bar, ma'am," said the employee. "It's no trouble."
"Don't bother yourself," said Mrs. Prufrock with a wave of her hand. "She's had plenty to eat already."
As the young hotel worker closed the door, Dolly turned and scowled at Mrs. Prufrock. "The servants in this hotel do not know their place," she complained.
The night passed quickly. Alan snored away in one bed, Prunella and Dolly in another, and Mrs. Prufrock in the third.
They enjoyed a continental breakfast in the morning (Dolly ate every donut in sight), and then drove to the museum to meet with Mr. Winslow and the Harrises. This time Winslow allowed Alan and Prunella to accompany him and Dolly to the hidden laboratory, as they had expressed curiosity about it.
Alan was especially amazed by Winslow's ability to open the sliding door and turn on the lamps with a mere wave of his hand. Since it couldn't be magic, he attributed it to some sort of nanoelectronic device implanted in the man's skin.
They soon entered the main room, where all of Winslow's ingredients and implements were kept. "Ooooh...aaaah..." marveled Alan and Prunella.
Winslow and Dolly hurried over to the table where they had left the cooling green solution the previous day. Inside the bronze mold lay a square, marbled jade stone about the size of a child's hand; the uninformed visitor might have taken it for a piece of tacky bathroom tile.
Winslow pulled the stone from the mold and turned it around in his fingers. The look of supreme triumph on his face suggested that he might burst into maniacal laughter at any moment.
"What is it?" Prunella asked him.
"The solution to all of our problems," Winslow gloated. "If it works according to specifications, that is." Carefully laying down the stone, he pulled his cell phone from his belt and gestured with his ring hand toward a passageway that apparently led to another room. "You children wait in there. I'm going to make some calls."
The three kids walked into the other room, which consisted of little more than bare white walls and a few worn-down items of furniture. While Alan and Prunella seated themselves on a Victorian couch, Dolly remained standing, glancing to and fro.
"I had no idea Mr. Winslow was a scientist in his spare time," Alan marveled.
Then he and Prunella watched as Dolly put out her arms and shuffled in almost a trance-like manner toward one of the bare walls. "Dolly, what is it?" Prunella asked her.
"There's...a door...in that wall..." came Dolly's monotonic response.
"I don't see one," said Alan.
"I...can feel it..."
When Dolly reached the wall and rested her hands on it, a surprising thing occurred. An entire section of the wall slid noiselessly backward and then sideways, leaving a passage through which Dolly unhesitatingly stepped.
"Hey, Dolly, I don't think you should go in there," Prunella called to her, but the girl had already disappeared into the dim light of whatever lay on the other side of the wall.
Alan slowly rose, stuck out his arms, and started to walk robotically toward the mysterious doorway. "Must...enter...secret...room..." he mumbled.
"Oh, knock it off," Prunella groused, and Alan lowered his arms and grinned.
Dolly had found herself in the midst of what she imagined must be an ancient library. Several wooden shelves were positioned parallel to each other, and were filled with large, primitively bound books. The only light came from the lamp in the room she had just left, and it was insufficient. As Alan and Prunella came up behind her, she waved her hand in the air and said, "Let there be light." By her command, the entire library became illuminated, although she could not tell where the light emanated from.
"How did you do that?" Alan asked her.
"I'm not sure," Dolly replied. "I figured if Winslow can turn on lights with magic, then so can I. I'm a witch, don't forget."
For several minutes they wandered through the book racks, while Winslow was making cell phone calls to his associates. Many of the books had bizarre titles--"Wonders with Wormwood", "Hemlock for Dummies", "You Want to Turn WHAT into Gold?"
"I take back what I said about Mr. Winslow being a scientist," said Alan. "This stuff is spooky."
"He's an alchemist," Dolly informed him.
"Oh, that explains a lot."
They reached a far corner of the library and found a wooden desk with cluttered papers on top. Above it, posted on the wall, was a large pedigree chart.
"Oh, look!" exclaimed Prunella. "It must be Mr. Winslow's genealogy."
The three kids stood in front of the chart and started to read from the bottom. Angus Winslow's name was there, along with several other Winslows, male and female, and a few other last names.
While Prunella scanned the chart upwards, she found some very familiar names-- Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John Proctor. Winslow himself was a descendant of Matthew Proctor, as Prunella was of Luke. "He's related to me," she mused.
Then she saw something that made her gasp in horror.
Unlike her own pedigree chart, Winslow's had a name in the Husband slot next to Charity Proctor.
The name was Alvin Matheson.
TBC
As Winslow spoke, he picked up several colored stones from a table and fumbled with them. "We alchemists have known how to turn base metals into gold since before you were born. But our purpose--our dream, if you will--is something altogether different."
"And what is your purpose?" Dolly inquired.
"A perfect world." Winslow stared at Dolly with piercing eyes. "The elimination of all that is evil."
Dolly realized that she had heard words similar to those before...
"You think of good and evil as metaphysical concepts," Winslow went on. "To us alchemists, they're measurable quantities. Each one of us is born into the world with an equal measure of good and evil in our souls. Which side we choose is up to us, but they are always there, pulling us in one direction or the other." He held up his right hand, and the light of a nearby lamp reflected off of his jade ring. "My ring contains a special stone created by my great-grandfather. With it, I can cause a person's good side to temporarily become dominant."
"That's what you did to me," Dolly reflected. "That's why I couldn't help but tell the truth about the love potion."
"Exactly," said Winslow, leaning against a table. "Now, Dolly, imagine if everyone in the world suddenly became good. There would be no crime, no war, no hatred, no prejudice, and most importantly, no reality TV."
"What a wonderful kind of day," Dolly mused.
"This has been the dream of the alchemists from the beginning," Winslow continued. "To that end we have exhaustively studied the magical properties of nearly every known element and compound. However, this is a very time-consuming process, involving a great deal of trial and error. This is where you come in, Dolly. You are all that remains of the Wicasta. With your innate magical sense, you can unlock secrets in an instant that otherwise would require decades of alchemic research."
Stepping over to an old wooden desk, he opened a drawer and pulled out a slip of creased paper on which were written a list of ingredients and instructions. "Take this potion, for instance." He handed the paper to Dolly, who started to read it with interest. "My people have been trying to prepare it correctly for hundreds of years. All the factors--the purity and balance of ingredients, the temperature, the heating time--have to be exact in order to achieve the desired potency. If anything is off in the slightest, you end up with something like the stone in my ring. That's why I need you, Dolly. With your talent, you can detect any loss in potency during the preparation."
"The Cleansing Stone," Dolly muttered, lowering the paper. "What is it good for, may I ask?"
Winslow plucked the paper from Dolly's hands and laid on a table in front of an unlit gas burner. "The Cleansing Stone is the key to a power greater than that of God Himself," he proclaimed pretentiously.
"That's silly," Dolly responded. "Nothing is more powerful than God."
Winslow smiled sheepishly. "Let me rephrase that. With a Cleansing Stone in your hand, you have access to a power that God either does not possess, or is unwilling to use--the power to extinguish the evil in human souls."
Dolly felt herself becoming nervous, or perhaps intimidated.
"Theologians and philosophers have struggled with the problem of evil since the beginning," Winslow continued. "If you assume that God is all-powerful and loves His children, then you must ask yourself, why does He allow evil to run rampant on the earth? Why must even those who do good deeds and say their prayers at night suffer from the lawlessness and corruption around them?"
"I never thought about that," said Dolly, looking at the floor.
"With a Cleansing Stone, you will never need to think about it." Winslow reached down and rubbed the top of Dolly's head. "What do you say? Will you help me to create a perfect world?"
Dolly pondered for a moment, then raised her head and smiled. "I will, Mr. Winslow."
"Excellent." Winslow reached up and grabbed a glass container from a top shelf, which was about even with his ears. "Let's get started, shall we?"
The Cleansing Stone potion took roughly an hour to prepare. While Winslow carefully mixed ingredients in a vial atop a gas burner, Dolly watched the process like a young hawk, giving him advice on how much of each ingredient to add and when to raise or lower the temperature. As the jade-green mixture bubbled and boiled, she began to feel more and more uneasy, as though she were abetting in the creation of a monster. The kind of magic she saw in it was unlike anything with which she was familiar.
"Turn off the heat...now," she instructed Winslow, who complied. Carefully lifting the vial with a pair of plastic tongs, he slowly emptied it into a square bronze mold, then replaced it on the burner.
"There it is, Dolly," he said proudly, gazing down at the steaming green substance. "All we have to do now is wait for it to solidify."
"How long will that take?" asked Dolly. "I'm hungry."
"It should be solid by morning," Winslow told her. "In the meantime, let's join the others and get some donuts."
----
"It was believed that the Wicasta died out during the 17th-century witch hunts," Winslow related. He was seated along with Maria, Nadine, Mrs. Prufrock, Alan, Prunella, and Dolly at a table in a Dunkin Donuts shop. "But now, thanks to Hannah Proctor's locket, we've found a survivor."
Dolly hardly noticed that the others were talking about her; she was too busy ravenously gobbling up one donut after another. "Oh, I do so love donuts," she mumbled with a full mouth.
"You'll get fat if you eat too many," Prunella warned her.
"Then I shall be a happy fat girl," said Dolly, taking a large bite out of a chocolate cruller.
"I'd like to know more about this project of yours," Alan requested.
"I'd rather keep it a surprise until it's done," Winslow responded. "It's very sensitive. I have competitors, you know."
"You said this magic sense is only passed down to females," Maria noted. "We have something like that in our family. Only the girls are born with tails."
"It's something genetic, I suppose." Winslow wiped the sugar from his lips with a napkin, then reached into the box for a maple bar. "The Y chromosome must prevent men from growing tails or developing Wicasta powers."
A pimple-faced poodle girl in a fast-food uniform approached their table. "Can I get you anything else?" she asked.
"More donuts!" exclaimed Dolly.
Prunella groaned with delight. "Are you really eating them, or just making them disappear?"
----
Later that day the group arrived at the Salem Mairzydoats Hotel, where Winslow had booked a room for Mrs. Prufrock, Dolly, Alan, and Prunella (he had invited the Harrises to spend the night at his house). Dolly was awestruck at the lavish furnishings of the hotel's reception area. "It's like a castle!" she cried.
"Yeah," Alan rejoined. "Only a king could afford to live here."
Dolly's amazement grew as she and the others entered their room, which featured three beds and several seascape pictures on the walls. "Oh, it's heavenly," she remarked. "Why should anyone want to stay here for only a night?"
"Two reasons," quipped Prunella. "Food and clothing."
While Alan and Prunella discussed homework and Winslow's mysterious project, and Mrs. Prufrock filed her nails and tried on some new bead bracelets, Dolly discovered the unspeakable joys of room service.
"How can I help you?" asked the young chipmunkish man who appeared in the doorway.
"I would very much like some donuts," said Dolly eagerly.
"We don't serve donuts until morning," explained the hotel employee. "Continental breakfast, six to nine a.m."
Dolly was undaunted. "Then I shall have ice cream instead."
"The shop on the first floor has ice cream bars for sale," the employee informed her.
"Then go and fetch me one, thou knave," said Dolly, growing impatient.
Mrs. Prufrock laid a hand on Dolly's shoulder and pushed her back. "I'm sorry about my, uh, niece," she apologized. "We're working on her social skills."
"I can bring her an ice cream bar, ma'am," said the employee. "It's no trouble."
"Don't bother yourself," said Mrs. Prufrock with a wave of her hand. "She's had plenty to eat already."
As the young hotel worker closed the door, Dolly turned and scowled at Mrs. Prufrock. "The servants in this hotel do not know their place," she complained.
The night passed quickly. Alan snored away in one bed, Prunella and Dolly in another, and Mrs. Prufrock in the third.
They enjoyed a continental breakfast in the morning (Dolly ate every donut in sight), and then drove to the museum to meet with Mr. Winslow and the Harrises. This time Winslow allowed Alan and Prunella to accompany him and Dolly to the hidden laboratory, as they had expressed curiosity about it.
Alan was especially amazed by Winslow's ability to open the sliding door and turn on the lamps with a mere wave of his hand. Since it couldn't be magic, he attributed it to some sort of nanoelectronic device implanted in the man's skin.
They soon entered the main room, where all of Winslow's ingredients and implements were kept. "Ooooh...aaaah..." marveled Alan and Prunella.
Winslow and Dolly hurried over to the table where they had left the cooling green solution the previous day. Inside the bronze mold lay a square, marbled jade stone about the size of a child's hand; the uninformed visitor might have taken it for a piece of tacky bathroom tile.
Winslow pulled the stone from the mold and turned it around in his fingers. The look of supreme triumph on his face suggested that he might burst into maniacal laughter at any moment.
"What is it?" Prunella asked him.
"The solution to all of our problems," Winslow gloated. "If it works according to specifications, that is." Carefully laying down the stone, he pulled his cell phone from his belt and gestured with his ring hand toward a passageway that apparently led to another room. "You children wait in there. I'm going to make some calls."
The three kids walked into the other room, which consisted of little more than bare white walls and a few worn-down items of furniture. While Alan and Prunella seated themselves on a Victorian couch, Dolly remained standing, glancing to and fro.
"I had no idea Mr. Winslow was a scientist in his spare time," Alan marveled.
Then he and Prunella watched as Dolly put out her arms and shuffled in almost a trance-like manner toward one of the bare walls. "Dolly, what is it?" Prunella asked her.
"There's...a door...in that wall..." came Dolly's monotonic response.
"I don't see one," said Alan.
"I...can feel it..."
When Dolly reached the wall and rested her hands on it, a surprising thing occurred. An entire section of the wall slid noiselessly backward and then sideways, leaving a passage through which Dolly unhesitatingly stepped.
"Hey, Dolly, I don't think you should go in there," Prunella called to her, but the girl had already disappeared into the dim light of whatever lay on the other side of the wall.
Alan slowly rose, stuck out his arms, and started to walk robotically toward the mysterious doorway. "Must...enter...secret...room..." he mumbled.
"Oh, knock it off," Prunella groused, and Alan lowered his arms and grinned.
Dolly had found herself in the midst of what she imagined must be an ancient library. Several wooden shelves were positioned parallel to each other, and were filled with large, primitively bound books. The only light came from the lamp in the room she had just left, and it was insufficient. As Alan and Prunella came up behind her, she waved her hand in the air and said, "Let there be light." By her command, the entire library became illuminated, although she could not tell where the light emanated from.
"How did you do that?" Alan asked her.
"I'm not sure," Dolly replied. "I figured if Winslow can turn on lights with magic, then so can I. I'm a witch, don't forget."
For several minutes they wandered through the book racks, while Winslow was making cell phone calls to his associates. Many of the books had bizarre titles--"Wonders with Wormwood", "Hemlock for Dummies", "You Want to Turn WHAT into Gold?"
"I take back what I said about Mr. Winslow being a scientist," said Alan. "This stuff is spooky."
"He's an alchemist," Dolly informed him.
"Oh, that explains a lot."
They reached a far corner of the library and found a wooden desk with cluttered papers on top. Above it, posted on the wall, was a large pedigree chart.
"Oh, look!" exclaimed Prunella. "It must be Mr. Winslow's genealogy."
The three kids stood in front of the chart and started to read from the bottom. Angus Winslow's name was there, along with several other Winslows, male and female, and a few other last names.
While Prunella scanned the chart upwards, she found some very familiar names-- Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John Proctor. Winslow himself was a descendant of Matthew Proctor, as Prunella was of Luke. "He's related to me," she mused.
Then she saw something that made her gasp in horror.
Unlike her own pedigree chart, Winslow's had a name in the Husband slot next to Charity Proctor.
The name was Alvin Matheson.
TBC
