~ Lydia and the Dragon ~
By Alexander de Barr
_____________________________
It was a cold and starless January evening. The setting sun was obscured behind black storm clouds. High up in the mountains, the heavens hounded the Profiterole School of Arcane Mysteries with relentless snowfall. Lydia Weatherlee and her friend Rachel were seated in the third row of an old lecture hall, deep within the bowels of the castle, each preparing for their evening class: alchemy.
"Professor Heiliger is late," Rachel said in a hushed tone.
Lydia glanced up from the notebook on her lap and checked the door: she was hastily copying her friend's homework assignment. "
Another few minutes should do."
Toly Verdier, the head prefect, saw what Lydia was up to. As the most promising student in the school and as a role model to others she would not--she could not--stand for this. She had to lead by example.
Lydia saw her coming out of the corner of her eye.
"Oh no... What does little Miss Perfect want?"
"Young lady, this is university," she said haughtily. "You should have outgrown this sort of behaviour by now."
"Mind your own business," Rachel interjected.
"You shouldn't indulge her, dear. It won't do her any good." She turned to face Lydia. "This sort of behaviour hurts the school's reputation."
"What are you? My mum?"
"No, Lydia. Unlike her, I actually care enough to teach you the right way," Toly replied with a prissy smile.
Lydia curled her lip.
"At least your pixies look healthy," the head prefect said, pointing a finger at the bottled spirits on their desks.
The doorknob turned with a creaky groan. Toly skipped back to her front-row seat. A willowy man dressed in a grey robe entered the hall. He clutched, under his arm, a purple box bound with leather straps and sealed via a brass locking mechanism.
"Eww! Who's that?" Lydia whispered in Rachel's ear.
"I've seen him once or twice..." she murmured back, muffling a giggle all the while.
The robed figure moved towards the podium, followed closely by the professor.
"Quiet please! Class is about to begin," Professor Heiliger said with his deep, booming voice.
He was a tall, imposing man in his late forties, solidly built, with a firm jaw and golden blond hair that had begun to grey around the temples, giving him the air of a wise elder. When he taught, he was like a great feline lording over his domain. Lydia liked his classes. She habitually blushed when he called on her.
The dozen or so students hushed their conversations. A couple of girls in the front row adjusted their uniforms. Lydia continued copying her homework under her desk whilst feigning attention, an art she'd mastered after many years of practice. She and her friend were high up above the podium; it would be hard for the professor to notice her wrongdoing.
The lowest levels of the castle had been carved out of the mountain itself. On a nice day, even this room would have offered its occupants a gorgeous view of snow-capped peaks and heavenly clouds shrouding the valleys beneath. As it was, the snow was blowing against the tall windows with such ferocity that it made them rattle in their porous old frames. Every now and then a cold breeze would come to lick the girl's ears or tickle their thighs.
"Someone draw the curtains," the professor ordered.
Toly, ever one to please, hopped to it with gusto. Darkness crept into the room's corners. Only the blue and orange light of the bottled pixies on the student's desk kept it at bay.
"Thank you, Miss Verdier."
Lydia was not pleased; it was too dark now for her to keep copying her friend's homework.
"Professor? Could you turn on the lights, please?" she asked.
The professor flicked an old light switch by the door: dozens of candles above the blackboard and on various chandeliers around the room lit up spontaneously. Satisfied, he took his place behind a carved eagle lectern.
"Now, ladies. Some of you will already know Professor Blackett. For those who don't, he is our master of mirrors."
Professor Heiliger turned to his associate, who gave a courteous bow. His face showed deep calm but little else. His features were so plain as to be hard to describe. He had pale but taut skin, small black eyes, a thin mouth, a straight nose, and no creases were to be found anywhere on his face: from a distance, one could mistake him for a mannequin come to life.
"Professor Blackett is going to assist me in teaching you about alchemical transmutation. Now, transmutation is a core concept in alchemy. In fact, one could say that it is
the
core concept of alchemy. We've touched on it briefly in the past. Today we begin our deep dive into the subject. Pay close attention to today's lecture."
The professor stepped aside to make room for his colleague. Blackett placed his little box on the table before turning to address his audience.
"You've probably all heard the saying 'to turn lead into gold,' yes?" he asked as he undid the latch around his collar.
The students were quiet as mice. He paced back and forth across the floor, as if weighing the quality of the air, before stopping in front of Pollyanna Delling, a second-year student. He put his hands on her desk and leaned in.
"Yes?" he enquired.
"Yes, professor. Of course," she answered, a little uncomfortably.
"And what does it mean?"
She hesitated. He pulled back, resuming his pacing. "Anyone?"
Toly raised her hand. Blackett beckoned her answer with an open palm. She stood up, her hands joined behind her back, and began confidently:
"All matter is born from the bursting of stars, and all matter is composed of a handful of simple elements arranged in a myriad of different ways. Everything that surrounds us, even dirt, could be turned into gold with the right alchemical process. That is the essence of transmutation," she said with a conceited smile.
Blackett paused, then chortled. "If you want to be a materialist so badly, miss, I suggest you return to the city, find some chemists in a basement somewhere, and huff fumes with them until your face turns blue."
Toly, so self-assured, was mortified. Lydia snickered, as did a few others.
"We are occultists, miss," the professor added. "We do not lust after trinkets."
Heiliger interrupted his colleague. "Professor Blackett," he said with an amicable tone. "Please. Most of these are first-year students. Be gentle. It was a good guess, Toly. Well formulated."
The head prefect sat back in her seat, her ego more than a little bruised.
Lydia was most pleased. "
Maybe this Blackett isn't so bad?"
Toly spotted her grinning with glee at her humiliation: she saw red.
The Master of Mirrors resumed his lecture. "The idea that a common element might be turned into gold is a pitfall occultists have kept in place since the beginning of time, to divert those who aren't worthy of hearing our teachings away from us and back to their incessant warring. Besides, if it was possible to turn something common into gold, gold would instantly become worthless. How many of you have taken Professor Beringer's class on the theories and principles of value?"
The howling of the wind outside made it hard for Lydia to hear Blackett's lecture; his raspy voice didn't carry far. It didn't take long for him to lose her attention. Besides, she still hadn't finished copying Rachel's homework. But there was too little light under her desk to see properly. She looked at the pixie lamp before her. The two creatures within were sitting quietly in their respective compartments, glowing contentedly. She pulled the lamp closer, but it wasn't enough. She needed more light from them, and she could get that, maybe, if she could rouse them with the lure of coupling.
The contraption had two glass compartments, open at the top like two oil lamps but built on the same base, and each compartment contained one of these incandescent little spirits: the blue one was male and the orange one, female. As long as they are kept close together, it is said, pixies can burn for a hundred years or more.
Every now and again, the blue one would run back and forth, waving at the orange one from behind his glass prison, oblivious to their captivity yet yearning to be with her. And between the two glass compartments was a brass connector tube like a tunnel with a small faucet, which, if turned, would incrementally open a little glass gate that kept the pixies separate. If Lydia opened it only a tiny bit, the blue pixie would get excited and light up, giving the mischievous student enough illumination to finish her cheating. She turned the faucet; it was stuck. She applied more force. It budged by a smidgen. She strained it with both hands. A loud, rusty screech filled the room. It had yielded suddenly. Lydia froze. The middle gate was wide open.
"Miss Weatherlee!" Professor Heiliger exclaimed. "What are you doing? We don't need the pixies yet!"
Seeing the gap, the blue pixie lunged for the orange one's pen and dived into its arms: they danced in circles, getting closer and closer, spinning faster and faster before melting into each other, turning into a bubbling purple flame that erupted into a wild cacophony of sparks and light. Fiery bits shot straight up into the air and rained down onto the girls. Rachel shielded herself under a book. Lydia ducked under her desk. Their neighbours tripped over each other and scattered. Myra Hansberry, who was sitting in the second row, had her hair catch on fire.
Professor Heiliger came storming up the stairs, one arm above his head to shield himself. By the time he'd reached Lydia's seat, the commotion had died down: The blue pixie, exhausted from copulating, squeezed back through the brass tunnel so it could rest in its pen, whilst the orange one stayed to nurse the five new little flames at its feet: there was plenty of light now. Lydia's desk was pockmarked with smouldering little craters.
"Miss Weatherlee, you were supposed to wait! You needed them for what we're about to do," the professor said sternly.
Toly interrupted, obsequiously, "None of this would have happened, sir, if she hadn't been trying to cheat."
Heiliger picked up Lydia's half-finished homework, some of it lightly burnt, that lay scattered on the floor, then turned to her with a displeased look in his eyes.
"This isn't grammar-school, Miss Weatherlee. You should have outgrown this sort of behaviour by now."
