The Masquerading Magician by Gigi Pandian Page B

point. Had I acted better, the university would have kept me on as a professor emeritus, with my office and research privileges.” He closed his eyes and was lost in thought for a few moments. “But that choice was taken away from me, by my own actions. I couldn’t accept that I was losing control of my body. I’d like to blame it on the illness affecting my mind, but that would be a lie; my mind is as sharp as it ever was.”
    â€œWhich is its own curse,” I murmured. “You’re fully aware that your body is failing and everything that means.”
    Ivan’s eyes lit up. “You do understand.”
    I thought of Dorian but didn’t speak. I took Ivan’s hand, which was far too frail for someone in his mid-fifties, and squeezed it gently.
    â€œI was angry,” Ivan said. “I lashed out at everyone around me and went down a self-destructive path. I went back-and-forth between looking for false cures and drowning myself with alcohol. The university asked me to take an early retirement, to avoid a scandal. It was too painful to stay in Prague, where I spent so many happy years in my youth. And I did not wish the people who knew me before to see this is what I became. In this modern age, research is possible anywhere.”
    â€œIt’s not the same.”
    â€œI had the choice of staying in Prague but being too angry to do my research, or going somewhere else where I could focus completely on my book before I die.” He cleared his throat and looked away. I gave him space, but he didn’t need long. “Ah! Here it is.”
    I took a piece of paper from his hands. Not only was it a print-out of a scanned copy, but it was the image of a secondary source, not an original alchemy book. The top half of the page contained explanatory text in German, and the lower half showed a poor-
quality photograph of an illustration in an alchemy book. The yellowed page looked like a woodcut, as was common for alchemical reproductions. Though the image was blurred, I made out the central image of a cherubic angel trapped in a prison of flames, with bees circling above in a counterclockwise circle.
    Backward alchemy .
    I felt myself shaking with fear and excitement as I took in all the details. On the edge of the image, outside the flames, two men were dressed as jesters. Though the book had been damaged, the image was clear enough to reveal that the bees were stinging the men’s eyes.
    The bees in Dorian’s alchemy book were used in a similarly unsettling way. But here in this image, there was something more. I realized why Ivan had said the image was so disturbing. The hair on my arms stood up as my gaze fell to the eyes of the angel. The absolute horror in her eyes cut through my core, bridging the gap between the printed page and the ground beneath my feet.
    â€œI told you it was alarming,” Ivan said. “It is much worse than any horror movie, no?”
    It had always amazed me how much life artists could breathe into an image, even when all they had was a knife and a piece of wood. “Why did my question make you think of this illustration?”
    â€œHoney,” Ivan said. “The scent of honey. This is a book about alchemy, not an original alchemy book itself. The author of this scholarly book made a notation that when working with this alchemy book, he detected the scent of honey. Apparently, honey was used as a preservative. Counterintuitive, but alchemists have always been known for being ahead of their time.”
    â€œWhere did this book come from?” I asked. Ivan and the author’s theory of honey as a preservative didn’t ring true, but something was going on.
    â€œThe academic text is in a German university archive,” Ivan said, “but unfortunately the original source is unknown. The woodcut illustration was found as three single sheets of paper in a French bookshop.”
    I nodded. “From the blackened edges,