Page 75 of Inkpot Gods

The true work is about to begin.

No one and nothing else troubles them as they make the journey back to the house, the carriage riding lower with its full burden of bodies. A dead man weighs the same as the living, especially when that weight is put to carriage springs and horses, not grieving loved ones forced to carry the body to its eternal home.

The greenhouse in the back is the best place for them to work, near-abandoned since the rains returned and did away with the need to grow even basic kitchen seasonings in controlled conditions. There are still some pots of herbs and simples around the edges, things meant for use in alchemy rather than cooking, but those will be of more aid here than not.

The girl was not embalmed before she was given to the ground. This is both a gift and a trial. Her blood has long since congealed in her veins, and must be flushed out, replaced with a blend of saltwater, rainwater, and mercury, prepared by Asphodel as Miss Cottingsly works the bellows to push the rotten blood away. The smell of it is intense, and Asphodel pauses to rub an herbal liniment under her nose, blocking enough of it out that she can continue breathing despite her body’s traitorous attempts to gag.

The man is fresher, his blood sweeter, but he was not their target tonight; Asphodel sees to him quickly, harvesting the organs she can use most efficiently, draining his circulatory system and harvesting a few veins. Excess to needs or no, nothing can be wasted.

After the girl’s blood has been purged and the gashes made in her wrists to let it drain have been stitched closed, Miss Cottingsly cracks open her chest and abdomen, beginning to remove rotten, damaged organs. Asphodel is quick to replace them with the organs harvested from the dead guard, intermixed with sachets of dried herbs and twists of wire. They’re constructing a body entirely inimical to life. That’s an important part of the process. Auf are neither living nor dead. They shouldn’t be treated like common resurrections.

Once the body is fully prepared, Asphodel moves across the greenhouse to the single electrical outlet connected to the structure. She has a large mechanical battery connected there, and she checks it before attaching the jumper leads to the metal bars along its sides.

If this works, this will be the first auf made entirely using electrical current, rather than requiring the use of a natural storm. It will modernize alchemy. They have observed the proper seals and sigils, have prepared the flesh according to the books of the masters, but the masters couldn’t account for what they didn’t have, and the exact applications of electricity will provide her Invention.

She will become a proper alchemist on the strength of this night’s work. She attaches the jumper leads to the girl’s wrists, turning to Miss Cottingsly. “The switch,” she says. “Flip the switch.”

Miss Cottingsly nods, serene as she crosses the greenhouse to flip the switch in question.

Electricity arcs and sizzles, and the light in the greenhouse goes out with a large popping sound, accompanied by flame appearing around the plug connecting the battery to the wall. And nothing else happens.

Asphodel swears, hurrying back to the table where their auf is waiting. She trips over the cable on the way, and falls into the body, cutting one hand on the jumper lead. Blood runs down the side of her palm, soaking the stitches on the girl’s wrist. Outside, the storm screams, and lightning lashes down, hitting the frame of the greenhouse.

The electrical current is dead. Still, the lightning passes through the cables to the jumper leads, and into the body of the dead girl. Asphodel feels it brush across her skin, gentle as a kiss, sending her hair to stand on end before it dissipates and flows away.

And on the table, the girl opens her eyes.

Asphodel stands rigid before the members of the American Alchemical Congress, her creation by her side. Eliza—for that is what they call her even now, although she doesn’t claim the name as her own, didn’t even recognize it when it was first offered—shifts her weight uneasily from one foot to the other, squirming under the attention of these unfamiliar, much older men.

“As you can see, I have summoned life back out of death,” says Asphodel, voice carrying and clear. “She is not an auf: her heart beats, her lungs expand, and while her wounds have healed, they did so only marginally faster than the human norm. There were components of her making which should have rendered life impossible for her to achieve. She is something altogether new, true life created by alchemical art.”

“How are we to know that you didn’t just bring us a child snatched off the street?” asks one of the alchemists.

“My uncle, John Baker, will testify to my efforts,” says Asphodel. Miss Cottingsly would be better, but these are men of art and science: they have barely lowered themselves to speak with her. They will never lower themselves to hear the testimony of an auf. “He knows what supplies I commandeered, what my plans were, and what a mess I made of the greenhouse. He can tell you I speak truly. She is a masterpiece. She is my greatest creation.”

“A woman making life is nothing new,” says one of the alchemists. Others laugh, their agreement like acid in the back of her throat. Oh, how it burns.

“I brought back the rain,” says Asphodel. “You promised me training and a fair assessment if I could do that much.”

“So you did,” says the man at the center of their number. “And so we have allowed you to be trained, as we had sworn we would never do. We have kept our side of the bargain, Asphodel Baker. We never promised you that you would be an alchemist.”

“She breathes, she cries, she lives!” snaps Asphodel. “Eliza is a miracle. She can heal and grow. I believe she will age. Electricity is the answer. The modern world is waiting for our arrival, and you would rather sit there and play at godhood than pay attention to true progress when it unfolds before you!”

“And better minds than yours will make your future manifest,” says the alchemist. “Your claim of Invention is denied, Asphodel Baker. Return to the kitchen and parlor where you belong. Take your ‘creation’ with you.”

Asphodel turns away, tears stinging her eyes, and takes Eliza by the hand, leading her creation, her auf that isn’t, away from the room of her greatest failure, which should have been her greatest triumph.

She doesn’t look back. She doesn’t see her uncle rise from his seat at the back of the quorum and begin screaming at the men who have always been his peers, doesn’t hear the way that he defends her. It wouldn’t change anything if she did, but it might lighten her heart in some small, essential ways. It might keep her from growing as bitter as time says she will, might spare some souls her fury.

But she doesn’t look back, and all chances of changing the moment are lost, time repeating over again as it always has, as it always does.

Eliza is in the kitchen with paper and charcoals when John Baker arrives home, finding Asphodel in the parlor, tearstains on her blouse and tangles in her hair. Miss Cottingsly stands nearby, watching Asphodel’s misery with an eagle’s eye, and he goes first to her.

“Is the girl an auf?” he asks. Asphodel had kept Eliza from him, as was only proper when he was to be part of the judging committee measuring the validity of her work. There had been no opportunity for him to perform his own examination or draw his own conclusions.

Miss Cottingsly shakes her head. “No,” she says, voice quiet. “Nor is she an urchin. She was dead. Exceedingly so. I cleaned her veins myself, and there is no way that child could have been restored to what she’d been before the fever took her. But she woke, and walked, and lives. Asphodel spoke truly: she has a heartbeat. If you stop her breath, she chokes and coughs and fights to have it back. She eats and excretes, and has no choice in either matter—hunger pains her, and while she’s clearly been taught to manage her own bodily functions, she will begin to cry if not allowed to urinate for too long a period of time. She doesn’t remember anything before she woke in the greenhouse, storm above and fire surrounding. Her resurrection was her recreation, but she lives. Your niece has created life. True life, not the theoretical twilight of the auf. And you have broken her heart.”

“I fought for her,” says John, sadly. “I did what I could do to show them the error of their ways. I tried. They refused to hear me.”