A Golden Fury

it, closing off the air. I clawed at her wild face, drawing blood she didn’t seem to feel. I couldn’t move her. Her breath was hot on my face, smelling, inexplicably, of sulfur. She was strong, too strong. How was she so strong?
And then she was lifted off me. I rolled, gasping, toward the tongs. I heard her shrieking before I saw her, across the table from the Comte, hands bared like claws. She leapt across it, but the Comte dodged her and ran toward me.
“Go, Thea!” he cried. “She has gone mad!”
Comte Adrien du Porre had a habit of stating the obvious.
“We have to restrain her!” The words were painful coming out, and I seized my throat.
She attacked the Comte again, throwing him easily to the ground. He was a strong man, but she tossed him like a child and leapt atop him. He threw her off, toward the hearth. She sprang back into a crouch. Before she attacked again, she reached behind her into the fire. She seized the glass ovum containing the substance, her fingers sizzling from the heat, and hurled it across the room.
I screamed then, though little sound came out of my swollen throat. I knew what would happen before it did. The Stone wasn’t hardened yet. It was vulnerable. The glass shattered, and the Stone became a red smear dripping down the brick wall. I wanted to run to it, though I knew there was no hope. But Mother was upon Adrien again, and I swung the tongs at her with all my strength. She dropped onto the Comte, insensible.
Adrien pushed her off of him, but gently. He rolled her onto her back and felt her throat for a pulse. His fingers seemed to find what he hoped for, and he looked up at me with relief and reproach.
“Mon dieu, Thea, you could have killed her.”
“She could have killed you,” I retorted. But guilt gnawed at me, not so much for the blow itself—that had been necessary—but for how easy it had been to do. I had not even hesitated.
“We shall have to restrain her,” murmured Adrien. “We cannot know if the fit will have passed when she awakes.”
I stared down at her, my heart still thrashing in my chest like a caged thing. Whatever had just happened, the Comte was taking a more positive view of it than I. It had not occurred to me that this was a mere “fit” that might pass.
“What—?” I didn’t know what to ask. “She tried to kill me. What madness is that? Have you ever heard of such a thing?”
“Men and women suffering madness can become violent, certainly,” said Adrien.
“But she was so strong,” I said. “Stronger than you. How could a disease of the mind have done that?”
“The mind has power over the body that no one fully understands. Put those down, Thea.”
I stared down at the heavy tongs in front of me, then lowered them.
“She made the Stone,” I said, looking back at the wall where the ovum had smashed. “It was in the last stage.”
The Comte looked at me sharply.
“The last stage? The Philosopher’s Stone? Are you certain?” He frowned. “She did not say so. Surely she would have told me.”
“She was keeping it secret from both of us. It is why she barred me from the laboratory.”
“Perhaps—perhaps she was waiting until she was sure. Perhaps she did not want to disappoint us—”
His eyes briefly met mine, then flicked away. We both knew that, whatever her reason, it wasn’t that.
“It could have cured her! If only she hadn’t destroyed it!” I went to the wall and touched the remains of the Stone with one finger. It was still warm. Tears of frustration pricked at my eyes. The Philosopher’s Stone. The dream of every alchemist. Whole lifetimes of work, centuries of unfulfilled hopes, had nearly been realized in front of my eyes. But beneath the frustration, there was a spark of excitement. She had done it. At the very least, that meant that it could be done. My hand went to the pocket of my gown. She had done it, and I had her notes.
“You don’t know that, Thea,” Adrien said. “Even if it was the Stone—which I rather doubt—no one really knows what it does. Who can say what is myth and what is fact?”
I shook my head in irritation. The Comte was given to making pronouncements he had not earned the right to make. He had not labored over the texts, pieced together the fragments, or spent untold hours over the fires in the laboratory. The Comte was a patron, not an adept. All he truly knew about the practice of alchemy was how much it cost.
“Call the doctor,” I said. “But if he can’t help her, then I can, once I’ve made the Stone.”
I started to hunt around the laboratory. If she had left any of the White Elixir, I could do it in a matter of weeks. If not, it would be months—months of Mother’s madness. But there was none left that I could find. At least there was a good deal of the transmuting agent left. That itself took months to prepare, and it was essential to the last stages of the White Elixir. I tilted the red transmuting agent into a vial, corked it, and slipped it into my pocket with the notes. The Comte watched me, a mournful look on his handsome, beak-nosed face.
“I can do it,” I said. “You needn’t look so worried.”
“No, Thea,” said the Comte. “You cannot stay here. It is time for you to go.”
I looked up at the Comte in alarm. “Not you, too!” I exclaimed. “I’m not going anywhere with the Marquis. I can’t leave at all, not so close to achieving this! And Mother can’t travel this way.”
“Your mother will stay here. And you will not go with the Marquis. But you must go, your mother was right about that much. I wish she had broached the matter with you