Throttle
Victor woke with a start. He twisted around frantically. He was in a round home, dirt floors, thatched roof, facing a fire and swaddled in blankets that smelled sharply of fresh wool. Whoever had done this had wrapped him so tight he couldn’t even move his arms.
“It would perhaps be better to prepare for the weather?”
Victor craned his neck as far as it would go under the circumstances and found a man sitting to his left a little behind him.
He had windswept brown hair and an unkempt beard and didn’t seem particularly interested in giving Victor eye contact.
Instead, he was focusing all his attention on knitting a large gray blanket that Victor could smell from where he was sitting.
“If I were to travel to such a place as this? I would think so,” the man said. “You are an Englishman?”
A strange question for someone speaking to him in his mother tongue. Victor shook his head. “German.”
The man nodded—like he was pleased he’d guessed right between the two—and continued to knit. Victor turned his head back toward the hearth. Then he spotted something to his right that he’d missed.
Every item Victor had been wearing save his long underwear had been removed from his body and laid out on the floor to dry.
His shirt, pants, and jacket closest to the fire.
His money—paper, ingot, and coin—pocket watch, tiepin.
His paperwork: letters, identification, the spell notes, and list of locations.
Even his boat ticket stub was exposed. A wall of white, robbing him of a shred of privacy.
Victor just closed his eyes for a moment to process that. Fury, humiliation, and horror fought to take him over, but it was despair that settled in his throat, choking him.
Would he never cease to be at a disadvantage with these men? Would helplessness be his only friend during these travels?
“Are you Willem Dijkstra?” Victor asked with a sigh.
“I am,” the man said.
Victor glanced back at the spread of his things. “You know why I’m here. Will you help me?”
Willem paused in his craft, still staring out at the fire.
“You are a dangerous man. Why should I, a good man, help a dangerous man?”
He continued to knit.
Victor resented being called that, but he was forced to admit it was true.
He didn’t see himself as particularly violent in the way that Alain or even someone like Gregor was violent.
He wasn’t a bully the way they were bullies.
But he had killed. Had acted with the intention to kill.
Even though Elias survived and the drunk would not have lasted the night.
It wasn’t even that Willem had called him a “bad” man, just a dangerous one. But it felt like he had.
“You could convince me,” Willem said contemplatively.
“I could pay you,” Victor replied.
Willem laughed, a high-pitched little thing. “I have seen all you could pay with.”
“What is it with alchemists and not just taking money like everyone else?” Victor hissed. “It’s very uncivilized.”
Willem turned to him then, bright eyed and merry. “Men who understand the language of the gods . . . we are not the same but similar.”
He was missing a few teeth and now that Victor could see him fully, he was surprised by how young he was. Maybe only ten years older than himself.
“So I can convince you.” Victor snagged that offer. “How can I convince you?”
Willem shrugged. “Tell your story. How you came to be here and if I like what I have heard . . .” He trailed off suggestively.
Victor sighed. He would try to tell this in a way that hopefully didn’t turn him from a guest into a captive.
“I come from a family line of doctors. It is . . . in my heart to create medicine and procedure that transcend our current abilities. The institution where I completed my study was not . . . able to assist me in this endeavor so I turned to seek out men who can. A book came to my possession that provided answers to some of my questions, and solutions to my struggles. During a demonstration, I accidentally bonded myself to a patient and am currently seeking a dissolution to that bond. I need guidance on how to do so before there are any permanent damages to either of us.”
There. That sounded nice and vague.
Willem made a considering noise and got up. He rustled behind Victor for long frightening seconds before returning to his side with a small stool and a bowl of what smelled like a hearty fish stew in his hands.
He scooped some of the stew and held the spoon to Victor’s mouth. Confused and more than a little alarmed, Victor ate what he was being offered.
It was incredible. Much better than all the food he’d had in France. Rich with fat, herbed and salted, fish chunks cooked to luscious density, creamy potatoes.
Victor couldn’t help but groan in delight as Willem gave him another spoonful. Willem smiled openly, waiting until Victor stopped chewing to offer him the spoon again.
“What is this man’s name? The one whose life you wasted?” Willem asked conversationally.
The food felt like a stone in Victor’s stomach.
“He . . . Eli—Elias,” Victor admitted.
Willem nodded. He daubed Victor’s face, cleaning it of dribbled broth, then offered him another bite.
Victor turned away from the spoon.
“I can hear your stomach from far away, German man. Eat.”
Victor’s throat was tight, but he didn’t know what to do besides open his mouth again.
“Does this man have family?” Willem asked softly.
“I can’t do this at the same time,” Victor said bitterly.
Willem shrugged, leaning back. “You can.” He seemed to struggle for a moment, to find the right words. “Kindness burns on wicked men, I find” was what he settled on. “I have bread.”
He tore a piece of sweet brown bread and dipped it in the soup, feeding it to Victor slowly. Victor sat there in his blanket prison and struggled not to burst into tears.
“He . . . He has sisters and parents,” Victor managed. “They live together.”
Willem nodded. “They love him, surely.” He murmured almost to himself, “And he does not love you, I can tell. Angry at you.”
“He doesn’t know me,” Victor admitted. Why was it so easy to confess that to this man?
Willem made a sad sound. “Is he a stranger, or have you seen his smile? Heard the way he laughs, broken bread with him?”
Victor didn’t know how to answer that. Technically he had done all those things with Elias, but he could tell that Willem didn’t mean it in this way. He meant, Did Victor know him well enough for it to be meaningful for his betrayal to have weight?
Willem had paused in feeding to watch Victor think about this question. His brown eyes were owlish and strange, very deep. He was younger than Victor had thought when he first saw him. Maybe only a few years older than he was.
“I . . . ,” Victor started, and then words left him. He swallowed hard. “What kind of alchemist are you?” he asked instead.
To his surprise, Willem didn’t insist upon his question being answered first.
“Currents. Air, water, and electricity. Everything has vibrations, waves, and paths. There is a path here and here.” He gestured with the spoon to Victor’s chest and his stomach.
“This . . . Elias . . . is pulling you like a fast current against the wall of a dike. You need a controlled leak or you’ll come spilling out all at once. ”
Victor thought frantically. “So, you’re saying that you can widen the stream between us so it flows steady and slow instead of coming in fits and starts than all at once?”
Willem shrugged. He dipped the bread in the soup and held it up to Victor’s mouth.
When they finished the stew and bread, Willem disappeared behind him and came back with a wooden comb. He smoothed a hand over Victor’s head to test its wetness and began to gently comb through Victor’s curls.
No one had done this to Victor since he was a child. The feeling of Willem’s hands on the edges of his ears and the nape of his neck made him shiver. Made him lean his head forward to seek touch. It made him miss his mother with a horrible ache deep in his bones.
“I didn’t know him well enough to break bread with him,” Victor admitted. “But he didn’t wrong me in any real way that deserved . . . that deserved . . . He was going to die anyway. He had the sugar sickness.”
“So you stole from God,” Willem murmured, sweeping a hand over Victor’s forehead. His fingers were so soft, completely unlike what Victor had imagined they’d be like.
“I . . .” Victor was at a loss for words again. He hadn’t thought about it in that way. The contrast between Willem’s gentle care and the conversation they were having made him feel dizzy and vulnerable.
Willem finished combing his hair, then came back with some kind of oil on his hands and smoothed it in. Pressing his fingertips into Victor’s scalp.
“He must be so angry and sad for what he lost. He must be so afraid,” Willem continued. “Would you be afraid if you met yourself?”
“Please stop,” Victor whispered.
Willem hummed again, in that way Victor was starting to understand meant that Willem had learned something Victor hadn’t intended to share.
He didn’t stop massaging, digging his thumbs into the aching knots at the base of Victor’s neck, pressing until they unraveled.
The tension from stress and riding bled from him, left him weak and shaking.
“Even now, he is probably roaming. Searching for you: your soul cries out to him like a beacon.” Willem paused. “Right now, are you thinking of how to outrun him?”
Victor wasn’t. He was stuck on stealing from God and whether he would be afraid of himself.
“No. I’m thinking about what he might be doing right now. Where he is,” Victor admitted.
Willem leaned around the chair so Victor could see his smile. “That is a good thing!” He patted Victor’s blanketed knee, then sat down beside him and picked up his knitting.
“You will stay there tonight, I think,” Willem declared. “Tomorrow, we will talk and then I will fix your heart.”