Chapter 18 #3
“How does that explain them disliking alchemists, then?” asks Asphodel.
“I’d think being weak would make them unappealing.
People like my uncle would never waste time hunting down something you’d call lesser than a Lunar when there are Summers and Winters to be had. Or even Lunars. They have their uses.”
Wistfully, she recalls the days when they had plenty of the materials they’d taken from Deborah close to hand.
She’d been barely better than a child then, and hadn’t realized the power she could have clutched for, instead allowing her uncle to squander and barter it away.
Well, she understands power now. She understands its uses and applications, and the next time they stumble across the living Moon, she’ll be ready to claim her fair share.
“They’re still Greek gods, miss. They still have their pride, and they don’t care to be dismissed.
And while your uncle would never waste time hunting for a Hyade, if he found one, he would take her, and she’d have no real defenses.
They lose a fair number of their company to ill-timed encounters with the alchemical world. ”
“Has the Congress attempted to consult with the Hyades about the lack of rain, in any form?”
Asphodel catches her breath as she waits for the reply.
Miss Cottingsly has already said the Congress discounts the Hyades for being women, but it’s possible that they’ve at least been asked, even if they haven’t been properly summoned.
It’s a relief when Miss Cottingsly shakes her head. This may work.
“You can go for now,” says Asphodel crisply. “I’ll see what I can find in the literature.”
“Yes, miss,” says Miss Cottingsly. She turns toward the basement stairs, walking away with no indication of being bothered by the dismissal. The old auf knows what she was made for.
Asphodel caresses the cover one more time before moving closer to the light, opening the book, and beginning to read.
An hour later, she’s more confused than ever.
There are conflicting accounts of how many Hyades there are: is it three, or is it fifteen?
They can be attracted or they can be summoned, but they aren’t found where droughts linger: their mortal embodiments like to live near water, and can almost always be found in sight of either a river or the sea.
She slams the book, frustrated. There’s been a drought in Boston for most of her life. She won’t find any Hyades here.
But if she can find one elsewhere, this may still be a solvable problem. She takes a deep breath, calming herself, and opens the book again.
The Hyades are associated with Dionysus, the Greek god of wine, and can sometimes be attracted with the same offerings that would be used for him.
She makes a silent note to ask her uncle exactly when the Congress marks the beginning of the drought, and get a bottle of wine from that year.
Almost as an afterthought, she decides to also request a bottle from the year she was born.
If the rainmakers are right and she’s somehow tied to the absence of the rain, that year might have more sympathy with the situation.
Were it not for Miss Cottingsly’s unprompted reminder that she’s entirely mortal in her making, Asphodel might begin to wonder if she were one of these Hyades, if maybe her manifestation had gone wrong and started repelling what she was intended to attract.
But no: the auf who serves her uncle’s household is fully capable of lying, but not to her.
Not to anyone with Baker blood in their veins.
It’s a small failsafe, bound into the work of her construction, making her a safe right hand and confidant for her uncle’s unending labors.
She closes the book, clutching it to her chest, and leaves the basement. Time to tell her uncle what she’s learned, what she knows, and what she suspects.
Time to begin.
“—so you see, by refusing to acknowledge that women might be the solution to the problem, the Congress has extended the drought far beyond the necessary; this could all have been resolved some time ago, had they only been willing to act as men, not huddle in their private clubhouse like boys.”
She keeps her chin high and her voice level as she speaks to her uncle, watching doubt and dismay crawl across his face like worms into a grave. Finally, he scowls.
“You’d blame the Congress? They’re great men, Asphodel. Better men than I, and better men than you could ever be, sex entirely aside. They move toward the platonic ideals of our philosophy, and they’ll remake the world.”
“In your lifetime?” she asks tartly. “Because I doubt that, but it might be so, if they were willing to open their minds and their doors and actually look at the world outside their textbooks. More than half the Lunars are women. All the Hyades, all the Horae. They shut themselves off from power by refusing to entertain that which betrays their philosophy.”
“What do you need, niece?”
Once he abandons her name, she knows there’s no point in continuing her argument: it is, in its own way, a statement of surrender.
So she smiles, and stands a little straighter, and says, “A carriage to New Haven, the loan of Miss Cottingsly for the journey there and back, two bottles of wine, some incense, a silver knife, and a bronze bowl. I’ll come back successful or not at all. ”
“I’ve put too much effort into your raising to wish to lose you to shame.”
“You misunderstand me, Uncle. If I fail, I’ll likely be dead.”
He blinks, raising his eyebrows. “Is that so?”
“There are no clear rites for summoning the Hyades. They dislike the company of alchemists, and their power is limited enough that most people never bother. Dionysus, on the other hand, loves them dearly, and is more commonly called upon via alchemical ritual. If I call on him, and have the connection to the absent rains you claim I do, perhaps one of them will come instead.”
“You gamble with dangerous stakes, Asphodel.”
“I have no choice.” She lifts her chin again, looking at him sternly along the length of her nose.
She’ll never be as tall as he is, but she’s enough taller than she was when first she came here that he seems small when looked at in this manner.
How could she be afraid of someone so small?
“I was born to be an alchemist. You saved me when you found me and brought me to Boston, and you damned me when you said I could never be your apprentice. If I die calling upon a god who has no interest in my company, let me die, and know that at least I fell with a book in my hand and a secret on my lips. If I succeed and survive, the Congress will allow me to be trained. That’s the only life that matters to me.
Give me what I’ve asked for, and give me my future. ”
“Foolish, wayward girl,” he says, almost wonderingly.
Her uncle has never been the physically affectionate sort, has never been inclined to touching her when such was not required, but he closes the distance between them and pulls her into his embrace, large hands splayed against her back, rough fabric of his coat rubbing at her cheek.
For a moment, Asphodel is too shocked to do anything but lift her arms and hug him in return.
Their embrace lasts for only a handful of seconds. Then he’s pulling away, releasing her, and she’s stepping back, still unsettled by his actions.
“You’ll have everything you need,” he says. “And I know I’ll see you again, when you’ve finished what you’ve started.”
Asphodel smiles.
The Congress, through her uncle, gave her a week to bring back the rain.
Three days have passed before Asphodel arrives in New Haven, borne to her destination by the finest carriage her uncle could hire.
Miss Cottingsly sits across from her, face betraying nothing of her thoughts as she holds her carpetbag in her lap and watches the countryside slide by outside the windows.
Asphodel is doing a far worse job of concealing her emotions.
She worries one fingernail between her teeth, stripping tiny pieces of skin away and swallowing them whole—never leave any piece of yourself where someone else might find it, even if another alchemist scavenging flecks of skin from the roadside is punishingly unlikely—until she comes near to drawing blood.
She pulls her finger reluctantly from her mouth, shaking it to ease the sting, and looks out the window again.
They’re almost to their destination, a place called Morse Beach.
There’s a house there, owned by a local alchemist who’s promised her privacy for the duration of her working, even as he laughed at the very idea of a woman calling down one of the powers entirely on her own.
What would he think if he knew that she was working from a ritual originally designed to call on Dionysus, but modified for a smaller prize?
Most alchemists don’t bother with gods anymore, unless they’re like the Lunars, filled with useful parts and easily dismantled.
God-working is difficult and dangerous, and the rewards are rarely worth the risks.
Asphodel thinks this is because of the changes in attitude between the modern alchemists and the alchemists of antiquity.
In Hypatia’s age, the gods were stronger.
They were more of a threat. And because of this, they were approached respectfully, when they were approached at all.
No one in those days would have dreamt of summoning one of the Hyades with the intent to do her harm.
All the incarnates, even those who weren’t considered strictly divine, were approached with a degree of care that she’s never seen from the Congress.
She’ll kill the Hyade if that’s what it takes to bring back the rain, but she’ll do it gently if she can. She doesn’t want to be a god-worker, thankfully, and after this, she doubts she’d be able to if she tried: no god is going to approach her willingly after she sacrifices one of their own.