City of Lost Dreams

THIRTY-SEVEN

“Where is she?” Sarah rattled the wrought-iron gate. “Pollina. Now.”

Bettina pulled a phone out of her heavy cloak and passed it through the bars. Sarah held it to her ear.

“Pols? Pols?”

“I’m fine,” said the voice, Pollina’s voice. “But, Sarah, don’t do it. Don’t do what she asks. It’s profoundly wrong.”

What is she asking?

“Where are you?” Sarah pressed the phone hard into her ear.

“I don’t know.”

“Can you get outside? Can you hear anything? Smell anything that would tell us where you are?”

Sarah glanced over and saw Bettina standing there calmly, arms crossed, watching her. Max and Nico, too, were waiting for a signal.

“Nothing. I’m locked in. But listen to me, Sarah. I need you to really listen.”

“Okay,” said Sarah, crouching down. Her heart was pounding, her breath making frosty clouds in the air. Only a mile or so away, it was just another late fall night in Prague. She could hear faint blasts of Donna Summer from a nearby club. And yet here she was, dealing with—what?—a crazed scientist? A four-hundred-year-old psychopathic poetess? She was going to stick with the former for now. She focused on what Pols was saying.

“I’m okay with dying,” Pols said. “If this is the end, here, it’s all right. Do you understand? I know I’m only thirteen, but I’ve done everything I hoped to do. I’ve loved and been loved. I’ve made music. I have had the best of life. And I’m going to die anyway.”

“Don’t say that.” It couldn’t end like this, over the phone.

“I’ve always known I wouldn’t live a long life. I think if you look into your heart you’ll realize you’ve always known it, too. So you must let me go. Let me go, Sarah. I will always be with you. Don’t put such stock in this physical body. It’s not what lasts. Love is what matters. You know that. That’s what the visions have shown you, isn’t it? Passion, in all its forms, that’s what endures.”

Sarah couldn’t speak.

Pols continued. Her voice was clear and calm. “God has always had a special plan for me, and I don’t want anyone messing with that. Okay?”

Sarah refused to accept what Pols was saying. If she did, she had the sense she would fall into an abyss there was no climbing out of.

“I’m coming to get you,” she said. The phone went dead. Sarah examined it. A burner phone, no other calls on it.

“I love modern technology,” said Bettina as she unlocked the gate. “You have no idea how annoying this all would have been in another century. Letters, carriage rides, messengers to bribe . . .”

“Spare me,” said Sarah. Her adrenaline was heightening all of her senses. She could smell things on Bettina—metallic scents, herbs, something harsh and chemical as well. No fear. That was bad.

Bettina gave a tight smile as Sarah, Max, and Nico came through the gate. “I’ve given the security guard a little tranquilizer so we’ll have the place to ourselves. And I’ve shut off the electricity—we don’t want anything interfering with the natural energy of the site.”

Max had his gun out in an instant and pointing at Bettina.

“I’m immortal,” she said impatiently. “I’m surprised I need to spell it out for you all. If you don’t do exactly as I ask, Pollina will die.” She looked at Max. “Harriet will see to that.”

Harriet stepped out of the shadows, eyes downcast. She was dressed in court costume of the seventeenth century and seemed barely able to stand. Her eyes were rolling. Drugged. She lurched toward Max, who held her by the shoulders, looking horrified.

“You did this to her?”

“She did it to herself,” Bettina said calmly. “She was a very willing participant. But not a very good spy. Still, she is being rewarded. You will see.”

“You’ve known about me?” This was Nico now, coming forward. “All this time?”

Bettina pursed her lips. “Only recently did you come to my attention. We’ve been looking for the same things, though I suspect for different reasons. I hope you enjoyed all my little cards. You know, several times I almost called you and suggested we go have a nice chai latte at Starbucks and talk over the old days. We should be friends. And yet—”

Nico’s lip twisted in a sneer. “You cannot stoop so low. Nor can I. But . . . you found it?” The little man was trembling.

“Found what? I’ve found many things.”

Nico looked toward the palace, hopeful.

She opened the front door for them, a heavy wooden Renaissance-era door crisscrossed with iron. It slammed shut behind them with a heavy clunk.

They were standing now in a foyer between two of the points of the six-pointed star. The room was empty, except for a pile of boxes in one angle of the star, and lit with torches that cast shadows on the whitewashed walls and stone fireplace. In the flickering light, Sarah could see empty-eyed plaster masks staring down at them. Laughing, crying, staring, grimacing. The hair on the back of her neck went up, and the key between her breasts began to vibrate.

“Charming, isn’t it?” said Bettina. “Ferdinand did love his symbolism. Max, the folio?”

Max looked at Sarah. She nodded and looked away. She couldn’t look at Max.

She needed to hold on to her anger, stoke its fire, keep it at the boiling point. Anger was good. Anger fed action.

“I’ve read it,” said Nico as Bettina flipped through the papers. “The building is supposed to represent the cosmos and all that is contained within. All of the stucco work has alchemical parallels. Heroism, transmutation, incest, the chemical wedding. If the Fleece is here, it must be buried. Unless you already have it—?”

Bettina laughed. “Is that what you’re after?”

“Fuck the Fleece,” Sarah shouted. “I want Pollina back.”

“Don’t fight her.” Harriet in all her finery slunk against a wall. “She is Elizabeth Weston. You should do as she says.”

“Fuck the Fleece indeed,” said Elizabeth. “I stopped looking for that a long time ago.”

“Then what do you want?” Nico came forward and stared up at Elizabeth.

“To be reunited with my daughter,” said Elizabeth.

“Oh, I remember,” said Nico. “Which one do you want? The dribbler? Or the spitter? Or the cougher?”

With one hand Elizabeth grabbed Nico by the hair and threw him across the room. Before Sarah could even react, Max had Elizabeth by the throat.

“You may be immortal,” snarled Max, holding the butt of his gun to her head, “but I will club you like a carp if you touch my friends.”

“A Lobkowicz with something in his codpiece,” said Elizabeth. “Polyxena would be proud. Let me go. Remember your little Pols.” Max released her. Nico started to stand, and then sat down, heavily, his head in his hands.

“You want to die?” asked Sarah. She very much needed not to look at Nico right now. “And be with your daughter? Because I can send you to her. We don’t need a portal. I have the antidote. I’ll give it to you after you give me Pols.”

She produced the vial from her pocket. Elizabeth stared at it.

“I have no idea what that is,” she laughed. “But I don’t care. Even if it is the antidote, I don’t need it. I don’t want to die.”

“You can’t want to live,” Nico whispered. “Not anymore. This is a curse.”

“You idiot,” Elizabeth spat. “A curse? You have done nothing with your time if you can’t think of anything better than dying. Ah, but your perspective is so small, isn’t it? Four hundred years and a dwarf is still small. But woman? Woman has risen! Woman will continue to rise! I want my DAUGHTER. She will live forever by my side. Together we will live to see the end of man. And now I have a way to bring Portia to me. That’s what I have been working for, all these years. I will bring her back. I will cure her sickness. And then, when her body is healthy and strong and pure, I will bind her telomeres with gold. And we will never be parted again.”

“It is impossible.” Sarah’s mind was spinning.

“You understand, Sarah,” said Elizabeth softly. “I know you do. The anguish at not being able to save the one you love? In that we are the same, we Weston women, aren’t we?”

“Don’t,” said Sarah. “Don’t try to girl bond with me. And how do you think Portia is going to be returned to you?”

Elizabeth spread her arms wide.

“You are going to take a dose of a time-perception drug, which a little bird tells me Tycho named after me. You will find Portia, and you will bring her with you through the portal. This can be done. I’ve been practicing.” Elizabeth turned to Max. “You can vouch for that.”

“Saint John,” Max said. “Jan Kubiš. You brought them through. How?”

“Time,” Elizabeth laughed. “Time brought me the answer. Time is the answer. The last century taught me that. Einstein taught us all that space-time can be bent by the presence of an enormously huge mass. Which is what a hell portal is, of course. A pocket of dark matter. But I needed the precise measurements of this power and how to manage it, which has taken practice. Another century. And I needed a portal here in Prague, near where Portia was. Not having a convenient key like mademoiselle here, I had to use a fair bit of alchemy to open the portals. I thought I had found all of them, until Harriet described the markings on the folio. Philippine bound this place very thoroughly with her spells so we must do things the old-fashioned way to find where the portal is hidden. And then I need you, Sarah, to open the door and be Portia’s guide. According to Harriet, you’re quite the little time-walker.”

They were all, Sarah realized, looking at her now.

“I don’t have any Westonia,” she said. “I took the last of it in Innsbruck.”

“Oh, Harriet will share. She’s not much good on it herself.”

Sarah looked at the wasted figure of Harriet.

“You really did find the antidote?” Nico was at her side now. “That’s the ‘something’ that you found at the castle?”

“I broke the Westonia in half,” Sarah confessed. “I took one half in the lab and the other at the castle. And I saw Philippine. I . . . I was her, I think. For a few minutes. She had made the elixir for immortality. And the antidote. She gave it to me. I can’t really explain how it happened.”

“Interesting,” said Nico. “Especially since I have the other half of Westonia right here.”

He produced a half pill from his pocket.

“But,” she insisted, “I hid the Westonia in my pocket.”

“And I stole it, and replaced it with half an Altoid.”

“Then who . . . what? I saw everything. Ferdinand. And Philippine. I saw Mozart, and . . .”

Elizabeth and Nico exchanged a look.

“Placebo effect,” said Elizabeth. “She doesn’t need the drug.”

Nico nodded. “She has the gift. I did wonder.”

“Me, too, at the ball,” said Elizabeth. “Scared the hell out of me. She has it.”

“I have what?” demanded Sarah. “What happened to me?”

“My dearest one,” said Nico, “It seems you never really needed the drug, after that first time. You only needed to think you had taken the drug. You’re highly sensitive to energy fluctuations, to put it mildly. Sherbatsky suspected this, I think.”

“So unfair,” said Harriet. “She doesn’t even care about history.”

“You’re saying I . . . But all the physical sensations . . . the sickness.”

“I didn’t say it was an easy thing. Perhaps you will get better at it.”

Sarah thought of how she’d been catching glimpses of Beethoven all over Vienna. Did she really have the power to see him? Did she only need to give herself permission?

“Lovely,” said Elizabeth. “No sense wasting good drugs. Ingredients are so hard to come by these days. I had to order powdered lion heart from some redneck animal dealer in Texas, for God’s sake. Now. Sarah. Pols is waiting. Time, my dear. Time. We need to make a deal.”

“Fine!” Sarah snapped. “What do we need to do to speed this show along?”

Elizabeth kneeled and bent her head in prayer for a moment.

“So you’re not kidding?” Nico said. “You could bring back Aristotle, or Jesus, or Seabiscuit. And you’re bringing back—”

Elizabeth was eye to eye with him. “Tell me, Jepp, wasn’t there a girl . . . why, I believe she was Tycho’s sister. Sondra, was it?”

“Sophie,” said Nico quietly.

“Wouldn’t you like to see her again?”

Nico seemed to struggle with himself for a moment, then said harshly, “Not on this side of things.”

Sarah saw Hermes stick his nose out of Nico’s suit pocket. The little man pushed him back down.

“Max, spread out the folio,” he barked. “Sarah, put that vial away for now.”

“Harriet, you’re going to love this!” cried Elizabeth. “The portal was hidden by alchemy, and only alchemy will reveal it. It’s magic time.”

“I assume you have the ingredients?” asked Nico.

“Removed for curatorial purposes from across the land,” sang Elizabeth, pointing to the pile of boxes. “The hardest to find was a sixteenth-century Venezuelan fruit fly preserved in amber. A favorite ingredient of Philippine’s. That was hidden, if you please, in a galleon inside the British Museum.”

“That’s what was in the galleon?” Sarah swung around. “I got high off a fruit fly?”

“What on earth are you talking about?”

“The cannon in the secret compartment in the galleon. I got blasted with it.”

Elizabeth smiled.

“Oh, that. That was just a wee something Philippine stored for Rudolf. A nice little seventeenth-century tonic for the vagus nerve. Not important. If you had popped off the head of the emperor figure on the ship, you would’ve found the fruit fly. Not that you would’ve known what to do with it. Anyway, thanks ever so for returning the galleon. I decamped from Vienna so quickly, I didn’t have time to dispose of it. And I always cover my tracks. So. Let’s begin. Nico, read out the instructions.”

Sarah watched as Elizabeth sprinkled various powders and liquids and objects at precise points in the room. A lifetime’s worth—no, several lifetimes’ worth—of collected ingredients. The feather of a dodo. A meteorite from the asteroid Vesta. Tears of an elephant shed during sorrow. A sparrow’s egg impregnated with twins.

Elizabeth gathered powdered vials of gold, silver, and copper, and set a large hourglass in the center of the room Nico took a piece of chalk, marched off the paces, and drew celestial symbols on the terra-cotta floor tiles—the Sun, the Moon, and Venus. Elizabeth emptied the vials onto the chalk symbols.

“Iron, tin, lead, and quicksilver,” said Nico. “Here, here, here, and here.” He drew the symbols for Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and Mercury. He seemed to be almost in a trance. “It’s been a long time,” he said. “I helped the Master draw this circle many times.”

“As I assisted my stepfather,” said Elizabeth. “Cardinal, mutable, fixed, calcination, congelation, fixation . . .”

“Distillation, digestion, solution,” added Nico. “Sublimation, separation, creation . . .”

“Fermentation, multiplication, projection.”

“Abracadabra,” said Sarah. “I’m waiting here.”

“Now, we do need someone to take my daughter’s place in the past. I had to send Kubiš and Nepomuk back through because if someone comes out, someone must go in. Or things are out of balance.” Elizabeth pointed at Harriet. “You,” she said, “are going to have such a lovely trip.”

“Harriet”—Max moved to her side—“you don’t have to do this.”

“I think it’s all so fascinating,” said Harriet, swaying. “Don’t you?” She stumbled toward Elizabeth. “I’m ready.”

“The time is right,” said Nico. “We must marry the red and the white, Mercury and Sulfur.”

Nico and Elizabeth began chanting something in Latin. “Ut supra sub ratione temporis unum spatium itineris conficiendi hic spiritus flectatur dimittam . . .”

And then the floor began to rumble.