The Alchemist

5

In a large open field full of wild flowers and gently swaying lush grass, a teenage boy and a little girl were running, laughing, hand in hand. Their blond hair was golden in the sunshine. The boy let go of the little girl’s hand and dropped to his knees to pick a flower. Giggling, she ran on ahead, looking back at him with her nose crinkled in mischief and freckled cheeks rosy. The boy held out the flower to her, and suddenly she was standing far away. Beside her was a gateway, leading to a high-walled maze.

‘Ruth!’ he called to her. ‘Come back!’ The little girl cupped her hands around her mouth, shouted ‘Come and find me!’ and disappeared, grinning, through the gate.

The boy ran after her, but something was wrong. The distance between him and the maze kept stretching further and further. He shouted ‘Don’t go, Ruth, don’t leave me behind!’ He ran and ran, but now the ground under his feet wasn’t grass any more but sand, deep soft sand into which he sank and stumbled.

Then a tall man in flowing white robes was blocking his way. The boy’s head only reached as high as the man’s waist, and he felt small and powerless. He got around the man and made it to the entrance of the maze just in time to see Ruth flitting away into the distance. She wasn’t laughing any more, but crying out in fear as she vanished around a corner. Their eyes met a last time. Then she was gone.

Now there were other tall men in white robes, with black beards. They crowded round him and towered over him, blocking his way and his sight, jabbering at him in a language he couldn’t understand, eyes round and white in mahogany faces that loomed close up to him, grinning with gaps in their teeth. And then they grabbed hold of his arms and shoulders with powerful hands and held him back and he was shouting and yelling and struggling but there were more and more of them and he was pinned and couldn’t move…

He gripped the glass tightly in his hand and felt the burn of the whisky against his tongue. In the distance, beyond the heaving dark grey waves that crashed against the rocks of the bay, the arc of the horizon was slowly lightening to red with the dawn.

He turned away from the window as he heard the door open behind him. ‘Morning, Win,’ he said, managing a smile. ‘What are you doing up so early?’

She looked at him with concern, her eye flickering to the glass in his hand and the empty bottle on the table behind him. ‘Thought I heard voices. Everything all right, Ben?’

‘I couldn’t get back to sleep.’

‘Bad dreams again?’ she asked knowingly.

He nodded. Winnie sighed. Picked up the worn old photograph that he’d been looking at earlier and had left lying on the table next to the whisky bottle. ‘Wasn’t she beautiful?’ the old lady whispered, shaking her head and biting her lip.

‘I miss her so badly, Winnie. After all these years.’

‘You think I don’t know that?’ she replied, looking up at him. ‘I miss them all.’ She laid the picture down carefully on the table.

He raised the glass again, and drained it quickly.

Winnie frowned. ‘Ben, this drinking-’

‘Don’t lecture me, Win.’

‘I’ve never said a word to you before,’ she replied firmly. ‘But you’re just getting worse. What’s wrong, Ben? Since you came back from seeing that man you’ve been acting restless, not eating. You’ve hardly slept the last three nights. I’m worried about you. Look at you-you’re pale. And I know you only opened that bottle last night.’

He smiled a little, leaned across and kissed her forehead. ‘I’m sorry if I snapped. I don’t mean to worry you, Win. I know I’m hard to live with.’

‘What did he want from you, anyway?’

‘ Fairfax?’ Ben turned towards the window and looked back out to sea, watching as the rising sun touched the undersides of the clouds with gold. ‘He wanted me…he wanted me to save Ruth,’ he said, and wished that his glass weren’t empty.

He waited until just before nine, then he picked up the phone.

‘You’re reconsidering my offer?’ Fairfax said.

‘You haven’t found anyone else?’

‘No.’

‘In that case, I’ll take the job.’