The Elixir of Erasure

The river ran backwards on the day the Queen vanished. I was delighted.

I was sure the elixir would fail, that some courageous, charming hero would intervene to rescue her at the last moment and skewer me with a shining blade. Decades of assiduous study and practice would have been for naught. All of my planning and scheming and careful manipulation of each source of ingredients, from the snotty stable boy to the gruff, clumsily shaved keeper of the inn, to the lugubrious ambassador from Obstinatia and the senile, jabbering High Priest of Huronia: my whole web of contacts and conspirators could have dissolved like a cube of sugar in a cascade of emerald absinthe.

I scaled Mount Valia with a small retinue of laborers and a few, squinting guardsmen to find the rarest flower in the country, the fragile and dazzling Angel Orchid, and pluck it, intact and fragrant, from a crevice on the cusp of an abyss deep and black as forgetfulness. I nurtured a clutch of asps from eggs to lethal maturity and harvested the venom of the most aggressive and dangerous among them, whom I quietly referred to as Montgomery, in the silver glow of a swollen moon. I scraped bark from the eldest trees in every graveyard from Duke’s Folly to the Shadow Marsh while animals scolded and threatened my solitary, frightened form.

I turned grapes cursed by a deranged sorcerer in Üttgard, who had fewer teeth than I have fingers, into a wine so dark and sweet that merely glancing at it in the decanter in my laboratory makes me feel drunk. The head of a wyvern, slain at my command by the finest hunter of the age, who charged me enough gold to buy his seventh wife and a fortress that dwarfs half the villages I have trudged through, now floats preserved (short a single, precious tooth) in the secret compartment of my writing desk. All of these vital elements could have eluded me, or cost me my life, as I scrambled to collect them.

But I am alive, and thanks to the elixir I concocted, The Queen has vanished and the river defies reason and natural law and flows backward, just as the prophet foretold. The Queen! My mother, The Marchioness of Eastwing, is the rightful queen of this fair land! Soon, if the last phase of my ingenious scheme comes to fruition, the throne will be hers!

I must not allow hubris to be my undoing, however. Master Bertrand did not insist that I read all of those insufferable, ancient tragedies for nothing, when all my boyish brain craved was more insight into alchemy and conjuring and the ratio of ox blood to bee pollen that would make a sleeping potion especially potent. Hubris is always the undoing of a tragic hero, and I must remain humble, cautious as a cat inspecting a cobweb.

You see, my mother and The Queen are fraternal twins. The Queen is, though it galls me to admit it, far fairer of face and form than my mother. She is the sort of woman to whom birds and butterflies pay warm attention. Children giggle with delight when she speaks and dogs roll ecstatically at her feet. Her teeth are ivory, her hair is dark and lustrous as raven feathers and her eyes green as jade.

My mother, alas, though she is clearly The Queen’s sister, is not as blessed in aesthetic terms. Her eyes are oddly proximal to one another, her nose is bulbous and prone to running, and one of her legs is ever so slightly shorter than the other, which gives her a halting, awkward gait despite all of the diligent labor of master cobblers, intent upon raising her right heel to match the height of her left with precision. Since childhood, she has been sickly, clumsy, not quite at home in her own skin or the world.

It ought to be emphasized, though, that she is much cleverer than the beautiful Queen, who seldom says anything more important or insightful than “My goodness!” and often forgets what a conversation is about long before it is over. Gorgeous as a lotus on a still pond is she, but thick as the mud beneath the surface is her wit.

Few care at all about this, though. Her Vizier and a coterie of experts and advisors write the laws and make the decisions and manage the country’s affairs with skill and wisdom. The Queen has only to dazzle the eye and cheerfully recite the right platitudes and all are happy and content.

Meanwhile, my mother, who was technically born first, albeit by the span of a single sneeze, seethes with secret resentment. She will never starve, of course, and many with the brains to pay her any attention routinely consult her regarding matters of state. Some are also aware that she is a gifted astrologer, a deft illusionist and quite adept at mixing love philters and making amulets of protection. She knows in her awkward bones that the throne should belong to her, and that her sister’s pretty posterior now adorns it because, since birth, she has been the favorite of everyone with eyes to see her and my mother and grimace at the sight of the latter.

It was at the height of last year’s Red Leaf Festival that I discovered my mother, sitting before the large mirror of the vanity in her boudoir and weeping an ocean. When I approached, she lamented: “Oh, Edgar! I will always be an ugly setting for the bright gem of The Queen’s smile! This land would be much more prosperous and peaceful, its people wiser and kinder and more charitable, if I had been born with half her beauty!”

I was aghast. I had long known that my mother envied and resented her sister, but never before had she made her feelings so explicit.

“Mother,” said I, in a tone as gentle and conciliatory as a slave’s apology, “Surely you can have an ever more profound influence on the nation’s affairs; you need only bend The Queen’s ear now and again, and she will be easily persuaded by your rigorous reasoning and honeyed rhetoric. Is it not better to rule by discrete proxy, and see all of your plans bloom from the shadows, while she carries on, dimly apprehending that she rules at all? When things go well, you can bask in reflected glory. Should anything go awry, won’t the scorn and acrimony be hers to absorb?” I knelt by my mother’s side as I posed this question, the better to confirm that I was playing the modest supplicant. Her temper is terrifying, as is her aim with a hairpin or paper knife when she sees red.

My mother fixed a look on me that was disappointment’s definition.

“Edgar,” she moaned, “Your father was the only man I have ever known who, upon discovering that I was distressed, did not seek to mollify me with flattery or reassuring nonsense, but sought instead to understand why I was distressed and then to work with everything he could muster to address the cause of my woes! When he looked at me, he saw that this ill-fitting garment of flesh is only that, and that the woman within is as intelligent and sensitive and good as any, mortal soul. His love was genuine and ardent because he recognized me, as no other has, or ever will again, I fear. I know that there is nothing to be done. My sister has always been as healthy as she is stupid and fetching. My lot is fixed. Forgive me for failing stoically to live with what I cannot change.” She dried her eyes, winced slightly at her reflection and patted me on the shoulder. I rose, and we left her boudoir to rejoin the festivities.

Our conversation haunted me, though my mother had recovered her composure quickly and has not said a syllable about the matter since. Why had the fickle and capricious gods made my mother the stutter before the eloquence of her sister? Couldn’t something be done to make her private superiority of character and intellect public?

As apothecary to the court, I have access to an enormous store of alchemical resources and a library that would stun any scholar. Each day, once my official duties were complete, I pored over every pertinent volume in search of a remedy for my mother’s soul sickness.

After half a year had passed, in a dusty compendium of formulae for various potions and unguents by a disgraced monk named Brother Umberto, I found what I had long craved: a recipe for something he called, “The Elixir of Erasure.” After enumerating the ingredients (most of which struck me as either fictional or impossible to secure) Brother Umberto wrote that, “This elixir, which ought to be prepared and employed with the utmost caution, will make the party who ingests it impossible to apprehend by any, empirical means. The party in question will remain very much alive, but will wander the world unseen, unheard, untouched, like to a symphony played for an earless audience.” Appended to the formula was another, which would allow its consumer alone to perceive the elixir’s victim. This, too, have I prepared and drunk, and it is as efficacious as the elixir itself!

While I had read and heard many appalling stories about Brother Umberto, who is universally regarded as a lusty lunatic who conjured succubi for sport and threw away his parents’ lavish estate the better to gratify his prodigious and disgusting appetites, later to die penniless and mad in a dungeon, I became convinced that I had the talent and repertoire necessary to brew this elixir and use it to make The Queen invisible and my mother, at last, fully visible. One, significant problem remained: the prophecy.

Scripture tells us that eons ago, Rufus, Holy Prophet of Huronia, decreed that unless a member of the House of Åström, which has ruled this land for longer than any can remember, sits upon the throne, the river Seguin, upon which this province and much of the nation depend for transport, trade and water, would run counter to its nature until such time as the throne is once again occupied by the right rear.

Most have grown skeptical as to the truth of these claims over the years, but as the throne has always welcomed its rightful occupant, no test has been available to confirm them. Since I surreptitiously spiced The Queen’s supper with the elixir a fortnight ago, she has been wandering the castle in search of someone who can see or hear her, and the river, true to Rufus' words, has run backward, much to the dismay of all and sundry.

Now, I have decided to persuade my mother to wait until night has grown dark and deep and then sit upon the throne herself, to see if she is just as pleasing to the gods and their moody river as her sister. Thus am I bound for my mother’s boudoir.

Entering, I have found not my mother, but The Queen. Illegible herself by all eyes save mine, she appears to be reading my mother’s diary, and weeping the while!

The Queen has noticed my ingress, and now speaks: “Oh, Edgar! I am so ashamed! I had no idea that your mother has suffered so terribly while I have had endless, glorious fun! I have always loved her, when I noticed she was there, and I could not have been fonder of your dear father, dead these many years. Remind me of his name later! I was confused and frightened by this strange hex, which has made a ghost of me. Now, I think my fate is still a happy one, compared with your poor mother’s!”

No trace of guile or cunning is apparent in her words or expression. How could there be? She is as crafty as an onion. It is true: darling dolt that she is, she simply did not realize that my mother has suffered so, and now she knows! I can feel my righteous indignation being swept away by the confused cascade of the Seguin.

“My Queen, you are right, of course. Long has she lived in the shade while the sun has smiled upon you. But rest assured, she has had a comfortable and fulfilling life in spite of her hardships, and you have always been benevolent in your dealings with her, with me and indeed, with all of your subjects. Be at ease, my lady: soon, I will find a way to rid you of this strange affliction!” I have advanced to place a comforting hand upon her shoulder, a gesture that she receives like some holy benediction, not having touched or been touched by anyone for a fortnight.

“My goodness!” she replies, to no one’s surprise. “I know you are eager to help me, and thankful for that. I just wish there was something I could do to help my sister, who seems always to be helping me to understand and do things that do not cause her a moment’s question or pause. Please do what you can to make me, uh, myself again—but can you think of a way to help your mother to stop being so sad and frustrated all of the time?”

Once more, I am taken aback by her guileless good nature. Since my mother’s sad soliloquy, I have harbored hate in my heart for my foolish aunt and all of the power and privilege that have fallen into her hands like red leaves in autumn. Now I understand: she is the right occupant of the throne, not because she is clever or calculating or especially noble or courageous. She is our ruler because, when she sees that something is wrong, great or small, she is moved to set it right, and unafraid to seek help to do so.

“I can see one way to do that, my lady,” her otherwise invisible eyes dance at this utterance, reassuring me that her altruism is real, “pray, drink of this flask—I am sure that being able to see her sweet sister and sovereign again will be all the tonic my mother’s spirit requires!” I have handed her the antidote which has allowed my eyes alone to see her and my ears alone to hear her, and she is gulping it down.

“My goodness!” she has not shocked me by exclaiming, as her reflection has coalesced in that same mirror before which my mother wept so pitifully.

Soon, she will sit upon the throne again, and order will be restored. I have made my mother visible to her sovereign’s silly eyes at last, and will have to be content with that. My mother and I will simply have to be sure that those lovely, innocent eyes are properly focused!