Before It Grows Cold
On the third midnight, too, the clock was not wrong.
Vespara closed her left hand and opened it again, traced the current of the formula still lingering at her breast, and set down the last line in her journal. Three days of records had grown far thicker than she had first expected. Checking results she had already written, under altered conditions, had stacked line after line beneath the same headings.
Minor wounds finished their Restoration within ten minutes. Damage severe enough to cost her part of the body, or to cripple a function, obeyed a different wait. Whether the injury came by day or by night, Restoration always began at midnight.
It was the same hour at which the Immortality Formula had been completed.
"It was never a full day after the wound. The formula has been keeping time of its own."
She struck out one conjecture she had written on the first day. There was no longer any need to record how long she had waited from the moment of the damage. Now that she knew the cycle on which the formula moved, she could foresee when the next change would come.
She lifted the mirror from the table and held it to her face. Only after her fingertips had searched the skin about her eyes, and she had tipped her chin to look as far as her throat, did she set it down. It was a thing she had repeated into the third day, and she could not omit it today either.
"I am not returning to the old body. A small mercy, I suppose."
The phrase original state had caught in her mind. If the formula still remembered her aged flesh and chose some later moment to turn her back, that would be inconvenient. She had no wish, the instant she grew used to a young face, to go back to inspecting wrinkles first of all. Fortunately, the baseline of Restoration seemed fixed upon the youthful body newly made.
The trouble was that a spell she had used afterward had wedged itself into that same working.
The Pain Regulation Formula remained fused with the Immortality Formula. Cutting off the supply of mana did not dispel it, and at midnight the two structures restored themselves together. The change in sensation could not be explained away as a temporary residue. Vespara left a mark beside that entry. It was a problem she had not solved, but that was no reason to let it bury the rest of the record.
Beneath it lay an item for which she had not yet written a single result.
For a while she only looked at the sentence. Everything she had observed so far was restoration while she still lived. If all she had made was an extremely powerful spell of bodily repair, she could not swear the same thing would happen once life was cut.
She had designed the formula to treat body and mind apart, and she herself had calculated the link between them. Confidence that the calculation was right, however, did not entitle her to fill the journal with a result she had never observed.
"If I am wrong about the rest, the record can be corrected. If I am wrong about this, there will be no one left to correct it."
She tapped the desk lightly with the end of her pen, then left the entry blank. Three days ago, closing a journal on an empty line would have rankled. It did not please her now, either. But she would have to begin again by thinking of a way to test it, and it was not a matter that had to be finished today.
Vespara closed the journal. She reached for the reference volume lying beside it, and stopped. She knew how far that book would carry her if she opened it. One annotation would lead into another volume; checking it would start a calculation. When hunger came she would eat bread, and when drowsiness came she would shut her eyes for a little while and then sit down in the same chair again.
She had lived that way until now.
"Three days will do. Shall I go outside, for once?"
She pushed the chair back, rose, and went to the bookcase. When she drew out the travelogue wedged among the research volumes, a folded page fell open of its own accord. The old paper smelled of the shelves.
A city beyond the sea, hot springs set between the mountain ranges, a festival street said to sell food all the day long — they met her eye in turn. In the margins her own hand remained. Seeing the word later, written small, she laughed.
"You have waited a long while."
She left the book open and went to wash. She turned the tap and adjusted the heat, and a moment later warm water poured down. Beneath it Vespara loosened her shoulders and rinsed the dust from her hair. The sigils and figures that had kept moving in her mind were pushed back, little by little, by the sound of the water.
It had been a long time, too, since she had washed without calculating. She closed her eyes and felt the temperature of the water, and thought that today she would not eat at the desk either. There would be no half-finished bread set down atop the experiment notes, and no crumbs to brush away.
When her hair was dry she opened the wardrobe. Her hand went first to a comfortable set of indoor clothes, then pushed them aside. From the back she took a white shirt and dark gray trousers she had kept stored, and drew a black coat on over them. Settling the sleeves and the waist took longer than usual.
Clothes cut to an old body hung loose on her now. She drew the belt tight, stood before the mirror, and straightened her collar. A line she might have written in the margin of the journal occurred to her, and she shook her head.
"I shall have to buy clothes as well. And my hair... This will do."
She combed her long hair back over her shoulders. A few white strands that had slipped down beside her face she left as they were. In the mirror stood a young woman dressed to go out. She smiled briefly at that face, then turned her gaze to the chair and the desk at one side of the room.
Until now she had always left meaning to come back. Even when she went for materials, even when she went in search of a book she needed, the work left in the laboratory came first. Today she had set no hour by which she must return. Nor had she decided everything she would do once she was outside.
She took a pouch of coins and a small notebook, and put the research records away separately. Today she meant to visit the Kingdom Central District. While she was there, she could look into what a longer journey would require. She checked the feed and water for the animals left in their cages, and at last locked the laboratory door.
She paused a moment outside, and not because she had forgotten anything. Light coming through the leaves was brighter than she had expected. Vespara narrowed her eyes and drew a breath. In place of paper and reagents, the air smelled of damp earth and grass.
"First, a meal."
Once that was settled, her steps grew light.
The deeper she went into the heart of the kingdom, the more the streets filled with people. Vespara came in by carriage, stepped down on the main road, and walked in search of the street she remembered. She had thought the way familiar, yet every corner she turned brought a different shop. The names on the signs had changed, and some buildings had been raised anew from the ground.
She stopped where a bookshop had once stood. Hats were displayed where the books had been. Vespara looked in through the glass, then walked on. In the laboratory, even the order of the shelves had scarcely changed. Outside, a great deal seemed to have happened in the meantime.
If she stopped by the academy, would anyone she knew still be there? The faces that rose to mind were all from long ago. There had been people whose hair was already white the last time they spoke. If they lived, they would be old, as she herself had been, and there would be no few who did not live at all.
She could not recall which of them she had last shared a meal with. She remembered what they had argued over in their scholarship. She remembered which formula the other had gotten wrong, and which book she had cited. Of what that person had liked when they were not speaking of research, and of how they had lived, she knew nothing.
Vespara twisted her mouth a little. She had known she had been a long time in the laboratory. Coming outside, she felt that time in a different way.
Fortunately, the restaurant she was looking for was still there.
A little in from the main road, a familiar sign hung. Beside the door stood a board listing the dishes offered that day, and from within came the clatter of plates and the sound of voices. Vespara read the name of the shop once more and pushed the door open.
"Welcome. How many?"
A woman in an apron came over. Vespara nearly turned to look behind herself, then held up a single finger.
"One. I may take a meal, I trust?"
"Of course. Would you like a seat by the window?"
Shown to her place, Vespara took off her coat and laid it over the chair. The table was a little narrow for setting down a research journal. The thought amused her, and when the corner of her mouth lifted, the woman laying down the menu smiled with her.
"Is this your first time?"
"My first time coming in to eat. I was told, a long while ago, that the meat of this house was excellent."
"You've come to the right place. We still have dishes from my grandfather's day."
Vespara looked up from the menu. When she offered the name of the owner a colleague in her memory had given, recommending the place, the woman's face brightened.
"That's right. That was my grandfather's name. Did you hear it from your parents?"
"No. An acquaintance told me. He is no longer in the kitchen, then?"
"He passed away a long time ago. My father does the cooking now."
"...I see."
Vespara touched the edge of the menu, then nodded. She had never once met the man. Even so, it felt a little strange that in the space of a single meal she had put off, someone had grown old, raised a child, and handed a shop down.
"Give me what you have served since those days. And recommend something that goes well with it."
"There's herb-braised beef. It's good with bread. And to drink?"
"Would wine suit it?"
"A lot of people have just the one glass. If you don't drink, we have fruit drinks as well."
Vespara thought a moment, then chose the fruit drink. She wanted to know the taste of the food first. When the woman confirmed the order and turned away, she watched that back for a brief instant, then moved her gaze to the window. The woman's way of answering had been so agreeable that she would have liked to talk longer, but other guests were waiting.
While she waited she took out the notebook. She wrote the date, then copied down the name of the shop. Not knowing what belonged on the next line, she paused with the pen. There was no aim to the experiment, and no conditions. She looked at the blank, wrote Lunch, and closed the notebook.
When the food came, that small dilemma was forgotten. Warm steam rose from the meat on the plate, and beside it lay vegetables soaked in sauce. Once the bread basket and the drink had taken their places, the table that had looked cramped seemed exactly right.
Vespara cut a little of the meat and put it in her mouth. She chewed slowly, then looked down at the plate. The long-cooked meat came apart easily, and the more she chewed, the salt of the sauce and the scent of the herbs rose together. The vegetables she ate next were sweet.
"This is good."
The words came out of their own accord. She did not think to see whether anyone had heard. She dipped bread in the sauce and found that good as well. This time she soaked it a little more generously, got sauce on her fingertips, found a napkin, wiped them, and laughed.
With no book to read while she ate, her eyes kept returning to the plate. She could go days without remembering what she had eaten in the laboratory; today she thought she would be able to order the same thing the next time she came. Vespara opened the notebook again and wrote the name of the dish beneath the name of the shop.
Order the bread with it.
Having left the note, she took up her fork again. A meal eaten while watching the people pass outside the window took longer than she had expected. Even so, she did not feel she was wasting time. What she had to do now was to eat well, before the plate grew cold.
"Excuse me. Are you here alone?"
Before that work was finished, someone came over.
Vespara looked up. A young man stood beside the table. His collar was neat, but his face was flushed, and the glass in his hand smelled of liquor. At a table behind him, two men who seemed to be of his party were looking this way and laughing.
"I am. What is your business?"
"It seemed a shame for someone so beautiful to dine alone. If you don't mind, would you join us?"
Vespara looked at the man's face, and then at her plate. Half the meat was still there. She found nothing lacking in eating alone, and if she changed seats now she would have to carry the bread basket with her.
"I thank you for the offer, but I shall eat here."
"Then I can come over to you."
He did not wait for an answer. His hand settled on the chair opposite. Fork still in hand, Vespara looked at that hand. Farther inside the restaurant, the woman who had been taking orders glanced their way, and Vespara saw her expression harden.
"Which house are you from, miss? You speak so properly. I am..."
The introduction was long. Vespara drank a mouthful while she listened to a family name she was hearing for the first time. Before she had set the glass down, he added where he lived and what his father did. The two men behind him had taken up their glasses and were rising from their seats.
Only then did she remember the people who, long ago, had held flowers out at the laboratory door. The clothes had changed, and the faces. The words they spoke before they came to the point had not changed much.
"So after your meal, have a drink with us. You won't regret it."
"Do you know, young man, what I like?"
"If you'll tell me, I can learn, can't I?"
Vespara set her fork down on the plate. The man seemed to take it for a favorable sign; he drew the chair out and smiled. She lifted the corner of her mouth as well. With the toe of her shoe, however, she lightly barred the chair's way free.
"Very well. Then I shall tell you, beginning with the first."
His gaze came back from the chair to her. With a fingertip, Vespara indicated the plate that still held a little steam.