The Alchemist's Question

My answer arrived before I could censor it, and it told me exactly which life I was not living.

Long before I had a word for it, I made a journey I did not know how to name.

I was in a cave, carrying a torch. The paths kept dividing and I kept choosing, walking a labyrinth in half-light with the certainty that someone was waiting at the end of it.

Then, sound. Muttering. Glass against stone. A thin shaft of light spilling from an opening ahead.

I crossed the threshold into a room cut out of rock.

It was an alchemist’s lab. A long worktable crowded with tubes and beakers. Small fires burning under stone bowls. Candles guttering in the wall niches. Against the far side, a heavy round table and two chairs made from tree branches.

And then I saw him.

A long red robe, embroidered, tied at the waist with rope, a tassel swinging near his feet. A soft pointed hat cut from the same cloth. His white beard fell to his waist. His white hair fell to his shoulders. His hands were wrinkled and strong, and they moved fast, running one beaker to the next, mixing, firing, measuring. He was muttering, furious with something I could not see.

He looked at me once. Then he turned away.

“Hello,” I said. “I came to talk to you. Please turn around.”

More muttering. Nothing else.

So I sat down at the round table and waited.

“Why are you here? What do you want?” He did not glance up.

“I want to understand the meaning of my existence.”

Not a small question. But it was the true one. It was the one I held as I traveled through the darkness.

“Get out of here.” He wheeled around and glared at me.

I stayed where I was. I told him I had come a long way to ask it.

He fussed a while longer. Then he stopped. He looked at me and crossed the room, leaning on a cane carved from a heavy tree limb.

Closer to the table, he was taller than I expected, and thinner. I was afraid of him. I held his gaze anyway.

He bent toward me and spoke almost in a whisper.