Alchemy and Artifacts by Lorina Stephens

Author:Lorina Stephens
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Historical Fiction, Fantasy, Canadian fiction, speculative fiction, anthology, alternative world, Fantasy books, short stories, science fiction and fantasy books, mythology, action-oriented, dystopia, power, survival, fantasy books to read, literary, literature, story books, reading, e-Book, book, books, Kindle, Kobo, Nook, iBook, google play
Publisher: EDGE-Lite
Published: 2019-02-20T00:00:00+00:00

Phlogiston’s Rainbow

Erik Jon Spigel

1882: la fonction essentielle de l’universe, qui est une machine à faire des dieux

When heaven disbanded in 1882 there were tears, hugs, well-wishes and the like, before all the angels went their separate ways, ages, genders, and desires. Uriel, whose very name meant The Light of the Divine, but who the Book of Enoch had associated with upheaval and destruction — change! It was change! — decided that he could best serve as shepherd and guardian to the new age of science.

He opened a delicatessen emporium in San Francisco, Lightman’s, in the Western Addition at the odd diagonal corner where Montgomery Avenue meets Broadway.

To all appearances he was a tall, gaunt, hunchbacked Jewish man with a neatly trimmed beard and mustache, and long, graying hair braided at the back. He was given to wearing, night or day, silver wire-framed glasses with amethyst lenses.

John Dee, Elizabeth I’s astrologer, had called him, what? The Master of Wind or some such. Kinder and perhaps more poetic than Enoch, an invisible mover of things after all, but still, Uriel felt, missing the point, somehow. Yet he was oddly grateful for it, and gave the astrologer a small gift of crystal, the same as his own eyeglass lenses were now made. In the right light, one could see a little of the now, the then, and a little of the will be all at once. It allowed angels, who knew no time, to order eternity as past, present, and future.

1888: Mr. Chao not playing the lute

Every day at 2:30 — except on the Sabbath — as was his habit, Uriel turned over the running of his shop to a young man from Chinatown, a Mr. Everett Quong, and, making a package of some smoked meats and pickles, as well as some sundries such as tobacco and talcum, walked the short walk down Pacific past the cigar factories and up the short flight of stairs above a hardware store to the practice of Mr. Chao, his acupuncturist.

Mr. Chao had been surprisingly phlegmatic when he first saw Uriel’s wings.

“Binding them up like that,” was all he had said, referring to Mr. Lightman’s hunchback, “it must be very uncomfortable.”

Mr. Chao thereby began a long study into the chi of angel wings. It was the only procedure that brought Uriel any relief.

This day, as always, he presented Mr. Chao with the parcels of smoked meats, pickles, and sundries.

“If you gave me money, I would only end up buying these things from you anyway,” Mr. Chao had once said. Now, closing the blinds, dousing the lanterns, Mr. Chao motioned Uriel to unfasten his wings and lay down on the table. Uriel removed his glasses last and his halo flared into luminescence, bathing the room in light. He lay down on his stomach and relaxed. Mr. Chao applied a needle to the base of Uriel’s left wing, the one that was always bound beneath the right when he went out.

Through the window there were scraps of a melody played on erhu mingled with the tintinnabulation of a child practicing piano.

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