The name Elm Street became a constant refrain in Lysander's mind, a destination etched in fire. He had a location for Alistair Finch, but the name was a locked door, and he was still far too small to turn the key. Direct action was impossible. He could not simply toddle down to Elm Street and demand an audience. His campaign had to be one of intelligence gathering, of building a profile of his target from the whispers and fears of the adult world.
He became a silent auditor of his parents' conversations, his play near the hearth a carefully constructed ruse to listen. He learned to still his body and focus his entire being on the low murmur of their voices after he was put to bed, the words floating up from the kitchen below.
"He was at it again last night," Edmund said one evening, his voice grim. "Smoke, a greenish smoke, pouring from his chimney. The whole street stank of rotten eggs and something sweet... something sickly."
Clara made a sound of disgust. "It's unnatural, Edmund. The children are starting to dare each other to run and touch his door. They say he has a demon in a jar."
"Superstitious nonsense," Edmund grunted, but there was no conviction in his voice. "But the man is a menace. Old Mrs. Gable swears her milk curdled the moment his shadow fell across her doorstep."
Lysander stored it all. Green smoke. Rotten eggs (sulfur). Sweet smell (perhaps mercury or arsenic). Community fear. This was not the profile of a respected scholar; this was the reputation of a rogue, a practitioner of the forbidden arts. It fit perfectly with the fragmented memory of the cluttered, sulfurous study.
He began to use his "innocent" questions to probe deeper, targeting his father who, as a man moving in the world of trades, had access to more diverse information.
"Papa," he asked one day, sitting on the floor and stacking his blocks. "Man... green smoke... why?"
Edmund looked up from his accounts, his brow furrowed. "Where did you hear about green smoke, son?"
"I heard... in the street. A boy said." Lying was a necessary new skill, one that left a bitter taste in his mouth but was essential for his survival.
Edmund sighed, setting down his quill. "The man on Elm Street, I suppose. He's... he's experimenting with things men were not meant to meddle with. He tries to change the nature of things. Metal into gold. Common water into the elixir of life. Foolishness."
"Change?" Lysander asked, feigning a child's confusion. "Like... caterpillar to butterfly?"
Edmund barked a short, surprised laugh. "Aye, something like that. But God makes the caterpillars change, not men with their foul-smelling pots and fires. This Finch, he thinks he can be like God. It's a dangerous path."
Change. Elixir of life. The pieces were falling into place. Finch wasn't just an alchemist; he was seeking transcendence. And his experiments, Lysander now knew with a cold certainty, had not just failed. They had catastrophically succeeded in a way Finch had never intended, twisting time itself around an unwilling subject: Lysander.
He needed to see the place for himself. He needed to lay eyes on the source of his torment. He began a new, more dangerous campaign of persuasion. He learned that a tanner his father did business with was located on the periphery of Elm Street. He learned the man's name, Griggs, and began to incorporate it into his requests.
"Papa, see Griggs?" he would ask. "Go with you?"
Edmund was always surprised by these requests. His son showed no interest in the other tradesmen, only Griggs. "The tannery is a foul place, Lysander. The smells are not for a little one's nose."
"Please? I be good. I see the vats." He would put on his most earnest expression, the one he knew Clara could not resist.
After weeks of pestering, Edmund, perhaps feeling a pang of guilt for his long absences or simply worn down by his son's strange, specific persistence, finally agreed. "Very well. But you stay by my side, and if the smell is too much, we leave immediately."
The journey there was an agony of anticipation. Lysander sat in the crook of his father's arm, his eyes scanning the passing streets. As they turned onto Elm Street, his senses were immediately assaulted. The air was thick with the pungent, earthy smell of tanning solutions from Griggs's yard, but underlying it was something else. A chemical tang, acrid and foreign. It was the ghost of the smell from his memory.
He saw the house long before they reached the tannery. It was set slightly back from the others, a narrow, timber-framed building that seemed to hunch in on itself. The windows were grimy, caked with a residue that looked both sooty and crystalline. One of the chimneys was stained a strange, streaky green. The front garden was a tangle of weeds, and unlike the other houses on the street, there was no sign of life, no washing on the line, no well-swept step. It was a house of absence, of secrets.
This was it. The source. The laboratory where his eternity had been forged.
As they drew level with the house, the front door opened.
A man stepped out.
He was younger than Lysander expected, perhaps only in his late twenties, but he carried himself with an old man's weariness. He was tall and gaunt, his shoulders stooped as if under a great weight. His hair was an unkempt shock of black, and his skin was pale, almost translucent. But it was his eyes that arrested Lysander. Even from a distance, they burned with a restless, hungry intelligence. He clutched a small, cloth-wrapped bundle to his chest and looked up and down the street with a furtive, paranoid swiftness before scurrying away in the opposite direction.
Alistair Finch.
A cold fury, pure and sharp, rose in Lysander's throat. This was the man. This gaunt, nervous specter was the cause of all his pain, the architect of the loop that trapped him, the thief of his life with Elara. He wanted to scream. He wanted to leap from his father's arms and pummel the man with his tiny fists. The intensity of the hatred was so visceral it shocked him.
"Papa," he whispered, his voice tight. "That man."
Edmund followed his gaze and his face darkened. He quickened his pace. "Aye. That's him. Finch. Pay him no mind, son. Don't even look at his house. It's an ill-omened place."
They passed the house and continued to the tannery, but Lysander saw and heard none of it. His entire being was focused on the image of the retreating alchemist, burned into his mind. The shadow had taken form. The abstract concept of "Finch" was now a man of flesh and blood, a man who walked the same streets, breathed the same air.
The meeting lasted only seconds, but it changed everything. The hunt was no longer an intellectual puzzle. It was personal. He had seen his enemy. And the sight filled him not with fear, but with a cold, determined resolve. He would grow. He would become strong. And he would return to that hunched house on Elm Street not as a child in his father's arms, but as a man demanding answers. The shadow had been seen, and now, it had a name and a face. The war had truly begun.