The Scarlet Alchemist by Kylie Lee Baker EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Status: Available for Free Download
- Author:Kylie Lee Baker
- Language: English
- Genre:Teen & Young Adult Diversity & Multicultural Fiction
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Size: 2 MB
- Price: Free
Year 775
Guangzhou, China
At high noon on the first day of the summer solstice, old man Gou barged
into the shop carrying a rancid hemp bag over his shoulder. Even if I
ignored the suspiciously human-shaped bulge inside, or the brown ooze
sloughing onto my floor, or the purple fingertips dangling out the untied
end, I would know that scent anywhere.
I closed my book and set down my tea that now tasted sour, the smell of
hot corpse knifing up my nose and making saliva pool at the base of my
throat, like I was going to be sick. I liked to think I was good at breathing
through my mouth and swallowing back the nausea like a professional, but I
typically only came across corpses when I was expecting to.
“You can’t bring that in here,” I said, taking a quick sip of tea to force
down anything besides words that wanted to come up.
Old man Gou kept walking forward like he hadn’t heard me, hitching the
bag higher on his shoulder. “I need you to—”
“I know what you need,” I said. “That’s not how this works. You make an
appointment and you go around back after dark.”
He bristled at being interrupted, but I didn’t care. People with leverage
didn’t come to me asking for help. His gaze twitched around the shelves
packed with ceramic horses and tiny servants on their knees, thousands of
glazed clay eyes witnessing his sins.
My family owned a míngqì store at the far west end of Guangzhou.
Uncle Fan and Auntie So molded clay into ghost vessels to bury with the
dead, and my cousins and I sold them to grieving families. No one could
take real people with them to the afterlife, but they could take our painted
ceramic steeds and beautiful glazed clay women and faithful servants the
size of your palm. They crammed as many as they could into their tombs,
hoping that cold clay would turn to warm flesh once their souls crossed
over, that they wouldn’t be alone in death.
When I was younger, I asked Uncle Fan if any of that was true. He
scoffed and said It doesn’t matter if it’s true, the dead can’t ask for refunds,
and slammed the kiln door shut. But the dead could do a lot more than he
thought.
That was only our business during the daylight hours. Uncle Fan and
Auntie So were blissfully unaware of where the other half of our money
came from.
“Take me to the back, then,” old man Gou said, as if it were that simple.
I shook my head, praying that no one had seen him dragging a rotting
corpse to our shop in broad daylight. Getting hanged for forbidden life
alchemy would certainly interfere with my upcoming travel plans. “I’m
watching the shop now. That’s why you need an appointment.”
He narrowed his eyes, his irises glinting gold—a side effect of eating too
many gold nuggets. These days, the diet of the rich was no longer steamed
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