The Leaf: A Novel of Alchemy

By Frank McGillion

The Leaf is a story based on the traditional Faustian theme. It describes how the intuitive Elizabeth and the rational John interact when brought together in a seemingly promising union thats destined to end tragically. Neither appreciates that the dark hand of fate is at work in their lives, having been set in motion by Elizabeths father: a spiritually broken cleric and secret practitioner of an arcane art.

This is a work of literary fiction that attempts to be innovative in style, not only by portraying its characters conflicts in traditional form, but also in terms of events external to them and by describing these in carefully crafted language.

A respected Literary Reader has described The Leaf as A stunning piece of literature

In short, it is a highly structured work that seeks to directly engage the reader through its unorthodox use of language and its compelling and thematic storyline.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Aug 23, 2001
• ISBN: 9781462826704

Frank McGillion

Frank McGillion is the author of over a dozen books. They include On the Edge of a Lifetime, The Opening Eye, Blinded by starlight, The Leaf: a Novel of Alchemy and, his most recent novel, A Walk in the Park. A graduate of the University of Glasgow he carried out postgraduate work at Oxford University and City University, London. He has also worked internationally in the corporate sector and as Tutor in English Literature in higher education. A recent guest of the CBS broadcast, People of Distinction he has wide media experience.

Book preview

CHAPTER I

The aspect of themselves

which human beings sacrifice

in the attainment of a given object . . .

comes back after many years

-knife in hand-

demanding to satisfy that

which sacrificed it.

Carl Gustav Jung

It was night. The rain fell through the city with a soft watery whisper. The streets were quiet and abandoned and the lamps that lined them glowed brightly in the silence. Along the ground, across a thin layer of wetness, the lamplight spread itself. And it glistened as it ran, spraying itself out into coloured threads and stretching and bursting like a spray of raindrops.

And above the wetness, above the spreading light, the lamps themselves waved and shimmered like fickle moons hanging in an uncertain sky. But the moon was hidden, lost in the shadows that hung darkly above. And the shadows crept through the rain and the light and the city, as if they too were falling to spread on the ground to merge with the wetness and its afterglow.

Occasionally a gust of wind would rush along the street, waving the branches of the few shadowy trees and making their leaves rustle as if they were shaking and chattering in the cold. And when the wind blew, the air would stream like ghostly fingers around an unlatched gate, and the gate would move and sway and squeak and swing on its rusty hinges, the sounds moving out and penetrating metallically the natural silent flow of the night.

The rain fell onto the windows of the houses and it clung to them tightly and trickled down the glass. Droplets forming drops and drops tiny puddles that rushed in a blaze of sparkling light into extinction.

And behind the windows, curtains would wave gently at times or give a sudden shudder as a breath of wind stole in from the night. But most of the time there was little movement, with only the whisper of the rain to break the stillness. And so the night crept along slowly, fading towards the morning like the shadow of a candle flame on a wall.

And the rain fell less and less until it finally stopped. And the sky wandered among darknesses of different shades until at last it settled and began to lighten. No wind blew and it was silent and very still. Hints of light began to lay themselves across the fallen rain and imperceptibly it grew warmer.

As the sun grew stronger, the streets caught less of the lamplight and more of the sky. And as the lamplight dimmed, everything else became brighter and more defined and it all began to grow with colour, and the forms of the day unfolded themselves and entered the world of the tangible and real.

And the sky hung quietly above the city, spreading itself with light and growing brighter and brighter as the day crept close. And when what was left of the darkness finally slipped away, the light grew stronger and stronger until at last the darkness was gone and another early morning had come.

Now the moisture began to stir. It pulled apart and rose slowly in ghostly spirals from the ground. And these spirals met and joined and formed thin grey mists, which drifted forlornly through the streets swirling round corners in loose shapeless bundles and spreading like wraiths across the ground. The mists hung in gaseous balls, waving gently and changing shape as the currents of morning air caught their movement. And beyond them, other streets waited for the warmth and light, so the coldness would pass there too and the mists would form and wander awhile then blow silently away.

On the eastern edge of the city where the sky was already flushed a full red with a hint of the sun, there stood a long line of grey, stone houses. They were very old and their dark walls blended unobtrusively with the half-light that filtered around them like phantoms. And across these walls the mists drifted, brushing closely against them and against the windows, which were scattered still with sparkles of raindrops.

And through the wisps of mist the raindrops began to glint again as it brightened. At first they shone with reserve, glinting now and then as they caught a brief glimpse of light. But as the light grew, they sparkled with many colours that glistened through the grey and pierced its dense darkness. And as the light withered through them, the mists became thinner and thinner until at last they were completely gone and the raindrops finally lost their shadows and glowed without any reserve like sparkling, watery diamonds.

And behind one of the windows - behind the glowing drops scattered across its surface - there was a small dark room. And a streak of light ran from the window across the floor to the wall opposite, from where it stretched and spread itself upwards reaching out to climb to the top. And around this light, there were regions of half-light: semi-fluid borders that sought to join this small block of day with the shadows of the room. And the shadows were bundles of shades of missing colour, negations of the day that hid behind heavy curtains, which showed their outsides to the raindrops and their insides to the musty dimness of the room.

And the shadows were of things. Things waiting for their colours to be brought to them by the light. And on the floor, there was a shadow that was a bundle of child’s clothes and there was a shadow that was an old chair with four wooden legs and there was a shadow that was a bed.

And on the bed, a child was lying watching the light forming behind the window and slipping in from beneath the curtains to run across the dark floor that surrounded her. She was a child of seven, and she had fair hair and blue eyes and a pale white skin that was whorled with red and with the dark, weary patches of tiredness.

She had spent most of the night crying and her pillow was hard where her tears had dried. Her face was painful, yet she barely noticed it as she looked towards the window. And the pupils of her eyes stretched wide and dark to catch whatever light there was to be had.

Her hands lay in front of her and her fingers were curled over as if they were holding something precious-something light and intangible that would run through them and escape like flowing water if they were allowed to open. And her mind was filled with sadness - a profound, biting grief - that had spread painfully through her using the night as an instrument with which to establish its hold.

For after a sudden and unexpected death, her father had been buried the previous day. And throughout the night, for the very first time, she had personally experienced the loss. It had come to her quite suddenly as she’d gone to her room to go to bed; so she’d left the voices behind the door, left the sad looking faces and the adult tears, and she’d gone off to find some sleep and some rest until the morning.

And when she’d prepared herself for bed, she went as usual to look from the window. It was raining, and she saw the raindrops spill themselves onto the panes of glass and her eyes followed them as they trickled irregularly down, leaving a silvery blue trail that moved jerkily across the window.

And far outside she could hear the rain and the wind and she could hear the raindrops tapping at the glass as if urging her to give them shelter. And in her warmth, she could sense the coldness of the night and sense its loneliness and its vastness as these stole through to her and chilled her to her centre. And she looked out and far away into the hidden, dark distance.

And while she listened and watched and felt, she became aware of a growing hollowness when she thought of her father. And she realised very slowly, he was gone for eternity-for as long as things lasted. And she understood the almost mystical fact that she would never see him again. And he would never again hear the wind or sense the coming of night or see the rain that fell outside behind the glass as if she were in a shelter that protected her from another world.

She stared at the lamps burning yellowly in the street below and remembered how her father used to caress her hair when he spoke to her gently. The tears formed slowly and ran warmly across her face burning her skin, which shone yellow too in the glow of the lamplight.

Throughout the night she’d wept and missed and wondered. And she’d wondered what it was she was feeling and what it meant. And when she wept, somewhere deep inside - somewhere normally unknown to her - she wondered whether she wept only for her father’s mortality or for her own too.

And her thoughts became fuzzy and unreal, confused and ill defined. Yet even so, even behind the few moments of dreams she’d captured, the grief and confusion remained making her wonder about it all and begging her for an answer. But she could give neither answer nor solution nor compromise, so the tears continued in open grief and in the unrecognised frustration of her simply being alive.

And now it was morning and she could hear a crow cawing at her window and her face was streaked with red and she had barely slept and she was tired. But even yet, she’d catch her breath as a half formed thought crept through her transiently hiding the light behind the window and making her cold and weary and sad.

And as one such thought passed, she heard the crow fly off and then the creaking of her mother’s bed and the sounds of slow footsteps as her mother walked quietly towards her room. And she heard her pause for a moment at the door and then the soft metallic sound as the handle turned and the door creaked open and her mother entered.

A pale tired face looked at her across the streak of light that shone through the mist of dust that danced in a sudden excitement. And her mother walked over and held her close to comfort her. And she could smell a scent from her mother’s skin that reminded her of incense. And she could feel the warmth of her mother’s freshly wakened body and she pulled herself closer to it.

Again tears began to form and trickle down her cheeks, burning once more. And they dripped from her chin and splashed and ran onto her mother’s hand as if the salt in them could heal the small, deep cuts that had been freshly made there.

And when she spoke, her mother’s voice was soft. ‘Elizabeth. How are you? Did you sleep?’ She rocked her daughter gently back and forth as Elizabeth tried to answer, but she couldn’t. She simply clung tighter to her mother and began to sob. ‘It’s fine love, fine. Cry as much as you can. Cry until there’s nothing left to cry away. It always helps-always.’

Her mother’s voice was strained and Elizabeth sensed that she too was close to tears and had something left to cry away. So, as her mother continued to speak to her, she hugged her even closer.

‘You mustn’t think part of you has gone because your father’s no longer with us. It hasn’t. You’ve been made complete by his death and nothing can ever alter that. Try to see yourself like the moon slowly filling with sunlight: dark and almost invisible just now, but at a point where you’re going to grow into something beautiful again. For in a sense you are that moon, Elizabeth, and you’ll grow back to fullness in time, and all that sunlight in you will never be eclipsed again by anyone or anything, however powerful.’

Elizabeth barely heard her, but after a time she lay back on her pillow and looked at her mother’s face. She was like a wise, dark angel who knew things few of us ever dream of. As if she were a messenger from some ancient, pagan god.

Elizabeth closed her eyes and everything became dark. Sounds and smells, indistinct and distant, were all she perceived, and she wondered if darkness itself went away when everything was gone.

She fell deeper into it and, somewhere far away, a voice spoke to her softly and with love. It said she was going to an island where she would live and grow and be happy and be forever protected by the surrounding sea. And as the day grew slowly round them leaking colour into the shadows, the child called Elizabeth slept.

Not far from where Elizabeth lay sleeping, there was an old country house that stood dimly beneath the colours that spread themselves into the sky. Lights still glowed behind some of its windows, intensifying the darkness of the rest of the building. A door opened onto the garden and, with the light, a young man stepped out into the early morning. He shuddered and shook his head to pull himself more fully awake, then he took a fresh, deep, breath and began to walk slowly across the lawn.

He came to a small tree that pointed its branches downwards towards the earth as if hinting at some buried secret, and he stopped and looked up at the sky, which was slowly growing in colour around him. He felt very good as he recalled the night just gone.

He’d spent what had been a magical night, in conversation with some new and completely unexpected friends. And they’d smoked rare cigars and fine cigarettes and enjoyed an intriguingly flavoured drink. And they’d talked about life and death and the laws of nature and about everything he wanted to dedicate his life to discovering. And their ideas had bubbled over him like some refreshing vital fountain and they’d trickled through him like iced froth making him tremble with an almost uncontrollable excitement.

And as he’d listened to their view of things, he’d felt a faint satisfying nausea as if he’d been starved of some unknown form of sustenance and was now exposed to an abundance of it. These people shared his desire to understand the mysteries of life and they seemed to know many aspects of those mysteries already.

He’d listened quietly as words and phrases and strange ideas flowed from them. And his mind trembled on the edge of it all, assimilating what it could with wonder and hesitation, creeping round them; watching and listening and comparing them with itself.

And after he’d been served the strange green drink, he finally spoke and made his contribution. And gently and with no resistance, he flowed in and was ensnared by them on their seemingly new, collective and continuous search of the arcane and the mysterious.

And somewhere in his thoughts, all-knowing messengers akin to Mephistopheles beckoned him silently, so he was just aware of their presence but unaware, precisely, of what they had to offer him.

And the hours had drifted by with their serious, insistent voices loud and confident and certain beneath the night sky. And the great questions were questioned again and the answers as ever, were elusive. But simply to question seemed so important that John felt like one of the first men on earth on the very first day. He felt like a giant in a primitive world that was blessed by the sun for the first time ever. And it was as if he’d taken that sun into himself at dawn, then let it go free for others less powerful than he was.

Finally sleep came to his eyes and kicked its heels awhile then left. For he couldn’t be tired now, he could talk of these things forever. And the rain fell around them and the sky hung quietly above and the wind blew.

And then the rain stopped and the wind passed on and still they spoke. And still he didn’t notice the subtle darkness behind the movement of things, so great was his passion and intensity.

He sipped carefully at his drink again, and then the pages of a book were fluttered open and scanned by one of his companions who triumphantly quoted from it as if it were nothing of import:

‘"When the two essences are mixed together in harmonious proportions, spontaneous ignition of their elements occurs. This can be captured in a crucible sealed by