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Doctor Fallow waggled his bushy eyebrows, winked twice, pinched his long nose, puffed out his cheeks and spun around on one foot. Rubedo and Citrinitas did the same--and all three of them sprouted up like nothing you’ve seen: swelled, grew, stretched, until they were taller than A-Through-L, and of a perfect size to enter the huge building.

“I…don’t think I’m of a girth to walk comfortably in there,” sighed Ell. “though I’m certainly of a height. I shall wait outside. If anything proves wonderful there, do yell out the window.” He settled down, heavy with radishes, to nap in the courtyard of Doctor Fallow’s office.

As they passed through doors and down hallways, the spriggans swelled up and shrunk down to fit each passage. September and Saturday sometimes had to crawl on their bellies, and sometimes could not even see the top of the doorframes above them, and had to scale the staircases like mountain climbers. The building could only be comfortable to a spriggan. Finally, the spriggans settled into something smaller than they had been when they entered, but taller than they had been at the feast, and opened the door to a great laboratory full of bubbling things.

“The heart of our university,” said Doctor Fallow expansively. “Only broadly speaking a university, of course.”

“We don’t have classes, really,” said Rubedo.

“Or exams,” said Citrinitas.

“And we’re the only students,” they said together.

“But no work is more important than ours.”

“You’re…alchemists, right?” said September shyly. The practice of alchemy is forbidden to all except young ladies born on Tuesdays--and spriggans, who were exempt from everything, if the Green Wind was to be believed.

“Exact as an equation!” crowed Doctor Fallow.

“Then I should tell you, I was born on a Tuesday.”

“How marvelous!” exclaimed Citrinitas. “I am so weary of running all the student committees myself.”

“And what use I could make of an assistant! The volume of papers is monstrous,” said Rubedo ruefully, glaring at his wife.

“Now, now, let’s not be hasty,” said Doctor Fallow, raising his hands for silence. “The young lady can have no more than the most rudimentary understanding of the Noble Science. Perhaps she would rather be a rutabaga farmer. I hear the market is very good this year.”

“It’s…turning lead to gold, right?” said September.

All three spriggans laughed uproariously. Saturday flinched--he did not like people laughing at September.

“Oh, we solved that long ago!” chuckled Rubedo. “I believe that was Greengallows, Henrik Greengallows? Is that right, my love? Ancient history has never been my subject. A famous case study even reported a method for turning straw into gold! The young lady who discovered it wrote a really rather thin paper--but she toured the lecture circuit for years! Her firstborn refined it, so that she could make straw from gold, and solve the terrible problem of housing for destitute brownies.”

“Hedwig Greengallows, my dear,” mused Citrinitas. “Henrik was just her mercurer. Men are so awfully fond of attributing women’s work to their brothers! But September, you have no idea how freed we all felt by Hedwig’s breakthrough. It is tedious to spend centuries on one problem. Now, we have several departments. Rubedo labors at the task of turning gold to bread, so that we may eat our abundance, while I am writing my dissertation on the Elixir Mortis--the Elixir of Death.”

“It seems to me,” said Saturday shyly, “that the country of Autumn is a strange place to conduct experiments. Nothing here changes, yet alchemy is the science of change.”

“What a well-spoken boy!” exclaimed Doctor Fallow. “But truly, the Autumn Provinces provide the most ideal situation for our program. Autumn is the very soul of metamorphosis, a time when the world is poised at the door of winter--which is the door of Death--but has not yet fallen. It is a world of contradictions: a time of harvest and plenty, but also of cold and hardship. Here we dwell in the midst of life, but we know most keenly that all things must pass away