Silvana and the Elixir of Eternal Life

She swore to defeat death. And the worst thing that could happen to her happened: she succeeded.

Vienna, autumn 1464

The Blind Crow was where the scum of Vienna gathered. No respectable woman would have set foot in there, and that was precisely why I liked it. It was a place where nobody asked questions. Where a thirty-four-year-old woman travelling alone, who read Latin and Greek, who bought manuscripts on alchemy and preferred not to explain herself, was left in peace.

That night I had finally found what I had been chasing for fifteen years. A single page. A Latin translation of the Kitab al-Hayat al-Khalida: the Book of Eternal Life.

“Death is not an end, but a door…”

“That’s been mistranslated.”

I looked up. And there he was: the man who was going to change everything. The man who would grow old at my side while I, obsessed, searched desperately for a way for neither of us ever to grow old. And when I finally succeeded, it would already be too late, and victory would turn to ash – the greatest failure of my life. And so I would lose twice the man who, at that moment, was no more than a stranger: first to his natural death, and then to a horror no human tongue should ever name.

But that night, in the Blind Crow, I knew nothing of that. That night I saw only a stranger with brown hair flecked with grey, pale grey eyes and ink-stained hands.

My name is Silvana Mond. At least, that’s the name I took when I married Matthias, and it’s the only one I still care to keep.

They say obsessions are always born of a wound. Mine has many layers, like the bark of an old tree. And if I want you to understand what I did – and why I did it – I have to start at the beginning.

Let me tell you.

***

Silvana and the Elixir of Eternal Life is the prequel to El Jardín Humano: a dark fantasy novel about grief, obsession and doors that should never have been opened.

For readers of The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue and Circe.