Joseph polished the constable's brass button with oak shavings, phosphorescent powder shimmering with ghostly cerulean in the dawn mist—the same unearthly hue that had clung to moldering grape skins in Madeleine's petri dishes the night she vanished.
The color of lightning-scarred vines that survived the 1902 purge.
Emilie wedged her astrolabe into hexagonal stone fissures. Prismatic light danced across the sulfur spring's surface, coalescing into a caduceus shadow.
Louis crouched by the bubbling acid pool, his vine-scarred arm now reaching past the wrist.
When he slit the mineralized flesh with a carving knife, what oozed wasn't blood but viscous grape must.
"Calcification of wounds." Emilie dripped the fluid onto Roman coins, watching verdigris slough away. "The ancients used sulfur springs to treat grape canker, but this…"
The pool erupted. Louis' clay figurine surfaced, its hollow eyes now crammed with fresh vine leaves—each serrated edge bearing the exact char patterns from Joseph's 1902 specimens.
Behind the smithy, the constable examined fluorescent particles through a magnifier.
As he dabbed beer onto the powder, it combusted violently, branding grape-leaf scars into his leather apron. The drunken smith stumbled over, fire tongs dripping molten lead.
"Melted that stuff on north slope years back,"
the smith slurred, poking the scorch marks.
"Some Parisian came with crates of glowing ore… soil amendment, he said…"
The constable seized a pig iron ingot. Its surface rippled with raised reliefs—microscopic grapevines mirroring the stone tendrils in Joseph's mill walls.
Midday heat stewed over vineyards heavy with overripe fruit.
Emilie ladled spring water onto blighted leaves, watching silver crystals bloom at liquid-contact points. Louis held a prismatic shard to sunlight—Madeleine's profile flickered within the refraction.
"Silicate deposition,"
Emilie flipped through her grandfather's journals.
"Normally takes fifty years to form—"
The clay figurine convulsed. Leaves stuffed in its eye sockets desiccated to ash. As the final leaf crumbled, Joseph's signature whistle melody poured from its hollow chest—each note reversed like salmon swimming upstream.
At twilight, Joseph carved fluorescent vines from the cellar walls. Where his grafting knife sliced, 1920 "Tears of Pan" wine seeped from stone.
The carpenter dipped his finger in vintage liquor, inscribing letters that wriggled like aphids into mortar cracks.
"Witchcraft!"
The constable blocked the exit, oil lamp illuminating his scorched apron.
"Same wine bled from hanged strikers' wounds in 1902, wasn't it?"
Joseph spun his pocketwatch. Madeleine's specter glided through wine-scripted text.
As the constable lunged, the carpenter hurled alcohol at the lamp. Flame froze midair as grape-cluster fireballs—each encapsulating history: soldiers hiding in 1914 casks, Madeleine scattering silver dust in '20, the feral boar pack's amber-eyed charge of '27…
Moonlight bathed Roman aqueduct ruins where Emilie discovered the first silver grape cluster. Translucent fruits glowed along the acid spring, their flesh threaded with silicon filaments mimicking neural networks.
Louis sliced one open—the juice etched spiral glyphs into Emilie's astrolabe, matching warnings inside Joseph's watch.
"Not grapes." Emilie trembled.
"Silicon-based spore sacs… terraforming through acid…"
The clay figurine shattered in the subterranean current, dissolving into bioluminescent particles. Downstream, they found Joseph waist-deep in glowing waters—his watch crystal overgrown with silica mycelium.
"The graft took."
The carpenter raised the timepiece where Madeleine's image merged with spore sacs.
"Her Roman mycorrhizae… finally found worthy rootstock…"
In Chavain's predawn cellar, Emilie calculated spore growth rates. Louis curled behind oak barrels, his right arm fully transformed—silver blossoms dripping vinous perfume from woody tendrils.
"They're propagating through me."
He snapped a branch, corrosive sap eating through stone. "We're the living grafts… springs were just petri dishes…"
Joseph's whistle pierced the walls. Emilie turned to find Louis' eyes now amber grape seeds—their striations mirroring the faun on Roman coins.
Sunlight speared through barred windows as Madeleine's twenty-year-old whisper slithered through spacetime:
"When man shares veins with land, crops transcend life's wheel."
The astrolabe clattered from Emilie's grip. Louis' vine-arm thrashed autonomously, thorns drilling stone to siphon aged Pinot Noir.
"Joseph's using vines as wine pipelines," she gasped, binding his leaking wounds with torn skirt.
"All Saint-Cyré's underground… it's an alive fermentation system!"
The cellar door exploded inward. Sulfurous dawn revealed the constable silhouetted in the frame, his lamp hosting floating spore sacs—silica tendrils unfurling into miniature vineyards within the flame.
"The carpenter bred devils."
He shook his fluorescing apron. "That missing Paris geologist from '07… last seen at Moreau's smithy."
At the aqueduct site, Joseph dissected a silver grape. Instead of seeds, the silicon flesh cradled half a 1920 watch gear. Madeleine's apparition flickered through broken teeth, her French laced with static:
"…mycelium network linked to pre-war weather station transmitters…"
Joseph coughed violently—blood droplets crystallizing into wine-red amber midair. Each encapsulated living memories:
1914 rifles hidden in casks, boars reflecting Parisian ore crates in '27, Roman coins warping in the smithy's current forge.
"Timelines converging materially."
He whispered to his rippling reflection—not his face, but Madeleine aged twenty-five, pouring luminous ore into acidic springs.
Beneath the smithy, Emilie found Roman tools melted into lead molds. The solidified metal bore entwined caduceus and thyrsus motifs. Louis' vine-fingers brushed the patterns—walls suddenly projected 1902's strike: burning trellises, hanged men swaying like overripe fruit.
"Not pure lead." Emilie's astrolabe needle spun wildly.
"Melting point 17 degrees lower… contains—"
The smith's drunken slur drifted through floorboards:
"Parisian ore… makes iron remember…"
Dusk found silver spores colonizing northern lavender fields. The constable's search party trapped in hexagonal light grids—each cell replaying disasters:
1902 lightning fires, 1914 disassembled artillery, '27 boar onslaught…
Joseph walked through holographic hellscapes, his watch dripping wine that vaporized into 1914 military maps—German bombing targets circled in sacramental wine.
"We transmitted intelligence through vintage codes." His voice shed decades. "Madeleine didn't vanish… she became—"
The earthquake hit. Collapsing aqueducts exposed century-old roots glowing like inverted galaxies beneath the moon.
In Chavain's cellar, Emilie completed her astrolabe mapping—all silica threads converged on Louis' chest cavity. The rhythmic ticking inside his ribs synchronized with Joseph's pocketwatch.
"You're the living graft." She pressed a Roman coin to his petrified arm.
"Madeleine altered your blood with Parisian ore… made you a conduit across eras—"
Louis seized her wrist. Amber eyes projected futures:
1953 comet weddings where bullet-casings sprouted vines, 1972 arson sites blooming fluorescent tendrils, 2013 labs where Madeleine's doppelgänger launched silicon vines into cosmic soil.
"Cycle's initiated." His dual-toned voice buzzed.
"Before the seventh moon disc falls…"
Boar howls pierced the night. The lead tusker's yellowed fangs bore not faded silk, but remnants of the 1902 union leader's incinerated standard.
This time, Emilie saw the truth—the frayed edges still smoldered with century-old embers.