The townhouse of Hendrik and Marta was a bastion of Dutch order—polished mahogany, the scent of lavender oil, and the quiet ticking of a longcase clock.
The arrival of the Francisco family was like a splash of vibrant, chaotic paint on a white canvas. Lola's rapier clattered against the umbrella stand; Don-Fran immediately began critiquing the "theatrical lighting" of the parlor; and Mateus, though pale and shivering, looked around with the wide eyes of a man seeing a sanctuary.
Marta, ever the gracious hostess, moved through the house with a quiet efficiency that reminded Faust of the hospitals in Europe.
She settled the travelers in the guest rooms, her hands lingering for a moment on Mateus's forehead with a motherly concern.
"Rest now," she told the boy. "The Doctor has brought you to the right place."
A few days later, the air in the city was crisp, carrying the scent of yeast and warm rye from a nearby bakery.
Faust, Hendrik, and Marta stepped out for a walk through the bustling center.
The city was alive with the morning's labor.
Children chased each other through the alleys, rolling wooden hoops with sticks and shouting in a mix of Dutch and German.
Near the corner, a blacksmith named Pieter paused his rhythmic hammering to wipe soot from his brow, nodding respectfully as they passed.
"Good morning, Professor Hendrik, Mistress Marta," the smith called out, his voice booming over the ringing of his anvil.
"Good morning, Pieter," Hendrik replied with a polite tip of his hat. He leaned closer to Faust. "It is a strange thing, isn't it? To have a place in the world while you... you simply move through it like a ghost."
As they reached a secluded path along the canal, where the weeping willows dipped their branches into the dark water, the conversation turned to the impossible.
Marta had been watching Faust with a mixture of awe and trepidation since his arrival. Finally, Hendrik stopped and looked at his wife.
"Marta, my love... I told you I would explain," Hendrik began, his voice low. "Faust is not merely my professor. He is the very man who taught me everything I know. I wouldn't lie if I say I consider him my second father."
Marta's breath hitched. "But the years, Hendrik... how?"
"We don't fully understand it ourselves," Faust said, his hands clasped behind his back. "Years ago, back in the University, Hendrik and I conducted a secret study—a study of my own biology. We found things that defy the ordinary nature."
Hendrik picked up the thread, his physician's excitement bleeding through his hesitation.
"His body has a capacity for regeneration that borders on the miraculous. His immune system is an iron fortress. Part of it is undoubtedly his genetics—that incredible, ideal physique he inherited from his father. But there is more. Marta, when I listened to his chest... it was not the steady thrum of a single heart. It sounded like multiple heartbeats echoing within one organ. A cadence I have never heard in another living soul."
Faust gave a dry, self-deprecating chuckle.
"For a scholar who believed only in the cold steel of logic and the grace of God, it is a bitter pill to swallow. I suspect my parents were witches, or perhaps something even older. To think that magic might actually exist as a biological constant..." He trailed off, looking at his hands. "I've even taken up a new hobby, learning the 'magic' of the stage from Don-Fran. It is easier to manipulate a coin than to understand my own blood."
"They are good people, Faust," Marta said softly, her fear beginning to melt into sympathy. "But that boy, Mateus... he looks so fragile."
"The surgery is perilous," Hendrik admitted, his expression grim. "I would be arrogant to say the chances are anything but slim."
Faust stopped and looked Marta directly in the eyes.
"You seem to forget, Hendrik. I told you the exact same thing about Marta twenty years ago. You didn't listen to the odds then. You simply cured her."
Hendrik looked down at his wife, who gently took his hand in hers.
"I was young then," Hendrik whispered. "I didn't know enough to be afraid."
He caught Faust's gaze and his expression softened.
"I'm sorry about your loss, Faust. Elena was... she was a light in this world."
Faust's jaw tightened, and he looked away toward the canal.
"She wouldn't want us to mourn, Hendrik. She would want us to work. Do not speak of her as a sadness."
They walked in silence for a moment, the only sound the distant barking of a dog and the splashing of oars in the water.
"But be honest with me, teacher," Hendrik said, breaking the quiet. "You didn't come all this way just for a Portuguese magician. You are kind, but even your kindness has its boundaries. You are not the most selfless of men."
Faust let out a genuine laugh, a sound that seemed to startle a pair of pigeons from the nearby eaves.
"I am glad my student still holds such cynical faith in me. It's funny, really. I came to renew my doctoral degree."
Marta blinked. "To renew it?"
"My license as a doctor is more than eighty years old," Faust explained with a smirk. "A man who looks thirty carrying a degree from the previous century tends to attract the wrong kind of attention. It's suspicious. One of the reasons I came to you, Hendrik, is that I need your name to petition the commission. I cannot spend another four years sitting in lectures with boys who haven't even learned to shave. It would be a colossal waste of time."
He looked at the old university buildings in the distance. "Perhaps in another hundred years, I might find the new theories interesting enough to sit through a class. But not now."
Marta and Hendrik exchanged a quick, unsettled look at the casual way Faust spoke of centuries.
"The surgery on Mateus," Hendrik mused, "if we can frame it as a demonstration, it might serve as your practical exam for the commission. You would just need a written study on a specific subject."
"That is no problem," Faust said dismissively. "I have trunks full of theoretical works I've been researching in secret. I could write a dozen theses by dawn."
"And you'll need to pass the theoretical exam," Hendrik added with a slight, teasing glint in his eye.
Faust scoffed, his chest puffing out with a flash of his old academic pride.
"The theoretical exam? Hendrik, that is offensive. I am the theory."
They turned the corner back toward the townhouse, the smell of woodsmoke and roasting meat signaling the approach of midday.