Chapter 1 - Flowers of Antimony

“Do you have any idea what you’ve done?”

“Do you have any idea what you’ve done?” Leon asked.

The object of his criticism, a young woman with an aching back and scorched fingertips, could barely see her accuser through the cloud of blue smoke that was billowing out of the crucible in front of her.

But there was no mistaking that voice, or the tone that carried it. Rosalie, wiping the sweat off her forehead, knew exactly who’d walked into her store. And why.

Rosalie wanted to take deep, calming breaths without also inhaling copious amounts of the sweet smoke at the same time, so she took a few steps back from the craft at hand. Thanks to Leon’s interruption the compound was doomed anyway.

“And what did I do, Leon?” she asked, hearing the strain in her own voice as she spoke his name. A raw swell of emotion urged her to scream, to throw the amethyst geode within reach straight at his head, to rail against his superior, smug-

“You made an old man very sick, Rosie.”

-and utterly legitimate accusation.

Rosalie swallowed hard.

He doesn’t know the whole story. Be reasonable. All you have to do is explain yourself, she thought.

“You were misinformed,” Rosalie snapped, walking a fine line between her anger and her desire not to get called in by a neighbor for a domestic disturbance.

“Care to inform me, then?”

She squeezed out from behind the counter and strode through the smoke to confront him. The closer she got, the less the smoke hid his face, the more she lost her nerve.

He didn’t look nearly as smug as he’d sounded. In fact, the expression he wore was so much worse than overbearing confidence. Rosalie could see disappointment etched in his brow.

She halted with a few feet to spare between them. A faint blue haze still hung in the air. The dandelion seeds in the crucible, exactly 1,000 of them, wouldn’t smolder for much longer.

His dark eyes measured her, taking in her ash-smudged cheeks, flannel pajamas, hair that hadn’t been brushed before it’d been pulled back into a ponytail. Rosalie didn’t care for the scrutiny, but Leon had seen her in worse states. If there was any embarrassment to be had here, it wasn’t in her appearance alone. It was in their contrast.

Leon had shoes on, unlike herself. Clean, un-ripped jeans, a wrinkle free, black button down. Leon looked as though he had showered that morning. Rosalie could also detect a faint cologne, fresh and herbal. She immediately recognized it as one of his homemade concoctions.

He put on a good front. Always had, always would. Leon looked every bit as though he had it together, from his tousled black hair to his impeccably clean and even nails. But Rosalie knew that the better he looked on the surface, the more composed he was, the worse he was probably feeling. Though they’d been separated for a year, almost four years of marriage gave her this crucial insight.

“Jacobson supplied the reagents,” she announced, bracing herself.

“Jacobson – The client!? Rosie! How many times do I have to tell you-”

“You don’t have to tell me,” Rosalie interrupted. “You’re not my partner anymore, and you’re not my boss either. When are you going to realize that you’re not responsible for me or my business, so how I choose to run it is none of your concern?” she hissed. If her summary of their relationship caused him any pain, it wasn’t visible.

Leon stood there, arms crossed, unmoving since he’d stepped into her shop.

“The man came to see me with blood dripping from his right ear. That makes it my concern. We help people, Rosie. That means we use the highest quality reagents. We don’t allow our clients to supply them unless we’re damn sure that they know what they’re doing. And we always have them sign a waiver.”

“I thought I told you I didn’t want a lecture.”

Leon huffed and fell silent. Seeing that he would obey her wish, Rosalie explained.

“Let’s be clear that I’m not the only alchemist who permits barter for service, especially in the case of someone like Jacobson, who does, in fact, have a family history of healing, and who should have known better than to skimp on his primary solvent.”

Rosalie recalled the tincture that Jacobson required to ease his pneumonia - it called for 236 milliliters of water from a river closest to his place of birth. And while it was true, all rivers connected - somewhere, somehow - that didn’t mean that all rivers were the same river.

Jacobsen hadn’t made the effort to procure the closest water, and so the tincture was off. There had been no way for Rosalie to know until it was too late.

“Besides, he’s not going to die. I’m sure that you concluded the same after examining him.”

“You’re right. He’s not going to die. It’s worse. He ended up going to a doctor. He didn’t want a remedy from you, or me, or any other alchemist in the county. Rosie, you know what kind of thin ice we’re all on here. Why would you make such an irresponsible mistake?”

Rosalie suppressed an urge to roll her eyes at the prelude to this familiar song and dance. When they’d lived and worked together, it was a frequent conversation.

Modern medicine is pushing us out.

It’s just a matter of time before we’re forbidden from practicing.

Alchemy is on its deathbed.

We have no margin for errors.

“Yeah, yeah,” Rosalie sighed, rolling up the sleeves on her flannel pajamas. She was exhausted by their argument and feeling every bit of shame and embarrassment that she imagined Leon would want her to feel.

“Get out of my shop. I need to…” she trailed off. No longer sure what she needed to do. Jacobson wasn’t coming back unless it was with a court summons. She didn’t have any orders to fill or new clients to consult with. Rosalie turned away from Leon and shuffled back toward her counter, where books, bottles, eye-droppers, boxes, and scraps of paper littered the surface.

I guess what I really need is to take a shower and clean up, she thought, feeling the defeat on her like a film of dust. It wasn’t even noon. A tense but blessed silence drifted on the dandelion smoke between them, until Rosalie heard him take a step closer. His voice was gentle now.

“I wish you’d consider my proposal again,” Leon suggested.

“I’m not going to your place under some thinly veiled pretense that you have to ‘show me something important’ just so you can try to make amends, or lecture me, or steal my latest recipes,” Rosalie grumbled, sliding behind her counter and gently brushing several clumps of dandelion seeds back into a large glass jar. She moved her laptop off a pile of notes to a shelf below the counter, hoping that her busywork would be a clear cue to Leon that the conversation was over.

Instead, he insisted, “What do I have to say or do to prove to you that it really is something important?”

Rosalie looked up from the mess and met Leon’s eyes. She tried to assess the sincerity there.

If he was serious, she’d have to make him put something that he really cared about on the line. Rosalie had the answer instantly.

“I want half of your family’s book. The first half.”

“Done,” Leon responded, faster than Rosalie believed it was possible to process the request. She might’ve been astonished if not for being so pleased. So she pressed her advantage.

“No. I changed my mind. The whole thing.”

That time he paused.

“You’re asking for access to all of my family’s formulae. Our marriage didn’t even get you half.”

“Yup. But agreeing to consider your ‘proposal’ did. The longer you stand there, Leon, the more valuable my time becomes. In thirty seconds I’m going to ask for a car to go along with that book.”

“I can’t give you the book, Rosie, you know that. It’s overseas. I keep my record in the cloud.”

“So what? Give me the password then,” she bargained.

“Can I think about it?”

“Sure. Take a few hours, but call me before eight tonight. If this project of yours is so important, then you’ll be willing to break a few rules.”

Leon nodded ever so slightly. She barely caught his agreement, and then he was gone. Rosalie looked around at the more pressing concerns. She’d left a large jar of forest fog beside a lit Bunsen burner - a great way to lose a precious reagent and make a terrible mess at the same time.

Before returning to the task of putting the shop back together, she unburied the landline phone on her counter and made sure that the volume was up all the way. Access to every single formula that Leon’s family had ever collected was an almost unfathomable condition to lay down, but he hadn’t said no.

And Rosalie knew from experience that if there was something Leon wanted, he’d make tremendous sacrifices to get it.

Stop by next week for Chapter 2! And if you’re feeling impatient (or wildly supportive) you can get the whole e-book novella right away from Barnes & Noble.