Chapter 12 - Flowers of Antimony
Again, Leon placed a piece of his humanity at the feet of the alchemical gods.
Need to catch up? Chapter 1 - Chapter 2 - Chapter 3 - Chapter 4 - Chapter 5 - Chapter 6 - Chapter 7 - Chapter 8 - Chapter 9 - Chapter 10 - Chapter 11
Please note that there are subjects and themes in this book that some readers might prefer to approach with forewarning, or not at all. These include relationship trauma, self-harm, suicide, death/dying, swearing, and sexual content.
“This can’t be right,” Rosalie mumbled.
They’d deposited the moss in the bottom of the crucible, nestled the seraphinite in it, poured in the Mediterranean water, brought it all to a cozy 36 degrees Celsius, dropped in the crushed up damselfly wings, and submerged an ant plucked from the back porch into the warm water as their sacrifice.
“I know. This was far too simple. I don’t think we have it right either,” Leon said, turning off the burner and fishing the stone out.
“Did you feel anything when you dropped in the ant?” Rosalie asked.
“No. Another reason I don’t think this worked.”
Extinguishing one life to preserve another was, as Rosalie and Leon intuited it to be, a failure. What the attempt netted them was a sad vignette of two succulents they’d frozen with dry ice and shattered, not resurrected, but awkwardly adorned with the seraphinite like a Dadaism art installation. Nothing had happened. To be sure, Rosalie took a small scalpel and scraped away some of the stone onto the shattered plant matter. The succulents were rapidly thawing. Their bruised, wet, and ragged fragments showed no signs of mending.
Several seconds of disappointed contemplation later, Rosalie initiated the debate over who would sacrifice an emotion, and which emotion it would be.
“I’ll give up doubt,” Leon said, pushing the soggy succulent chunks around on the lab table with a pair of long tweezers. “It would be wonderful to have uninhibited confidence.”
“Na-uh. No way,” Rosalie snorted. The thought of Leon walking around and believing he was correct all the time made her jaw ache preemptively.
“And why not?”
“Your confidence is already at insufferable levels. Let’s not jack that up, alright?” Rosalie explained, with as gentle a tone as she could manage.
“Alright. Point made,” Leon conceded. Rosalie watched his face and was relieved to see a small smile there as he cleaned up the casualties and reset the crucible for the second attempt.
“Then…jealousy. I rarely feel it anyway, and it’s not an emotion that serves any sort of productive purpose. I’ll give up that.”
Rosalie took the small chunk of seraphinite and placed it on the far end of the lab table before retrieving a new sample from the cabinets. She became aware of the weight of the gold medallion against her throat and was terribly tempted to grill him. But they’d wasted enough time that day.
With the new sacrifice determined, the reagents re-measured, and the apparatus reset, Leon and Rosalie went through the recipe together a second time in their attempt to create the philosopher’s stone. Once the water was brought to temperature, and all the reagents had been added, Leon leaned over the crucible, and spoke, “I sacrifice jealousy.”
Rosalie’s eyes were locked on the crucible, but in her peripheral vision she could see a shiver course through him.
“What happened?” she whispered.
“I felt it. I felt it leave.”
Leon looked into the water as if hoping to rediscover the newly lost piece of himself, but all he recovered from the crucible was the seraphinite.
They prepared the plant test once more. Rosalie, with a pair of tweezers, dunked a succulent into dry ice and then put it on the table where Leon crushed it with the aid of a small hand towel and a hammer. This time it was Leon who scraped some of the stone onto the pulverized succulent.
It was like an optical illusion. Rosalie could remember staring at her bedroom door at night whens he was a child, and seeing the thin bar of light disappear by degrees, as if the door was slowly, slowly closing. Then she’d blink, and the door would be just as open as it had always been. The mending of the succulent struck her the same way. As she stared, the pieces seemed to be closer to one another than they were a second ago. She blinked. And it occurred to her that, really, the fragments had always been that close hadn’t they?
It was only a matter of 30 seconds before Rosalie and Leon could discern that the once-shattered plant was a wholly restored echeveria runyonii.
“Wow,” Leon breathed. “Did that really happen, or are we sharing in some collective delusion where we never destroyed the succulent to begin with? Because that’s what it actually feels like.”
“It happened,” Rosalie nodded. The assertion gave her sparing access to the confidence she was hoping for, but it was the best she could do. In a stupor of amazement, they attempted to repeat the experiment. Another succulent was frozen and smashed. Another few grains of the stone were scraped off onto the remains.
But nothing happened.
Leon held the stone in his hand and rolled it between his thumb and palm. Rosalie fingered her necklace. Separately they settled into their thoughts.
The realization struck her so suddenly that she flinched, causing Leon to jump too. She pulled another succulent from the bin. This one she tore to pieces with her fingers before taking the stone away from Leon.
“Every time you transmute metal you have to make a promise. Every time you restore life, you have to sacrifice it,” she explained.
Holding the stone, Rosalie said, “I sacrifice boredom.”
Again she scraped the stone with a knife, depositing small granules onto the bed of torn succulent leaves. And again, the plant mended itself in degrees almost imperceptible to their eyes. All the while, their brains insisted that the leaves were just as torn as they’d always been, until before them sat the whole, unmarred plant.
Rosalie felt breathless and glanced over at Leon to see how he was taking it all. She found his brows furrowed, dark eyes locked on the results of their experiments, and his expression essentially unreadable. The only thing apparent to her was that the gears were turning.
“What are you thinking about?” she nudged. It was a while before he answered. In the waiting, she saw his gaze flicker from the stone and knife in her hands, to the succulent, and back.
“We have to be careful. We can’t waste any more sacrifices on plants. There are other permutations to validate, and I don’t know about you, but I don’t particularly feel like emptying out my emotional storehouse on this experimental stuff.”
Upon taking the tests to the next level they discovered that they didn’t need to scrape anything off the stone. All that was required for the alchemy to work was to sacrifice an emotion and then to touch the stone to the target.
After acquiring an assortment of insects from the backyard, they tested the remaining variables rapidly. Each time, Leon held the stone.
Animal injury, via a beetle with several legs plucked off. Leon sacrificed anxiety.
Animal death, via an ant with its head cut off. Leon attempted to sacrifice envy but found that it was too close to jealousy. He had to give up apathy before the ant could be restored.
Human injury, via sterilized scalpel incision to the back of Leon’s wrist - this was done so fast that Rosalie didn’t even have time to object. Again, Leon placed a piece of his humanity at the feet of the alchemical gods. This time it was pity.
“It actually works,” Leon marveled as he smoothed his fingertips over the bloodstained, but unbroken skin on his arm where a moment before there’d been a long and shallow cut.
“Yes, it works, and could you not mutilate yourself again? Please?” Rosalie begged, snatching the stone away from him. Her mind returned to her necklace, and the promise it held.
“You won’t hurt yourself again, will you?” She asked. Leon took a deep breath before giving her an answer.
“Okay, Rosie. I won’t. Promise,” he said, sealing the vow with a kiss on her temple. Rosalie grumbled, assuaged, but only just.
“You skipped one of the more important variables, by the way. Old injuries.”
Rosalie lifted the stone and held it against Leon’s left ear. She made the sacrifice before Leon could stop her. And he did try to stop her by pressing a hand to her mouth, but Rosalie had the sacrifice loaded, and he wasn’t quick enough.
“I sacrifice embarrassment.”
Though Leon had tried to halt her, his reaction after the deed was done was far from disappointment.
“Embarrassment? Really?”
“Yeah. Why not?” Rosalie quipped.
“I don’t know. I suppose it’s one of the less useful feelings we’ve got. Speaking of which, we need to make sure that we’ve really lost these emotions. And whether they can come back or not. I do feel something when using the stone, but that’s not conclusive,” Leon said, pulling Rosalie’s hand and the stone down from where they were pressed against his ear. Without missing a beat, Rosalie raised her left hand to cover Leon’s right ear.
“Sure. But first, can you hear me?” she whispered.
Recognition flashed across his face, followed by one of the most genuine smiles she’d ever seen him wear.
“Holy…” he whispered in return, holding a hand over Rosalie’s. She smiled in wonderment at the restoration of his hearing. “Say something else,” Leon urged her.
“Sure, there’s something you should know. After we split up last year I called Victor from the network. We talked. A lot. And he was going to come visit me later this month,” Rosalie lied, biting her lip in an attempt to give the fiction a little kick.
But Leon only smiled and shook his head.
“Victor’s a nice guy,” he replied. Not a trace of jealousy.
“We did it,” Rosalie laughed, feeling the sudden and surprising sting of tears in her eyes. “I can’t believe it.”
“I can. And we’ll do so much more,” Leon added with a grin. “But first, I think we should celebrate.”
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