Chapter 2 - Flowers of Antimony
A love of smoke, of simmering liquids, bitter vapors, and withered plants are what had lured her to alchemy.
(Still need to read Chapter 1? Find it here!)
After retreating upstairs to her apartment and indulging in a long shower, Rosalie felt her shoulders become less inclined to reflexively pull up toward her ears. She found the small amber vial that held an old, but still aromatic, pick-me-up oil blend and rubbed a small drop along the ridge of her collarbones. The scent of orange peel, geranium, and mint followed Rosalie as she walked back down the narrow, creaky stairs that marked the transition between her living space above, and the shop below. The swirling chaos of emotions that Leon’s visit had kicked up earlier were slowly settling.
There were still days when the mere sight of neatly organized but mismatched jars on her shelves triggered a landslide of unhealthy thoughts. If she’d accidentally left the freeze-dried wine berries outside of the photosensitive cabinet, she’d hear Leon’s voice bouncing between her ears, warning her of the potential degradation, the inevitable dent to her bottom line.
She’d feel her cheeks warm at the disembodied chiding. Next would come the angry white noise in her head that would drown out the voice. And then, usually, the heaviness somewhere between her heart and her stomach.
Guilt followed soon after, which made her angry again, and the vicious cycle fed her deepest regrets until she could find the strength to shove it all down. Rosalie had gotten good at that part.
But as she walked across her shop, cleaned up, wearing real clothes, and with actual shoes on, Rosalie felt fine. She knew in her bones that Leon would be calling her in a few hours, and it was gratifying to be sure of something for once.
Reaching the front door to unlock it and flip the “Closed” sign, she nearly earned a broken nose for her trouble. Just as Rosalie dropped her hand from the sign, the door swung open with a force.
“Woo! Oh! I’m so sorry, I thought the door would be heavier.”
An apologetic woman stood in the doorway of the shop, hands up in surrender, eyebrows raised in shock. With her straw sun hat, shapeless yellow dress patterned in pink and white flowers, heavy white knit cardigan, and well-lined face, Rosalie suspected her guest was a resident of the senior home in town.
“That’s alright, you just missed me. Come on in. How can I help you?”
Diabetes, shingles, or probably arthritis Rosalie wondered, taking a generous step back to make room for the woman to enter.
“Well,” the woman wavered. Slowly she lowered her hands and looked around the shop. Rosalie thought the older woman looked as though she’d been locked in a tiger’s cage, but had lost sight of the tiger.
Rosalie retreated to her counter, giving the potential client time and space to take it all in. There was a small population of people that was comfortable with alchemists. This woman was clearly not of that group.
“Well…I guess, can I ask first how this all works?”
“Sure. Here, actually, take one of these.” Rosalie ducked down to retrieve a copy of an article from a stack on the bottom shelf. She pulled one out, stood, and leaned on the counter with both elbows, holding out the paper like a lure. “What’s your name?”
“Delia,” the old woman answered, approaching the counter with care.
“I’m Rosalie. I own and operate this little shop, and I’m happy to answer any questions you have,” she tried to soothe. For her efforts, Rosalie was awarded a smile several shades less anxious than when Delia had first entered.
“What’s this?” the woman asked, gingerly accepting the handout but keeping her gaze locked on Rosalie.
“A peer-reviewed article from the North American Journal of Medicine,” Rosalie recited by rote. “The author, Dr. Abel, shares decades worth of findings on the scientific underpinnings of alchemy. I know people think it’s a bunch of snake oil because we use moss, and flowers, and dirt. But Abel looked at several common alchemical formulae and saw that there were, in fact, medicinal properties in the reagents. There’s scientific evidence for why we get results. Anyway, it’s all in that paper.”
“But…you’re not a scientist,” Delia whispered. “I mean, most alchemists aren’t. Right?”
“Correct. I’m not a doctor, either. I don’t think many of us are. But we are what we are, and it works because it works. Abel’s research just gives scientific credence to what healers and alchemists have known for centuries.”
“Why am I only just hearing about this research, though?”
Rosalie made no attempt to stop a bitter smile from twisting her lips.
“Because there’s no money to be made in legitimizing alchemy. Training is minimal in comparison to what it takes to be a surgeon. Ingredients and remedies can be shockingly cheap, though not always. Most of the hard work has already been done over generations by indigenous people and folk healers. All that’s necessary to be an alchemist is a willingness to experiment responsibly, an understanding of the principles, the ability to follow a recipe, and a desire to heal.”
“No patents, no med school,” Delia wondered aloud. She was looking past Rosalie, but with unfocused eyes. Rosalie thought the old woman was perhaps catching a glimpse of the shaky footing alchemy had in a capitalist society.
“Mhmm,” Rosalie hummed.
“Oh. But, it works though?”
“It works. Scout’s honor,” Rosalie answered with a nod.
“How about a treatment for arthritis?” Delia asked, coming back to the waking world with a few steps closer to the counter and a much kinder smile on her face.
It’s always arthritis, Rosalie thought with some despair. There was a good chance she’d be out of rock flour. Shipping that in from Alaska was challenging.
“I have a compound for that. It offers significant relief for most clients. I’ll warn you that it’s not inexpensive, but over time you should get good results and shouldn’t need to use any more. It’s $40 per jar, and depending on your points of pain, your knees, right? You-”
“How did you know?” Delia interrupted.
“The way you walk,” Rosalie answered. “You would probably need a new jar every two weeks for two, maybe three months. I make these to order. They don’t have a long shelf-life.”
“If it works, if I don’t need to take pills every day until I die, well, then I suppose that’s worth it. Sure. I’ll take a jar. When should I stop by to pick it up?”
Rosalie completed the new patient paperwork, got the waiver signed - that morning’s incident still fresh in her mind- and wished Delia a pleasant afternoon. Dealing with clients was a necessary part of the business, but it was Rosalie’s least favorite part. Front of house had always been Leon’s forte. For Rosalie, the fun started once Delia left.
From a cupboard behind her counter she pulled out a small plastic shoe box filled with a white powder. Eyeballing it, Rosalie could see that there was just enough left for the recipe. A brief jaunt brought her to the opposite end of the shop, right next to the door, where she pulled down a jar of dried white flowers. Bells from the recent Spring influx of lily of the valley.
Only one other item was necessary. Rosalie set the jar of flowers on the counter and jogged up the wooden stairs to her apartment, keeping her attention open for the sound of someone entering the shop while she rummaged in her fridge. She grabbed the cold glass jar of olives and brought it back downstairs.
Clearing a place on her counter, and taking extra precaution to remove all flammable objects out of range, Rosalie set up her lab with practiced ease. Technically, this arthritis compound could be worked on a stove, but there was an undeniable romanticism to using a burner and porcelain crucible.
A love of smoke, of simmering liquids, bitter vapors, and withered plants are what had lured her to alchemy. And, sadly, to Leon. But it’d been the meditative rituals that had kept her there: gently removing the blue iridescent carapaces from exotic beetles, winding strands of spider’s web around the tips of toothpicks, and picking seeds from apples and cucumbers. Rosalie loved the minutiae.
She set to her left a stained digital scale and three small ceramic bowls. One by one, she tared the weight of the bowls, then added the ingredients to them, watching the readout for the correct measurements.
She used a small plastic scoop to portion out 28 grams of rock flour to one bowl.
Ten grams of lily of the valley bells went into the next.
And finally, 40 grams of the olives into the last, leaving her one and a half olives for the Mediterranean salad she’d planned on having that night.
Rosalie was ignorant of whatever scientific benefits might’ve belonged to these ingredients, but the historical and symbolic significances were at the very forefront of her mind as she used a mortar and pestle to make a paste of the olives, and another to grind down the dried flowers.
Lily of the valley had long been believed to have healing properties, and symbolically represented a return of happiness. The olives were a nod to the olive branch of peace. And rock flour was a byproduct of melting glaciers. It was the fine substance that gave those gigantic blocks of ice and glacial lakes their brilliant cool blue hue.
Combined, in theory and in practice, they urged peace, cooling, and relief in the joints.
Rosalie lit the burner below her crucible, and added the olive paste first, stirring it with a thin silver spoon that usually sat in a velvet case with its siblings of other precious metals. In her first year as an alchemist, Rosalie had needed a thermometer to keep tabs on the olives in this recipe, but after the 300th-or-so formulation she could read the slight distinctions in aroma and color that told her when they were ready.
When the paste darkened and took on a sheen like an oil slick, she killed the burner and added in the ground up flowers, stirring all the while. When the sheen had disappeared, and the individual specks of lily of the valley were no longer discernible, she added the final ingredient.
The compound thickened exponentially and seemed to hit its limit just as she poured the last bit of rock flour in. Rosalie knew she’d done it right when she bent to the crucible and breathed in. She couldn’t smell anything, but felt a deep cold spreading out behind her sinuses, down her throat, and into her lungs.
Rosalie lost herself in the work: finding a suitable jar for Delia’s compound, labeling it with the name, formulation date, expiration, and adorning it with a brown ribbon and tag, cleaning out the crucible and the little bowls that’d held each ingredient, and putting the reagents away.
She reveled in the peace that comes from familiar and satisfying work. Until the phone rang.