Chapter 4 - Flowers of Antimony
But there are things that money can’t buy. Things that a selfish alchemist had no legal recourse for obtaining.
Need to catch up? Chapter 1 - Chapter 2 - Chapter 3
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.
Tentative arrangements were made.
Rosalie agreed to shutter her business temporarily and direct current customers to Leon. They would work together again in order to make the most of their time, and save money - it wasn’t like Rosalie was overtaking the market in Holyoke anyway. It cost her little in the way of pride to try it out at least. If the arrangement turned out to be unbearable, she could peg her hasty decision on the heavy-handed pouring that came after he’d shown her how the silver was transformed into gold.
Homework was assigned.
Leon sent her back with three books from his cupboard collection. Rosalie kept them tucked tight to her chest to protect them from the early spring drizzle, and to keep their scent in her personal atmosphere as thick as possible. She made a mental note to ask him where these books had come from, even though a part of her already knew.
And though they had discussed at length their plans with this project, there was one important detail that neither of them had remembered to raise.
Boundaries were not set.
This realization paralyzed Rosalie as she sat behind the counter of her shop, tracing one of the book’s coarse covers. It was a muted olive and constructed with that kind of cloth that fell out of favor in the early 1900s.
Rosalie now possessed all of the Das family recipes. She’d gotten what she’d wanted, and all she had to do was hear Leon’s idea. It was never integral to the deal that she agree to work with him. And yet, there she was. In a few hours she’d be going back to the home they’d once shared, to begin their joint investigation of alchemical miracles.
It was a surprising development, and Rosalie examined it as if it were a player on the stage. Something outside of herself, moving and acting according to a secret script. She felt as though the decision had been made by someone else, as though suddenly the plot of her life was in someone else’s hands. Each time she wondered why she’d really done it, her mind circled back to a nagging thought - Leon hadn’t been trying to make any amends with her. The project wasn’t a play to win her back. Not in a way that was obvious to her, at least. But that didn’t mean that he wasn’t hoping to rekindle something. Rosalie had failed to broach that subject before agreeing to the new arrangements.
I should’ve asked for the divorce papers rather than the recipes, Rosalie thought bitterly.
She wasn’t aware enough of her own internal compass, and the way the needle swung wildly, to realize that there was no real truth to the regret. It had no firepower. In the beginning, she’d wanted him to sign the papers. Desperately. She would’ve given anything to cut the ties that bound them. But as weeks became months, the urge faded. Leon could keep himself legally shackled to her if he wanted. The ties that bound them were leaving undeniable scars, but in every other respect there were tangible benefits.
She knew that he still named her the beneficiary on his life insurance policy. Her name was still the only one in the will.
The problem was that, even though she’d thrown the rings at him, and even though they were separated, the lack of an official divorce made it impossible to feel free. It kept the betrayal fresh in her mind. Like an unprotected wound, it kept getting dirty. Kept reopening.
How Rosalie had hated him in that moment, when she’d learned what he’d done. The memory surged through her. She pressed her palm down onto the unopened book that fixed her gaze. Could you squash down your emotions by sheer physical force? Rosalie gave it her best shot.
Leon had hidden his plan from her so well that, when she saw him off from the Denver airport to New Delhi (by way of San Francisco, then Seoul), she hadn’t the slightest idea how unlikely his return would be.
There were a lot of people who could shoulder the blame.
The alchemist, Gladwell, who’d put the world’s largest collection of recipes and books up for the highest bidder.
The Global Medical Association who’d thrown their names into the hat.
Leon, for being so damn clever as to know that he had something the GMA didn’t.
The surgeon who’d agreed to work with Gladwell to collect payment.
Rosalie could take some of the blame also, for not paying close enough attention to the bidding war. To the phone calls that Leon had made in the early hours of the morning.
Leon’s family had a lot of money. He and Rosalie didn’t live extravagantly, but she should’ve realized that whatever cash they threw into the ring, the GMA could quadruple it and not even blink.
And they had every reason to. There was no doubt in anyone’s mind that if the GMA won, that would be the final nail in alchemy’s coffin. The legacy that Gladwell had collected and cultivated would likely be summarily destroyed. The Global Medical Association was getting a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity thanks to Gladwell’s ambivalence to the treasure he was auctioning off. Who the prize went to didn’t matter. All Gladwell cared about was how he got paid.
So Leon had realized that they’d never out-bid the big guys. Not even if they got a lot of other alchemists aligned - which they had - and threw their life savings into the pot - which they did. The alchemists weren’t going to win, not if the currency was money.
But there are things that money can’t buy. Things that a selfish alchemist had no legal recourse for obtaining. And the GMA, bound as they were by politics, tax records, and accountability, had nothing to counter what Leon was prepared to offer.
Rosalie’s eyes glazed over with tears, the corner of her mouth twitched, and a heavy recollection settled into her gut as she prodded at the memory, like a kid with a stick discovering a decomposing squirrel. She did this occasionally when she wanted to remember why she lived and worked in this second-rate shop and apartment, and why her heart always ached. Her hand relaxed on the old book.
In the end, the coalition of alchemists who were prepared to save the formulae from certain destruction at the hands of the GMA hadn’t won the bidding war. Leon had.
He returned to her after two weeks: victorious but pale, fatigued, and ready to come clean. At first, he waved it off as a combination of jet-lag and food poisoning. But when they got home from the airport, he asked her to sit down. Instinctively, Rosalie grabbed one of the pillows from the couch and wrapped her arms around it. A poor shield.
Leon showed her the scars. He tallied the bill.
A significant portion of his liver. His spleen. His left lung. A testicle. The left kidney. A measure of his intestines. And some delicate workings from the inside of his left ear. No wonder he could barely hear her in the airport lobby.
There were other fees. Blood. Skin. Some bone and marrow. But Leon waved those off as if he’d tossed a handful of coins into a tip jar.
Rosalie didn’t take it well. She remembered feeling like she was going to suffocate. Someone had greedily sucked all the air out of the room and left her just a few molecules of oxygen.
She remembered none of what he’d said to her that night after the big reveal. Trying to recall his side of the conversation was like sticking her head underwater to listen to someone yelling in a foreign language. It was all garbled nonsense in her brain. But she did remember the accusations and curses she’d spat at him. An eloquence had come over her. Rosalie felt like she’d been channeling a superior being.
Her rage was a goddess.
Leon had put his life, and their future together, on the line for books and formulae. He’d transformed his life expectancy into a question of probabilities, with the odds stacked against him. And he hadn’t told her. Hadn’t asked, hadn’t warned, hadn’t prepared her for this.
By the end of her tirade that night, Rosalie was crying so hard she couldn’t see, taking deep, hiccuping breaths, and screaming in bursts loud enough to make him cower. The fear that she would lose him overpowered her. It twisted her judgment in on itself so that there was only one solution.
Rosalie would sever their bond before bad luck, or providence, could do it for them.
The anger had burned for days, making it easy to ignore his pleas for her to come back. Didn’t she understand? He had done it for her! For both of them! With Gladwell’s formulae, they’d made an incredible save for alchemists everywhere, and they’d foiled the GMA.
But Rosalie only loved alchemy because of Leon. That balance had been perverted when he’d put himself on the sacrificial altar. After everything was said and done, Rosalie wasn’t sure she loved either of them anymore.
She rubbed at a small damp spot on the book before her.
The harsh reality was that she had no other livelihood. Alchemy came easily to her. So she reluctantly hid behind the robes of a god that had demanded too much of her husband. Compounds, tinctures, ethers - she pressed on doing the work without any particular destination in mind. That was until witnessing silver marbles turned to gold, like the transformation of green leaves beneath an Autumn sun.
Here was a destination.
Rosalie turned to her homework as the despairing memories and the optimistic expectations coalesced to envelop her in a strange kind of calm. Leon had given her the books that lacked English translation. Her Latin, Italian, and German were excellent, but her Spanish, and French were sub-par. They agreed she would brush up on them after the major works were thoroughly combed. Hopefully, they’d find what they were looking for without having to go through the entirety of his collection. Flipping through the pages, scanning each paragraph, she found several small, delicately pressed and dried pansies.
They were nice, but not what she was looking for. Rosalie was searching for anything related to the use of a fifth element in alchemy. Leon had an experiment in mind.
Stop by next week for Chapter 5! And if you’re feeling impatient (or wildly supportive) you can get the whole e-book novella right away from Barnes & Noble.
