Chapter 5 - Flowers of Antimony
“What happens if I break the promise?”
Need to catch up? Chapter 1 - Chapter 2 - Chapter 3 - Chapter 4
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.
“Did you find anything?”
Rosalie handed over the small, but heavy, stack of books to Leon. She ignored his question.
“I’m not carrying these books back and forth every day. Either they stay here with you, or at my place.”
“Uh, yeah. Sure. Whichever you prefer,” Leon said. He spoke gently and took a step back to let Rosalie enter the house.
She could smell the homemade cologne on him as she swept past; this time it was a recipe that she remembered well. Sandalwood, tea leaves, and just the barest hint of vanilla. Rosalie had often tried to convince him to bottle and sell the stuff.
“Anyway, yes, I found something. Where to?” she asked, standing in front of the coffee table, hands on hips, while Leon closed the front door. She had shaken off the earlier recollections and memories as best she could, and now she didn’t think there was more she could do other than keep her back straight and her chin high.
Leon led her down to the basement, which had been transformed since her departure. The previous night, Leon had briefly debated with himself about using the basement for the demonstration of turning silver into gold, but they’d gone to the lab in his shop in the center of town instead.
“Wow.” Rosalie surveyed the hybrid space. “I can’t say I like what you did with the place.”
“I know. What were we going to do with it?” Leon mused.
“Theater slash lounge slash hobby-cave, I thought. It looks like you got halfway there, then changed your mind and decided you needed a second workspace.”
An otherwise classy, sable-colored couch was pushed all the way to the far end of the room to make space for several long tables covered in alchemical instruments and containers. On the side opposite the lab were several floor-to-ceiling glass cases, holding yet more reagents. Adding to the conflicting contrast was a dartboard on one wall, all of the darts stuck into the bullseye, and several cardboard boxes piled high in an empty and awkward corner.
They both gravitated to an equally out-of-place black card table with four folding chairs set around it and took seats opposite each other. Leon dropped the books in front of one of the empty chairs and fixed Rosalie with an expectant gaze, waiting for her to reveal what she’d discovered from the old books.
“So?” he prompted.
She didn’t answer him right away. Instead, she took a moment to note that he looked a little tired. But he wasn’t dressed to the nines, and that meant he wasn’t trying to put up a front for her like he had the other day when he barged into her shop and scolded her. This was as good a time as any to get in whatever small revenge she could - childish as it may be.
Rosalie waited for the opportune moment. Right as Leon opened his mouth to complain, she spoke. “Is it killing you that I haven’t told you yet?”
“Yes. Why are you doing this?”
If Leon was truly annoyed, he wasn’t letting it show.
“Because it pleases me to see you squirm. I have something that you want, and maybe I’m feeling imperious. And, first, I want you to walk me through the process for transmu-”
“Chrysopoeia,” Leon quickly and automatically corrected.
“I am not using that word. It’s weird. And you know what I mean,” Rosalie protested.
“Okay, fine. You want me to walk you through the process. Even though I showed you last night?”
“Yes. Please. I was maybe a little bit drunk and I’d like to take notes this time. So, you show me once more, and then I spill everything I found. Deal?”
“Of course. We’re in this together, Rosie. I have no intention of hiding anything from you,” Leon said with a brief sad smile. His eyes held an ounce or two of hurt - something in the way his teeth didn’t show, and she almost regretted keeping her cards so close to her chest. He got up and walked over to the glass cabinets. Rosalie followed.
Upon closer inspection, she could see that the assembly of ingredients was far more than decorative. Rosalie shuddered to think of what that kind of volume and variety of reagents had cost Leon. Then again, with a little gold-making factory in the basement, she supposed he had hardly felt the expense.
Rosalie saw approximately 12 different kinds of metals in ore, shaving, marble, and ingot form. There were jars of moss in every shade from hickory to emerald to chartreuse. Insects- too many to count. Flowers and herbs occupied at least two entire rows across five cases. Water was stocked in an almost endless variety of viscosities and colors. The last array to catch her eye was the multitude of nearly identical containers of - if not for anal-retentive labeling and a thorough understanding of alchemical ingredients - what could only be identified by a layperson as the world’s most impressive collection of dust.
Rosalie watched Leon select the reagents they would need - this time, taking notes on her phone: a thin silver medallion similar in size to a nickel, a jar of zinc oxide half-empty, another of distilled water, and finally, a paste made from scarlet lily petals. The ingredients she only vaguely remembered. The application? Hardly at all.
With everything spread out on the lab table, and with intentional formality, Leon instructed her to set a burner beneath the crucible - low - and fill the bowl with the distilled water. Next in went a spoonful of the zinc oxide, followed by a generous dollop of the red paste. None of the reagents apparently needed to be measured. Rosalie almost quibbled with him over the slap-dash preparation, though she’d never known Leon to work a formula incorrectly.
But still, it nagged at her.
“These are terribly common ingredients. Why in the world didn’t our predecessors get it right if this was all they had to do?”
Leon stood close by her side, watching her stir the mixture with a spoon carved from bone. He adjusted the heat on the burner.
“First of all, it wasn’t all they had to do. Second of all, the biggest reason is probably because they were trying to turn lead into gold. You can’t do lead. It’s a post-transition metal.”
Rosalie looked at him sidelong. “A what now?”
“Ah. I should’ve told you to brush up on the periodic table. To be clear, this all came from Gladwell. Verbally. I can’t take hardly any credit on this piece. I’ve taken notes since, but anyway, only transition metals work for transmutation. Iron, nickel, copper, zinc, platinum, silver, gold, et cetera.”
“Yeah, et cetera,” Rosalie said, trying not to roll her eyes.
If Leon knew he was on thin ice mentioning Gladwell by name, he didn’t look it.
“What next? I remember you put the coin in, and out came gold,” she prompted.
“Mmm, you’re forgetting something,” Leon teased. Rosalie waited patiently, but he didn’t produce the answer. She hated it when he played professor.
“Really. Please just tell me, Leon.”
In her annoyance, Rosalie failed to realize how ironic the power play was.
“Come on. I dropped the coin in, and then what?”
“I don’t know! That’s why we’re doing this! I don’t remember.”
Leon sighed heavily, and Rosalie suspected that he exaggerated his frustration. If there was one thing that she could praise him for, it was his almost legendary patience.
“Alright. Calm down. Keep stirring, it’s not ready yet in any case. I’ll tell you a story.”
Leon shifted so that he was leaning back on the lab table with his palms, and more-or-less facing Rosalie as she stirred and eyed the mixture. She searched for a telltale change in viscosity, color, or scent.
“So this formula that we’re using was documented by Gladwell. Obviously. We could probably find a more archaic version of it in the old books we won, but this is how I came across it. When I was with him in India he gave me access to everything, and I found this particular formula one day. Of course, I asked him about it. I think you’ll agree that when it comes to transmutation, we’re in fairytale territory. So I asked him if this was real, if it really worked. He winked at me - he was kind of creepy - and said ‘Only if you make the work a promise.’
“I was astonishingly high on painkillers, so I didn’t question him further. It sounded like benign advice: make the work a promise. Okay, so commit to it. Carry through with your intentions. Sure. Sort of like - if you want it bad enough, if you work hard enough, you’ll get the desired result, right?
“So I remembered what he said. I came back home…”
Leon trailed off, and Rosalie flicked her gaze up to consider his expression. She caught the flash of pain that swept over his face. Up until that moment, she was absorbing the monologue with a mixture of fascination and horror. They’d never explored the wasteland of this particular conversational topic before. The original bombshell, dropped upon his return from Gladwell, had left the landscape too toxic for Rosalie to venture into.
“I came back home,” Leon picked back up, having found some resolve. “I…lost you. And all I had was the mystery of these old formulae and books. I dove in and it still took me almost eight months of trial and error to figure out what Gladwell had meant. Rosie, is it ready?”
That was a test. Rosalie looked down at the mixture and saw that it hadn’t taken on any of the scarlet from the paste. But it did shimmer like a moonstone.
“If opalescence is the indicator for a reaction, then yeah. It’s ready.”
“Drop the coin in. Make it a promise.”
Rosalie paused. “A promise…to who?”
“The coin,” Leon said, his enjoyment rendering a cheeky grin. There really was no metaphor or double meaning here. He was being completely serious and having a little too much fun with it. Rosalie pushed for a little more help.
“Make a promise. To it. Uh, any pointers here?”
“Not really. Like I said, it was only about four months ago when I realized that this was the key part. I’ve only done this myself maybe three times? I got wrapped up in the research, which, as you know, didn’t go very well for me. That’s one of the reasons I couldn’t do this without you.”
Rosalie logged that confession for later examination and turned her attention back to the crucible.
“Right. Okay, I remember you mumbled something last night when you put the coin in. A promise, then?” Rosalie picked up the coin and put the edge of it into the milky liquid to minimize any splash before dropping it in fully. It disappeared from view, but she heard the gentle clink as it hit the bottom of the bowl. “I promise to water the jade plant when I get home tonight.”
There was no puff of smoke. No clarion note ringing out. No change in the air pressure around them.
Rosalie looked up at Leon again. He was still smiling as he killed the burner on the crucible.
“Perfect. Pull it out now.”
She did, with the help of small silver-plated tongs. While she let the opalescent liquid drip off, Leon grabbed a small towel from the table and held it out over the crucible. She dropped the damp metal coin into the cloth. He polished it.
Gold.
“Have you tested the ones you’ve already done? Like, at a coin shop?”
“Sure have,” Leon confirmed. He held the coin up to the light, admiring it as one does when they don’t see the monetary value of an item, only the art of it. Rosalie held out a hand.
“What happens if I break the promise?”
“That’s what we’re testing today,” he answered, passing the coin back to her.
“Four months since you could make magic, and this is the first time you’re shaking things up?”
Leon blinked innocently at her.
“Rosie, are you telling me that you’d consciously sabotage a formula just to see what happens, without a buddy system or precautions?”
“Do you think it would explode? Or melt?”
What’s the absolute worst that could happen? Rosalie thought to herself, not daring to say it aloud and tempt fate. She held the coin up in front of her, trying to look at it the same way that Leon had. It was pretty. She’d always preferred gold to silver. But her enjoyment of the metal’s evolution was hampered by an acute feeling of loss. She had given a promise over to the alchemical process. It shouldn’t feel like something had actually been taken from her, and yet, it did. Rosalie had the insistent feeling that something she’d forgotten was hers had been stolen, and now it was being dangled in front of her.
“I have a theory, but I didn’t want to test it alone,” Leon said, breaking her from the reverie.
Curiosity got the better of Rosalie.
“What promises did you make to get those gold marbles? And what promise did you make last night?”
“Honestly, the first promises I made didn’t work. Which I have another theory about. But, for the marbles I promised to make calls to my brother, and my parents. Last night I promised to pay the internet bill.”
“I don’t know why I expected that to be more exciting. Hey, are you okay?”
A funny look crossed Leon’s face. His eyes tracked back and forth as if watching trees pass outside of a fast moving car, and he slumped, leaning heavily on the lab table. Rosalie moved to steady him, but he lifted one hand to wave her off.
“Vertigo. It’ll pass,” he said. With what looked like considerable effort, he refocused on her and quickly changed the subject.
“Hey, how about dinner?” Leon pulled his phone from a back pocket. “Takeout. My treat.”
Rosalie felt a little dizzy herself from the conversational whiplash, but the mention of food brought her quickly back to reality. She could drop her guard just this once for some comfort food and further discussion of those theories he’d referenced. Rosalie allowed herself to feel a spark of hope, that this working arrangement would be alright, until the phone fell from Leon’s hand and he went to his knees.
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