Chapter 6 - Flowers of Antimony
A tiny little voice in her head started babbling like a lunatic about promises and cowards and abandonment.
Need to catch up? Chapter 1 - Chapter 2 - Chapter 3 - Chapter 4 - Chapter 5
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.
Rosalie pulled two plates down from the cupboard while Leon stood hunched over at the kitchen island.
“Thanks, Rosie.”
He sounded miserable, but they’d gotten up the basement stairs without further event, and he’d even insisted on still making the call to Great Garden.
“No problem. Thank you for ordering us some dinner. Where did you move the glasses?”
“Other side of the stove vent…holy shit,” Leon whispered, grabbing the edge of the counter as if the floor beneath him was sublimating.
“Leon,” Rosalie hissed, dashing around the island to get an arm around him. “Sit down, damn it. You told me you were feeling better! Is this normal?”
“Just a minute or two,” he whispered again. His voice sounded even weaker than before.
“Are you going to pass out? Maybe we should get you to the floor. I have serious doubts that I can catch you.”
“No, it’s fine. Tell me when the room stops spinning, would you?”
Leon sat, crossed his arms on the counter and put his head down. Rosalie kept a hand on his back. Whether it was to comfort him, or herself, she couldn’t be sure. It was the first time she’d consciously touched him in months. Under the vertigo, the room may have been whirling around for Leon, but for her it was shaking.
“And you’re not taking anything for this?” she asked, knowing that there were formulae out there, and if anyone had them, it was Leon.
“If this was an infection, I would. But it’s a matter of missing parts,” Leon mumbled. Several eternal minutes passed before he lifted his head. “I feel a little better.”
But I don’t, Rosalie thought. A new feeling had come over her. Heavy, slimy guilt. She was laid low by the realization that this wasn’t the first time his body had betrayed him. Had he been scared the first time it happened? And the one person who could’ve, should’ve been there? Well, that was her. A tiny little voice in her head started babbling like a lunatic about promises and cowards and abandonment. Rosalie fought it the only way she knew how: brute force.
“If you go unconscious, I’m taking you to the hospital. What if something is horribly wrong?”
“No, Rosie, that’s off the table. Don’t you dare,” Leon cautioned. “After what I put you through, the last thing I want to do is void our generous life insurance policy by prompting questions like: ‘Hey, what happened to your kidney? Oh, that’s interesting, you’ve got one lung. How’d you manage that? Why is your ear so screwed up? When did you lose a-’”
“Okay okay. Stop. God. That’s almost sweet, Leon,” Rosalie said with a bitter chuckle.
“You’re welcome. I mean it, you know.”
“Mean what?”
“I’m sorry.”
“You didn’t say you were sorry.”
“I’m saying it now. I’m sorry, Rosie.”
A strange and trembling silence enveloped the room. Rosalie stepped backward, putting some distance between them, and Leon looked at her with an intensity that carried all of the sincerity of his apology. Under normal circumstances, Rosalie would’ve snapped, or scoffed, but the urge was oddly absent. Instead, she felt nervous. And not knowing how to deal with feeling something other than animosity toward him, she changed the subject.
“Yeah. You said you had theories? About what might happen when I break the promise I gave to the coin. And about why your first attempts didn’t work. Tell me those, and then we can talk about what I found over dinner.”
Rosalie thought she caught some disappointment in the way he nodded curtly, but that couldn’t be helped. Not yet. She moved back to the other side of the island and uselessly rearranged the plates and drinking glasses in front of them.
“The theory,” Leon cleared his throat. “So I started off making promises like ‘I’ll go and sit down in the next ten minutes.’ Or ‘I’ll clap my hands three times before midnight.’ None of those worked. They had no weight. That means there’s something in the strength of the promise that triggers the transmutation.”
“I suppose that makes sense,” Rosalie said, squinting one eye critically. “I mean, in the world of miracles. Which is clearly where we are. A few chemicals and a promise should not gold make, we agree on that at least, right?”
Leon laughed, leaning on the counter and idly rotating the plate in front of him.
“Right. It makes as much sense as it can, given that we don’t understand the science behind it.”
“You really think there’s science under this?”
“Maybe. If we test it. Which brings me to my theory on breaking the promise. I suspect if you don’t fulfill the promise, then that’s like isolating a reagent and removing it. The promise was an important element. It can’t possibly be the same if that’s taken away. I suspect that it will turn back into silver. You’ve got the coin?”
Rosalie nodded, pulling it out from the breast pocket of her flannel shirt. She placed it on the marble counter between them.
“Okay. Uh. Argh,” Leon growled in frustration, looking around the kitchen for inspiration, or something else that clearly wasn’t there.
“Can I help you?” Rosalie chuckled.
“Yes. We need a way to make this safe. It would be nice if it turns back to silver without an explosion, but who knows! We need to cover the coin but still see i-”
“Pyrex,” Rosalie interrupted, bending to retrieve a baking dish from a low cabinet. “And I can get us goggles from your lab. I’m assuming you have goggles. We’ll keep a fire extinguisher- here it is,” she mumbled, pulling it from beneath the sink. “And when it comes time to test, we’ll do it from a safe distance. Also, we should probably do it outside.”
“Good thi-” Leon started but was interrupted again. This time by the doorbell. Rosalie watched him carefully as he got up, went to the door to pay the delivery person and retrieve their takeout. He moved confidently, without a hint of the earlier imbalances.
With the cardboard cartons and plastic containers spread out between them, Rosalie stood and ate behind the counter, dismissing Leon’s invitation for her to sit on the side with the stools, next to him. They rushed through dinner, cementing the details of the experiment. Rosalie shared with him that a fifth element was referenced in two other recipes, but that was it. Over the breaking open of fortune cookies, they agreed to tackle those mysteries once they’d learned more about transmutation. In their excitement to get some answers they left all of the food out; to be dealt with afterward.
Fifteen minutes later, and after several trips up and down from the basement, they had everything arranged in the backyard. It was a plainly fenced in and much-neglected affair. On top of a metal filigree patio table, safely relocated to the center of the backyard, they placed a stone tile. On top of that, the coin. Over the coin, the baking dish. The April weather was especially capricious that year, and they were as likely to get mild rain as snow flurries. Not knowing how long they would need to be outside, they dragged out two quilts from the linen closet and each wrapped themselves up. Rosalie looked down at Leon already seated on one side of the backyard porch swing, with his safety glasses pushed up to his forehead and phone out in front of his face, ready to record.
They were approximately 20 feet away from the setup when Rosalie sat down next to Leon, and initiated the first attempt to break the promise.
Leon spoke into his phone, which had survived the earlier fall with only a small scratch on the screen. “Time is 6:03 PM. We should probably turn the porch lights on. If this doesn’t do it we could be out here for a while.”
It suddenly occurred to Rosalie that they could be doing this from inside the house and watching out a window. It would be safer and certainly warmer.
But this is more fun, a little voice insisted.
“Ready, Rosie?”
“Ready. Alright. I have decided, as of this moment, that I’m not going to water the jade plant when I get home.”
They stared at the setup. Rosalie even braced for an incident, halting the gentle swing of the bench with the tension in her legs. But nothing happened.
Three seconds passed.
“Is it safe to go double check?” Rosalie asked, but Leon was already on his feet and shuffling over to the array, phone out. He reached the improvised glass blast shield and called back to her. “Nothing changed. Intention is out.”
Rosalie bit her lower lip and tapped her toes on the wooden deck. She waited for Leon to retake his seat before speaking.
“It’s because the potential is still there.”
“Hmm,” Leon assented. “Right. The opportunity for you to still water the plant before ‘tonight’ is over is still available. Which means…we can probably assume…when the opportunity passes is when the promise is truly broken. That gives us-”
“Full dark. Midnight. And dawn. All potential triggers for the broken promise,” Rosalie interrupted.
“We could dig out the camcorder, set it up, and go to sleep. If, you know, in the next few minutes we hit dark and nothing happens,” he suggested. The last of the spring twilight was draining out of the sky. Rosalie took a deep breath of the cold air, which would’ve been unpleasant if it didn’t smell so fresh and crisp with that day’s drizzle permeating everything. She thought about his suggestion for a few moments while gazing at the pink and white tulips that were springing up close to the porch. She had planted tulips in the past, but not these particular flowers. And while Leon didn’t care much for tulips or gardening in general, Rosalie realized that he must’ve planted them anyway after she left.
That settled it. Rosalie might’ve taken Leon’s suggestion, but a pang of guilt was trying to take up permanent residence in her chest. She decided to try to balance the scales.
“I’ll stay here. I’m not really comfortable leaving you alone after this afternoon, and if something goes terribly wrong when the promise officially breaks, you might need my help.”
Leon looked back to the patio table and nodded slowly. Rosalie couldn’t identify what kind of emotion supported his agreement. And that was just as well. Had she been able to catch a hint at what came next, she wouldn’t have extended the kindness. In one swift motion, Leon turned back to her, kissed the corner of her mouth, lingered for half a second, stood, and went to the patio door.
“Thank you, Rosie. I’ll get some coffee on and we’ll record each potential trigger as it passes. Do you want me to get you anything?”
Rosalie blinked at him. “Do you have any whiskey for that coffee?”
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