Chapter 7 - Flowers of Antimony
It was three in the morning. Midnight had come and gone without the gold coin changing in any discernible way. Only one milestone remained.
Need to catch up? Chapter 1 - Chapter 2 - Chapter 3 - Chapter 4 - Chapter 5 - Chapter 6
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.
It was three in the morning. Midnight had come and gone without the gold coin changing in any discernible way. Only one milestone remained.
Rosalie found the relative silence peaceful. There were no nocturnal insects to sing in a noisy chorus or bang up against the porch light above them. It was both too late and too early for birds. And in Holyoke, only the rare and faint sound of a semi driving through town gave proof that they were anywhere near civilization. Thirty-two minutes of comfortable quiet had passed since the last time Rosalie and Leon had spoken.
The safety glasses had long been abandoned on a small and dirty glass-topped patio side table just out of reach of the porch swing. Next to that sat the fire extinguisher. They were each wrapped in their quilts, though good jackets from the hall closet would’ve served fine. Rosalie kept her hands busy fiddling with the empty coffee mug, Leon with his phone, checking a weather website for sunrise times.
“Leon?”
“Hm?” he replied, distracted.
“I just realized something.”
“Yeah?”
“You could’ve gotten someone from the network to go over those translations with you. The Alder twins, cheerfully spooky as they might be, are very smart. They would’ve jumped at the chance to do this work,” Rosalie speculated.
“Maybe. But I don’t like anyone in the network as much as I like you, Rosie.”
His saccharine response earned a grunt from her, and she ran down her mental list. After the kiss, Rosalie couldn’t help but be suspicious of his motives for choosing her for this adventure. As the night wound on, she’d been calmly compiling all the other routes Leon might’ve taken.
“Alright, but what about Gladwell? Why not ask him what happens if you break the promise on a transmutation? Why not just ask him about what other impossible things can be done with alchemy? He already knew about transmutation. Surely going to him would’ve been faster and easier?”
Leon gently pushed against the deck, putting the swing back into motion.
“Gladwell is gone,” Leon sighed. He closed his eyes and leaned his head back on the generous cushion of quilting bunched up behind him. “Poof. I tried to get in touch with him last summer. No one’s heard from him. No one’s seen him.”
“Ominous,” Rosalie mumbled. “So are those the real reasons that you dragged me into this? Gladwell’s gone, and you’d rather work with your estranged wife than the weirdos in the network?”
“Rosie. Do you know how some people can pick up an instrument, look at the sheet music, and after a little dedicated study they can play the song? But if they want to play a new song, they need new music?”
“Yeah,” she acknowledged.
“And then there are some people who can pick up an instrument, learn it, and then the sky’s the limit? They can play anything once they get those techniques in their bones. They can write the music, improvise, play-by-ear.”
Rosalie bent over to put her empty coffee mug on the porch and then drew the quilt tighter around her shoulders. It took some fussing with the ends, but she was also able to cover her legs. She glanced at Leon. He was still leaning his head back, but his eyes were open again.
“I need the sheet music. You can play whatever you want. You understand the patterns. Somehow. This is largely uncharted territory and simply put, I can only walk on an existing path. But you have a sense of direction. You can read the land. Do you get it?”
“You’re mixing metaphors, Leo. But yes. I get it.”
He laughed. “And you’re not that estranged. We had dinner together, we’ve talked more in the past day than we have in an entire year. And you just called me ‘Leo.’”
“Shut up.”
“Sure, but before I do, sunrise is 6:15. We have a few hours yet.”
Dutifully, Leon stopped talking. After a few moments, he began to hum a song she didn’t recognize. The rocking of the porch swing, the cold, ephemeral night air, the warm cocoon of the quilt, and the gentle melody all combined to pull Rosalie into a sudden and dreamless sleep. Exhaustion of every shade, emotional to physical, also played its part. When Leon gently shook her awake, she was startled to learn that dawn was only a few minutes away.
“Err, sorry. Thanks. Ugh. Aren’t you tired?” Rosalie asked, burying a yawn in her quilt cocoon, and stretching her legs out, causing the swing to rock.
“Mostly excited. This has to be it,” Leon breathed.
The safety glasses sat forgotten on the side table while Leon set his phone to record again, shedding his quilt and leaning forward. Rosalie joined him. Sunlight was bleeding up into the sky beyond their backyard, lighting the world up in a gradient of pink and tangerine.
A minute passed but felt like ten. With the fencing, they couldn’t see the moment when the sun broke over the horizon, but they both felt it. Accompanying the dawn was a feeling that neither of them could immediately place. They questioned each other at the same time.
“Do you feel that?”
“Do you hear that?”
“It’s like a dog-whistle,” Leon said, getting up from the bench so fast that Rosalie struggled against the back-swing before she could chase after him.
He was halfway to the setup when it happened- the glass dish filled with a golden smoke. Rosalie wanted to warn him, but Leon moved too fast and wasn’t paying attention to her anyway. He pressed the back of his hand to the glass, checking for heat. Finding the dish cool, he flipped it over and to the side, waving a hand over the coin to dissipate the fumes. By then Rosalie had joined him. The sound and feeling of an uncomfortably high-pitched noise was rapidly fading. They watched in stunned silence as the coin rippled like a heat mirage.
The golden surface flaked up like gilding beneath a power sander, and the specks dissolved rapidly into a golden mist. There was no scent, despite the copious billowing of what looked like smoke. As soon as it looked as if the last fleck of gold had evaporated, the coin would ripple again, and the gold within it would rise to the surface only to scale, then disperse.
Rosalie tried to slap Leon’s hand away before he could touch it, but once again, he moved without hesitation and she was too slow.
“I swear to God, for a man who can’t risk a trip to the hospital you’re playing it awfully fast and loose with common sense and safety,” Rosalie seethed, watching him pick up the coin and hold it in his palm.
“It’s alright. There’s no heat. It doesn’t hurt. It feels kind of fizzy, though.”
The reaction continued for another 30 seconds before it appeared that the last of the gold had turned to silver, and in Leon’s hand was, to all appearances, the coin as it had been before the transmutation.
Speechless, they stared at it for a few moments before looking at one another. Rosalie broke the silence.
“Now what?”
Leon rubbed the coin between his fingers before offering it to Rosalie, who gingerly accepted the token.
“Now,” Leon sighed. “You go upstairs and get some sleep. I have a few orders to fill for today. It is Friday, right? Right. It’s Friday. After that, I’ll crash on the couch, and we can pick back up whenever it is we’ve had enough rest.”
The sleep Rosalie could agree with. But more work? Later that day? Something nagged at her, as exhausted as she was.
“What’s the rush?”
“There’s no rush,” Leon protested.
“Then let’s take the day off.” Rosalie made the suggestion knowing full-well the response it would get. Leon’s expression twisted to show distaste and annoyance as glaringly obvious as the rising sun.
“No,” he complained. “Fine. Alright, there is a rush. The sooner we unpack these secrets, the sooner we have a practical application for them, the sooner it’s done! Alchemy saved, the world changed, we-” Leon took a breath and looked as though he was about to say more, but came up short. Rosalie guessed that it had to do with the scowl she couldn’t help but make. She kept thinking back to how nice it’d been to sit together in the dark. To exist together, wrapped up with innocent curiosity. How quickly he was ruining it.
She took a deep breath. Rosalie didn’t want to be angry. Not really. The sun was rising. They were on the leading edge of what she could only think of as magic. And he’d apologized earlier. For the first time.
“Okay, we can have this fight later. Or maybe not at all. It’s been an incredibly long day and perhaps neither of us is being reasonable, or thinking clearly. Let’s…put a pin in it, and talk after we’ve both had some sleep. Deal?”
“Deal,” Leon agreed. He was smiling gently now, the earlier annoyance completely erased. Sometimes she wondered how he could shift gears so quickly, so easily.
Still turning that thought over, Rosalie spun away to collect the discarded quilts left on the porch, and head inside. They’d been gifts from her mother. The hem of one was beautifully embroidered with small, yellow roses. Wrapped up as Rosalie was in fatigue, and a myopic study of the quilts she’d left behind when she abandoned Leon, she almost didn’t hear him calling after her.
“Rosie?” He asked, quietly. It was the tone in his voice that caught her attention, stopping her as she was about to disappear inside.
She turned to look at him.
Rosalie knew in that moment that every acquiescence - the hand on his back, the dinner, the kiss - they’d all been a testing of the waters. And Leon was ready to wade deeper.
“If I decide to join you upstairs, rather than take the couch, would you object? I mean, would I be in any danger?” Leon asked.
She answered his question with another.
“Do you stock arsenic in the lab downstairs?”
“Yes?” he replied. Not without hesitation.
“Then I make no promises.”
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