What Blooms in the Dark

by Ryan Muree

  “Oh.”

  “Not one was close—”

  “Oh.” Aulos tucked her chin in and made a face somewhere between pity and disappointment.

  Shenna dashed across the street, Aulos in tow. “He was furious—”

  “Uh oh.”

  “And then he said—”

  “He said?”

  “He’d been paying attention to me for three years and rattled off my flaws and strengths. He paid me a really nice compliment, actually. Even the flaw wasn’t terrible.”

  Aulos’s silence went from exasperation to full-on squealing. “This is great!”

  “No, I looked stupid. I couldn’t do one salve correctly—”

  “That doesn’t matter!”

  “It matters a lot.” Shenna pressed her palm to her chest. “To me.”

  “Okay, but it doesn’t matter that you failed this time. He’s been paying attention to you for three years, Shenna. Shenna!” Aulos pulled her to a stop and faced her. “He likes you.”

  Shenna shook her head and tugged her back into motion. “Yeah, we’re friends, we work together—”

  “No.” Aulos shook her head slowly. “He likes you likes you.”

  They passed the bakery and the glassmaker. Everyone was packing up early for the festivities.

  “No, he’s helping me pass the salve practical. I mean, he’s nice and all, but—”

  “No, no… no. My sweet, blind, hopeless Shenna,” Aulos cooed. “He likes you. He was willing to help you when no one else volunteered—”

  “You forced him—”

  “I did no such thing. I merely suggested it was a good idea, and he took up the offer. Willingly. By doing so, he’s wanting to spend every day with you for a few hours at a time. Seeing you in class is not enough.”

  Shenna groaned and led her around the corner toward a bridge over the teal river. “You’re ridiculous.”

  “Best of all,” she whispered with a smile, “he’s admitted to having a crush on you for three long years—”

  “No. That’s not what he said.”

  “He’s been helping you in class, right?”

  “Sometimes. Sometimes he teases me.”

  “Ugh! Shenna.” Aulos giggled. “He likes you. He knows you. He cares about you.”

  Shenna wasn’t sure about that, but the whole thing was weird. If she was honest with herself, how well he knew her threw her off, too. He’d been paying attention, listening to her answer questions in class, shaking his head at her mistakes with a smile… No. No way. “Occhemists don’t have time—”

  “No, that’s your excuse.” Aulos released Shenna’s arm and twirled ahead of her. “Are you coming to the fish fry? He might show up. You could dance.”

  Shenna shook her head. “Not tonight. I have some catching up to do in the conservatory since I was gone two hours. And besides, he shouldn’t like me. You think it’s just me that has to study and work all the time. It’s just the way things are with us. You know this. He shouldn’t have time to like me or whatever this is either.”

  “Shen—”

  “No, I still have to learn salves. I still have a practical coming up and an exam to pass for level two. That’s more important.”

  Aulos mocked her, opening and closing her mouth like a black-bellied fish. “All I’m saying is don’t shut yourself off from the opportunity to experience something great. You could be a power couple. The best occhemists in Eien or something.”

  “Now, that’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.”

  When Aulos giggled, her halo-wrapped braid of hair shifted. “Maybe. Still, you could stand to be a little less textbook and loosen up. Shen, open up to him. Connect with him. He seems to get you, but you both need to understand where each of you is coming from. He’s a natural at salves for a reason. Just accept it, and if you relaxed, you might get better.”

  Shenna took a deep breath. She was right about one thing. He knew all these things about her, but she didn’t know much about him.

  “So?” Aulos waggled her eyebrows. “What’s the plan?”

  Maybe getting to know each other was better. Maybe she’d be able to understand how he approached salves, and she’d improve. That was the whole point.

  Shenna tilted her head back and sighed. “Okay, fine. I’ll try loosening up and getting to know him.”

  Aulos pumped her fist. “Yes! Thank you, Shenna. Your future self will thank me for this. Now, I’m off to dance with a gorgeous, blue-eyed bass singer who sits behind me in class, and you go get your nails dirty with boring plant stuff.”

  The plan changed, and even Shenna could accept that. She wasn’t “as rigid as a textbook.” Maybe it wasn’t entirely the worst thing ever to get to know Colter. Some part of her was a tiny bit curious about him. More so than the average person. Maybe she could afford to spend a little time in her day not getting her nails dirty.

  Chapter 6

  Deep breath—in and out. I can do this.

  She rounded the corner of the lab’s entry and collided with Chaak.

  His papers dropped from his hands. His eyeglasses fell from his nose. He let out the oddest yelp.

  “I’m so sorry, Mentor Chaak!” She knelt and helped gather the papers. “Here, I’m sorry. I’ll get it.”

  “No, that’s enough. It’s enough,” he grumbled. He yanked his work from her hands and crushed the papers against his chest. “Make sure you don’t waste our time.”

  “I still have thirteen days, sir. I’ll get it.” I hope.

  He huffed and stepped around her to leave.

  Ugh. Deep breath—in and out. I can do this.

  It was a rough start, but she had a new plan today—don’t be the worst and open up. Just a little.

  “You ready?” Colter was already seated at a lab counter. Lava bark, aspir tubers, and a few river lilies were spread neatly in front of him. “I figured we’d start from the top, just like yesterday, but with one exception.”

  She ducked out of her bag’s strap and took a seat on the stool across from him. The plants were ready. The vials and jars were clean. But there were no tools. No scalpel. No tweezers. Nothing.

  “How can I—?”

  “The point of salves is to save your life or someone else’s. They’re usually for healing, and you might find yourself in the field without all of your tools, right?”

  She nodded.

  “Well, if you’re overworking the materials, what if I just take the tools away from you? Leave you with just what you’re good at—your strengths. Maybe you’d get closer to a real salve.”

  She lifted an eyebrow. Tools would make the difference?

  He pointed at her. “You can pulverize materials for potions, but you can’t use the same technique for salves.”

  “Pulverized” seemed a bit harsh, but honestly, his idea wasn’t that crazy. In the field, she often had to crawl around for rare seeds and roots. Not being able to reach her scissors or tweezers meant she had experience using her fingernails and her palms when necessary. It wasn’t ideal, but it wasn’t far-fetched either. “Let’s try it.”

  He grinned. “Just what I wanted to hear. Except, let’s shrink the goal. Let’s just get the ingredients right today.”

  “I only have two weeks.”

  “Give me a chance.” He paused and shook his head the tiniest degree. “I mean, I think you’ll pick it up once you try.”

  She had nothing to lose. Her way certainly didn’t work. She opened the formula journal to the correct page.

  He took the little book and tossed it behind him. “And none of that. You know the ingredients. I want you to figure it out.”

  “Okay.” I can do this.

  She started with the lava bark. With her fingers and nails, she peeled the exterior. That part was easier than she thought. She could actually admire the pale-orange veins pulsing in the phloem. She picked them out like strings of hair, gathered them in a pile, and then mashed them together in her palm. Without the pestle, sh
e had to work it from different angles in her hands and fingers, cupping it in her palms and reconstituting the fluids into a pulp.

  The whole process was painstakingly slow. Much slower than when she had used her tools. But if she had her tools, it would have already been a soupy failure.

  When it appeared as mashed as she could manage, the ball no longer pulsed, but radiated a steady orange glow with heat. She placed it on the counter.

  Colter smiled and set his mortar on the table beside it. With two fingers he plucked out an identical wad of orange mash and put it right next to hers. “See?”

  She half-laughed. “I did it. I did it right?”

  “It’s perfect. I knew you could do it. One ingredient down. Let’s see if you can do the next one.”

  “Hah!” She could breathe. She wasn’t pathetic. This wasn’t impossible. Her cheeks ached from smiling so hard.

  Then again, his smile didn’t help the heady feeling either. His trust and belief that she could do it, and his confidence, encouraged her to try Aulos’s suggestion. Even though she was making progress without it, it couldn’t hurt. It was research. An attempt to improve even faster.

  Plus, she couldn’t fight the fact she wanted to know more about him. “What’s your favorite plant?”

  “Hm.” He rubbed the bottom of his chin with the back of his hand. “The inares.”

  The inares? So he liked rare things. Hard-to-get things. Beautiful things. “That’s your favorite?”

  “Yeah, it’s incredibly gorgeous, everyone knows that. Three long, symmetrical, white petals. Little pearls for seeds. But I love that it grows where it shouldn’t.”

  She scoffed as she picked up the aspir tuber next. “You love that it grows in the back of dark, moldy caves?”

  He smiled and nodded. “Yeah, it blooms in the dark, where it should be impossible to thrive. I admire that.”

  His words. His tone. The cadence in his speech. His long stare boring into her.

  Suddenly the heat coming from her face had her checking if she had accidentally rubbed lava bark on herself.

  “You know, they thought for centuries it was a key component to the Elixir.” He crossed his arms and watched her pick the eyes of the aspir tuber with her fingers.

  “Really?”

  “Yup.” He clicked his tongue. “Careful. Just the eyes, not the skin.”

  She nodded and adjusted the depth at which she carved into the plant. “The inares doesn’t even come close to life-saving, though. It’s used for indigestion.”

  He snickered. “I know.”

  The rest of her tutoring session went just as smoothly. The conversation kept flowing, from laughing about first meeting their mentors and inevitably disappointing them, to how they preferred to eat their fish or fruit. And she got the last two ingredients correct for a healing salve.

  Finally, she was getting somewhere.

  She smiled at three perfectly prepared materials.

  “Tomorrow, you make a real salve.” He smiled so wide that his cheeks lifted his glasses.

  The next day came and went, as well as the next several.

  Each day, she got more ingredients correct and created actual salves. Usable solutions, not just burnt crust in a vial. And she learned more about Colter than she’d ever thought possible. That he loved learning and studying, especially the classes he assisted in—her classes. They reminisced about old practicals and silly occhemy mentors.

  “Remember the one who never wore shoes?” he blurted.

  “Yes!” She tapped the table. “What was his name?”

  He shook his head. “It started with an O or a P… I think—”

  “Pretch!” She pointed at him.

  “Yes! Pretch!” He chuckled. “Man, it’ll be nearly two years since the Necrophaise killed him.”

  She blinked. Colter kept track? No one kept track.

  Unless they were close to one another.

  “You were close to him?” she asked.

  He shook his head. “No, but I remember it. I remember all of them.”

  All of them? He remembered every Eien he’d ever met who died from the Necrophaise? But that was… all of them. Everyone died from the Necrophaise. It was touching to think he remembered each one who passed, but it must have weighed heavily on him to do that.

  She bit her lip and placed her most recent salve on the counter. A bright, brilliant rose-orange salve for burns. “Two years. It feels like eons ago.”

  He nodded. They both grew silent.

  It always came down to the one illness—the Necrophaise—that no occhemist had yet solved. The room darkened with the somber reminder that all things ended, all great and wonderful things eventually ceased to exist, and this would, too.

  Only four days left. Four days until her last-chance practical with Chaak. Colter’s tutoring sessions would be over.

  He cleared his throat. “What’s your dream?”

  She glanced up from the stem she played with in her hands. “My dream?” She chuckled.

  “Yeah? Your goal. What do you want to accomplish before… you know, before the disease takes you?”

  She inhaled and blinked a few times. Her stomach turned over. She didn’t want to consider that. She never did.

  “I’ll tell you mine, if you tell me yours?” he teased. His index fingernail scratched at the grain of wood.

  She scoffed. She had said it a million times. To herself. To Zoi. To Aulos. “To rank up faster than anyone else.”

  “Why?” He stood and gathered up the tools and jars he had slowly allowed her to use again. “What does it matter?”

  She followed his lead and got the cleaning solution and rags for the counter. “Because it’s something just for me. Like setting a personal record. And… I don’t have forever to do it either. I don’t want to take so long that I run out of time.”

  He hesitated before agreeing. “You’re right.”

  She squirted solution on the lacquered surface and rubbed it in deep with the rag. “Your turn. What’s your dream?”

  “To save those I care about.” He placed the jars and vials into the wash basin and turned on the water.

  She scoffed. “We want the same things. Everyone wants that.”

  He shrugged as he worked the glass-cleaning brush into the vials. “The Last Elixir is all I care about, and it’s because I care about everyone. I don’t want anyone else to die if they don’t have to. I want to be the one to find the Elixir.”

  She respected that. It was a race to save her people, and it was a race they failed over and over again for thousands of years. It was the reason they studied and worked so hard, and the reason the Occhemist Circle existed—to send the best candidates to Revellis to find it.

  But when she looked up from her freshly cleaned countertop, he was standing over her.

  “Everyone is important to me—”

  “Sure, that’s what every Eien would say.”

  “Especially you.” Unwavering, he gazed down at her for so long she wasn’t sure he’d blinked.

  The lab room was suddenly sweltering. Her hands wanted—needed—to do something. Put them on the counter? To her sides? She rubbed the back of her neck and tugged at her vest. Had Aulos been right? Was this his way of saying that he liked her like that? She couldn’t ignore him, but she couldn’t handle the intensity of him either. Maybe she couldn’t handle him liking her that way.

  But he couldn’t mean what he said. Romantic relationships were a waste of time for occhemists. Eiens loved all Eiens. It was their way. She was misunderstanding him, and Aulos had to be wrong.

  And yet he was still staring at her. He smelled like herbs and fresh water. The corners of his mouth gently lifted into a sweet smile with lips that would probably, maybe, possibly feel soft against hers.

  What was she thinking?

  Her heart wouldn’t stop pounding. He wasn’t saying anything, and she couldn’t find the right words either. It had all gone awkward too quickly.

  �
��Shen, you ready?” Aulos bounded into the classroom, but stopped at the entry. “Whoa, everything okay?”

  Aulos’s distraction was enough to break the moment. Shenna blinked and regained control of her heart—maybe.

  Colter turned away, walked back to the basin, and cranked the well for more water.

  Aulos lifted her eyebrows and mouthed, “You okay?” to Shenna.

  Shenna nodded and cleared her throat. Her hands couldn’t find her bag fast enough. “Thanks, Colter. I’ll see you tomorrow?”

  He stopped the water and turned toward her. “Wait, Shenna. I wanted to know if you’d like to skip tutoring tomorrow.”

  Shenna stopped four steps from the door. Had Aulos not been standing in it, she’d have made it out before he spoke. “Oh?”

  “You’ve made progress. You can make salves now. We still have a few days for you to perfect it. By then you’ll be as good as me.”

  She nodded and adjusted the strap of her bag on her shoulder. Her nervousness must have been too obvious. She must have looked stupid. He could probably tell. “Hah, no way.”

  “Mentor Chaak gave me tomorrow evening off, and I was wondering if you’d meet me for dinner?” He tossed a rag back and forth in his hands three times, opened it, folded it, and repeated the whole thing over again.

  Dinner. As in dinner dinner? No, just dinner.

  “Um, sure, yeah, I mean, sure.” She scoffed. Maybe that sounded rude. “I’d love to.” Too desperate? “I think it’d be fun.” Shut up, Shenna.

  Aulos squeezed her hand a little. Apparently she agreed.

  “Where? When? I mean, I know tomorrow, but where?” Her mouth must have decided her brain was wrong and spoke on its own.

  Colter adjusted his glasses. “Actually, I was thinking we’d meet at the Sun Terrace by the Stonetree Arch when our tutoring time would be about over. Just before sunset?”

  She nodded.

  He nodded.

  “Yeah, I mean, that sounds good.” Not excited enough. “It sounds great, I mean.” Too much. It was all too much.

  “Great, yeah, see you then.” He flapped his hand in a short, half-hearted excuse for a wave.

  “Great! See you later.” Aulos yanked her by the arm into the stairwell and down to the streets of City Center.