Coralline had been about to deliver an affirmative reply to The Lone Linctus, when the mailman had delivered a scroll bearing the lime-green seal of The Irregular Remedy. Coralline had wrenched it from his hands, torn the seal, and unrolled the scroll to discover an interview date and time scrawled at the center of the parchment.
Rhodomela had interviewed her in a bare, shabby, dimly lit office at the back of the clinic. She had asked Coralline the standard questions, but her mouth had tightened ominously at the standard answers. Coralline had felt certain she would be rejected from the job, but a letter had arrived the next afternoon, stating:
Role: Apprentice apothecary
Wages: Fifty carapace per week
Condition of Employment: The employee will be subject to a probationary term of six months. If she passes the probation, she will remain an employee of The Irregular Remedy and will earn a hundred carapace a week. If she fails the probation, she will be asked to leave The Irregular Remedy promptly, with or without reference.
Coralline had yelped. Her mother had emerged from the kitchen at the sound and snatched the letter from her hands. Her amber-gold eyes had swept over the words quickly. “Who does the Bitter Spinster think she is,” Abalone had scoffed, “to make you such a low offer, half that of other clinics, and to subject you to a probationary term? How ridiculous!”
In her only act of defiance against her mother, Coralline had accepted the offer. Even had the wages been half again what they were, she would have accepted it—for it was Rhodomela who had instilled in her the meaning of healing, the day of her father’s haccident.
Coralline and Abalone had brought Trochid to The Irregular Remedy and lain him down on the stretcher next to the door. Rhodomela had injected his arm with anesthetic just above his vanished wrist, and she’d bound a tourniquet of spiny straggle below his elbow. Fresh blood had spurted out, and the pungent smell of it had invaded Coralline’s nostrils, making her waver dizzily. “Be useful!” Rhodomela had snapped. “Hold the tourniquet steady.” Nodding, Coralline had held the red strings of spiny straggle tight, but she had turned her head away from her father’s arm. She’d observed Rhodomela in an effort to distract herself from all the blood and to keep herself from fainting.
Rhodomela had combined smidgens of Clotter Blotter and Un-Infectant in a flask. Bubbles had spewed, then the blend had turned a still, leaden white, smooth as ice. With swift, meticulous fingers, Rhodomela had plastered the paste to Trochid’s stump, arresting the bleeding. In that moment, Coralline had understood why she’d always wanted to be a healer: so that she could save the lives of those she loved.
Now, as Coralline continued to look at Rhodomela from the corner of her eye, she contemplated committing her second act of defiance against her mother. She looked at the two scrolls she’d wedged into a corner of her counter, each tied with a golden ribbon—they were the invitations to her engagement party and wedding. She wanted to give one scroll to Rhodomela, though she was not supposed to. She was supposed to give the other scroll to Rosette Delesse—who worked as an associate apothecary at The Conventional Cure clinic next door—but she did not want to.
Coralline wanted to hand the invitation to Rhodomela nonchalantly, without fuss or ceremony, and she wondered how best to accomplish it. Her glance fell upon the tray on her counter, laden with implements—snippers, vials, labels, a mortar and pestle, scalpels, needles. Coralline always took the tray with her into the remedial garden outside the window. She would invite Rhodomela on her way out into the remedial garden, she decided, then she would invite Rosette once she was in the garden. She squeezed the two scrolls onto the side of her tray.
But if she was entering the remedial garden, she might as well snip some algae and refill one of her urns of medication, she figured. She turned to look at the unit of shelves that ran from floor to ceiling behind her counter. She examined the labels of her white-gray limestone urns: Rash Relief, Cough Cure, Swelling Softener, Bruise Abolisher, Gill Gush, Eyesight Enhancer, Headache Healer . . . She opened the Headache Healer urn; as she’d expected, only a spoonful of the gooey gray glob remained.
She’d prepared the medication at least half a dozen times and could probably recite it from memory, but she wanted to be extra certain; flicking her tailfin to rise toward her higher shelves, she ran her index finger over the spines of her medical manuals. Quick Concoctions for Quick Recovery. Medical Medleys. Heart: The Most Difficult Part. Secrets of the Central Nervous System. Extracting Medical Medleys, she flipped through the thousand-page textbook on her counter until she’d located her favorite recipe for resolving headaches. She scrutinized the short list of ingredients—yes, it was exactly as she remembered.
Gathering her tray, Coralline slipped out from behind her counter and hovered in front of Rhodomela’s.
“What is it?” Rhodomela asked, her serpent-like eyes flickering irritably.
“Nothing,” Coralline mumbled, losing her nerve. She darted out the window into the remedial garden.
The garden formed a crescent shape around half of The Irregular Remedy. Coralline found herself relaxing as she looked out over the dozens of algae. There were green algae, the most humble and uniform of the algae, the colors of their fronds varying from pale green to deep jade. Then there were brown algae, their strands taller than her, equipped with gas-filled bladders that floated the blades upward for easier photosynthesis. And there were red algae, Coralline’s favorite, the colors of their fronds varying widely from scarlet to maroon, pink to purple. Of the three families of algae, together numbering about ten thousand species, red formed the majority because of their ability to photosynthesize at great depths.
Placing her tray on the windowsill, Coralline approached creeping chain, a mat of interlaced blackish-purple red algae. She sheared three blades. Next, she sought the thick, hair-like thalluses of green rope smattering a rock and snipped the four most vibrantly colored fronds. Finally, she snipped just a sliver of iridescent cartilage, admiring its brilliant blue fluorescence. She ground each of the three algae separately in her mortar and pestle, then put all of them in a flask and shook the flask. Only when her arm tired did she hold it before her eyes: Bubbles were sputtering, and sounds were emerging from the flask, as though the algae were whispering to one another. The reaction showed her that the algae were joining, and, through their combination, becoming stronger together than they had been apart. Then, in the blink of an eye, the colors merged completely, and the mixture formed a gray glob. The Headache Healer solution was ready.
Coralline placed the flask on her tray, then grabbed one of the two invitation scrolls. It was time to invite Rosette Delesse, unfortunately. Straightening her shoulders, assuming a stoic expression, she turned to face The Conventional Cure next door.
Rosette was lingering in the remedial garden of the clinic. Her body formed a long, lithe shape, her eyes sparkled sapphire, and her hair, gathered over one shoulder, shone a passionate, fiery crimson. Her corset was woven of a fine, flimsy net and was precisely the same shade as her skin, such that she appeared to be wearing nothing. Coralline swam over to Rosette and handed her the invitation. Rosette’s fingers untied its golden ribbon to reveal a small square of ivory parchment filled with cursive gold writing.