Rhodomela arrived suddenly at Coralline’s bedside. Coralline thought of inviting the master apothecary to sit on the desk chair next to her bed, but it would be far too close for comfort—yet it was equally intimidating to have Rhodomela hovering over her, forming a bony tower. Rhodomela handed her The Annals of the Association of Apothecaries. Coralline usually devoured the journal as soon as it arrived every month, reading it cover to cover in a single sitting from her perch at the living-room window, but the journal for this month was sitting unopened on her desk, deposited there by her mother earlier this morning.
Coralline saw a large portrait of herself on the front page of The Annals.
The Queen of Poison
From the village of Urchin Grove, twenty-year-old mermaid Coralline Costaria seems to have stumbled upon a shocking medical discovery.
Coralline worked as an apprentice apothecary for renowned, exacting Master Apothecary Rhodomela Ranularia, at Rhodomela’s clinic, The Irregular Remedy. Coralline, the first person Rhodomela ever hired, was also the first person Rhodomela ever fired. Coralline worked for Rhodomela for six months before Rhodomela told her, “I’d rather die of blood contamination from black poison than see your hideously ugly face again,” according to Rosette Delesse, an associate apothecary at The Conventional Cure next door.
Soon after Coralline’s dismissal, a black poison spill lashed Urchin Grove, leaving Coralline’s eight-year-old brother, Naiadum, terminally ill. Coralline decided to reject medicine in favor of magic to save her brother. Abandoning her family, she traveled far and wide through Meristem to find the legendary elixir of starlight. She returned empty-handed, but with a gruesome murder charge against her and an unsettlingly unconventional idea: that the reviled, poisonous acid kelp desmarestia, when combined with the alkaline algae sea oak, could be a healer of tremendous scope.
With her poison-based remedy, Coralline managed to rescue her brother from the brink of death. But a challenge unfolded: Without a medical badge from the Association of Apothecaries, she was in defiance of the Medical Malpractice Act. The punishment for such defiance? To be barred from practice for the rest of one’s life.
Rhodomela arrived at Coralline’s rescue. She said that Rosette was woefully mistaken and that she had never terminated Coralline’s employment at The Irregular Remedy. As proof, she showed Coralline’s apprentice apothecary badge to the Constables Department of Urchin Grove. Rhodomela said that Coralline had simply forgotten the sand-dollar shell at The Irregular Remedy, and thus had been unable to produce it when constable Pericarp Plicata had asked to see it at her home. Pericarp has dismissed the medical malpractice charge against Coralline.
Rhodomela visited next with the Association of Apothecaries, and presented a case to the Decision-Making Panel—consisting of three master apothecaries—that Coralline had invented an unprecedented, life-saving remedy, and should thus be awarded the title of master apothecary. The panel agreed unanimously.
With their decision, Coralline (whom Rosette has dubbed “Queen of Poison”) becomes the youngest healer in the realm of Meristem to have achieved the title of master apothecary. (Rhodomela is the second-youngest healer to have achieved the title, at twenty-five years of age, when she invented the Black Poison Cleanser solution.)
But with the murder charge looming over Coralline, the question remains: Will the remainder of her healing occur at the Wrongdoers’ Refinery?
“I don’t understand,” Coralline stammered, gawking at Rhodomela. “You fired me during my probationary review.”
“Yes, but I realized soon after that I should not have. That’s why I never mailed your badge to the Association of Apothecaries, as I was legally required to do. And that’s why I never disposed of your urns of remedies. With your desmarestia solution, you have now proven that you do know how to think irregularly.”
“You lied to the Constables Department to save me,” Coralline said incredulously. “Am I really a master apothecary now?”
“Yes.”
“I can’t believe it. It’s a dream come true. . . . Thank you for getting the medical malpractice charge against me dismissed; thank you for convincing the Association of Apothecaries to award me the title of master. And I never thought I’d say it, but thank you also for firing me. Otherwise, I might have relied on my textbooks for the rest of my life, without bothering to think for myself.”
“Think nothing of it,” Rhodomela said. From her pinched expression, she seemed slightly embarrassed at Coralline’s gratitude. “And here’s your new badge.”
She handed Coralline a sand-dollar shell. Coralline Costaria, Master Apothecary stated its smooth, round surface. Coralline read the words over and over, as though repetition would help with comprehension.
“Your remedy has the potential to change the future of healing. I am here today to invite you to join me at The Irregular Remedy not as an employee but as a partner. I would like for us to be two master apothecaries working side by side, together saving lives.”
Rhodomela’s tone was as flat as ever, but she’d just paid Coralline the greatest compliment of her career. Even in her most farfetched dreams, Coralline had never imagined she’d be a partner at The Irregular Remedy—an equal to Rhodomela! That meant more to Coralline than the title of master apothecary, for Rhodomela’s approval was more difficult to achieve than that of the Decision-Making Panel. She envisioned a placard with the words Coralline’s Cures dangling above her unit of shelves at The Irregular Remedy. She would not have her own clinic, but she would have her own practice at this clinic. Her logo would be a pink burst of coralline algae.
“Will you be my partner, Coralline?” The black eyes pierced Coralline, narrow but bright.
“I would love to,” Coralline heard herself say, “but I can never heal again.” She meant it for herself—if she could not heal herself, she could not heal others. And that was what Rhodomela had said to her during her probationary review: “In order to heal others, you have to first heal yourself.” Even were Coralline not to die soon, she did not want to heal herself. There was an addictive element to her heartache for Izar, a beauty to her bitterness.
It hurt, but, with quivering fingers, Coralline handed the sand-dollar badge back to Rhodomela.
“Don’t do this, Coralline,” Rhodomela said, her face as stiff as a cloth wrung tightly through the hands. “You have too much talent and skill to waste.”
“I’m sorry.” Rhodomela had smelled Coralline’s surroundings for herself, but Coralline did not want to explicitly tell Rhodomela that she lay on the verge of death; Rhodomela would see for herself soon enough. “You were right,” Coralline said.
“What about?”
“Love. That it’s a farce.”
Coralline was about to blurt out more, to wail, to share her burden with someone—but, her eyes glittering, Rhodomela whirled around and departed. Coralline could not help but wonder whether Rhodomela was fleeing her own pain or Coralline’s.
A knock sounded at the door.
“Come in,” Coralline called.
Ecklon entered. His pebbled hair was swept off his forehead, and his broad frame was attired in a dark-ash waistcoat with buttercup lucine shells for buttons. His face, with the narrow line of his nose and the smooth set of his lips, was unbearably handsome, so much more so than Izar’s, but Coralline felt as though she was regarding not the merman with whom she was supposed to spend the rest of her life but a beautiful stranger.