I pause by the doorframe. Mother studies me with a curious expression. “Immerse yourself in the scent, then meditate on it. The notes will tell you where to go.”
After dinner over a crossword puzzle with Mother, a challenging one I chose to keep both our minds occupied, I head to the workshop. I need to catalogue the scents to source on tomorrow’s trip to Meyer. I bring textbooks, just in case Mother drops in and wonders what I’m doing in there. At least one good thing came of failing to inventory: when she leaves, I can work on Alice’s elixir without fear of discovery.
I insert our old iron key with the heart-shaped grip. It sticks, the way it sometimes does. When I’m a hundred years old, I’ll probably stick in a few places, too. I jiggle it a few times, until I hear the lock give way.
A tendril of Layla’s Sacrifice pushes against the inside of its glass dome like it’s trying to escape, in strange parallel to its namesake. A sixteenth-century aromateur, Layla, had a daughter, Shayla, who mistakenly fixed a Turkish prince with the wrong princess. For her crime, she was sentenced to three days in a locked tomb, a slow and horrible way to die. But so greatwas Layla’s love for her daughter that she volunteered to stand in for the punishment. Layla stood with her back straight as a reed while they rolled a rock against the entrance of the tomb.
When they returned three days later, they found only an orchid.
“You have it easy in there. Three squirts of water a day, sunshine, peace of mind. It sure gets more complicated when you’re on the outside.”
I grab a notebook and pen. Before beginning my work, I run my hand along the narcissuses the groundskeeper William had carved into the farm table, an old ritual for resetting my mind. The simple act thins the anxious cloud hanging over me, but it doesn’t evaporate altogether.
I write down plants I could use for the remaining notes in Alice’s elixir. Her scentprint contains several exotics, which doesn’t surprise me given her age and gender. The miso soup heart note still bothers me. It’s the drum majorette in the woman’s parade of scents, and totally necessary.
I turn on the computer and pull up our database of plants. Miso is made from soybean, and I run through all fifty-nine species, including four that I personally added to the list after a trip to Asia a few years ago.
None of them match Alice’s miso scent. Then I pull up the Meyer website, which contains a list of all ten thousand species grown at the garden. As I read the names of each plant, I mentally call up their smells.
Again, no matches.
I drum a pencil against my temple. Meyer’s database isn’t regularly updated. They add new species all the time.
Then again, what are the chances they would add a plant with that particular note?
I fumble the pencil and it drops onto the desk, breaking the tip. If I can’t find it at Meyer, I will have to look elsewhere, and elsewhere is somewhere between not here and everywhere.
TWELVE
“HARVEST STINGING NETTLE FROM THE TOP, WHERE IT’S
LEAST EXPECTING YOU.”
—Tulipia, Aromateur, 1755
THE ROOSTER’S CROWINGjolts me awake. Mother’s gone. I smell only the fraying threads of her winter’s bark base notes. I wrestle on the nearest clothes—T-shirt, sundress, oversized sweater, and leggings—and then peer into my mirror. Dark circles bloomed overnight under my eyes, which look more snail brown than amber at the moment.
I employ a battalion of bobby pins to keep my hair out of my face, jamming them in wherever I see a stray lock. My chin-length bob is begging for a real trim after that last hack job I gave it.
I’m so jittery, I want to pedal to the train station right now, but Meyer doesn’t open until one on Tuesdays. And I have to go to school anyway, because Mr. Frederics might wonder why I’m not at algebra.
Mother left a bowl of oatmeal sprinkled with raisins on the kitchen table with a note.
SEE YOU IN A WEEK. EMERGENCY CELL # ON FRIDGE.
LOVE, M.
P.S. CHECK ON MS. DICARLO.
Did Mr. Frederics tell Mother about Alice’s odd behavior? Did something happen or not happen between him and Ms. DiCarlo? We always follow up on the targets to make sure they don’t adversely react to our potions. But Mother’s never had to remind me to do it.
I choke down the oatmeal, grab a beret, and dash off to school.
I whiz through the parking lot, past Court’s Jeep and Mr. Frederics’s bamboo-green hybrid, feeling every glance thrown my way like a pie in the face. No one cares about my problems any more than they didn’t yesterday, but I’m still self-conscious, as if everyone knows what I’ve done to Alice. I reassure myself that Court wouldn’t say anything, for his mother’s sake, if nothing else.
Today’s Cardio Fitness leader, Vicky, stands in front of the class, fiddling with her phone. Kali stretches to one side, then the other. “Thought you were going to Meyer.”
“I’m catching the 12:20 train.”
