Chapter Six: Happy Birthday
The cauldron on the bench top simmered softly, each popping bubble releasing a wisp of smoke the same shimmering silver as the liquid it came from. Elodie was keeping a close eye on both the potion itself and the flame underneath the cauldron to make sure it didn't heat unevenly or bubble over. This was a crucial step for the potion they were making — a sleeping draught — and she needed to make sure everything looked good before they added mandrake root; the most magically active ingredient. She was also keeping a close eye on her lab partner.
Cress stood at the bench next to her, far enough away that they wouldn't accidentally catch anything in the flame, and chopped the mandrake root while Elodie monitored the cauldron. While she was warming up to Cress, Elodie had admittedly had reservations about them during the first class. Not because she wasn't sure about Cress as a person — they were one of Cori's friends and had seemed both friendly and studious the few times they'd spoken before — but because they were a third year. Alfea offered three years of potions classes, so the only third years in the second year class were those who weren't serious about it and just needed to fill space with an elective.
That was true for Cress too. They had admitted as much when Elodie asked. They weren't particularly interested in potions, but had done well in the first year class, had friends willing to help with the assignments, and absolutely did not want to take another year of astronomy. When it was time to pick lab partners, the other two third years in the class had picked each other and Cress had gravitated towards Elodie, the only other person they even remotely knew. Elodie hadn't had the heart to say no.
It seemed she had worried for nothing though. They'd been timid during the first week's class, but the way they had handled ingredients this week proved that their technical and knife skills were good. Elodie found Cress's theoretical knowledge to be lacking, but they were aware of that and happily deferred to Elodie. Honestly, Cress was probably one of the better lab partners she could have gotten. Certainly better than Cori had been, as much as that pained Elodie to admit. Cori had always wanted to take the lead, for better or for worse.
"Is this finely chopped enough?" Cress asked, gesturing to the small mound of mandrake root on the cutting board.
"Looks good to me," Elodie said. She picked up a timer and set it for fifteen minutes. "Ready to add it?"
"Ready," Cress confirmed. They lifted the cutting board over the cauldron and, when Elodie hit the button to start the timer, scraped the chopped roots in all at once.
The potion turned neon pink at the spots where the root hit, but the colour quickly dispersed. At the bottom of the cauldron was a small rod of quartz — completely inert, clear of any physical or magical contaminants that could affect the potion — that Elodie was using her magic to spin. It wasn't as precise a method as counting how many times you stirred a potion by hand, but she found that keeping both a physical and mental eye on the potion let her control it just as well. She'd brewed enough that the state of a potion just made intuitive sense to her and she couldn't remember the last time she'd over stirred something by mistake.
Besides, she wasn't sure she'd be able to stir a potion by hand just then. Elodie had redone the voice of nature field exercise earlier in the week and every single one of her muscles were still sore. Even the ones she hadn't used! Spending hours trekking through the forest and the swamp near the school was a lot physically, even if the exercise itself hadn't been too difficult.
Elodie had absolutely no problem listening to the voice of nature, though she preferred to think of it as drawing on the ambient magic in the environment around her. She also felt entirely comfortable doing a field exercise that forbid transforming or using large amounts of magic. Palladium, she suspected, knew that too, and had decided to make her do the exercise alone rather than putting her with a group of first years. Elodie had actually finished ahead of all the first years. She couldn't help but wonder if a big part of that was not needing to confer with a group. The previous year, Elodie and Lily Freya had easily been able to find the way to their goal, but had spent a lot of time explaining and justifying their magical intuition and resulting decisions to Val and Cori, who were less in tune with nature. Elodie had suspected at the time the exercise would have gone much quicker without that, and now knew she was right.
"Is it looking good?" Cress asked.
"I think so," Elodie said, peeking into the cauldron. It was actually hard for her to tell. The potion they were brewing was a sleeping draught, but the recipe had been modified. Based on the ingredient changes, Elodie suspected it would last a lot less time than the standard potion; minutes instead of hours. The colour of the potion — a milky translucent pink rather than the strong pastel pink the standard recipe produced — made sense with the reduced mandrake root, but it was hard to be sure.
"It's looking perfect," Professor Mirta said, coming up behind them and looking over Elodie's shoulder. "Well done, both of you."
Elodie preened under the praise as Cress thanked Mirta.
"Did you modify the recipe yourself, Professor?" Elodie asked.
"I did," Mirta confirmed. "And I think you're the only one who's recognized that I did. I remember you telling me last year that you have a particular interest in potions and I'm glad you've kept up with it. Don't work too far ahead though or I won't have anything left to teach you." She took one last look into their cauldron and then walked off to attend to other students.
"How did you know the recipe was modified?" Cress asked. They were at the end of the bench, cleaning mandrake residue off the cutting board. "There wasn't any assigned reading on the potion, was there?"
"No, there wasn't," Elodie said. She could see Cress visibly relax as she spoke, no longer worried they had missed an assignment. "I uh just know what a regular sleeping draught is made with and this isn't it. Like the professor said, I like potions, so I just know things like this?" She was unsure of her answer as she spoke. Elodie knew how annoying it could be to tell someone that she just knew something, but there really wasn't any other way to explain it.
"Seems like I really lucked out getting you as a lab partner, didn't I?" Cress asked with a grin. They finished washing the cutting board and flicked the excess water off their hands. "How long is left on the timer?"
"Two minutes, fifteen seconds," Elodie replied.
Cress nodded and picked up their copy of the potion recipe. Elodie didn't grab hers. She didn't need to. As she watched the timer tick down and Cress started to prepare for the next step in brewing, Elodie decided that she would let them take the lead for the rest of the potion. After all, they were almost finished, so there weren't many mistakes left to make.
The bus into Magix deposited Elodie at a familiar stop. Her aunt and uncle's apartment was only a short distance away and she decided to walk slowly to draw out the journey. She was visiting to celebrate her birthday — most second years had turned seventeen at the end of first year or over the summer and today Elodie finally caught up — the same way they celebrated her birthday every year: With a low key dinner at whichever new restaurant Adora thought her notoriously food adventurous yet indecisive niece would like. However, Elodie had something else on her mind.
It had been almost a week since she'd met Cinder Rose and she still hadn't told her uncle — though she had told her therapist. She was no longer too worried about how he would react since it was clear to Elodie that Cinder Rose legitimately didn't want to hurt her, but she'd been working up the courage to ask the question Cinder Rose had told her to ask. Why was her brother's body unrecoverable? Cinder Rose had implied Jean had something to do with it, and Elodie's mind had been reeling with the possibilities.
When she arrived at the apartment, her uncle was already there. He must have left work early to meet her. He was leaning against the wall by the entrance and he waved at Elodie when she came in, but continued talking on the phone. Judging by the conversation, he had only physically left work early. Elodie walked past him and sat down in the kitchen.
There were two wrapped gifts sitting on the table and Elodie was immediately intrigued by the larger of the two. Adora always gave her something to wear — the smaller gift looked about the size of a jewellery box — while Jean favoured practical gifts; things like books or the promise of a shopping trip to get new potion brewing supplies since all cauldrons looked the same to him and he didn't want to get the wrong one. This gift looked a bit too big to be either of those things.
"Happy birthday," Uncle Jean said, walking over to Elodie and ruffling her hair, a gesture that had bothered her significantly more when her hair was long. "You should open your gift from me." As Elodie suspected, he gestured towards the larger box.
"Shouldn't we wait for Adora?" Elodie asked. Despite the question, she pulled the gift closer to her.
"She should have been home before me," Jean said, waving his hand dismissively. "Why should we have to suffer just because she's running late?"
Elodie grinned at his overdramatics, but dutifully stood up and started peeling away the wrapping paper. What she revealed underneath was a glass box and her eyes widened when she saw what was inside.
The vast majority of people from Norroux had fire or light magic. Exceptions were rare enough to turn heads. Elodie's parents hadn't been exceptions; her dad was a fairy of light before he became Fairy of Shadows, and her mom had been a witch of fire — Witch of Infernos. Elodie wasn't an exception either. She'd inherited her mom's fire magic before she, too, became Fairy of Shadows. Uncle Jean, Wizard of Fungus, was an exception.
The glass box was a terrarium, filled with mushrooms that he must have nurtured with his magic. Elodie recognized a few of them as ornamental species that her mom had grown in their garden, and many more as species that had uses in potions or medicines. It buzzed with magic and Elodie suspected her uncle had gone to great lengths to preserve the mushrooms within; a static microcosm of the diverse Nourraine ecosystem.
"I love it," she breathed.
"I'm glad." Elodie could hear the pride in Jean's voice. "But maybe we should have waited for Adora after all. Nothing will be able to top this first gift, so I may have preemptively ruined your experience of opening hers."
"Oh, um, sorry to disappoint, but this actually wasn't my first birthday gift," she said, her nerves creeping back in.
Elodie's first gift had been two books, neatly wrapped, that she'd found waiting in her dorm's common area when she woke up that morning — though perhaps her uncle didn't need to know that last part. Cinder Rose hadn't left a card or signed her name, but she hadn't needed to. One was a photo book, highlighting the Nourraine capital where Elodie and Cinder Rose had both been born, and the other, some sort of history text about the Shadows. Elodie's heart had skipped a beat when she saw the author's name before remembering that her dad had been a junior. The Étienne Chapdelaine that smiled at her from the author's photo was her grandfather.
"So your roommates decided they know you well enough to get you something this year?" Jean joked.
"No," Elodie hesitated before continuing. She was tempted to defend her friends — they'd known her for less than two weeks before her birthday last year, so of course they hadn't been close enough to get her birthday gifts — but decided to press on instead. "It was from one of my cousins, actually."
"Oh?" Jean's eyes narrowed. Elodie could tell he was fighting to keep his expression neutral.
"Marie-Ève Greymore," Elodie said. She paused to give her uncle a chance to respond, but he said nothing. He wasn't looking at her anymore; he'd turned to stare out the window, but Elodie suspected that was more out of politeness than anything else. His eyes were unfocused, not looking at anything, really. "It was unexpected since we only really met — or re-met, I guess — last week, but I thought it was nice of her." Jean just hummed thoughtfully in response. "It was some books," Elodie supplied, as though that might help.
Jean's silence stretched and Elodie wondered if he was actually thinking about anything or if he was just fighting back that same thought spiralling panic that Elodie had when she'd first seen Cinder Rose. Probably thinking. Her uncle had always been more put-together than she was.
"She's known about you for a week and hasn't done anything other than give you a birthday gift?" Jean eventually asked.
"She uh also bought me bubble tea," Elodie said.
"Nothing to hurt you?"
"No."
In fact, Elodie was pretty sure that the books being left in her dorm was part of her gift. It confirmed that, as she already suspected, Cinder Rose was perfectly capable of sneaking into Alfea, into her dorm, and was choosing not to. Cinder Rose was perfectly capable of ambushing her, attacking her, when she was most vulnerable, and was choosing not to. It confirmed that Cinder Rose was not a threat. She could be playing a long game, but that would be stupid. Elodie would only become stronger and more dangerous as she got better with her magic (if she got better with her magic). If Cinder Rose wanted to kill her, she would have acted immediately.
"Why didn't you tell me?"
I told my therapist instead was her immediate reply, but Elodie bit it back.
"I didn't want you to do anything rash," Elodie muttered. While Jean was not the kind of person to immediately go scorched earth seeking vengeance — that was more her mom's style, from the stories she'd heard — Elodie knew he would do anything to protect her.
Jean opened his mouth to reply, but instead chuckled. "That's a valid concern." He ran his hand through his hair, a restless gesture.
"Cinder Rose mentioned something about you when we were talking," Elodie said, deciding to just take the plunge rather than beating around the bush.
"Cinder Rose?" He raised an eyebrow.
"Oh, uh, yeah, that's her stage name," Elodie said.
"Isn't that one of those singers you listen to?" Jean asked, amusement tugging at his lips.
"Yes," Elodie said, feeling her cheeks grow hot.
"And you never realized she was your cousin." It was a statement, not a question, and accompanied by laughter.
"You and Adora didn't either," Elodie protested.
"I have never seen a single picture of Cinder Rose," Jean countered. "And with how things were when we returned to Norroux, there was no way I was going to let Adora get more involved with the noble houses than she absolutely had to. You're her cousin."
Elodie puffed out her cheeks. They hadn't exactly been best friends. When her family visited, Cinder Rose had always chosen to spend her time with Léon, who was only a year and a bit younger than her. Elodie had sometimes tagged along with them, but always ended up leaving to play with her own toys or read her own books when they started talking about boring things like history. She certainly wouldn't rejoin their parents and Sophie and Cinder Rose's brother, since they would be talking about even more boring things like politics. Elodie started. That was right. It had been Cinder Rose's brother — what was his name, again? — not her, who was supposed to inherit their dad's Shadow.
"What is it?" Jean asked.
"Oh, uh, nothing," Elodie replied. She would have to ask Cinder Rose about it next time they met. Although once an heir was officially chosen, they were very rarely cast aside. The most likely explanation was that he had somehow died (just like Léon), and Elodie didn't want to hurt Cinder Rose by bringing him up; not after she had so openly assured Elodie she wouldn't hurt her. Instead, Elodie refocused her thoughts. "But my bad facial recognition aside, Cinder Rose mentioned you."
"Did she?" Jean asked, raising an eyebrow. Elodie was grateful he wasn't going to push the previous topic.
"She told me to ask you why so many bodies weren't recovered after the fire." Elodie had turned Cinder Rose's words over in her mind so many times since their conversation the previous week. She felt that tearing off the bandaid was the best way to go about asking the question.
"I see," Jean said. He looked away again, out the window, squinting against the sunlight. "I wonder why she wants you to know about that."
"I don't think she did, specifically," Elodie said. "She didn't bring it up until I mentioned you." Uncle Jean snapped back to face her and narrowed his eyes. "I didn't really tell her anything about you," Elodie added quickly, feeling his unease. "Just that you were the one who saved me from the fire."
Uncle Jean let out a breath neither of them realized he was holding and walked over to the table. He tapped the top of the terrarium with his fingers.
"After I got you out, I went back into the house," Uncle Jean started after a moment. "I knew Adora was strong enough to protect you and smart enough to get you away without waiting for me if it became necessary. I wanted to see if I could find your brother and sister."
"But you didn't find them," Elodie finished. She knew this was a sore spot for both of them (an unkept promise, lost siblings) and wanted to push him along.
"I didn't find anyone who was worth saving," he said bitterly. Elodie couldn't help but wonder if he'd found anybody already beyond saving, and her fingers were brushing her mom's locket before she even realized she'd moved her hand. "And on my way out…" Jean didn't finish his sentence. Instead, he tapped the terrarium again. "I made sure nobody else would be able to get back in."
When Elodie imagined what state her childhood home might be in now, she always thought of it burnt out; a shell of its former self, filled with the charred remains of her childhood and family. It was oddly comforting to imagine it instead covered in mushrooms; the whole manor transformed into an extension of her mom's garden. Then the implication hit her.
"And anybody still inside…" Elodie trailed off.
"Wouldn't have been able to get out," Jean finished.
Elodie didn't reply and instead turned her attention back to the terrarium. She could immediately pick out three species of mushroom that were highly toxic; at least one of them had spores that could cause permanent lung damage or death within a minute of being inhaled. After a moment of silence, Uncle Jean cleared his throat.
"I don't regret it," he said, quietly.
Elodie wasn't sure if she could bring herself to regret it either.
Before she could reply, the apartment door swung open and Adora entered. She surveyed the scene in front of her and sighed dramatically.
"I can't leave you two alone for five minutes without the mood being ruined, can I?" Adora put down the bags she was carrying and crossed her arms for dramatic effect.
"No, you really can't," Jean replied.
Adora rolled her eyes, gave Elodie a hug, and wished her a quick happy birthday. She looked over at the kitchen table and, when she saw the exposed terrarium and pile of wrapping paper, laughed.
"If you can find my gift under there, you might as well unwrap it now too," she said.
Elodie reached into the mound of paper and pulled out the smaller box. It was much quicker to unwrap than the terrarium — in both its size and lack of emotional baggage — and was, as Elodie had suspected, a jewelry box. Nestled in the felt interior was a pair of earrings, intricate silver flowers with a single black pearl at the centre of each. The metal, she thought, looked like a perfect match for the silver of her mom's locket. She loved them.
"Thank you," she said.
"Happy birthday, Elodie," Adora repeated, giving her another hug. "Now, I don't know what gloomy things the two of you were talking about before, and I don't care. We're moving on. It's time for dinner."
"You're putting your foot down, are you?" Jean asked, bemused.
Adora stood up straighter and puffed out her chest. "This is my royal decree, yes," she said, in her best snooty voice. They all laughed and Elodie wondered just how accurate that impression was. Adora, while not royalty herself, had spent many years close to them as a member of the Solarian royal guard. A highly trained warrior; easily as fierce and powerful as her husband. "I found us a nice all-you-can eat sushi place," she added.
"Sounds good," Elodie said.
Jean murmured his agreement and started cleaning the wrapping paper while Adora went to grab a more comfortable pair of shoes. As he moved around the table, scooping the crumpled paper into his arms, Jean stopped behind Elodie and gave her shoulder a reassuring squeeze.
"I'll always have your back," he said in Nourraine.
"I know."
Though she wondered if, like Cinder Rose, her uncle was only looking out for her because of the people he couldn't help ten years ago.
"I can't believe how dramatic she's being," Cori said as a scream filled their dorm. They were watching a movie — a zombie movie that had clearly been made by someone who wasn't even remotely familiar with actual necromancy. "There's only like four of them chasing her."
Cori sat cross-legged on the floor and Elodie was on the bed above her, slowly and carefully undoing Cori's grown-out cornrows. Cori had taught Elodie how to do and undo cornrows and dreadlocks early on during their first year — as soon as she'd discovered that Elodie had dexterity in spades and liked doing something with her hands during movie nights — and had eventually become satisfied enough with the results to let Elodie do her hair regularly. That night, Elodie was only undoing the summer's cornrows since Cori wanted to wear her hair loose to the Alfea ball that weekend.
Notebooks and textbooks were strewn around the room from when they had made a half-hearted attempt to study earlier in the night. They had made good progress reviewing for healing, but Cori quickly became frustrated when she got stuck on part of a herbology assignment Elodie couldn't help with, and she'd taken one look at Elodie's star charts for astronomy before deciding she couldn't even try to help. The books had been abandoned in favour of a birthday movie and popcorn.
Elodie split her attention three ways: she kept an eye on Cori's hair, spraying it with more conditioner when it looked like it was starting to dry and being careful not to pull on her scalp; she watched the movie, which was a shared favourite of theirs, even if it wasn't entirely realistic; and she used her magic to monitor the cauldron that sat on her desk, next to the new terrarium.
The cauldron simmered lightly, as it would need to for about another movie and a half, late into the night. It was the final step in brewing a rejuvenation potion. A crystal rod spun lazily at the bottom of the cauldron, much slower than the one she'd used for the sleeping draught that afternoon. This crystal also wasn't an inactive clear quartz; it was amber. Amber was an active stone that would leech magic into the brew over time, increasing the length of time the potion was effective for.
While she still harboured a lingering suspicion towards the acretta seeds she'd bought at a steal last weekend, the potion looked and felt like it was coming along well. A bubble burst on the surface of the cauldron and Elodie's nostrils flared. It smelled like it was coming along well too; disgustingly sweet despite the fresh air coming in through the open windows. Cori didn't even flinch as the smell hit them. Elodie appreciated that her roommate was willing to tolerate their room occasionally smelling like an apothecary, though she suspected the fact that this particular potion was being made at her request didn't hurt.
It was a quiet night — other than the occasional screams from their movie, of course. All in all, Elodie thought, there were much worse ways to end a birthday.