The Apothecary

Chapter 24

The Dark Force



I must have slept, finally, because I dreamed of being on a boat in the vast sea, among seals and walruses that rose up out of the water and spoke Norwegian. For much of the dream I was panicked that I didn’t have the Pharmacopoeia, and when I did have it, its pages were terrifyingly blank.

I woke at dawn to a racket of birds and didn’t know where I was until I saw Benjamin’s face, blinking and frowning close to mine. The early light filtered through the mulberry leaves. I sat up and saw the apothecary and Jin Lo waking up, too. Jin Lo was brushing dirt off her overalls. Neither of them seemed to notice that I had slept under Benjamin’s jacket with him. The apothecary was too distracted, and Jin Lo, I was pretty sure, would never notice such a thing.

“That boy isn’t back,” the apothecary said. “Your friend.”

“He will be,” I promised, though I wasn’t sure.

We emerged cautiously from our little cave of leaves, and there were no police officers waiting to arrest us, no Danby with his sight returned, no Scar. The apothecary led us across the dew-soaked garden to a leafless tree I hadn’t noticed before. His eyes were locked on it as if he were facing a formidable adversary. There wasn’t a single bud on the tree, or even a bit of warm brown colour in the bark. It could have been a sculpture made of stone or concrete: an expanse of smooth, grey, bare branches, reaching up to the sky.

“You can make that bloom?” I asked.

He didn’t answer, but started to methodically unpack his bag.

Jin Lo went to the gardener’s shed and brought back a long metal rod with a T-shaped handle. She walked around the tree, making deep holes in the earth among its gnarled grey roots. The apothecary followed her with a bottle of green powder, tapping the powder down into the holes.

Then he circled the tree a second time, with a bottle of clear liquid, pouring it into the same holes where he had sprinkled the powder. Green foam bubbled up out of the ground, until there was a ring of popping, fizzing bubbles around the roots and the thick trunk.

The apothecary walked around a third time, with a trowel, and covered all of the holes with dirt so that the fizzing and foaming was trapped underground. And then he stood back with us and waited. I remembered a poem we’d read in school: “Weave a circle round him thrice, and close your eyes with holy dread.”

But nothing happened. We watched and waited.

“That’s the jive-o tree?” a voice said behind me, and I turned and saw Pip, holding a paper bag. He’d approached without any of us noticing, and he’d changed out of the rolled-up overalls into his own clothes and shoes.

“You’re back!” I said.

“You think I’d miss the show? Have a popover.”

He held out the bag, and I brushed off my dirty hands and took one. It was hot and soft and smelled delicious, and I realised I was starving. “Where’d you get these?”

“Portuguese lady makes ’em on the King’s Road,” he said, and he took a bite of golden dough.

Benjamin said, “Look!”

I did, and tiny green leaves had started to pop out and unfold on the tree. As they unfurled, they grew, until there were thick, green, waxy leaves on every branch. Then, while the leaves were still unfolding, tiny white flower buds appeared.

“Take this,” Benjamin’s father said, handing him a glass bell. “I don’t know how long the bloom will last.”

The buds grew into tight fist-sized bundles of petals, which then burst open, all over the tree. It was as if the great tree had spontaneously burst into flame, but the fire was made of white flowers as big as my head. The air smelled heady and sweet, like spring.

The apothecary pulled down a branch with one of the white blossoms on it, and showed Benjamin how to hold the glass bell over the flower. Then he snipped it free. They cut two more like that, and the apothecary fastened a piece of cloth tightly over the open base of the bell and dampened the cloth with something from a bottle.

As soon as he’d sealed up the three blossoms, there came a rumbling noise from deep in the earth, among the roots of the tree, and the thick trunk seemed to shudder.

The apothecary looked concerned. “Stand back,” he ordered, and we all moved a step away, transfixed.

One of the white blossoms on the tree trembled and started to wither, then another. As each blossom shrank, turning grey and shriveled, a thick black smoke rose up into the air. The apothecary rushed forward and snipped one more flower while it was still white and fresh. He quickly dissected it with a pocketknife, squeezing oil from the bulb at its centre into a vial.

Then he looked up, and we all watched the smoke from the tree gather itself into a dark cloud. Again there was a rumbling noise, and this time it came from inside the cloud, like thunder. But it wasn’t thunder: It was more like an expression of disapproval. I can’t describe the cloud accurately except to say that it seemed to have intelligence. It seemed like a great being, made of cloud vapour, embodied with the power of intention, of will. That idea seemed foolish to me at the time, but I couldn’t ignore the feeling, and now it doesn’t seem so foolish. The cloud moved away deliberately, as if it knew where it was going, into the sky.

The apothecary pushed his spectacles up on his nose, watching the cloud glide over London. “I was afraid that might happen,” he said.

“What is it?” Benjamin asked.

“A consequence of forcing the bloom. It’s something like the radiation released when they split the atom, I suppose. The Pharmacopoeia calls it the Dark Force.”

“Is it dangerous?”

“I’m not sure,” the apothecary said. “I’ve never seen it happen like that before.” He plucked one of the withered grey blossoms from the tree to inspect it, but it crumbled to dust in his hands.

I looked at the three blooms in the glass bell, which were still perfect and fresh, with thick, waxy petals. “It didn’t affect your flowers.”

“I took precautions,” the apothecary said. “Now we have to collect our provisions and get to the boat.”

“We’ll need warmer coats for Nova Zembla,” Benjamin said. “And boots.”

The apothecary blinked at him. “We? You’re not going to Nova Zembla.”

“Yes, I am,” Benjamin said. “You need me.”

“If Benjamin goes, I go,” I said.

“Me too!” Pip said.

The apothecary, who had been so un-parentlike until now, gathered up all his fatherly indignation and seemed to grow several inches taller. “You think I would take children to the testing of a nuclear bomb?”

“We can help you,” I said. “Jin Lo, tell him we’re helpful!”

Jin Lo shrugged. I was getting tired of her eloquent shrug. “They help some,” she admitted.

“We helped a lot!”

“It’s out of the question!” the apothecary said. “Enough! I need to go over my notes.” He patted his pockets but found nothing. We waited.

“They are lost?” Jin Lo finally asked.

“Oh, dear,” the apothecary said. “They’re in the Pharmacopoeia.”