After her sister's visit, Marthe's head was brimming with new pictures: the fields of lavender at Valensole, all the subtle grades of blue and purple; the way twilight melted them all into one; the precise hues of the liquid distilled from each plant, the shape and color of the bottles, and a new understanding of the surroundings where she was learning her craft. Just as plant variations were bred together to crete new hybrids- like the lavandin from the delicate wild lavender- this was what she did with the descriptions her sister had supplied; she grafted them on to the sights she remembered from childhood and reinvigorated them.

The pictures she drew on were vibrant as ever, though. The crumbling stone farmstead overlooking the great Luberon valley where she was born. The blending room of the distillery in Manosque where she had experienced a kind of rebirth, beginning the transformation into the woman she was now. Scent was memory, and memory a complex blend of scent and emotion: the perfect flowers of the lavender hills, like millions of mauve butterflies fluttering on stalks; the violet; the heliotrope of home, with its heart of sweet almond and cherry vanilla. She mixed them all into her signature fragrance Lavande de Nuit, along with a breath of civet musk and a haunting trace of smoke.

I still dream in pictures and color, always the world of my childhood. I see the purple Judas trees at Easter lighting up the roadsides and terraces of the town. Ochre cliffs made of cinnamon powder. Autumn clouds rolling along the ground of the hills, and the patchwork of wet oak leaves on the grass. The shape of a rose petal. And my parents' faces, which will never grow any older.
"But it is strange how scent brings it all back too. I only have to smell certain aromas, and I am back in a certain place with a certain feeling."
The comforting past smelled of heliotrope and cherry and sweet almond biscuits: close-up smells, flowers you had to put your nose to as the sight faded from your eyes. The scents of that childhood past had already begun to slip away: Maman's apron with blotches of game stew; linen pressed with faded lavender; the sheep in the barn. The present, or what had so very recently been the present, was orange blossom infused with hope.

At the door to the shop, a bell tinkled, and moments later they seemed to enter the very flowering of lavender.
The scent was all around them; it curled and diffused in the air with a sweet warmth and subtlety, then burst with a peppery, musky intensity. The blind girls moved into another room. There they arranged themselves expectantly around a long wooden table, Mme Musset welcomed them, and a cork was pulled with a squeaky pop.
"This is pure essence of lavender, grown on the Valensole plateau," said Madame. "It is in a glass bottle I am sending around to the right for you all to smell. Be patient, and you will get your turn."
Other scents followed: rose and mimosa and oil of almond. Now that they felt more relaxed, some of the other girls started being silly, pretending to sniff too hard and claiming the liquid leapt up at them. Marthe remained silent and composed, concentrating hard. Then came the various blends: the lavender and rosemary antiseptic, the orange and clove scent for the house in winter, the liqueur with the tang of juniper that made Marthe unexpectedly homesick for her family's farming hamlet over the hills to the west, where as a child she had been able to see brightness and colors and precise shapes of faces and hills and fruits and flowers.

Scrubby evergreen bushes released a strong scent of resin and honey; forests of pine gave way to gentle south-facing vineyards disturbed only by the ululation of early summer cicadas. Sitting up tall on the seat, she craned around eagerly to see what plants thrived naturally.
It was a wild and romantic place, Laurent de Fayols had written, the whole island once bought as a wedding gift to his wife by a man who had made his fortune in the silver mines of Mexico. One of three small specks in the Mediterranean known as the Golden Isles, after the oranges, lemons, and grapefruit that glowed like lamps in their citrus groves.
There were few reference works in English that offered information beyond superficial facts about the island, and those she had managed to find were old. The best had been published in 1880, by a journalist called Adolphe Smith. Ellie had been struck by the loveliness of his "description of the most Southern Point of the French Riviera":


'The island is divided into seven ranges of small hills, and in the numerous valleys thus created are walks sheltered from every wind, where the umbrella pines throw their deep shade over the path and mingle their balsamic odor with the scent of the thyme, myrtle and the tamarisk.

Eau-de-vie- flavored with myrtle," said the old woman. "Try it!" She watched intently as Ellie raised the glass to her lips. "Myrtle from the garden. I steep the berries with honey in the local firewater, but the secret ingredient is the flower, added for the final day. Such a pretty white flower it is, drowned in purple for just one day."
The liqueur tasted of stewed plums. Not unpleasant, but very strong.