Gretchen lurked over Briar’s shoulder and regarded the tome of potions spread on his desk. “I was quite good at potions, you know.”
Briar perked up. “See, Vatii? Gretchen didn’t even want to be my flatmate, and already she’s more helpful than you.”
Gretchen folded her arms. “I didn’t say I’d tell you for free.”
“What would you like in return? More walkies around town?”
She looked annoyed by the term “walkies” but chose not to argue semantics. “I’d like more control of them. Coming and going. It’s inconvenient, how I’m beholden to whichever times you’re home or not.”
Briar didn’t particularly want to wear a curtain everywhere either. “What if I left something from the house outside so you could come and go as you pleased?”
“Will that work?”
“We can try and find out.”
Gretchen considered that, floating three feet off the ground, her messy bun wobbling from side to side as she tilted her head. “A pint of water, two sprigs of chamomile, a tablespoon of turmeric, crushed blackberry, a wishbone, and a half cup of golden-eye lichen.”
Briar scrambled to grab his pen and parchment, scribbling as she spoke. “This isn’t any of the recipes I’ve found.”
“It’s my own blend,” she said. “Who’s it for?
Diarmuid?” Briar gaped at her. “Were you the witch he raved about?”
She beamed, the first smile he’d ever seen her wear. “When I was alive.”
Briar’s to-do list expanded to include:gather the ingredients for Diarmuid’s elixirandfigure out a means to give Gretchen free rein of the town.
He cut a square of fabric from the curtain-cloak to bury somewhere and test the limits of Gretchen’s imprisonment. It meant he could wear his Rede cloak instead, which he honestly preferred. Floral curtains weren’t the statement he wanted to make as a budding fashion designer.
At lunch, he set out into the breezy air, ablaze with the campfire smell of autumn. The local apothecary was a mom-and-pop business, Gretchenexplained. Though it had a similar smell to Odell’s, Briar found its low rows of individual troughs, full of different dried herbs, more tactile and welcoming than the sterile archive he’d grown used to. He shoveled ingredients into brown paper bags, but one gave him pause. Searching through the moss and fungi section, he couldn’t find any golden-eye lichen.
“It’s rare,” Gretchen said. “You might need to ask if it’s behind the counter.”
He had no better luck there. The shopkeeper said they hadn’t gotten any shipments of golden-eye in a few years, as its increasing rarity meant it wasn’t purchased enough to warrant restocks. She offered to custom-order it, but Briar couldn’t afford it in bulk, and a small order wasn’t cost-effective. If he were to continue making this elixir for Diarmuid, it would be catastrophic to Briar’s long-term finances. He left with the majority of what he needed, but the lichen presented a big problem. Gretchen said it was the most vital ingredient of the lot—no alternative would achieve the same results.
It needled Briar. This was meant to be a simple task. The money he’d saved over the summer wouldn’t begin to cover ingredients for even a rudimentary potion service at this rate.
He wandered, feet itching to move and stomach growling at him. He’d packed a cucumber sandwich for lunch, but it tasted of disappointment, given the smells wafting through the high street. He sat on the lip of the fountain in the town square to eat, chewing sullenly while townsfolk streamed by. He studied the statue pouring its potion into the pool below, a man with a severe set to his brow and a jutting chin. If he’d been flesh and blood, Briar imagined he would still seem carved of stone. A plaque at his feet read:
Éibhear O’Shea
For his magic, which protects us still, and for the ones he left behind.
A group of teenagers in school uniforms chatted over their packed lunches. They discussed, loudly and in tones of self-import, the party they’d had that weekend, who kissed whom, who got blind langered, which of the popular lot failed to show. The conversation veered into recollections of a game of truth or dare where one boy was dared to go into the woods at the stroke of midnight. They guffawed at the notion, but in an odd way, danced around the subject of the forest as though it was benign and perilous. Malignant and silly. As if there was nothing to fear in it, but no one sensible would ever go in.
Local superstition prevailed, Briar thought, as the girls ran back to school at the toll of the church bell. Their conversation planted an idea in his mind, though. He looked down the lane leading out of the square. The forest crowned the houses, its canopy aflame in fall colors.
Feeding the crusts of his sandwich to Vatii, he walked until he reached the edge of the village, where the houses fell away to fields and the forest beyond. Perhaps it was all that superstitious talk, but looking at the woods, he felt as though they stared back.
“Vatii, lichen grows in forests, doesn’t it?”
She gave an affirmative caw. Beside them, Gretchen’s flickering outline solidified with a spasm of emotion, her face frozen in a mask of terror.
“You’re not that dim,” she said. “You can’t be thinking of going into the woods for some stupid lichen.”
“Why not? You insisted it’s important to the recipe.”
The purple haze of her swirled. Her moods swung between ambivalent and mildly grumpy, but now she struggled to articulate her meaning.
