Page 1 of Potion Sickness

CHAPTER 1

The pepper grinder unscrews itself at 7:40 in the morning, which is early, even for this house.

To be fair, it’s my fault. Annabel taught me a kindling charm a few weeks ago. It’s one of the smallest, simplest spells she knows. She teaches it to children before she trusts them with anything that has actual consequences. You hold your intention like a match, she says, and you offer it to the wick. She makes it sound easy. Just easy as lighting a candle with an actual match.

When she does it, it is easy.

When I do it, the candle stays cold and the pepper grinder on the far counter rotates its own top off and dumps a lifetime supply of peppercorns across the butcher block, from whence they bounce, scatter, and disappear under the refrigerator with the enthusiasm of prisoners going over a wall.

“Again, Marigold. I keep telling you. The problem is intention,” Englebert – my long-dead grandmother’s ancient talking cat familiar who is, for some reason, still alive and still completely unbearable – says from the windowsill.

“My intention was fire.”

“Your intention was ‘fire, probably, unless something goes wrong, which it will.’ Magic is very literal, Marigold. You expect disaster, you get disaster.”

“I got pepper.”

“Magic works with the materials at hand.”

I sweep what I can reach into my palm and give up on the rest. Somewhere under the refrigerator, future archaeologists will find enough peppercorns to spice an entire cauldron’s worth of soup. I hope they come up with a theory about how its an offering to some sort of kitchen floor deity.

I light the candle with a regular match and promptly blow it out again, out of spite. I didn’t even want a lit candle. I just wanted to see if the charm would work. It hasn’t worked on eleven consecutive attempts, but Annabel still insists I’m making progress, because attempt number four cracked a windowpane.

Maude saunters in, inspects the peppercorn situation, and sneezes three times in succession, each one angrier than the last. He walks to the windowsill, looks up at Englebert, and sits down directly below him, in the exact spot where the morning sun lands after it makes it past the sill. Soon, the sunbeam will abandon Englebert entirely and belong only to Maude.

Englebert opens one eye. “He’s doing it again.”

“He’s sitting on the floor, Englebert.”

“He’s staking a claim. He’s been doing this all week. He positions himself downstream of my sun and waits. It’s psychological warfare of the cruelest kind.”

“He’s a cat.”

“He’s a squatter.” He closes the eye. “I refuse to be baited. I have a full run-through tonight. I must conserve my energy for the work.”

The work. He’s been referring to ‘the work’ for nearly two months now, ever since Vivian, the woman who owns the gallery downtown, founded the Duskboro Community Theater, announced its inaugural production, and made the mistake of holding open auditions in a town that contains Englebert.

He’s not in the play. He is, depending on the day and who he’s speaking to, the casting director, the acting coach, the dramaturg, or the assistant director. Last Tuesday I heard him describe himself as ‘the production’s conscience.’ Vivian directs and Englebert graciously allows it, as far as he’s concerned. He’s started sleeping sixteen hours a day instead of his usual eighteen and describes the sacrifice as ‘Wagnerian’.

Opening night is two weeks from Friday and I can’t wait. Not because I’m a theatre enthusiast – or even a casual theatre fan, really -- but because it means soon my life will cease to be structured entirely around the busy schedule of an extremely pompous talking cat.

The doorbell rings, and before I’ve had the chance to move, it rings four more times in quick succession. This can only mean Lily has arrived.

* * *

By eight o’clock my kitchen contains eight people, two cats, and one raccoon who is technically outdoors but has pressed himself with intense longing against the screen door. Adelaide keeps passing him pieces of toast through the gap.

Annabel arrived first, because it’s Addie’s lesson day and we always have breakfast before lessons start. Gabe delivered Addie and then failed to leave, which he does more Tuesdays than not these days. Hannah was planning to drop the girls off on her way to the Community Center to fight with a castle wall that won’t stand up straight but then decided the castle could wait until she’s had coffee. My cousin Pru is here, because Pru is always here lately, and the reason Pru is always here is the same reason she’s currently at my kitchen table with her forehead on a script.

“Out, damned spot,” she says into the table.

“With feeling, Prudence,” Englebert says.

“That was with feeling. That was all of the feeling.”

Pru was conscripted in July. I say ‘conscripted’ because there’s no other honest word for it. What most of Duskboro has forgotten, and what Englebert evidently has not, is that Pru used to act. Duskboro High put on two shows a year back in the day, and Pru was in most of them from ninth grade on.

She played Emily in Our Town. She played Abigail the year the drama teacher had the bright idea to stage The Crucible in a town founded by people who were lucky to escape Salem courtrooms (which is a grievance my mother still likes to bring up). Then she graduated, moved to New York, went to law school, and never set foot on a stage again. She’s previously described this to me as one of the few unambiguously correct decisions of her life.