The Careful Brewing of Potions

[Mild cursing]

“So…” the girl begins innocently. Oh shit, here comes another stupid question, I think, before the little twelve-year-old can have a chance to finish whatever she was saying. “You just mix some plants together, chant some Latin, and SHAZAM, it all comes together?”

I sigh in exasperation. This goddamn thing will be the death of me. The cauldron bubbles angrily in agreement, wafting the beautiful harmony of good cooking throughout the cottage

“For the last time, you infuriating pest,” I muster as much forgiveness into my voice as I can, which isn’t much. “Magic is a little more complex than that beautiful summary of yours.”

She snorts, “It’s not that difficult, watch this.” She grabs a dried bundle of thyme and sage and moves to toss it into the building cauldron.

“NO!” I yelp, intercepting the dried spices before they become another lost cause, unlike this ignorant child in front of me. “Never add spices without my careful instructions,” I seeth. The thyme and sage are clutched to my chest. I carefully set the dried bundle aside, vowing to always keep a close eye on this idiot.

“Why not? I'm improving your potion!”

I restrain any urge to strangle this girl. With fake patience, I smile, “This pea soup has mint in it. Mint does not pair well with thyme or sage.”

She is shocked. “Wait, this is pea soup? I thought it was a potion!”

“No, this is dinner. We’ll make potions later if you can show the slightest aptitude for magic.”

“I have an aptitude for magic!” Her indignant protests fall on deaf ears. “I wouldn’t be your apprentice if I wasn’t.”

“Somehow your mother thought you were capable,” I mutter under my breath. Out loud, I say, “Asha, child, magic is like cooking; you have to follow a recipe if you want the right results.”

“So magic has cookbooks?” She asks with a cute, quizzical look on her face.

“Yes, child. Magic has cookbooks, but they’re called spellbooks,” I correct.

“Can I see one?”

“No! Absolutely not! You aren’t ready for that!” This thing I have to train will be the death of me. Curse her mother, curse her! A curse on all her ancestors! A horrible, horrible curse on her descendants! But I keep all those thoughts inside. Aloud, I say, “For now, we’ll eat.”

“Oh, yes! I’m famished!” She rushes to grab a wooden bowl and spoon. In a flash, Asha is at my side, holding her bowl outstretched and practically salivating over the notion of food. I dish her up before satisfying my own needs.

I grab a small vial and two glasses before exiting my small woodland cottage. Filling us both a glass of water from the well, I add a few drops of the potion to my apprentice's drink. The potion is clear, dissolving without a trace into the water. I walk back inside and set the drinks down.

To my utter horror, the girl has nearly finished her meal, hungrily attacking the pea soup with an inhuman ferocity.

“Asha! Behave yourself, or I will revoke your apprenticeship.”

She spares me a fleeting glance before tipping the bowl and guzzling the rest down. With a satisfied smack, of her lips she smugly replies, “You can’t. You made a deal with my mother and bound your word to it. Severing the contract will bring a great deal of pain to you if you fail to uphold your end of the bargain.”

Dammit, this child. She's not wrong; her mother and I drafted a contract. I would take on Asha as an apprentice if I were compensated with a share of her mother’s crops for the next decade. We both bound our words to it, meaning our magic would backfire on us and cause intense physical pain. Once a bound contract is broken, the witch immediately regrets it. Usually, the threat of agony is enough to keep people from going back on their words.

“Witch’s spawn,” I mutter under my breath, but Asha hears me.

“You’re a witch’s spawn too, Mare.” She wrinkles her nose up at me.

I tentatively sip my soup and find the spices are just to my liking. I can’t imagine the atrocity of flavors that would have assaulted my taste buds had Asha succeeded in her brief cooking endeavor. “I am ma’am to you, little miss.”

“Fine, you’re a witch’s spawn too, ma’am.”

I am much too sophisticated to be lured into a pointless argument with a twelve-year-old. I refuse to draw on my petty side and argue about which one of us is more of a witch's spawn. Instead, with the grace and wisdom that comes with being fifty-two, I change the subject, “What does your mother do nowadays? She didn’t speak much about her life when I spoke to her last.”

“Oh, she’s just working on the farm,” Asha says offhandedly as she rises to dish herself up with seconds. “Doesn’t do magic much anymore, but she stays busy by running the market. Sells all the produce and all that.”

“Hmm,” I muse.

A comfortable quiet descends, only the sound of scraping spoons and the slurping of soup. As my apprentice begins to sip her water, I carefully hide a smile. We both finished our pea soup shortly afterwards.

“Take my bowl out to the well, draw up the pail, and rinse out the dishes. Come back inside when you’re down,” I order Asha.

“Why in the world would I take care of your dishes for you?” She protests, rising to take her plate out.

I don’t move, instead replying with, “If I can’t trust you to follow specific instructions, then I can't expect you to carefully follow the instructions of a spellbook. Magic is a complex and dangerous thing; if you get the recipe wrong, worse things could happen than burnt muffins. And also, you are my apprentice, meaning you do whatever I say without complaint and act like it has something to do with your magical training.” I smile and she glowers.

“Fine,” Asha relents, leaving with a bowl in each hand. I can hear her vaguely muttering a tirade about lazy old women. Her anger only makes my grin deepen. Oh, the next six years will be fun!

Once the door closes behind her, I rise from my seat and begin tidying my spices. My cottage is small and rectangular, but every inch is claimed by something useful or beloved. The front door opens into the dining area, where a solid oak table is perpetually dusted with stray herbs, and the benches bear faded cushions patched over the years. Through the circular window beside the door, sunlight pools upon stacks of empty jars and a jumble of boots, while outside, the winding forest path snakes toward my doorstep.

The back of the cottage hosts a stone-lined pit embedded into the floorboards. Supported by thick iron legs, my cauldron stands where heat from the coals can boil any concoction I wish to make. My cauldron isn’t very big, unlike some witches I know, but it can host a couple of gallons.

I pour a vial of a cloudy mixture into the cauldron before ladling the soup into mason jars. If my potion does its job properly, the pea soup won’t spoil for a few weeks.

I never keep a burning fire in the pit; the smoke and soot would cloud my cottage, but a flame is always lit in the inglenook. The fireplace stands modestly against the far wall, emanating a gentle heat that warms my bones.

There is a small room with its oak door ajar, a shaft of lantern light illuminating a fraction of the room. The door is on the right side of the house, just large enough for one single bed and miraculously big enough to cram a second in there for Asha.

I shake my head. This cottage will be cramped with her occupying the space.

I work on the counter, untying bundles of spices and chopping them into small pieces with my knife. I gather and dry sprigs of plants I find in the forest, as they are important for my potions and a tasty meal. My worn spellbooks are strewn about, yellowed pages work with years of use and corners dog-eared to important pages. I ran out of bookmarks years ago.

Asha comes back inside as I funnel a mixture of lavender and rosemary into a jar. She sets the dishes back on the table and storms over to me. I smirk, knowing she discovered the effects of the potion I had slipped in her drink.

“Mmmhmmmhmm, hmm!” She tries to inform me of her furious annoyance.

“I’m sorry, honey, I can’t understand you when you mumble.” My mocking sweetness makes her gaze darken with the violence only a girl her age can conjure.

“Hmm MMM!!” She has desperately resorted to emphasizing with her hands. Between all the mumbling and gesturing, I vaguely understand that she wants me to fix this ‘curse’.

“I can’t fix this potion, Asha.”

Her eyebrows shoot upwards, “HMMM?”

I laugh at her fearful expression. "You have to figure it out yourself. There are some spell books lying around. Keep in mind that there is no specific antidote to this potion, and you’ll have to follow the basic antidote recipe. Make sure you add the right spices, or the effect may become permanent.” I emphasize the last word, and, as I expected, Asha looks utterly terrified.

I don’t tell her that the potion will wear off in a few hours anyway.

“Get to work!” I clap my hands and she jumps to attention, “You have less than an hour. This is your first challenge, make it snappy! ”

Asha hurries about, dashing like a madwoman from counter to counter, flipping pages at random and checking spines. Eventually, she finds the antidote template. I know this recipe by heart, as it is one of the easiest potions to learn. Hence why Asha is beginning with this.

Pour three cups of water into a cauldron and bring to a boil. Add 7 dried and chopped sprigs of Heal-all (prunella vulgaris) and 4 ounces of dandelion milk. Prepare a paste of pre-boiled daylily tubers and at least herbs that share the intended properties of the antidote. Be mindful of the measurement of the herbs, as well as the parts of the plants. For the complete table of common witchcraft herbs/spice properties, see the Guide to Herbology spellbook. After preparing the paste, add it to the cauldron and boil for fifteen minutes. Let the potion cool completely before consuming, as the magic needs to infuse into the water mixture.

I sit at the dining table to be out of her way, content to watch her bustle about.

I know exactly the herbs and spices Asha will need. Chamomile buds, mugwort roots, and most importantly, basil leaves. These herbs all have some association with silence, speech, and regaining your voice.

Asha transports hot coals from the fireplace to the pit, measuring the water and adding the dandelion extract. She struggles for a bit, searching for the Heal-all. She triumphs, dicing the dried plant before adding it to the boiling water.

Once more, she returns to the hunt, zipping around the cauldron with a crazed urgency.

“Chop chop!” I encourage Asha on the fringes of her chaos, cackling with borderline evil laughter. I am fully engrossed in embracing my diabolical side. “Get the lead out! Jump to it! Tick Tock! Get a wiggle on! Step on it! Put your skates on!” With every random phrase that pours out of my mouth, Asha shoots me increasingly concerned glances. I am thoroughly enjoying myself a little too much. These next six years are going to be terribly funny.

Asha finds the book of herbology and begins sniffing bundles and uncorking jars on her hunt for the right plant.

“Put a little giddy up in your getup!” My hollering earns me a glare. “Hop to it, you slowpoke!”

Eventually, she began grinding the paste with my mortar and pestle. She adds the paste to the boiling cauldron. A warm and fragrant steam envelopes the room.

After the potion boils for fifteen minutes, Asha unhooks a ladle from its nail on the wall. She stirs her concoction with a wide-eyed reverence, admiring her first attempt at magic.

“Do you want to speak again?” My question startles her. I grin, “Try it out, let’s see how badly you messed it up!”

Asha scours the mess countertops for a glass jar and a matching lid. Maybe I should reorganize, I absentmindedly contemplate. If I continue to share this space with my apprentice, I should consider efficiency. The chaos makes sense to me; I can navigate the untidy room with ease. Asha, on the other hand, searches forever for something that would only take me a second to find.

She ladles the potion into the large quart jar. The potion is cooled by the time she ladles the last little bit, a small sip of a green and purple swirl. Asha downs the potion, furrowing her brow and smacking her lips at the peculiar taste.

“Don’t just stand there, speak! Does it work?”

“Yes,” She says tentatively. The joy that breaks open on her face is beautiful. She laughs, overwhelmingly happy that she regained her voice. “I did it! I made a potion! I fixed my voice! I’M A WITCH!”

I laugh with her, rising from my chair. “You are far from being a witch, little girl. But you are one step closer.”

“YES!!!” She yells in glee, abruptly hugging me. Her sudden outburst of elation in the form of physical appreciation startles me. But Asha’s bubbling joy overwhelms me, and I hug her back. She squeezes me tighter in response. “I’m so excited to be your apprentice, Mare,” she sheepishly murmurs.

I don’t have the heart to correct her to ‘ma’am’.

…

Her clothes are all packed, waiting outside the door. Asha ties a travelling cloak around her shoulders. I reach out, centering it fondly with the loving grace only time will teach.

“Thank you,” She whispers softly into the morning air.

“Thank you,” I insist. “For these wonderful six years. You changed my life.”

“No, you changed mine.” Her smile is warm with faint smile lines on her face, the condemning evidence of the laughter we shared. “You taught me so much, Mare. I will miss you.”

We embrace, and I hold tight, not wanting to let her go. My cottage will be so lonely without her. Her hair carried the familiar and cozy scent of herbs.

“Safe travels.” We share a smile, years of memories bridging the gap between us.

“I will.” Asha turns, walking away down the path. I stay rooted in place until she disappears from view, gone into the trees. A grown witch wandering the world and sharing her potion craft with the world.

I turn back inside, chuckling softly to myself. Over the six years she trained as my apprentice, I never once corrected her decision to call me Mare. I now realize that, six years ago, I wanted her to be my friend, not my apprentice. And I got just that.

Inside, the cluttered cottage is suddenly more vast than I remember it being.

This cottage feels emptier without Asha filling the space.

Quieter, muted, diluted.

Missing.