Chapter Eight
. . .The last Amazonian life leech larvae fell from my tweezers into the earthenware dish, where it wriggled with the rest like animated saffron stamens. I checked the other ingredients: chamomile flowers, ox blood, eye of newt, mandrake root, and two fungi with names I could not pronounce.
The healer was late.
Though the healer shuffled, it did not take her long to reach me. “I like the workshop. What did it used to be?”
“A dairy barn,” I said, thinking that it had not changed much aside from gaping holes in the wall and places where the boards in the loft had rotted through, allowing straw to fall onto herbs hanging from the rafters. At least I had a concrete floor, a very plush thing for a barn this old—it even had a rut carved at the back of the stalls to make cleaning easier. I used the trench as a track to run my cart up and down the workshop. I heard her staff drag over the edge of it as she came.
One word came to my mind when I saw her: Babushka. Little old Russian lady, the sort who had thirteen cats and wore a scarf to cover her thinning white curls. Frail, thin, the woman that pedestrians took by the elbow to help mount a curb. Alarms went off in my head, crawling across my skin like a nest of baby spiders. Nothing fragile lived to old age in the magical world. I saw now standing before me a very advanced femme fatale.
The woman saw my set-up on a board secured to the stall, and nudged me aside, muttering under her breath about contaminating the potion. True, this wasn't a standard kitchen with a hazelwood chopping block and a heavy cauldron, but it was an improvement over asbestos countertops and an electric stovetop. She raised her hands in exaggerated motions and scooted me back so I could not see her working past her plaid shawl.
“How is this not going to kill me?”
“Have faith,” crooned the witch doctor. “I did tell you that it would be best if I gathered the ingredients.”
“And you would not have told me about the life leeches and fungi.” Both toxic. Terribly toxic.
“Pity you wouldn't let me bring them. These are barely old enough.” She hissed under her breath. Bowls clanked together. “It is done.”
The woman turned to me, armed with a paste that looked like purple oatmeal. Her arms shook, as though to underscore the babushka impression, and her smile was soft even if her eyes weren't.
I was not impressed. After all, I was a Swift, which meant I knew a few different ways to prepare mandrake, and clanking bowls together was akin to cooking steak by beating it with a mallet and eating it raw.
Over her shoulder, in the window, a crow craned his head in. They usually didn't come so close to the barn, perhaps they would land in my wilderness of a garden, but that was it. I didn't like the way he was watching.
“Eat,” the woman said, “and be cured.”
The air felt thick and charged, the way it did during a thunder storm while lightning split trees in half. Nerves, I told myself. Just nerves. The bowl felt cold as lead against my fingertips.
The witch doctor's eyes widened as I raised the spoon to my nose. Past the swampy scent of wriggling larvae, earthy fungi, and flowery herbs, I smelled nuts. Bitter almond. Very faint, but it was still there. Recognition jolted through my veins. The potion splattered over concrete. “Life leeches, fungi, and cyanide? What fool do you take me for?”
“Eat it. It's a cure. You will be fine.”
“No.”
“You have been the most impossible mission I have had in a hundred years! Eat it! Yes, you'll die, but I'll bring you back, you'll be cured, and I can finally go to my grave.”
“Mission?”
An angry cloud darken her eyes. She yanked up her staff and shouted, “Sisto cor!”
It missed. She reared back to try again.
“Fera!”