10:19
“Give me a moment?” Siobhan pointed at her bare feet. “I need to put my boots on.”
That was a great excuse to hang back. And she did need to put on her boots. But really, Siobhan needed a mero or two to sit in her own self.
While she mindlessly pulled a sock on and then a boot, Siobhan licked her lips, trying to capture any residue of the potion. Almost immediately she caught herself and cursed internally. She drew a long breath, held it in a mero while willing it to push against the potion jumping in her veins, then blew it out hard like she could expel the toxins. If only it were that easy.
Every time she put that potion in the bottom loop of her bag strap she told herself she wasn’t going to need it. But she always put it there because what if, like just now, she did? Every single day when she walked out of the house was another day she could push too hard and her Magick would start to Consume. And for sure every time she had ‘adventure time’ with her friends there was a greater chance of it. So, she carried the potion and she pretended to ignore it sitting there at the bottom of the strap.
Alchemists, at their core, were ambitious and they were competitive. Like kids at an elite college, they pushed. They pushed themselves. And through that they pushed other alchemists to greater heights. It was an ouroboros of ambition. And that wasn’t bad, intrinsically. That’s how discoveries were made and society advanced.
But pushing the boundaries of their Magick too often lead to Consumption – which was the term they coined in the community for when the body’s natural Magick pool was depleted and the Magick, of its own volition, reached out to the world for more. More Magick. More power.
Magick was a hungry thing. It was usually sated by the natural stores of Magickers. On a subconscious level Magickers knew pushing their Magick was bad. The first hint of strain and their natural defenses had them backing away. But, if they continued to push their ability to use Magick would grow, like neurogenesis in the brain creating cranial folding.
And that promise of greatness drove some people, often in the alchemy community because that was where so many mad geniuses gravitated, to keep pushing until they became monsters.
There was a concept called kindling in which the brain could be stimulated in such a way as to create a response. The research initially was done on seizures. A part of the brain was stimulated to create a seizure. Over time the brain, if stimulated frequently, would start seizing on its own. The idea was to understand seizures to be able to combat them and it was a questionably good thing. In fact, the research was used to figure out how to apply Magick in the treatment of progressive diseases affecting the nervous system. So good.
The same phenomenon worked with Magick in the body or the brain or whatever esoteric system you embraced to explain how Magick worked.
Push your Magick enough, go into Consumption too many times, and your Magick, when taxed, would just start consuming. It went from bad, to worse, to give them a hotshot because they are about to eat the world. And that was just the progression. The only way off that merry-go-round was to stop pushing.
The potion Siobhan carried as her “about to make the world bleed” solution was one every alchemist carried. And many used. Often. Because they just kept pushing.
Siobhan didn’t. Push. She walked away from that cutthroat community, became a teacher, and only used her Magick to cook up potions which involved no expansion of her Magick.
Still she feared someday she’d push just a little and she’d tip over the edge. Which she did.
That was why she didn’t push when she was in danger situations. Because that was too much of a threshold event. She knew her advantageous Magick would surge and she knew she wouldn’t be able to stop.
But the temptation to do ‘just a little’ was always there. As it had been today. And the potential for her Magick to just go “give me more!”, as it did today, was there, so she carried the damned potion. And she was glad she had it.
Only now, with her skin itching like a junkie and her mind racing with all the possibilities, all the good she could do with this energy, she was not so very glad.
Once you let the genie out of the bottle, once you filled your body with liquid Magick, it was very hard to put it back. It was arguably the most addictive substance Siobhan knew of.
And she’d know as she’d once been dependent on it. The group that gravitated to her former mentor, Sebastian, were the ambitious types. Probably because he was. She certainly had been. Everyone in his orbit wanted to attain the level of Magick he did. So they pushed. And they pushed. And they Consumed. And they drank potions that amped their Magick. Because that too was addictive.
Even now, clenching her teeth and fighting to contain the shakes enough so she could tie her boot lace, she thought of the extra potion she had deep in her bag and she wanted it.
But, she was stronger than her ambitions and her need and all the “think of the good I could do”s and that bottle was staying deep, deep in the bag. She just needed to ride out the wave from the first hit and move on. If she made it through the next few hours while the potion coursed through her she’d be in the clear. And back on the straight-and-narrow.
“Siobhan?”
At Gwen’s call she shoved down her thoughts and jumped to her feet. Then frowned. Stupid potion. Jumping to her feet. Was she twelve? Was she Abe?
“I’m coming!”
Walking at the sedate pace a sedate and controlled lady would walk, while mentally willing her blood to stop capering like a puppy, she joined the others where they were clustered near the next hedge wall and trellis.
Tomatillos, like small green paper lanterns, hung from branches hugging the trellis structure. Ivan very delicately traced one of the ones nestled half in the branches and half in the hedge the trellis merged with.
“What are they?”
“Tomatillos,” Well, that actually came out coherently. She’d had doubts. She pressed her tongue to her upper lip, testing to see if the numbness was receding. Of course it wasn’t.
“Tomatillos,” he rolled the l’s as she did, pronouncing them like the letter ‘Y’.
“They are good raw or cooked.” Siobhan kept her expression particularly bland as she suggested, “You should try one.”
Ivan shrugged and plucked the tomatillo from the branch then stared at it. “Do you eat this papery part?”
“No. Peel that off.”
“Oh, it’s sticky.” The tomatillo he’d picked was a nice, big one. Perfect for taking a bite. “And it looks like a green tomato. Is that why it’s called a tomatillo?”
“Maybe?”
Ivan cocked his head to the side and took a big bite of the tomatillo. And then immediately spit it out and stuck his tongue out. Siobhan tried to bite back her laugh and failed.
“Sour?”
Ivan leveled her with a half-lidded stare. “Yes.”
Prairie giggled at his side. When he turned to glower at her she wrinkled her nose then gave him a big grin. “Serves you right just sticking things in your mouth.”
“I’ll stick—Uh,” A blush burned Ivan’s high cheekbones. “I mean. Yeah. Stupid. I thought,” he turned to give Siobhan another ‘look’, “I could trust Mom.”
Siobhan pressed a hand to her chest. When the fingers trembled she tensed her muscles and pressed them tighter. “Mom?”
“Sure.” Ivan pointed at Siobhan. “Mom.” Then he turned and stabbed his thumb towards Dempsey who was three steps back in the intersecting path. “Dad.” After that he looked around, poinpointed Ben where he was idly leaning against the right wall, and pointed, “Drunkle Ben.”
“Hey!” Ben grinned. “Yeah. Definitely Drunkle Ben. Better than Uncle Ben because I don’t do rice.”
Siobhan ducked her head and grinned. It felt like her face was stretching too far, like her skin was rubber and it was just stretching all out of proportion and all her teeth were showing and all her gums and her jaw and her mouth was encroaching on her eye sockets.
Heart jumping like a trapped bird trying to escape the cage of her chest, she raised her hand and felt the skin next to her mouth. Nope. In the right place and not stretched at all.
She blew out a breath and arranged her features in what she really hoped looked like a semblance of normalcy. Running her tongue along the line of her upper teeth to make sure they were all there and in the right order, she placed her hand on the gate at shoulder-height and pushed.
It swung open revealing another square of garden with the same five paths, raised beds, and hedge at the far end. Sighing she looked to Dan who’d moved up on her left. “Do you think it’s ever going to end or are we just going to keep finding new gardens?”
“Logically it has to end.”
He shifted his toothpick left to right. Siobhan found herself momentarily transfixed by the movement. She had to blink hard several times before she could shift her gaze to encompass the totality of his face. And even then it took her several mikros to really bring his features into sharp focus.
“Unless you think the repetition is part of the test?”
For another mikro or three Siobhan parsed the words, playing them through her fuzzy brain. Then she pushed another smile. “We should definitely look for patterns in this garden. Nothing really jumped out at me in the last one.”
There. That made it seem like the entire garden wasn’t just an impressionist painting like the one of the flowers in the gallery from earlier.
The benefit of the potion coursing through her veins was the call of the plant Magick was muffled to the point she could ignore it. It was a double-edged sword as the call of the potion was much stronger. But at least it was a single point of temptation, not the whole world drawing her off the path of righteousness and sobriety.
Normally she’d call on her awareness of the plants through her Magick to give her a clue as to what was what. But, not being able to do that she had to rely on her eyes and her eyes were definitely wonky.
“Hey,” Gwen placed a soft hand on her arm, “Need some help?”
Siobhan was so tempted to say yes. But, no. She had no idea what effect pulling off the wobbles caused by the potion would have on Gwen. Plus, she really didn’t want Gwen to realize how off she was.
That, of course, was a really stupid ask and if she was fully in her right mind she would never have thought it. Gwen proved she knew just what was up, even before the touch, as she leaned in and whispered low enough probably only Siobhan heard it. “You are high as a kite, aren’t you?”
Siobhan bit her lip then nodded, choosing to focus on the path revealed by the open gate rather than look at Gwen.
“Can I help?”
“Please, don’t. It’s the potion and I don’t know what it might do to you.”
“The potion you made us pour into your mouth.”
Again Siobhan just nodded.
Gwen backed away. Her hand lingered a moment then she stepped back far enough that there was breathing room between she and Siobhan. She poked a finger into her hair at the back of her head while stepping around Siobhan and into the next gardenscape. Then she turned back and looked at Siobhan. “You coming?”
Siobhan balled her hands into fists, crushing the shakes, then lifted one to check her flower wreath while letting the fingers of the other drift over her bag strap. “Yes.”
She startled when Dan cupped a hand under the elbow of the arm fussing at the bag. It might have been the very first time he’d touched her in a non-combat situation.
She cast him a quick glance even while she looked inward to run a list of her physical state. Hands not shaking. Check. Face in a serene expression. Probably check? Standing in an upright manner? Check and check. So, what gave her away?
She looked at Dan with a quizzical expression then looked down at his hand then back up at him again.
“You stumbled.”
Looking back over her shoulder she frowned. “Did I?”
Prairie nodded then stepped up to the other side of her. “That potion did some damage, huh?’
“Better than what I would have done if someone hadn’t poured it down my throat. Who was that?”
Ben slid in around her, twiddled his fingers, then headed over to the path on the far left.
“Thanks!” she called over to him.
“Welcome! So,” he made a big deal of looking over the beds of flowers and plants. “See anything that jumps out at you?”
Besides the technicolor wobbles? Yes, not the answer she was going to give. So, instead she swept her gaze from the left to the right and then back again. “No.”
“You sure?” Dempsey rumbled. By the way he shifted his shield and swept the garden like there were assassins lurking in the foliage, Siobhan, even in her questionable state, could tell he was getting antsy at the lack of aggression. If she wasn’t in such the questionable state – that was what she was going with – she’d probably be feeling the same.
Even in her “questionable state” there was something very off about the setup. Something should be happening. Something attacking or something catching on fire or birds pooping on them or something that gave a clue what they were supposed to be doing in this garden. No way, no way, The House was just giving them a lovely interlude before the next challenge. Especially considering they couldn’t go back. That didn’t feel lovely. Not at all.
She slanted Dan a glance. “What do you think?”
Dan gave Abe a nod and the younger person scampered over from near the right wall with an eager expression. Dan nodded down at where his fingers remained wrapped lightly around Siobhan’s arm. Abe followed the look then smiled really bright and nodded hard enough Siobhan feared their head might topple off.
She knew Abe wasn’t a child but so often they reminded her of her students. There was something so open and bright about them, like life hadn’t managed to smudge their shine yet. It filled her heart with joy just being around them. So, she was happy to accept their hand wrapped around her arm, giving her subtle support.
“Thank you,” she murmured to them.
A mad twinkle entered their eyes. “Happy to help, Mom.”
Siobhan’s mouth twitched. Then it twitched again and again. She clenched her teeth and got the recalcitrant feature under control, forcing a half-smile. “That’s going to stick, isn’t it?”
Her Ss sounded like Ths to her. She wondered if they sounded like that to the others? If so nobody made any comment. Humoring ‘Mom’? Or was she just imaging the slur?
A sudden thought flitted through her brain as she looked at Abe. “Are you tired?”
Abe gave her a questioning look. “Do I look tired?”
“You never look tired,” Dan muttered.
Siobhan looked at Dan. Did he look a little drawn? “Are you tired?”
Dan shook his head but Siobhan’s mind went into an obsessive loop where she imagined she saw all of her friends looking a bit drawn. Because of her. Here she was with the energy of bunnies in Spring and they were all the worse for her Consumption.
She reached into her bag with her free hand and fumbled out a bundle of potions tied with a ribbon. Her thumb ran along the tops, counting out five. Not enough. Pulling the bundle out she thrust it at Abe who took it with a frown. She held up a finger then reached back into her bag and pulled out the last bundle of energy potions in her stock.
Thrusting this bundle into Prairie’s hand where the petite woman stood to her left, she wagged a finger between it and the one Abe held. “Energy. You all need it. Spread them around.”
Dempsey walked over and took the bundle from Abe so they didn’t have to let go of Siobhan. He separated one from the bundle and gave it to Abe then he walked around distributing the other four while Prairie handed the ones in her hand to Ben, Patti, and Ivan while retaining one for herself.
Patti popped the lid on hers and held it to her mouth. “To your health!”
She gulped back most of it then dipped her hand down to give Sass the last few drops. Siobhan’s eyes burned as she followed the gesture. Had she hurt Sass too?
Blinking rapidly, she watched her friends quaff back the potions, before shoving the empty vials into various places on themselves. She tried to stop the blinking but it was like she was one of those creepy dolls that just winked and blinked and never stopped. Lifting her shaky hand, she pressed her fingertips to her eyelids, holding them shut while her eyeballs jerked against the pads. Only when the eye twitching slowed to a sluggish near stop did she lower her hand.
Gwen was giving her another look from one row over. She forced a rubbery smile, then feeling the crazy in her eyes she relaxed it a bit and lifted her chin to her friend. Gwen narrowed one eye and stared at her while pursing her lips.
Dempsey broke the awkward moment. “All I see is plants.”
“Me too,” Patti added. “What am I supposed to be looking for?”
“Wish I knew.” Siobhan’s lips remained pursed and the ‘knew’ dragged out an abnormally long time. At least to her ears.
“Is there anything I can do to help?” Prairie asked quietly from her side. Siobhan turned and looked at her friend. Or friends. Because her eyes crossed and she saw two Prairies.
Poop.
Blinking rapidly she brought Prairie into something like focus.
“Would an energy potion help you?” Prairie held up the last of the five Siobhan gave her.
Siobhan shook her head. Perhaps a bit too fast because Prairie followed the motion with an alarmed expression. Considering Prairie worked in a trauma center she had to see a people in altered states on the regular, whether from pain, mental illness, or substance abuse. So, that she looked at Siobhan with alarm raised alarm within Siobhan’s breast.
She paused to take a long breath through her nostrils then let it out with a huff. “The potion Ben gave me boosts my energy exponentially. Trust me, I do not need any more energy.”
“Oh,” Prairie nodded like she understood and maybe she did. “Okay. What else can we do to help?”
Siobhan waved her hand. “It’s just got to work its way through. I’ve done this before.”
“Are your eyes focusing okay?”
“Is it that obvious? No.”
“It isn’t obvious, but I suspected as much. Would hydrating help?”
With that suggestion Siobhan became suddenly aware that she had the worst case of cottonmouth. She poked her tongue at the corner of her mouth, expecting to find crust there. There wasn’t any but she still felt like her lips should be cracked with how dry her mouth was.
Prairie held out a canteen, the cap dropped back. “Here. It’s just water.”
“Thanks.” Siobhan took the canteen then tipped it back for a big gulp. Then another. Then another. Then nothing. She held the canteen back from her mouth and shook it towards the ground. Not a drop came out. She’d drained it.
Looking apologetic she returned the canteen to Prairie. “Thanks.” Wait. Had she said that? Oh well, didn’t hurt to be polite! “I really needed that.”
Suddenly another canteen was being thrust at her by Ivan who’d come up in front of her on the central path. She shrugged took it and drained that dry too then offered it back to Ivan with a little laugh. “I really hope I’m not sucking down our entire drink supply.”
Ivan waved idly towards the fountains in the center of the two rows running parallel to the central one they stood on. “Plenty of water to be had.”
“Are we sure we should drink it?” Siobhan frowned. “What if that’s part of the test?”
“I’m not sure what kind of test would involve fountains.”
“Well,” Dan strolled back from where he’d been making a survey of the raised beds. “There were fountains in the second garden, but not in the third or the fourth, and now there are ones in this garden which is the fifth but that’s a staggered pattern. It’s possible its adding one extra garden between fountains but we wouldn’t be able to tell that unless The House gives us many more gardens.”
Kim strolled over to listen to Dan’s theory. She cocked her head and then shuddered. “Please. No.” She looked up at Siobhan with an apologetic expression. “Nothing against gardens, but the thought of strolling through a series of them indefinitely is unappealing.”
“I agree. And I like gardens.”
“Let’s hope the fountains don’t mean anything.” Ivan looked around the garden, his gaze alighting on the fountains before moving on to stare intently at the right castle wall. Siobhan followed his gaze, narrowing her eyes to try to see what he might be seeing. She saw nothing. Whether that was because she was, as Gwen put it, high as a kite or there was nothing to see was undetermined.
What was determined was that she was definitely seeing the wall a bit clearer. And not in a ‘I can see through the wall and into the vast universe beyond’ way. In a ‘I think my vision is clearing which is a great sign’ way.
Normally it would take an hora for that effect to fade. Maybe the juiced Magick of The House was doing something to the Magick in the potion. That would be nice. Maybe she could actually be a functional member of the group and not a tottering dork before the test was over.
She cast her gaze further over the garden, regretting the speed she did it at as she tilted slowly to the left. When Abe’s hand closed gently on her arm, holding her upright, she turned her attention back to them. Too quickly. Far too quickly.
Her head bobbled like one of those dolls with the bobbling heads – you know the head bobbly dolls or whatever – and she lifted her brows like that was going to make her vision stop swimming. Oddly, it did. Or at least it convinced her brain it did. Either way she was able to focus on Abe and give them a tight smile.
“Thanks. Would you be okay with us walking to the next hedge?”
“Hap! Hap! Happy! To Help!” Abe replied. No wait, no. She was pretty sure they only said, “Happy.”
Talk about an unreliable narrator! Woo.
At least her eyes felt less bugging out. And her hands were shaking a little less. She looked down to confirm. Yep, less shaking. Although it did feel nice to lace them together and clench hard.
Raising her clenched hands to in front of her throat she rested her chin on the knuckles then looked down the path to the next hedge. “Shall we?”
“Yes!”
Abe gently held Siobhan’s arm as they walked down the path and approached the trellis. Siobhan could smell the jasmine as they approached, way before her eyes adjusted to be able to see the small white clusters of star jasmine flowers.
At first she thought her eyes were still hazy as the vision of the flowers danced very subtly, like pollen on the air, but as they came close to the trellis she saw it was actually bees flying flower to flower gathering nectar. Then from the top of the hedge a kaleidoscope of butterflies, blue morphos and painted ladies and red admirals, swirled down to settle on the jasmine.
Not a kaleidoscope like her brain was seeing the space as though peering through a toy, thank the light for that! Kaleidoscope was one of the terms used for a group of butterflies. Wasn’t that pretty? Wasn’t she still a little loopy? Yes, she was!
“Pretty.” Abe echoed the words in Siobhan’s head. She turned and looked at them, lips pursed. Were they…? No. Nope. Complete coincidence. Whee.
She blinked, focused her rapidly clearing eyes, and stared at the gate. Then she turned to look at the others. Then she waited a moment for her head to clear and to make sure she hadn’t in fact flew around three times but just once. Then she got to the point. “Has anyone seen anything that might be a test?”
Teft? Tetht? Oof.
Ben turned from where he was poking a knife into the cracks between the stones in the castle wall to the right. “Nope.”
Dempsey looked over from the left wall. “Can’t see anything.”
Ivan scratched the side of his neck. “This feels weird.”
“Yeah,” Patti drew out the word and came up from where she was squatting next to a bed of lemon balm. “It feels very weird.”
Siobhan shrugged. She meant for it to be a little shrug but she was pretty sure she hit her earlobes with her shoulders. And yet the buoyant bubbles of the potion felt like it was settling in her blood. It was still there but she didn’t want to claw open her arms to get at her veins anymore. Baby steps. Still steps.
“Eventually something will happen and then we’ll know,” Prairie said with a soft smile. “Until then all we can do is keep our eyes and our minds open.”
“You are so pretty.” Siobhan shook her head as the words came unbidden to her mouth. “Sorry. Smart. You are very smart.”
Prairie grinned. “The potion?”
“The potion.”
“I never want to drink that potion.”
Dread hit Siobhan’s gut, cold, like a ball of ice plummeting through her system to lodge just above her pelvis. Her eyes grew wide and she shook her head. “I never want you to drink it either.”
She smiled bright, hoping to alleviate the coldness in her words. “And with that, we should move on!”
Turning quickly with eyes wide she laid a hand on the trellis gate. First because she wanted to open it. Second because she really needed the support as the world spun around her at the abrupt movement. Once the swimming door came back into clear detail she pushed it. This time she noted that she did push it. That there was no feeling of a latch giving.
She turned and looked back over her shoulder, slowly this time because headspins were absolutely no fun. “Maybe this time there’ll be a clue.”
Abe grabbed her arm again, then gave her a big smile. “Maybe!”
Siobhan advanced under the trellis with Abe close beside her. From behind her she heard Ivan ask, “Should we try to hold the door open? One of stay back and do it?”
“Do you think that would work?” Kim asked.
“Eh. Probably not.”
“Yeah. If its part of the test I doubt we’ll be able to keep it open. Plus, what’s the use? We don’t want to go backwards anyway.”
Enter The Woods 