Fourteen Potions Draft 2

Sarah lived in Choanta, a small village led by their healing teacher; a witch. The witch helped the poorest of the people, and blended small potions for their health. Sarah lived in the house three houses down from hers.

She would listen as a small child as the healer women would chant and throw various ingredients together. Sometimes the smell of what the woman was boiling would make her gag. “Never would I ever drink anything like that,“ Sarah used to think to herself.  Yet, she  knew what of great importance the women to the people. The witch had saved countless lives with her potions, including Sarah’s own mother during labor fourteen years before.

Everyone respected the women, and would trade gold, animals, and food, for just a bit of one of her “gagging” mixtures. Most of the potions were to cure the sick. But some say that she made potions to trick people into love, make women more beautiful, men stronger or even change the unwitting completely into a goat. Those of course were all rumors, but Sarah always wondered, what exactly was that woman creating?

One rainy October day, Sarah sat with her head pressed against the window, waiting to hear the  women’s chants, waiting for the “gagging” smell, waiting for the new brew. But nothing came. Sarah sat there, and thought “Where is the woman, where is the stench, where is the chanting, where is she?” Not one day did Sarah not know where the woman was. Not one day was she not creating a new brew. Sarah was confused, puzzled, but also very curious. “Could she be out? Could she be traveling? Away from her house, and her potions?” As Sarah sat there she pondered the idea, “if she’s not home, maybe I can look around, find out what she’s making, and see if there really is a potion to make you more beautiful?”

Sarah gathered her jacket, boots and gloves and walked over to the women’s house. She peered through the back window, but no one was in sight, no one was home. She grabbed and turned the handle to the door, it was unlocked. She entered through the back door, and she was in. The house was ordinary; typical furnishings, a decorated parlor, and even a coat closet. It looked strangely just like Sarah’s house.  No skulls on the walls, or spiders hanging from the ceiling. No body parts in jars on shelves. It was surprisingly normal.

 Sarah walked through the parlor and into the hall. That’s when she saw the door. It was old looking, rusted and opened slightly, as if someone had just walked through it. Sarah came up to the door and looked through. And there it was, the room. She slowly walked through the door, inside were shelves; rows upon rows of shelving. On those shelves were various plants, herbs of some kind. There were also insects, and animals  held captive in jars. There was even a carcass on the table, a crow Sarah imagined. The smell filled the room with its sweet sick stench. In the corner was her pot. A large cast iron bowl, that’s where she brew her potions.  Sarah was finally in. Finally in the lair of the woman.  

And now, finally, she could make herself beautiful, and no one had to know how she did it. No one would have to know she stole the potion. As she was thinking this, she heard the door to the house creak open and then shut. She heard footsteps in the hall. Someone was in the house. There were fourteen potions on the shelf. Their labels were all missing. She knew one of them was what she needed. She frantically glanced back over her shoulder. There wasn’t enough time to figure out which was which. She grabbed the closest one and chugged it, hoping desperately she’s picked the right potion. After she sucked down the last drop, she ran.

She ran through the rusted door, and there she stared face to face with the woman. She was old, her hair a frizzled white, lines smothered her once smooth skin. Her lips cracked, and splitting. Sarah was in shock. She had been caught, trespassing and stealing from the woman. Sarah stuttered an, “I’m sorry”. But Sarah couldn’t take the woman’s pulsating stare, Sarah pushed her way through the women, and ran to the door, she flung it open and ran as fast as she could through the street to her own house.

When she banged the door shut to her room, she cried like she had never cried before. She wept on her bed, until a large circle of tears filled her pillow. She had done wrong. How could the women forgive her, how could Sarah forgive herself? And what if with all that Sarah had picked the wrong potion. What if she had picked the potion that turns you into a goat. Not the one that would make you the most beautiful woman in the village. Sarah stopped crying, and sat up in her bed, frozen, and silent waiting for the effects. Waiting for the potion to work. How long could it take?

 But nothing happened. She looked the same, felt the same, she was the same. The potion didn’t work, it was the wrong one. Her breathing started to even out.  She went through all that for nothing. “It was probably a potion for chicken pocks or something” Sarah said aloud to herself. Right?