Fourteen Potions

Sarah lived in Choanta, a small village lead by their healing teacher; a witch. She helped the people, and blended small potions for their health. Sarah lived in the house three houses down from hers. She would listen has a small child as the healer women would chant and through various ingredients together. Sometimes the smell of what the women was boiling would make her gag. “Never would I ever drink anything like that. “ Sarah used to think to herself.  She knew what of great importance that women was though. She saved countless lives with her potions including her mothers when we was in labor with Sarah 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 you completely into a goat. Those of course were all rumors, but Sarah always wondered, what exactly was that women creating? One rainly October day, Sarah sat with her head at the window, waiting for the women’s chants, waiting for the smell, waiting for the new brew. But nothing came. Sarah sat there, and thought “Where is the women, where is the stench, where is the chanting, where is she?” Not one day did Sarah not know where the women was. Not one day was she not creating a new brew. Sarah was confused, puzzeled, 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 whats she’s making, and if there really is a potion to make you more beautiful?” Sarah gathered her jacket boots and gloves and walked over the women’s house. She peered through the back window, but no one was in sight, no one was home. She entered through the back door, and she was in. The house was ordinary. The typical furnishings, she had a decorated parlor, even a coat closet. It looked strangely just like Sarah’s house.  No skulls on the walls, or spiders from the ceiling. No body parts in jars on shelves. It was normal. Sarah walked through the parlor and to the hall. That’s when she saw the door. It was old looking, rusted. It was open slightly open, as if someone had just walked through. Sarah came up to the door and looked through. And there is 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 kinds. There were also insects, and animals being 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 women.  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 and this, she heard the door to the house 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 closet 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, there she stared face to face with the women. 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 women. Sarah stuttered an “I’m sorry”. But the women just gazed at her, watched her start to tear up. Sarah pushed her way through the women, and ran to the door, she flung it open and ran as fast as she could to her room. 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 broken the women’s trust. She had done wrong. How could the women forgive her, how could Sarah forgive herself. And what if with all that, sarah 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. She sat there frozen, and silent waiting for the effects. Waiting for the potion to work. But nothing happened. She looked the same, felt the same, she was the same. The potion didn’t work, it was the wrong one. She went through all that for nothing. “It was probably a potion for chicken pocks or something” Sarah said aloud to herself. Sarah was disappointed. She knew what she did was wrong, and that she would be punished for it. But never again would she question the women, never again would she disrespect her. Or anyone for that fact.