#1: The Potioneer at the End of the World
Our first short story
This story is part of a challenge to write 52 short stories in one year! Follow along with the challenge and receive prompts to write your own stories, by subscribing here.
Whew, it was hard to shake off the rust of not writing for a while and get this story going. What you’re reading today is the fourth draft. The first three versions focused more heavily on Argi, and Jenn didn’t even come into it, but the story didn’t work that way. Someday I’ll probably return to this world because I’m still obsessed with Argi, a potion-maker living at the end of the world.
Enjoy!
Jenn entered the strange building that stood at the edge of The Strait, the one that hovered between hut and home and business. It faced the churning waters at the end of the world, the southernmost building humans had left.
A potioneer lived there, according to his sister, a potioneer that could help their mother when nothing else had worked. Jenn wasn’t sure what a potioneer was, and staring at this foreboding structure at the edge of the continent, he had never wanted to find out less.
A bell didn’t tinkle over the doorway to announce his arrival. No one stood behind a counter ready to welcome him in or encourage him to sample some wares. Jenn stood alone for a moment, looking at floor-to-ceiling shelves filled with stoppered bottles, some of which seemed to emanate their own light. Looking at them, he was reminded forcefully of seeing one by his mother’s bedside years ago, when he was a small child, worried his mother was going to die.
“You’re welcome in my apothecary,” a voice said softly behind him. Jenn turned slowly, sure that the only thing worse than knowing what was behind him was not knowing.
But it was only a woman, a regular woman. She looked to be younger than Jenn’s mother but older than his sister, with dark hair and deep-set eyes. She looked—well, like the humans he had seen in paintings in old books, from before the war and the Nuclear Destruction; Strange only because she was whole.
“I’m Argi,” she continued when he remained silent. “I’m the potioneer. What can I help you with?”
“Thank you,” he stammered, wishing he knew what he was there for. “My sister sent me to fetch something for my mother,” he started, but trailed off, unsure how to finish.
“What ails her?” The woman asked gently. She peered deeply at him, and Jenn fidgeted under the strength of her gaze.
He shrugged. “Well, she’s sick, but not like usual… She won’t eat,” he said finally. “She is blind, but she’s always been, I don’t think there’s much you can do about that.” He hadn’t meant it to come out as a challenge, but he wondered if she’d heard it that way.
“No, probably not,” she said simply. “My grandmother was blind her whole life,” she added. “Everyone has something, these days.”
He felt soothed, somehow. “She has a terrible cough, all day and all night for a week now. She barely sleeps.”
The potioneer, Argi, he remembered, nodded. She looked around at her shelves as if she was thinking hard about something. Jenn found himself picturing his mother, laying in her bed and staring out the window at the yellow sky, wasting away.
“You’ve tried other medicines,” Argi said. It didn’t seem like a question, at least.
Jenn nodded. “The doctor saw her and said it was probably cancer.”
“It’s in all of us,” Argi said softly, still looking at the shelves.
He’d heard that before. During World War III and the nuclear attacks, billions of people had died. The few thousands that were left had fled as far south as they could, almost to the Arctic, searching for habitable land. But the poison was in their bodies by then, passed from generation to generation.
“Is there anything you can give her?” He asked.
Argi nodded. She pulled down two bottles. One was as large as Jenn’s head and seemed twice as heavy. The other was tiny and came with an eyedropper.
“What are they?” He asked. He couldn’t seem to take his eyes off the small iridescent bottle. From some angles it looks purple, from other green—he wasn’t sure if it was the liquid inside or the bottle itself.
She pointed to the large bottle. “This is peace. It will help her sleep. Give her a full glass each night.”
“Peace?” He repeated.
“And the small one is hope,” she continued. “She only needs one drop per day, in the morning. It’s very powerful.”
“Hope?” He echoed, hearing himself sound incredulous.
“Yes,” Argi nodded. “What were you expecting?”
His eyes had landed on the small bottle again, the one she said was filled with hope. “I don’t know,” he admitted finally. “Medicine, I guess.”
She smiled. “These are medicine, too, of a kind. They won’t make her cancer go away, but they’ll help her.”
“I guess I thought you’d have a cure-all,” he mumbled. “Maybe that’s stupid.”
Argi began wrapping up the bottles in scrap fabric and placed them in a bag. “Not at all,” she said finally. “My family have been potioneers for generations, and my great-grandmother used to talk about these wonderful medicinal potions to treat anything. But the ingredients they needed to make them died out because of the Destruction. We did the best we could with what survived, but she always said it didn’t compare. When she died and I took over, I decided to give up on the medicinal ones, let the doctors do that. I began bottling emotions instead.”
“You can do that?” Jenn asked skeptically. The bottles had disappeared into a bag, but he stared at the still, convinced he could see the iridescence through the wrapping.
“Yes,” she said simply. She didn’t offer an explanation and he didn’t dare ask for it.
“How much?” He asked finally, afraid of the answer. But before she could even respond, he felt relaxed again.
“What can you spare?” She asked.
Truthfully, he couldn’t spare money. No one was exactly wealthy, living at the end of the world, but he did have a lucky coin that had been passed down from his grandparents. It was silver with seven sides and a carving of a strange creature with three claws on each foot that was wearing away. He plunked it down on the corner, trying not to let his face betray how sad it made him to part with it. It wasn’t worth anything, but it had been his grandfather’s all the same.
“Thank you,” she said, pocketing it. If Argi was surprised or upset by this form of payment, she didn’t show it. “Would you like help carrying these home?” She asked.
He shook his head. The unsettled feeling he’d had walking in for the first time was starting to creep back in, though it kept being sucked away like the current pulled the water back out to sea. It left him unbalanced, the to and fro of his own emotions in the shop.
“No,” he stammered. “I can handle it.”
She nodded and led him to the door. Just before he stepped over the threshold, she stopped him with a gentle hand on his shoulder. “I think you should take a drop of the hope in the mornings too,” she said softly. “The despair you both feel is understandable, but the world is getting better, Jenn. I promise.” He blinked at her but didn’t say anything, so she continued, “When I was your age, the sky was orange and it was dark all the time, from the fires that were still burning. But now the fires are slowing down and we have night and day again. I think that means that things are getting better.”
“We have a book at home that says the sky used to be blue,” he said finally.
Argi nodded. “That’s what my great-grandmother used to say. Maybe it’ll be blue again someday.”
They both paused, looking outside at the yellow sky. Behind a dark haze, the sun was tracking toward the horizon. Nearby, waves crashed against the rocks, spraying salt into the air.
“Thank you,” he said finally. He wasn’t sure he’d take a drop of the hope in the morning, but he’d consider it.
He trudged home slowly, the brittle bones in his hand aching. He’d looked back only once and seen Argi standing outside, facing the whipping waters. The wind buffeted her, lifting her hair into a snapping stream behind her. She seemed strong in its face, but it made him feel cold and bitter, so he hurried inland.
The sun had nearly set by the team he reached their small house. Jenn hurried to pour some of the potion from the big bottle into a glass to take to his mother. It smelled like flowers and something sweet that he couldn’t identify, and she’d drank all of it in a single go. After, she sank back into her pillows, a small smile on her face.
“Thank you, Jenndinth,” she said finally, reaching out to pat his face. Somehow, she always knew exactly where he was.
“Good night, mother,” he said. He sat, watching her sleep for a long time, relieved that she wasn’t waking up and coughing, grateful that it looked like she was really resting.
When he returned to the other room, Jenn placed a log on the fire and pulled a blanket over his sister, who was already sleeping soundly. As quietly as he could, he turned out his pockets and was shocked to find his grandfather’s coin still there. He turned it over and over in the light, silently examining it. It was the same coin, down to a small knick on a corner that had been there as long as he’d had it. He set it in his eye-line as he lay down to sleep, watching the firelight play across the silver.