Chapter 14
The bottles of salts, alcohol and glyoxal, our aldehyde, shed oblong shadows on the bench. Working in the main lab would be too risky, and so we conceal our activities in the chemical storage room, in the dim light of a table lamp.
“Kathrine, I’ve never seen you before-” I start.
“Yes you have,” she interrupts me, smiling.
“I feel like we’ve met, not here at the university though. But then where?” I ask.
“You’ve always been impatient and undisciplined. Just like me,” she tells me, still smiling.
“Always? How do you know?” I ask.
“You have to be patient Iris”, she replies, instead of answering my question.
I am about to formulate another question but then I desist, and we work in silence for a while, side by side.
“Do you remember what you’re preparing?” Kathrine asks me after a while.
I shake my head no.
“What did you tell yourself this morning when you saw the distillation unit?” she prods me.
“That I knew how to use it,” I remember.
Kathrine nods encouragingly.
“Yes, and what else?” she insists.
I hesitate for a moment, before the thought flashes back to my mind with the same abruptness with which it surprised me this morning.
I know what it’s meant for, I used it to make potions.
“Yes, we’re making a potion,” Kathrine says, enunciating my unspoken words.
Then she pauses, and her eyes grip mine. There’s love, sorrow and regret in her gaze, creased by an old woman’s wisdom. Removing the nitrile gloves she cups my face and says, “My child.”
I start to sob with a buried grief I cannot explain. Then the words speak themselves through my voice.
One potion to restore the consciousness of all, one potion to know what’s behind that door before it opens, one potion to let the glorious tree of the noble family live eternal.
“One potion to restore your own consciousness, one potion to know what’s behind the door you’ll open, one potion to find the tree of your true family,” Kathrine echoes, rephrasing my words.
Her face shivers through my tears.
“Now drink,” she tells me, handing me the fluid we just produced.
A pinkish liquid sits in the beaker, filaments of smoke exhaling from its translucent surface. I swirl it around for an instant, then I close my eyes and drink.