“There really isn’t much else we can do,” the doctor’s voice was grave. “I would prepare your family for the worst.”
Renna felt her heart sink as her ears took in the hushed conversation that leaked in through the crack in the bedroom door. Her hand tightened around the clammy one that rested on the blankets beside her on the bed. Its fingers were weak, old and wrinkled. Accompanying the figure of the same description that took up the mattress, tucked away in a thick pile of quilts as she slept uneasily. A bandage wrapped carefully around her forearm.
“I recommend this,” the doctor continued, “to ease the pain.”
“Thank you, doctor.” Was the only reply that the man got from her parents. It was her father, not her grandmother’s son but still the gravity of the situation was heard in his voice regardless. Renna sucked in a shakey, half-breathe as the front door opened and was closed behind the doctor as he left. So that was it, they could do nothing for her grandmother.
Renna’s eyes wandered over the pale features of the woman before her. Her stomach crumpled into tight knots as she fought back the burning of her eyes. There had to be something. She couldn’t give up, not when it was all her fault that her grandmother was in that state in the first place. Perhaps there was something, a herb or a witchdoctor that might have a less common cure for the spreading illness caused by the bite.
It was her mother’s broken voice that called her out of her thoughts. “Renna,” she said. “Come here child.”
Her green eyes shifted from the sick form to the doorway where her mother stood. She was thinner than usual, stress taking away her will to eat, and large bags hung under her matching green eyes from no sleep. Her dark brown hair had been pulled back, though it looked like some had fallen loose without her mother knowing it. The ribbon did its job poorly after so much abuse the last few days.
“Your grandma needs some of these herbs,” she stated though her voice hitched on a few of the words. “Please go out and get them.”
Renna looked toward her grandmother. Her tight features and the way her breathing came out uneven. Surely she’d make it back before anything happened. If she hurried, maybe the herbs would ease the pain enough for her grandmother’s body to fight back against the sickness in her wounds. If she didn’t make it back in time though, her grandmother would…
She stood, forcing the thought from her head as she took the list from her mother and headed toward the door. On the hook beside it sat a cloak, which she grabbed and draped over her shoulders, and a pair of worn boots she slipped on. There was no other exchange between her and her parents before Renna was out the door and headed in the direction of the herbalist on the edge of town. He would have what they needed, it was probably a very common herb if the doctor had recommended it, and if he didn’t. Well, she’d figure it out after.
The sun was peeking out over the horizon when she reached the small, squat building on the side of the village and knocked a few times on the door of the shop. A faded sign hung over it’s door that read apothecary, though Renna had never heard anyone in the village call it that. It was simply Master Sarlee’s herb shop.
When he appeared there was a mixture of confusion on his tired face before it was replaced with sorrow when he realized who was knocking so early. Her grandmother was well known as the woman who lived in the woods, not far from the village, and she had worked closely with master Sarlee for some time because she was very good at growing what he needed or finding the more rare types. Her grandmother had told her that she and the herbalist had grown up in the same age, they had become fast friends over the herbs they both loved. She’d told Renna many such stories.
“Your grandmother,” Master Sarlee began, then looked down at the paper Renna held out for her. He took it in his hand, eyes scanning the page as his face grew carefully blank. “I see. Come this way.”
Renna nodded, following the man into his shop so that the door fell closed behind them with a snap. The inside of the shop was a mixture of shelves and thin tables pushed against the walls. A long counter cut across the far side of the room, blocking off a small path behind which was a door and many closed cabinets that she assumed held more medicine. Everything smelled of earth and the faint stench of incense that burned somewhere in the home. They made her nose itch like the ones in the temple did. Perhaps he was burning them at a personal shrine somewhere upstairs. Another prayer to the gods.
“This,” he set down a bottle of green liquid, “and this. And…”
He came up short at an empty place in the cabinet behind the counter. There was a long moment of silence before he moved again. Muttering to himself as he shifted and looked through a collection of herbs that he had in jars or hanging to dry along one of the walls. It appeared he came up short though as his tongue clicked.
“I’m out,” he stated. “I had been waiting for…”
His eyes moved to her. Eyes heavy as they moved over her. Master Sarlee was an aged man, his long white hair pulled back into a tail with a black ribbon at the nape of his neck. It’s locks framing his weathered, wrinkled features and deep set gray eyes. He looked every bit an old grandfather as her grandmother did, though Master Sarlee had no grandchildren of his own. He and his wife had never had one, it left the ever looming question of who’d succeed him over the minds of the village. He was getting older, though at that moment she’d never seen him look so aged.
“Your grandmother was going to bring more,” he stated. “Perhaps you can fetch it for me from her garden. She grew the one we need in her greenhouse.”
Renna’s eyes moved to the door, her thoughts going back to her grandmother. She didn’t want to be away for long. She needed the medicine that Master Sarlee had set on the counter but if the doctor had prescribed all of them that meant it was important. Her fingers taped against her thigh as she ran over the possibilities. Master Sarlee could go get it, but she would be much faster. Plus she knew the route much better than Master Sarlee. She’d been to her grandmother''s house thousands of times since she was very young. She could traverse the forest path even in the darkest of nights and the harshest storms.
Finally she nodded again. Yes, she could do it. She’d have to do it, if her grandmother’s life was on the line. Especially when it had been her fault that she’d been alone that day in the woods. Her stomach tightened at the thought as she turned her eyes back to Sarlee.
“Show me what I’m looking for.”
Sarlee said her grandmother grew the herb in the greenhouse because it needed to be warm in all seasons. Whether she’d already picked it or not, he was unsure of. However, he’d ripped a page of his herb book that described it out so she could look at it when she got there. This was how Renna found herself flying through the woods as the crisp morning air began to warm with the sunrise. Around her the birds began to wake, though their chirps were faint against the hammering of her heart and the sound of her boots against the worn, forest path.
On a usual day, it would take her about thirty minutes to an hour to get to her grandmother’s house. Renna was able to get there in about twenty minutes. By the time she got there her lung screamed, her legs wobbled, and her mind clouded with exhaustion as she tried to gasp in a few breaths. Leaning over so she could brace her hands on her knee outside her grandmother’s metal gate.
Her eyes roamed the building through the gap in the brick walls circling her grandmother’s home. The path that cut through green shrubs up to the cottage’s wooden door. The whole building was covered in greenery. Vines and brush snaking their way across the thatch roofed place. Trees thick with flowers and leaves hanging over the yard. It looked as it always did, a small peaceful oasis in the forest. Beside the home, that was shut tight as no one was there, was a tall greenhouse. It stuck from the right side, standing higher than the cottage itself and wider. Renna knew that there were two entrances, one from her grandmother’s kitchen and the other from the side where she had rows of outdoor plants growing in the open air.
It was this side entrance that Renna made her way too. She didn’t have her grandmother’s key, but she knew she always kept the side door open. It had always worried her mother that she did this. However her grandmother had always seemed unworried about potential people entering her home from that side. She said that her herbs were meant to help people, if someone needed them enough to steal them then she would much rather they had it then not. So she’d always kept the greenhouse unlocked from the side. Renna would be one of those people, it seemed.
Circling the outside of the greenhouse, Renna entered through the unlocked side door and stopped. A soft trickle of water from her grandmother’s irrigation system filled her ears as she tried to judge where to start. Rows of high boxes thick with growing plants covered the lower floor as well as the higher platform that looped around the outside of the room. The whole place was like a jungle of plants. Some big enough to create walls, others drooping over the edges of their boxes where they grew. From the ceiling hung smaller, round planters that grew vines of flowering plants that mixed with the collection of dangling windchimes and pieces of glass that caught the morning light.
The plant Master Sarlee needed was one that liked warm, shadowy places. Or that was what he’d said and as she pulled the folded page of his book out she confirmed it once more. Which meant that the boxes that sat under the canopy of other plants was likely where her grandmother had put them and it was where she started. Venturing over, Renna began her search. Moving as quickly as she’d allow herself as she picked through things. When she was through the first box and had not found the plant, she felt a lump begin to form. Then a second box came up empty and with it her nose began to run.You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
By the time she''d finished picking through everywhere she thought they could be, Renna’s eyes ran along with her nose. At some point the burning of her eyes had become too much. Sitting back, she ran a gaze over the greenhouse and everything caught up to her. The frustration of being unable to find the plant. The guilt from not being with her grandmother in the forest that day. The stress of seeing her mother so distraught. The exhaustion from running so far. The sadness of possibly losing her grandmother and the heaviness of all of it on her shoulders.
While Renna was far from the age where one could wail openly, she did. Sitting back on her legs, she tilted her head back and let out everything that she’d bottled. The noise of her crying mixed with the trickle of water. Engulfing it. Leaving her sobbing as the only thing that could be heard. She didn’t care though. She let the tears fall down her face. Letting it all sink in.
“Oh my,” the voice was soft like a ring of her grandmother’s windchimes. “Are you hurt?”
Renna’s eyes flashed toward the door, though it stood empty, before moving across to a small archway that sat tucked into a grove of tall plants. Renna had always wondered what it was for but had always assumed it was simply for the plants that grew on it. The vines and flowers weaving their way across the arch of wood. Just another feature in her grandmother’s garden that she’d all but forgotten about. It wasn’t until Renna eyes the woman who stood under it’s canopy that she once again was reminded of it.
The woman herself was small with long white hair that fell in braids down her sides. If it wasn’t for her youthful face and the slight point of her eyes that stuck from beneath her hair, Renna would have thought she was an older woman. Perhaps she was still much older than Renna, though she looked about her age as she tilted her head and looked over her with startling purple eyes.
“Who are you?” Renna felt her voice crack. “Why are you here?”
The girl’s face danced with a faint, sad smile. “I usually come to Amara for the herbs I need,” she said. “However she hasn’t been around the last few times I’ve visited.”
Amara. It had been a long time since she’d heard her grandmother’s birth name. Around her she was simply grandmother. Still, Renna had been spending time with her grandmother since she was a baby and she’d never seen this strange pale haired visitor.
“I’m Faylen,” she said. Likely after realizing she hadn’t introduced herself.
Renna sniffed, wiping her nose with her sleeve. “Renna,” she stated. “Amara. My grandmother… she…”
The words couldn’t come out as a wave of sorrow washed over Renna once more and the tears pushed their way forward once more. Renna felt herself crumple, not just physically but emotionally under the tears. It was at this moment the girl swept forward. Coming to sit beside Renna, a comforting arm brushing over her shoulders as she attempted to soothe the sobbing. It seemed to have the opposite effect as the comfort of another body beside her own only brought a new, stronger wave of worries from inside her chest and allowed them to wash over Renna. The girl. No, perhaps she should call her a woman. Did not seem to mind it. Instead Renna heard a mutter of soothing hushes and a gentle hand rubbed along her back.
She wasn’t sure how long she cried. Eventually the sobs turned into softer crying and that eventually turned into silent tears and soft sniffs of her nose. Until she had calmed her gasping and fallen into a quiet misery. Her eyes itched from the tears and her face felt wet, there was no way she was a pleasant sight but still the woman sat with her. At least until Renna seemed to have control over herself, at which point the woman handed her a handkerchief and offered a smile.
“How about a cup of tea?” She offered. “A cup of tea fixes most things and what it doesn’t fix we can certainly figure out together.”
“Tea.” Renna’s eyes moved to the locked door of her grandmother’s kitchen. “My grandmother’s house is locked though.”
Faylen chuckled. “Not to worry,” she said as she gestured toward the archway. “I live very close by.”
Renna’s eyes followed. Finding the archway and sucking in a small gasp. Where there used to be nothing but a canopy of plants stood a small passage. Warm, golden light leaked from it from the room beyond. She could see a small kitchen beyond, a fire crackling in the hearth. At once her eyes flashed back to the woman, Faylen. Magic. This woman was doing magic.
“Who are you?” she asked again.
“I’m Faylen,” was her only reply as she helped Renna to her feet and helped her through the passage into the kitchen beyond. As soon as they’d passed through the door, Renna felt the warm of the hearth and smelt the aroma of bread mixed with mixed herbs. Much like her own Grandmother’s kitchen had always smelled. It wasn’t a very large place, just a small kitchen with counters and cabinets lining a wall, an island with a collection of vials and other tools across from it, a large fireplace lined with drying herbs and other weird contraptions directly across from the door, and a table pushed under a bayed window that overlooked a night garden. Renna looked back at the bright daylight of her grandmother’s garden seen through the square doorway they’d passed through. Then at the night sky beyond the woman’s windows.
“What are you?”
“Oh, I’m quite normal,” Faylen said as she headed toward the counters where a kettle was filled with water from a spout over her sink and hung above the fire. “I run my own tea shop.”
“A teashop?” Her eyes moved to the other two doors. One sat beside the one they had entered through, the other on the opposite side beside the fire. Perhaps one of those were the shop itself, though it didn’t seem like they were in any city. In fact, outside the window Renna could see a stretch of meadowed slope that led to the bank of a large pond that gleamed with moonlight. There was no light of other houses or the noise that came from living in a village like the distant sound of farm animals. What type of teahouse sat so far in the middle of nowhere.
“Yes,” Faylen moved to the table and pulled out a chair. “Here, sit.”
Renna’s body felt stiff. Her muscles ached from her run through the forest and all at once the reason she’d come flickered through her mind. She stopped halfway to the table so she could look back once more at the greenhouse through the door.
“Don’t worry, dear.” Faylen said. “Amara will wait for you. Drink this.”
She handed Renna a mug of steaming liquid and gestured for her to sit at the table once more. There wasn’t a lot to say that the woman was telling the truth other than the way her gut seemed to calm when Faylen spoke. Of course, other than the gut feeling there was no logic in why Renna knew the woman was telling the truth. It made as much sense as her grandmother’s canopy turning into a magical doorway. Yet there she stood and there was her grandmother’s garden, still lit brightly through the passage.
So Renna sat and looked down at the brewed tea. Watched the steam twist it’s way up from the cup and felt it’s warmth against her hand. She hadn’t realized her hands had been cold until then. It felt like it was thawing her as she lifted the cup to her lips and took a small sip. The tea wasn’t sweet, instead it had a heavy herby flavor that sat on her tongue for some time after she’d swallowed it. It reminded her strongly of her grandmother who was always around plants, warm and earthy smelling. It was welcoming enough that a small wave of fresh tears escaped her eyes and dripped down her cheeks.
“It’s all my fault,” Renna stated. Her words cut across the gentle air of the room to where Faylen hummed as she worked over at the island counter in the center of the room. “My grandmother is dying because of me.”
Faylen let out a soft, thoughtful noise. “I’m sure that’s not true.”
“It is,” tears made the cup before her blur, “I was supposed to go with her to collect herbs that day and I decided to go to the river with others instead. By the time they found her, the infection had already set in and now-” A hiccup broke her sentence as the crying turned into sobs again.
Faylen was silent while Renna cried, allowing her a few moments of quiet for the guilt to leak out through her tears. Then she crossed the kitchen and set a plate down in front of Renna. A few cookies sat upon it, round and golden against the blue plate. She then ducked her head down to make sure she was in Renna’s view before offering a smile.
“I’m sure Amara and your parents are thankful in a way,” she said. “That you weren’t there. You could have been hurt too.”
Shock eclipsed Renna’s guilt. A wave of denial overcame her at once. “If I was there we might have been able to fight the wolf off.”
“Nonsense,” Faylen stated. “The only reason it only bit your grandmother once is because she’s protected. You don’t have that luck. I could have killed you.”
Renna’s brows furrowed. “Protected?”
“Oh yes,” Faylen sat across from her. “Perhaps that’s a conversation that you should have with her when she wakes up.”
“The doctor said she won’t wake up,” she said as her head ducked back toward the tea, her eyes swimming again. “I was sent out to get the herbs to keep her comfortable but… I can’t find them.”
Renna wasn’t sure what she was expecting from Faylen, but laughter wasn’t it. Her eyes shot up as the woman’s head tilted backward. At once Renna was reminded again of the windchimes in her grandmother’s greenhouse. The beautiful, sharp chime of the woman’s laughter bringing about a sense of calm.
When she finally stopped she gave Renna a smile. “Don’t fear, child.” She said, “Amara isn’t going to die.”
Renna pushed up from the table, her hands falling flat against its surface. “How can you be sure?”
“Because I’ve already sent someone to help,” she stated. “Amara is far too important, she can’t pass until she’d found her successor.”
“Sent someone to…” Renna’s eyes darted to the passage. If her grandmother was going to wake, then she had to go. She had to apologize for not being there. Had to see with her own eyes. She moved toward the door but a hand stopped hers. Faylen smiled at her and gestured to the tea.
“It’s rude to not finish your cup before you go,” she said. “Sit. Drink.”
Renna hesitated. Every part of her wanted to go. Wanted to see her grandmother and confirm Faylen’s words with her own eyes. Yet she couldn’t get her feet to move as she glanced down at the cup. Finally she sat. Something compelling her to do so. The tea was far too hot to drink quickly. Instead she had to settle into small sips and the liquid warmed her insides. With it, calm engulfed her. Perhaps it was the relief of hearing her grandmother would be fine or the fact that she’d finally allowed all those bottled emotions out of her. Maybe it was the tea itself. Whatever it was, Renna a wave of clam exhaustion washed over her despite the itch to go to her grandmother’s side.
“What type of tea is this?”
Faylen glanced up over her own cup. “I’m not sure,” she stated.
“You’re…” Renna felt at a loss for words.
“That tea is simply whatever kind you need at this moment,” Faylen stated. “As was all of this.”
Renna stared down at the nearly gone tea. “I don’t understand,” She said. “What I needed?”
“Oh yes,” Faylen stood then and took the cup from Renna. “You should go. Take that with you.”
She had gestured to a small pouch that had been set on the island amongst the tools. Renna looked over the leather of it, worn and faded. Like it had been used many times over the years. Had it been what Faylen was working on when she’d been busy at the counter before with her tools. Finally Renna looked back at Faylen, the woman was setting the dirty cups into the sink. She’d gone back to humming, her back turned to Renna now. Signalling it was time to go, though Renna felt somehow that once she stepped through that door she’d never see the kitchen beyond the canopy again. She wondered if she’d ever see Faylen again either.
There was a small part of her that wondered if she could ask for another cup of tea. The words of Faylen settling into her mind as she taught about the warm, earth tea she’d been served. How comforting and warm it’d been, like her grandmother had been there with her while she sat in the kitchen and drank it. Perhaps she could learn to make such a tea herself and serve it to her grandmother too. A smile moved across Renna’s mouth for the first time since she’d heard her grandmother was sick.
“Thank you,” she said.
Just as she’d thought, Renna never visited the small kitchen or had Faylen’s tea again. Which hung in Renna’s mind for a long time after she passed back through the passage into her grandmother''s garden and found the archway passed into nothing but another part of the garden as it always had. Faylen had been right about everything, after all. When she returned with the small leather pouch in hand, her grandmother had been awake and burst into tears. When they’d both had their fill of crying, Renna had apologized for what she’d done. However, her grandmother wouldn’t hear it. She was grateful that Renna wasn’t there that day. When Renna said that Faylen said that also, her grandmother had been shocked and accepted the leather bag from her. Inside was a small container of tea leaves. Ones that Renna assumed were just what her grandmother needed at that time.
Such a mysterious thing, herbs. The garden came back into her mind.
“Perhaps,” Renna said as she handed her grandmother a cup of warm tea. “You might teach me about your garden.”