To his utter amazement, he found a garden!  It was green and blooming, and warm as a summer’s day.  The senior lycan could practically smell the magic preserving the garden.  Bees and butterflies danced across the fragrant blooms, and birds sang in the ornamental trees.  At the base of one such tree, Fridolf saw an unusual looking herb.  It had lime green stems, and the undersides of the leaves matched.  The tops of the leaves, however, were a luminous silver.  He had never seen an herb like that before, and was quite sure Calista didn’t have it in his garden.  Excited, he hurried over and stooped down to dig up one of the short sprigs.  He may not have been able to buy his daughters fine gifts in the city, but he could at least provide Calista the new herb she’d asked for.

He turned around, herb cradled in his hand, and jumped, startled, then froze.  At the end of the path, between him and his horse, stood a strange figure enshrouded in a black cloak.

“H-h-hello?” he stammered.

“Thief!” the cloaked figure roared, pointing an accusing finger at him.  Fridolf flinched.

“N-no…”

“Do not do yourself the disservice of becoming a liar as well!” the stranger roared.  Fridolf gasped as he lifted off the ground.  He felt as though he were picked up by a giant, invisible hand, and then that hand began to squeeze.  He struggled, panicking.  If this stranger were an ordinary human, Fridolf would not have seen him as a threat.  But a mage?  A mage was a dangerous enemy for anyone, lycans included!

“P-please, I--”

“Yes?  You what?  Please do tell why you felt you had the right to steal from me after I was so kind as to open my home to you.  I even fed you, you ungrateful scheming dog!  Give me a reason why I shouldn’t kill you for your insolence!”

“M-my daughter,” Fridolf gasped.  “She asks for so little.  And I must give my children bad news.  My youngest, she-she is a h-healer, an herbalist!  Her garden… she asked for a new herb for her garden!  I didn’t think there would be any harm…” he trailed off, gasping for breath.

The stranger paused, and eased up his hold on the merchant.

“Your daughter… she is… a doctor?” he asked, hooded head tilting to the side in consideration.

“Yes, yes, she is a doctor,” Fridolf agreed, trying to catch his breath.  The hooded figure set him back on the ground, but kept him restrained.

“Tell me about her,” he ordered.

“Calista!  She is… kind.  Gentle.  She has a strong sense of duty.  Her mother and grandmother were also both herbalists.  Unlike her sisters, she follows in their footsteps.  She is beautiful; the most lovely of my daughters.  People in town always compliment her.  She doesn’t care for flowers much, loves sunflowers and lavender, because she says she appreciates that they are as useful as they are beautiful, unlike most other flowers.  I think… she sees herself in them?  She is brilliant.  Probably smarter than me!  She’s been… performing her duties ever since her mother died five years ago.  She didn’t have enough time to study and train, but she’s done so well, and has concocted several new medicines her foremothers never thought of,” Fridolf gushed nervously.

The stranger regarded him silently for a moment after he stopped talking.  Fridolf found himself sweating despite the cold.  The lycan gasped as he felt the invisible fingers tighten around him again, and whimpered, even though the grip was not as tight as before.

“Send her here,” the stranger commanded.

“W-what?”

“Your youngest daughter.  Calista.  I wish to hire her.”

“Hire…?”

“Yes.  I have an… affliction.  The clergy have been unable to help me, and I have not been able to convince a doctor to come here.  I will hire her to treat me.  You will send her.  I have no untoward intentions, I genuinely want to hire her,” the cloaked stranger said, his tone softening.  “I will pay your family a thousand gold crowns a year for as long as she is in my employ, and I will employ her until I am cured.”  Fridolf gaped at the man in shock.  Just one year of Calista working for him would be enough to cover the debts he was about to accrue to cover the losses of the fleet.  Two years would fund an entirely new fleet.  And there would be enough left for the family to live comfortably on as well.

“You will send her to me.  If you do not…” he tightened his magical grip on the merchant until Fridolf yelped in pain.  “I will track you down, and you will die.  If I am particularly angry about it, your whole family might die with you,” he threatened.  Fridolf paled at the threat.

“Y-yes.  Alright.  I will.  I will send her.  Thank you.  You are… truly kind,” he said, bowing low when the mage released him.

“Get out before I change my mind,” the stranger snarled.  “You have seven days to send her here!”

“Y-yes!  Of course!” Fridolf ran to his horse, unhitched it from the post, and threw himself into the saddle.  He galloped towards home, finding the road easily from the gate.  When he got far enough away to allow the horse to slow, he realized he was still clutching the mystery herb in his hand.  Miraculously, he had managed not to crush the delicate-looking plant.  He was tempted to fling the thing into the woods, for it was not worth the price he’d just paid for it.  But he was loathe to discard it, feeling doing so would leave him nothing to show for what had just transpired.  And he was a little afraid of offending the mage by throwing the plant away, convinced the man was spying on him from his castle somehow.

“Papa!” Calista rushed out to greet Fridolf as he rode up to the house.  She helped him dismount so she could give him a hug.

“Here,” he said in a subdued tone, handing him a small herb with exposed roots.

“What’s… this?” she asked, confused.

“It’s an herb that I believe you don’t have in your garden,” he said.  Calista gave him a questioning look, concerned by how sad and subdued he looked.

“Is something wrong?” she asked.  “You’ve been gone so long!  We were getting worried.”

Fridolf sighed and wrapped an arm around her shoulders and guided her back towards the house.

“Are your sisters home?” he asked.

“Actually, yes.  They’ve been home more lately because we’ve been waiting for you,” she replied.  She didn’t want to let him know that part of their motivation for sticking around was three particular troublemakers who continued to come around the clinic and house and bother her.

“Good, I will tell you all at the same time what happened.”

“Alright.”

Fridolf settled at the dining table with his three daughters.  Calista was the last to the table, as she had to pot the strange herb before it suffered irreparable harm from being out of the earth and in the cold much longer.

Fridolf put his head in his hands and tried to collect his thoughts and get his shame at his behavior under control.  Finally he looked up, took a deep breath, and explained all that had transpired in the past month, ending with a detailed description of what had happened at the castle.

“I don’t intend to let you go to him, Calista,” he said heavily.  “I don’t know that I believe what he said about legitimately employing you.  Mages don’t have the best reputations as trustworthy individuals.  I won’t sacrifice you like that.  Besides, if you go, you won’t be able to tend to the sick and wounded lycans.  I can’t sacrifice the lycans of this town, either.  When the week is up, I will go back to the castle myself and surrender.”

“Papa no!”

“You can’t!”

“No, no, please, Papa, don’t do it!”

Fridolf held up his hands as his three daughters all protested his plan.

“It must be this way.  I will get my affairs in order and take out the necessary loans for Bardoul.  He is plenty capable of running the business without me, now,” he insisted.  He refused to hear any more of the girls’ protests, and left the dining room.  He locked himself in his study to gather up all the paperwork he would need in the coming days.

The three sisters sat in silence at the dining table for a while after their father left the room.  They were each wrapped up in their own thoughts and feelings.  One by one, they left the table to attend to other tasks, unable or unwilling to discuss the problem further until they had processed what all they had been told.

Calista returned to her workroom to get back to making medicines and taking notes.  First though, she pulled out various books on plants and tried to find the new mystery herb.  It didn’t take long to find it, and she sighed.  She hoped her father didn’t ask her what the herb was.  She didn’t have the heart to tell him it was an alchemical reagent known locally as silverleaf, a member of the nightshade family, and was quite poisonous and not useful for medicine.