Natasha~

The green of the forest floor was more vibrant the next morning as I walked with my basket at my side, filled with the glass jars of various potions that Auntie Baba had made throughout the night.

I did my best to hide my excitement as I entered the town. Auntie told me it would harm business if I seemed too new to everything. Instead, I did my best to act more like Auntie, above it all and knowledgeable beyond my years. I held my head high and did my best to avoid staring at anything for too long, no matter how interested I was in it.

The people I passed by stared at me, interested in the stranger strolling their streets. I hoped they were picking up on what I was trying to show them: that I was worth spending their hard-earned money on.

Each person I passed looked different, even though most were dressed alike. It was like I was right about towns having the same color to wear, and I was standing out like a sore thumb in my long green dress that swirled around my ankles as I walked among the muted browns and reds that walked the streets.

I was glad the full, heavy basket kept my hands from shaking as much as they wanted to. They shouldn’t see how excited I was; that would drive the prices down.

The reasonable fear still lingered in my chest, but as I kept my head high like I was as proud of my presence as Auntie was, as proud as I wished that I was, I easily kept the fear from reaching my face.

My eyes, despite my best efforts, still wandered the town searching for everything that I could process. They tried their best to memorise the scene, in case I never got to see it again. They searched for the shops that Auntie told me to find, like the ones selling cheese wheels and stationery supplies.

My ears, however, were free to listen in wherever they wished. Most conversations that I passed at first were nothing more than town gossip or plans for the market, and, more importantly to me, anything that was going on in their lives, their desires, their hopes, their problems.

I could hear anything I wanted. Anything that would help me sell the heavy basket of mixed potions, ready to go for most ailments, and a note attached for how it was to be used. No one would want to know the ingredients that were inside the glass bottles.

A fact that I knew well from experience.

I plastered on the kindest smile I could when I overheard my first potential customer complaining of pain in her arms that she hadn’t been able to get rid of with the elixers from the local apothecary.

“I’m sorry, but I couldn’t help but overhear your troubles. You said your arms were ailing you?”

She nodded, cautiously, “They are, have been for a month. Why do you ask?”

“My Auntie, she makes all sorts of aids, and I happen to have one of her elixers that could help with that.” I fished in the basket and showed her the glass, watching her sceptical face study it carefully, “This one is to be drunk, but I’m sure I can have her turn it into a balm for a price if that suits your preference.”

“What’s in it?” She took the glass, turning it in the sunlight to get a clue about its ingredients.

“It’s a vodka base, with some natural herbs and honey for inflammation,” I say, leaving out some of her more important ingredients that would turn her skeptics into witchcraft accusations.

“Vodka, you say?” A smile grew on her face as she watched the herbs float around in the bottle. I nodded, “How much?”

“50 copper, it’s usually more, but as my first customer in this town, I’ll let you have a discount.”

I watched as she mulled over her options, hoping she wouldn’t try to haggle the price with me. I was still very bad at that, even with the practice that I had with Auntie Baba. After a minute, she shoved the coins into my hand and popped open the bottle, taking a quick sniff before pressing the bottle to her lips and having her first taste of the stronger-than-normal liquor.

Over the next few hours, I sold my whole basket of stock to anyone I overheard in the market for all sorts of ailments, some bad enough that I had to recommend that they seek more help and only use the potion as the aid that it is, and not as the cure to broken bones or flashbacks from battles that they had to re live as though it were happening all over again.

I didn’t have a potion for everything, but I did have advice for most, sometimes recommending the advice of others they knew would have it as well, just to be sure.

It was exciting. My first time out on my own in a town was going so well. I even got directions to the nearest dairy farmer who sold what I wanted.

I was just starting on my way over when an older lady caught my eye. She was wearing a hooded cloak and was hunched over a long wooden cane that seemed to have been built for a man twice her size. She had a long nose and ears, like many I had seen her age, and flat white hair that hung on her head like the mop I had in the closet for when she let me clean our hut.

Auntie Baba noticed that I had spotted her and gave a dramatic sigh before making her way over to me. She was slower than normal, probably exhausted from the amount of walking she’d done to follow me around the town market and through the forest to get there.

“You have a keen eye, girl.” She remarked as soon as she was at my side, taking my arm as I began to slowly walk to the dairy farmer’s booth with her. “How many did you sell?”

“The whole lot.”

“Everything?” She asked, surprised, and lifted the cloth covering the basket that now only held my coin pouch bursting at the seams. “Good Niece.” She nodded her approval, warming my chest.

It was rare for her to sound so genuine when announcing her approval.

We walked slowly to the booth and picked out a wheel that I’d be able to carry and a couple of bottles of milk that he warned needed to be cooked before we could use them. I promised him sincerely, excited by the recipes that we’d be able to have in the coming weeks until the cheese was used up.

Auntie Baba needed a couple of breaks on our way out of the town, as I searched for the stationery she had hoped for in the market that we couldn’t find in time before her legs couldn’t take her further, and she needed to sit on a bench.

I asked one of the booth owners where we might find paper and ink, and he simply shrugged. “No one here has any need for that. Maybe the church has some you could buy, if they are willing to sell to women.”

“Thank you, I’ll go ask the priest.” I smiled warmly at him before quickly adding, “Paper is wonderful to wrap glass in. Have you ever tried?”

He shook his head, eying us with a hint of suspicion on his face.

I quickly made my way to the tall brick walls that made up the church and through the dark wooden doors that were thick and heavy enough that they felt like the doors to a bunker instead of a place of peaceful worship. Tall stained glass filled the back wall, flooding the room with colorful light that made the whole building feel calmer than it would have been with the rickety lines of pews that I walked past, coated in a layer of dust someone had desperately tried to clean with their hand.

“Sister, what brings you here on such a day?” A man called out calmly, his deep voice sounded like the soft fur of a kitten soothing any anxieties I held before.

“Forgive me, I do not know what day it is, Brother,” I said, turning my head toward the tall man stepping down from the steps beside the pulpit that I only recognized because of the books I had and the stories Auntie shared from before the hut.

“This is a day of celebration, and of sorrows. The Lady of the land had triplets and survived twenty-some years ago; sadly, only two remain.” His face had a mix of sympathetic pain and hope. “The girl was kidnapped from their nursery in infancy, only a few months afterward.”

“That’s awful.”

He nods, “It was. But we must celebrate that her brothers have grown into fine men and strong leaders despite her loss.”

“Would losing something in infancy disrupt the rest of their lives?” I asked, worried about how my similar story could have affected the family that I couldn’t remember, or myself, having lost everything and then gained a whole new identity.

“Losing someone can, and has frequently in my experience. Though it is usually the mother or father lost to the child and not a sibling, that would have rarely been mentioned by anyone to them, outside of their parents.”

I nodded, trying to wrap my head around his words in the unexpected conversation that we were having that had nothing to do with the reason I was there.

“Have you lost someone, Sister?” He asked, leaning against the pew nearest him.

“I lost my family as a babe; it’s only myself and my Aunt now.” I nearly whispered, mulling over his words, wondering how the loss must have affected me that I couldn’t know much about. “She won’t talk about them anymore.”

“Of course not, losing someone close to you is the hardest thing most of us go through. Especially if you remember them.” He watched my face as I avoided his gaze.

“Do you have paper?” I blurted, growing uncomfortable in his presence for reasons I couldn’t pinpoint, “Ink too. I can pay if I have to.”

“Ink and paper?” The surprise was clear in his voice. His head tilted as I nodded my confirmation. “You can read?”

“Of course, I have class.” I looked at him, showing how I thought of the insult clearly on my face.

He nodded, slowly. “We do have some, but I’m afraid it is not for sale. To anyone, of any class.”

“I understand. Thank you for your time, anyway.” I turned back toward the door, “and your words, Brother.”

He watched me leave as I mulled over his words, letting them play over and over in my mind as I returned to Auntie Baba empty-handed. The odd similarity between the family that they celebrated and mourned with, and my own life living in the hut with no one but Auntie for all of my life that I could remember, spun in my mind as we walked through the forest.

I wondered again how I had been affected by losing what I did so young. If I even was affected. I wondered what my life would have been like if my family hadn’t died.

For a moment, I thought I heard my name called out in the forest, echoing among the trees, before a soft slap in the distance that must have been hard enough to bruise if we could hear it.

As I was dismissing it as nothing, I spotted Auntie Baba shaking her head and laughing to herself. Probably thinking the same thing as I was, I felt bad for whoever was the recipient of the slap, but she clearly did not.

I held our front door open for her and pleaded with her to rest for the rest of the day, lightly chastising her for following me into town.

She watched me finish the chores that I hadn’t done while I was in town, occasionally “correcting” how I was working, places that I missed, or what I should be doing differently, all the way up to when I served our dinner.