Writers of the Future, Volume 28 Page 3

  The pounding knock came again and she was gone to the front door, shouting, “I’m coming, I’m coming,” before Lan could respond.

  “They are not pockets,” he muttered under his breath. Then he was very aware of how heavy the vase truly was and how his head had just gotten worse under the weight of it.

  He could hear the other woman’s voice, annoyed, and a man’s voice, that was too low to make out. “I’ve been told that you were a friend of Apothecary Haigh.” Then the man added something Lan couldn’t hear.

  “We were neighbors,” said Jaddi. “It stands to reason I would get to know him. The man never washed his own clothes so I volunteered to take care of them for him.”

  Volunteered? She’d run a hard bargain on that, demanding that Haigh always leave her a fresh bottle of medicinal cream for her hands every week when she dropped off his clothes, holding them hostage until he did. There’d been that one month Haigh had tried to resist, wearing the same two sets of trousers and shirts until an accident in his workroom set one on fire and the other became so sticky with resin it started to contaminate his work.

  Lan started to open his mouth to correct her, then remembered what she’d said and closed it again.

  “I see.” The woman sounded skeptical.

  The man said something again. A question by the lilt at the end of his sentence.

  Jaddi snorted in response. “Ha, you must never have met the man. He kept that workroom so secret no one’s ever set foot in it. I have never, at least. Only caught a glimpse once when he was slow to shut it.”

  That wasn’t true either. It had been, up until today.

  “Nope, he was a secretive sort. We get them now and then, but we don’t complain at all here in Otaor when it means we have someone as useful as he was.”

  “You obviously knew him better than most.” There was an awkward silence that filled the air. Even where Lan was standing on the opposite side of the wall he could almost see Jaddi’s stern face, her mouth a slight line as when she’d been displeased with Haigh.

  “And you obviously must not have found what you were looking for to be banging upon my door as you are.”

  “And you have it?”

  “I have no idea what it even is. But I do know that Haigh is dead, and I could only assume that it was because of you.”

  “That’s a strong accusation,” said the man, his voice snappy and defensive, and for the first time loud enough to be heard.

  There was a hard step and a creak on the kitchen floor and a sharp sound that echoed faintly, just as when Haigh slid metal prongs against a boiling beaker. Then the woman spoke again, quietly at first, “That’s fine, Mart. She can think however she wishes. This whole town can think how they please.” Then she spoke louder, “We did not kill him, though I doubt you will believe us. We wanted him alive, to speak with him about something he took from Queen Yula when he was sent from the court.”

  That was something Lan had known, sort of. Haigh had mentioned it once or twice, mostly in passing when describing something, or comparing the availability (or lack thereof) of things he needed. But it hadn’t truly meant anything. At least not until now.

  “The court?” asked Jaddi. “You’ve got to be joking.” She let out a long drawn-out sigh. “I knew he came from a good background to get the learning he possessed, but that seems a bit farfetched, if you ask me.”

  “We weren’t asking. We are telling,” said the woman. “He was once greatly admired until he angered the queen.”

  “She as fickle as the stories say?”

  “You don’t talk about the queen. Ever.” Mart’s voice sounded as if he were snapping each word out.

  “Not at all,” added the woman. “I think anyone would have been rightly upset as she was, but it is beside the point. Haigh simply took something with him that didn’t belong to him.”

  “And it took, what? Almost fifteen years to figure that out?”

  Crickets. Lan turned his head to the window as if he’d be able to see the bugs.

  Instead, he saw his home. An odd feeling crept over him, as if he were just here on an errand, bringing Jaddi something from Haigh, staying to talk for a few moments, before heading further into town with other deliveries. He’d do that every week, enjoying the sun warming his wooden body, knowing everything he held was safe under their enchanted lids. Most of the people here always greeted him in a friendly way and there were some children he’d play with. Not everyone, but enough that he’d been happy.

  “Irrelevant.”

  The woman’s voice brought Lan back. His thoughts dropped. There’d be no more Haigh to hand tools to, no reason to be holding all of the things he had stored. And his head still pounded, worse now that the vase was pressing on the freshly woven branches.

  He felt tired, though he never slept. And sad. Tears leaked out of his eyes and dripped down his face, no doubt leaving dark paths in the grain of the wood. They were talking some more, but Lan paid no attention to it.

  Haigh was gone. Lan could still see those glassy eyes staring out at him. They’d been calm and gentle, as Haigh had never really been. The man had had a fire inside that spurred him on, a passion that Lan loved to see when he’d worked. But now Lan would never lean over an experiment again, hands outstretched with anticipated tools or ingredients. He’d never hold anything steady or put details in Haigh’s journals.

  He knew exactly where everything was in himself, would be unfastening latches before Haigh could even ask for what he needed. And now? What would he do with himself? There was no point in even going back and searching for what was missing from his head. Not when there was no one to hold them for.

  A hand upon his arm made him turn unconsciously, only afterwards wondering what would have happened if it hadn’t been Jaddi who’d touched him.

  “They’re gone. Oh, Lan.” She brushed the dark tracks his tears had made, then removed the vase and blankets. The pain in his head eased slightly. “Did you hear all of that?”

  “Most,” he said, following her back into the kitchen.

  “Do you know what they were looking for?” she asked. “Did he hide it in . . . one of your baskets?” She glanced down his body as if she could see beyond the lids, her eyes lingering on the dead rat tail sticking out at his waist (front waist, rightmost) and the feathers protruding from a lid upon his leg (right leg, center column, sixth down).

  Relinquishing his hand again to her ministrations, he started to say he didn’t know, then stopped. He remembered Haigh rushing about, shoving more things into Lan’s hands, insisting he find places for them in his already stuffed body.

  There’d been expensive and rare ingredients: a diamond beaker (back, leftmost column, second down) and an emerald hummingbird (chest, center-left column, sixth down); that one was tickling his insides every time it decided to hover. Flowers hardened and coated with blood-dyed amber. He remembered contemplating whether he could remove the embalmed rat, but he’d helped make that rat, Haigh handing him the tools and letting him fill the miniature stoppered urns. He’d been so excited. No, the rat stayed and the ambered flowers were shoved in with a basket of seeds.

  So he shrugged. “It is possible. He didn’t say anything about most of what he gave me today.”

  She lifted his hand up. “Looks good. Just be careful until it dries all the way. You don’t want anything to misform.”

  “How is my head?”

  “It looks all right, but I wouldn’t put anything in it just yet.” She didn’t mention the vase, so Lan didn’t mention it either. Nor did he know what he would put in it if he couldn’t find the shears, the needles, the prongs and there was something else, but his head hurt too much to really think about it. Probably one of those pestles; yes, that seemed right. It surprised him that he was having so much trouble remembering.

  “But it still hurts.”

  “
It hurts?”

  He nodded.

  “Hmm.” She looked into his head again and felt around, pushing against some of the newly woven branches. “It looks good now. Everything looks fine, Lan. I don’t know why it’d be hurting. Maybe it’ll get better as the wood settles.” She kissed his cheek, then turned to peek out the window.

  “I’m sure he probably gave whatever it was to you. He trusted you.”

  “But I don’t even know what it is.”

  She shook her head, her eyes growing dark, and he heard her mutter under her breath. He caught only the tail end, “. . . enough to get him killed. Stupid man.” Then louder, she said, “He certainly loved his toys. I just wish they hadn’t gotten him killed.” She glanced over at Lan’s body again, her eyes lingering on some of the lids, making him squirm uncomfortably.

  Lan nodded. He didn’t know what else to do. She was right; Haigh had loved that workshop, had rapped Lan’s knuckles many a time when he’d tried to touch things, some of which were now, oddly, inhabiting his body. It never hurt, but he’d always been chastened and would look on in awe as Haigh finished something else. It’d only been during the last ten to twenty basket additions that Haigh had finally let Lan do things himself. Mostly simple tonics for people in town and the creams for Jaddi, but it’d still been exhilarating.

  “They’re gone; come.” Jaddi didn’t wait for a response before starting out her front door.

  “Why?”

  “I’m not going to just leave him up there. You’re fixed and those queen’s guards are gone. I doubt they’ll be back again today, if ever. Maybe we can bury him right inside the forest or under the eaves of those tall trees in his backyard.” She rattled off a few more options, her voice soothing the pounding in Lan’s head. His own thoughts turned back to the workshop. He’d be able to find the things for his head in there, certainly. That should make the headache disappear. He hoped.

  They ended up burying Haigh at the base of a large maple tree halfway between the house and the start of the forest. The wildflowers grew like crazy outside the shadow of the tree, ringing the grave and dancing in the wind as the spring turned to summer.

  Lan searched himself, finding bits and pieces of things Haigh had loved, and immortalized them in colored glass, glazing each piece with enchanted paint (left leg, front-left column, third down) and stringing them up into a wind chime to hang in the tree. It took a bit of time, but was easy to do while Jaddi slept at night.

  Once it was finished, he took the next evening to search for what was missing from his head. But when he got there, the workroom had been swept clean, probably by a few souls from town who’d been looking for their last deliveries. It was a kind thought, but it frustrated Lan that so many had been in such a place that’d been only his and Haigh’s for so long.

  Most of the shelves were empty and the desk had nothing but a small oil burner and a cracked clay pot sitting upon it. Nothing, absolutely nothing to fill his head.

  He dragged himself back to Jaddi’s house that night, dejected and overly lonely, where she promptly told him he wasn’t allowed to go back if it made him so upset.

  Instead, she had him help her around her house. Taught him stitch work so he could help patch the clothes she mended, since he couldn’t very well wash them. He helped clean as well, finding things to do to make her life a bit easier. He knew she didn’t need his help, but it felt good to be doing things for someone now that he could no longer help Haigh.

  His baskets gathered dust—not on the inside; that would be impossible with the enchantments. And not on the outside either since he was very much active. But around the lids and underneath the latches, a slight coating of dust always began to gather. When Lan noticed, he would spend hours unlatching and relatching each and every basket, pretending that they were still in use. Though that did nothing for his empty head.

  They were outside, Jaddi weeding her garden and Lan gathering what she’d pulled out to later throw into the forest, when a thought occurred to him. “Jaddi, is there anything you need me to hold for you? I’ve got space, and I can make more now that I don’t need most of what is stored within me.” That last sentence almost choked him up, though he had no real throat to be closing up on him.

  She stretched and sat back on her heels to rest for a moment while she considered him. “I don’t really need you to hold anything. Most everything has homes in my house and those that don’t usually don’t stay long. But thank you for the offer.”

  She massaged her hands, plucking a piece of dried skin off before she bent back over. “Granted, if I were going somewhere that might be a different story, but I’m content here.” She paused in her work and stared out at Haigh’s empty house, a sad expression passing over her face, but it was gone almost as soon as it appeared and she was back at her work.

  Lan felt his shoulders sag in disappointment. That’d been a perfect plan, exchanging Haigh’s things for Jaddi’s. It would have been bittersweet as he missed Haigh fiercely, more with each day, always hearing the man’s words in his ears despite him no longer being around. But it would have cured the constant headache he bore and helped Jaddi. He’d thought.

  “So what should I put in my head? It’s been empty since Haigh died.”

  Jaddi didn’t look up as she was busy working a long weed out. “Whatever you want, I guess.”

  He stared at her, a little angry that she’d be so dismissive. And completely unhelpful. It wasn’t so much to ask for something—anything—to be given a home in his head.

  His headache became almost unbearable for a few moments, then eased as his eyes began to water. This was unnatural. He’d never felt any pain at all, at least not physically, before Haigh had died, and now he was stuck with an empty head that refused to be pacified.

  Jaddi thought it was emotional pain finding a bodily way out, but she was also a believer that if one thought something often enough it became reality. Not that, Lan privately admitted, he’d never given that one a try.

  It was another week after that conversation, in the dead of night, that he decided to take another look about his house. With a mostly full moon in the sky, Lan walked down the lane, now partially overgrown from disuse.

  The house was untouched, dusty and empty. He could see decently well with the light coming in from the windows, but it wasn’t the same as it’d been the many years he’d spent growing from a few tiny baskets to the hundred he had now. He sat heavily in a chair in the workroom, staring at the bare shelves and workbench.

  His night went by no faster here than it did at Jaddi’s house. Time seemed to slow when he had nothing to do, no one to help, until it felt as if it stopped altogether. The moon’s light shining upon the floor didn’t even seem to move at all.

  Wandering further in the house, he stared sadly at the drying room. He’d spent a good bulk of his time here, hanging flowers and stems, crushing them later, draining sap into pots. All of which were now either burned or broken. This room had not been cleaned as the other had. Not as interesting, he supposed.

  So he set to work, mostly unconsciously. Cleaning off the tables and dusting off the hooks. He swept the floor clean, taking bucket after bucket full of debris outside. Then he set about scrubbing with a long-handled brush, not realizing morning had arrived until the sun was already long in the sky.

  He hurried back to Jaddi’s house, glad for the quick night, and glad again for her company. She didn’t ask where’d he been, merely greeted him warmly when he arrived.

  The next night, and every night after that, he went back to Haigh’s house, wiping soot from the walls, mending broken furniture, scouring burned books for pages still legible. There were quite a few, as the fires had been quick work, not thorough.

  That thought gave Lan pause. The queen’s guards would have had plenty of time to burn anything they’d wished. Then again, it could have been out of spite that they had ruined
things, angry that Haigh had not given them what they needed. Or the queen needed. Or whoever.

  He spread out the pages worth keeping, carefully scraping off the burned pieces. The rest he scanned. Most were notes from experiments, many of which Lan remembered. Some were even in Lan’s hand. Those were the newer ones when Haigh had trusted him enough to keep track of things. A few, a very few, were from Haigh’s private journals. They had been rarely updated, and when done so, with little emotion. He only wrote factually, as in one page “Finished updating experiment G-kpo4.”

  Lan could read Haigh’s coding easily enough, the first capitalized letter signifying the original recipe, lowercase letters standing for which ingredients were changed and the symbol between standing for how those ingredients were changed—reduced, in this case, with a zero meaning they were taken out completely. A double line with more letters, but before the number, meant there was a substitute. And the number was simply how many experiments in he was. Always at least five of the same. Couldn’t run the risk of bad data.

  The page crinkled under his sudden tight grip and a tear plopped upon the page, blurring some of the letters. Lan quickly dabbed it dry, struggling to remain gentle with the fragile paper. It was all he had left.

  No, that wasn’t true. Lan pressed his wooden fingers against his chest, feeling the hummingbird (chest, center-left column, sixth down) take flight and flutter her wings against her little cage. It tickled, giving Lan a slight smile. There was much Haigh had left, but it was within Lan. Then Lan sighed. Maybe he should put that silly little hummingbird in his head so she’d have more room to fly about. No, he’d as likely lose her while trying to do so, and then he’d have two places aching instead of one. Besides, Haigh had always told him not to put anything breakable up there, for it was impossible for Lan to see what he was taking out.