Page 44 of Charmed

I’d worked withhypericum erectumenough to recognize its magical makeup, but the thick magic shrouding the woods made it difficult to search through the layers enough to locate the unique properties comprising the ingredient I was looking for. A tracking spell would prove useful, yet the curse blocking access to my powers made me unable to cast it. Seeking Alden’s help would only distract him rather than assist him.

Thankfully,hypericumspecies grew in abundance in this wet habitat and were quite variable in habit, which meant I’d be able to find them either as trees, shrubs, annuals, or perennials. They rarely stemmed from woody plants, so I kept my focus on searching the clumps of shrubs scattering the undergrowth for the erect or spreading stems rather than roots that touched the ground.

I kept my vantage point lifted as I hopped along the soft undergrowth, missing the advantage of human height. After much searching, I found an abundant patch growing in the soft hues of golden sunlight. I painstakingly gathered several and brought them back to Alden’s growing pile of ingredients, evidence of his own productivity.

Discouragement prickled my warty skin that I likely wasn’t helping him as much as I wanted, but I pushed these emotions aside to focus on the next ingredient on my list—pueraria, a kind ofkudzuarrowrootplant said to contain powerful antioxidant abilities.

Roots buried underground made them trickier to locate and would require me to explore the soft hum of magic filling the air above them in order to locate the precise spot in which to dig. I closed my eyes and tried to reach out to the power flowing beneath my skin, as Alden had taught.

At first it remained barely discernible, so suppressed by the curse as if to almost not be there at all. But after a bit of poking and prodding, I discovered a crack in the curse’s barrier wide enough to access just enough magic to form the most basic tracking spell; the pinprick of light led me to a plant with lilac buds. My small, weak body and clawless hands made the task of digging them up difficult, but not impossible to accomplish.

By the time I returned, Alden had found the remainder of ingredients and was hard at work preparing them—he’d already steeped the leaves from the various gathered herbs to extract their juice and was finely chopping thehypericumflowers andginseng.

He glanced up with a warm smile when he saw thepuerariaI carefully balanced on my back. “Thank you for finding that. Would you mind peeling off the skin and chopping it into thin slices? It needs to dry in the sun before we boil it, but we can speed the process along with some fire magic.”

I did as he asked. Even midst his own tasks, Alden often paused to supervise my work, his comments encouraging despite my movements being made more clumsy with my webbed hands. When he wasn’t directly tutoring me, he walked through each of his own steps as he performed them, satisfying my never-ending thirst for knowledge that had centered around this very spell.

With each bit he imparted he lit up, a recaptured portion of the joy magic brought him by sharing his enthusiasm with one as interested in the subject as he was. I was fascinated by the expert way he brewed the potion, soaking up his every movement and magical technique like an under-watered plant—from prepping the ingredients, to the manner in which he added them, to the method he employed to stir them over his conjured flame.

From my limited experience Alden had brewed the potion flawlessly…yet when it finished steeping, it wasn’t the fern color or bubbly consistency as illustrated in the potions book, but instead a soft, pearlescent pink.

By Alden’s bulging eyes of disbelief, I didn’t even need to ask to confirm that he’d messed up. “This is not the healing tonic.” Even with the evidence before him, he seemed reluctant to admit it.

“Which potion did we brew instead?”

He leaned forward to better examine the color and experimentally sniff the floral fumes rising up in swirling clouds. Perplexity furrowed his brow and he dipped his hand into the rosy liquid, rubbing it between his fingers to test the consistency. His conclusions only seemed to deepen his confusion.

“Which potion is it?”

He slowly met my gaze. “A love potion.”

Alove potion?I hopped closer to the book to better study the recipe, but even with my perusal I couldn’t determine where the mistake had been made. “Did we get one of the ingredients wrong?” My own cursed condition testified how much damage even that simple error in magic could create.

“I must have, but I’m not familiar enough with these types of potions to discern where the mistake was made.”

He summoned the spellbook from where it had been snoozing in a patch of sunlight flitting through the canopy of leaves and opened to the love spell so he could compare the recipe side by side with the healing potion. The perplexity creasing his brow only deepened.

“The two potions are nothing alike.”

I hopped onto his shoulder so I could better see. Sure enough, the two potions didn’t share a single ingredient. I cast the pink potion a dubious glance.

“Are you certain that’s a love potion?”

“Positive.” Despite his assertion, I detected a hint of doubt.

“You seem rather confident. Did you become familiar with this particular potion by frequently brewing it for all the besotted women of the court?”

I hoped my lighthearted teasing would compel him to smile, but though a partial one tugged his lips, they didn’t truly curve upwards. “Unfortunately my title proved far more effective than even the most potent love potion.” He summoned a handful of magic and cast an analysis spell over the potion, one of the first charms I’d acquired in my own basic arsenal. “Without a doubt this is a love potion, but how we could have brewed it instead…I don’t understand.”

In his confusion he became lost in further study, causing him to miss the spellbook’s frantic fluttering in a way I’d come to recognize—it wanted to attract its master’s attention. I concentrated on the subtle ripples stirring the magic in the spaces dividing us.

“Alden?”

He didn’t even look up from his perusal of the hefty tomeCommon Potion Brewing Errors. “Hmm?” he murmured distractedly.

“Does the communication spell you cast grant me the ability to communicate withanything, not just humans?”

That captured his attention. Interest rather than frustration furrowed his brow as he glanced up. “Why do you ask?”

---