Page 55 of The Affair of the Mysterious Letter
“Then why don’t you stand up, dearie. Show Granny how little you need her help.”
“Ms. Haas,” I said quickly, “I really wouldn’t—”
I did not have time to complete my warning, although I doubt it would have made any difference. None of the others ever did. My companion steadied herself against the edge of the cart and rose to her feet with a grace that was quite breathtakingly impressive for the moments it lasted. But moments they were, and then she collapsed. I managed to catch her as she fell, returning her to the floor of the cart without too greatly exacerbating her existing injuries.
She propped herself up on her elbows and directed a torrent of remarks at myself and Granny Liesl that I shall forbear from repeating.
“Such harsh words,” cooed Granny, “for somebody who has only ever wanted to look after you.”
Probably I should have held my tongue, but I felt it only right to come to Ms. Haas’s defence in this matter. “Did you not also try to eat her heart?”
“Yes, but only out of love. And a desire for immortality.”
“I’m not sure I consider that kind of love entirely praiseworthy.”
“Oh, dearie.” She brushed a gnarled hand down the side of my face, in a manner that made me feel oddly violated. “So kind and yet so stern. But what use is your love or that of your blind, idiot god? Will it give your friend the strength she needs for the task that you have set her?”
Ms. Haas knocked the old woman’s arm away. “Enough, Liesl. Only I am allowed to torment Mr. Wyndham. I will admit I need your help. Now help us.”
Granny leaned over and reached into one of the many sacks thatfilled the back of the cart, producing at last a dusty bottle full of murky green liquid. “A potion”—she proffered the phial to Ms. Haas—“that will restore your strength, but only until the stroke of midnight.”
Unstoppering the container, Ms. Haas sniffed cautiously at the fumes. “Asphodel, maiden’s sorrow, bloodstone, and wolf’s tooth stirred with a glass spike and sung over at moonrise.” She resealed the bottle. “Not, I think, the correct potion.”
“I’m sorry, dearie. Can’t blame an old woman for trying.”
She offered Ms. Haas a new draught. This one was red-brown in colour and sealed inside a round-bottomed flask. My companion repeated her inspection. “Deathwort, plague-fly wings, hangman’s eye, hellblossom, needlefish eggs, and murderer’s tears, boiled in a black cauldron by the light of a red candle. Now that’s the stuff.”
Ms. Haas raised the potion to her lips and, as my varsity friends were so fond of saying, downed it.
Granny smiled. “All better now?”
“For the moment. Although you know as well as I do that the side effects will be miserable.”
“Everything has a price, Shaharazad. That was the first thing I taught you. Of course, now we’ll need the second thing I taught you.”
I was not altogether keen to learn the nature of any of the lessons that Granny Liesl had passed on to Ms. Haas. “I think you’ve done quite enough. Thank you so much for your kindness.”
“Mr. Wyndham, would you like to know the third lesson I taught Shaharazad?”
“I would rather not, if it’s all the same to you.”
“It was,never refuse a gift from a witch. Now, let’s do something about those wet clothes.”
CHAPTER FORTY
The Cottage in the Woods
All of myinstincts told me that permitting a self-confessed witch to lead us away from the road that we knew would take us to our destination and into an unknown part of a foreign woodland was most assuredly inadvisable. My misgivings were far from assuaged when I spied through the trees a low, ramshackle cottage decorated, I could not help but note, with human-seeming bones and supported above the ground by what appeared to be a pair of bird’s legs.
“There now, love,” Granny Liesl said to my companion. “Isn’t it nice to be home?”
Ms. Haas curled her lip. “It wasn’t nice thirty years ago. Now it’s positively gauche. Nobody’s hanging skulls from their eaves anymore and chicken feet are utterly impractical.”
“Always so headstrong. Always so certain you know better than your elders. Granny was here long before you and she’ll be here long after you’re gone.”
“And she’ll still be talking about herself in the third person.”
The witch smiled in a fashion that was hard to read, having all the character of affection but coming from a face designed for nothing but malice. “Ah, but you have learned some pretty words.”
