Page 19 of Of Potions and Honey
“Rats.”
Heart pounding from the spider scare, Mira crouched down to open the box, only to find her fears confirmed. Only three bottles had survived the fall, and that wasn’t nearly enough for the contents of the pot. Mira squeezed her eyes shut, trying not to cry. Served her right for not cleaning out the cabinets again, and being too lazy to light the lamp in the store room.
“All right.” Mira forced herself to take a deep breath and promptly sneezed four times from the dust. “F- Stup-” She sneezed again and stood, hurrying out of the store room. “All right.” Another deep breath in the kitchen, mercifully dust-free. “Chin up, Mira. It’s fine. Accidents happen.”
Though perhaps they really shouldn’t, at least not because she was too damn lazy to light a lamp. Lesson learned. For now,she’d let the mixture cool down; she wouldn’t need to preserve it for too long this time, anyway, so she could still bottle it when it was cold. In the meantime, she’d go get new bottles, and maybe one of Matteo Stone’s strawberry pastries to lift her mood.
She stubbornly refused to consider how to make that fit into her budget. Not today. Today, she needed a treat.
She grabbed her hat and shopping basket, and peered into her wallet to make sure she had the funds to pay for the new bottles. Another thing she sorely missed from Willow Harbour right about now, along with the steady pay cheques. If she needed cash, the nearest bank was in Heartfield. Everything else required a cheque or keeping a tab with a store. And she hadn’t been here nearly long enough that people just allowed her to do that.
And the place she would be going to didn’t do tabs, anyway.
Mira felt guilty about it even knowing that she couldn’t afford going toMore By Moorefor this. Not in the least because Harper would need to order the bottles, and they wouldn’t be here for days, maybe longer. Never mind the cost. Next month, perhaps, and once she knew that her concoction worked. Until then, she would have to bite the bullet and venture into the local Golden River store.
As if the weather had been reading her mood, the sky was a uniform grey today. The smell in the air was threatening rain, so she also took her umbrella and walked a little more quickly than she usually did. She’d come to enjoy the walk into town most days. It was so much slower getting places than she was used to, but it had its own charm, and was incredibly relaxing to boot. More than once, she had come back from her errands with a problem solved in her head, or an idea for a story to write down. For now, the latter mostly went into her notebook. She’d barely found the time since she’d gotten here to do more than quickly write down a raunchy short story she’d developed whiletrying to tame the wilderness that was her back garden, to send off to theHarbour Gazettefor a little bit of money to tide her over for the rest of the month. Thankfully, the editor still pulled her submissions out of the pile to read before most of the others. As long as she delivered sufficient quality – and enough crude innuendo – she’d have a reliable way to pay at least some of her smaller bills.
Today though, her walk would be far from inspirational. Mira grumpily kicked a pebble off the pavement and into the overgrown front garden of a house for sale. Judging by how little of the paint remained on the sign, it had been for sale for a long time.
Some have been up for sale for years.Hamish had sounded resigned.Don’t think they ever will go on and sell though. Soon enough it’ll be just you and little Yoni out here.
Mira wasn’t sure if ‘little’ Yoni would be too happy about that. Then again, from the few interactions Mira had witnessed, Yoni was curt with near everyone besides Clara, Kayden, and Marigold the cat. And the cat didn’t quite count. Who could be mean to a cat?
Said cat was nowhere to be seen today. Mira guiltily wondered if she’d scared her off with the pebble, though it was just as likely that the current weather wasn’t to Her Majesty’s liking, and she’d decided to stay inside today. Either way, she did not appear to join Mira for a few minutes, beg for pets, and then disappear again into the bushes to hunt herself an afternoon snack.
Maybe that was for the better. When Mira reached the town proper, she was in a foul mood, which got worse as she turned down Streamlet Road and approached her destination. The store seemed to mock her, with the bright yellow and the cheerful parrot and the multiple billboards outside announcing today’s ‘magnificent deals’.
And not one of those deals was for glass bottles the exact size that she needed. Of course not.
She went in and grit her teeth as the charmed bell chimed the three-note jingle that was a hallmark of every store. She ducked her head and hoped to look sufficiently determined that nobody would bother her about helping her out. At least the layout was somewhat familiar; a smaller version of their home goods and delicacies floor back in the emporium. It didn’t have the shelves full of expensive gadgets that the emporium offered, like the serving platters inlaid with firestones, or the bowl that mixed all sorts of things on its own, albeit somewhat poorly. A little while ago, the customer complaint of the month in the break room had alleged that the bowl had spun so out of control that the cake batter it was supposed to mix ended up on the ceiling. Mira wasn’t quite sure she believed that, but therewasa chance, and in any case, a refund had been issued. Here, there were no dangerous bowls, just regular ones. The place looked far more suited to its location, with robust-looking kitchenware and a lot of tools needed for food preservation. That was what Mira needed. She turned right and made her way through the aisles to the canning equipment.
The shelves were sorted slightly differently, no doubt the result of some smart person’s study or other, designed to maximise the money people spent in the store. More than once, Mira caught herself glancing at things she currently had no need for, harshly reminding herself that she was here for one thing only, and if she could afford that much with treat money to spare, she could consider herself lucky.
They did not have the matching size, so Mira stood there, scribbling maths into her notebook to figure out how to get the whole batch of her potion bottled for the least money possible. After ten minutes of disgruntled calculating, she finally put the correct size and amount of bottles into her basket. She was aboutto return to the entrance where the till was when, to her left between two shelves of preserving jars and matching covers in adorable pastel colours, a door opened and three people left the back rooms.
“…get back to me in a few weeks.” A lanky man in an ill-fitting blue suit nodded magnanimously. “Great work. I’ll let you know if we need your expertise again.”
The other two muttered something Mira didn’t quite catch. What she did catch though was a glimpse of red that stopped her in her tracks. She risked a glance, and sure enough, it was the man from the forest, and with him was the same woman who had inquired after the ‘famous pond’.
“Yes, you will receive it shortly. Now, if you’ll excuse me,” he said pointedly, and Mira flinched when he looked at her. “It appears we have a customer I need to help out.”
The man and the woman looked decidedly unhappy about that. Mira felt somewhat the same, chiefly because she had what she needed and had no desire to spend more time in here than necessary. Before she could voice that, the pair turned and stalked away, and the manager turned up his mask of a smile a little more.
“I am terribly sorry about that. Now, how can I help you?” He puffed out his chest. “Here at Golden River, we pride ourselves on excellent customer service.”
Yes, I know, it’s just that you’re not exactlypayingfor excellence.Mira decided to keep that to herself. She cleared her throat and smiled – the exact same smile he wore, and that he most certainly recognised. “It’s fine, Mr…?”
“Sheffield, Mumford Sheffield,” he announced. “Manager of this beautiful store.”
“Mr. Sheffield. Thank you so much, but I have what I need.”
She bobbed her head as a quick goodbye and turned, speed-walking to the till and leaving the no doubt disappointed Mr.Sheffield behind. At the front of the store, a boy who might not even be twenty rang her up, mechanically asked her if she needed a bag even as she was putting the bottles into her basket, and generally had a look about him like he was contemplating an early descent into alcoholism when he wished her a good day while Mira was already halfway out the door.
Revitalising the area, my behind. That poor boy looks dead inside.
Not entirely surprising. The work at the emporium hadn’t been exactly stimulating, but at least she’d always had something to do. Here, she’d been the only one in the store, and there was only so much tidying one could do if nobody came in to mess up the shelves in the first place.
Although there had been the tourists. Mira wondered what that had been about. Customers were not supposed to ever see the back of a store. Had they made a scene? Had come in with some exceedingly awkward complaint? It wouldn’t be the first time a manager bent the rules to avoid something embarrassing reaching the wrong ears on the higher levels within the company.
