Chapter 16: Pensive Water
Osric wrote slowly, pausing every few moments to think. His penmanship suggested he wasn't writing in the Common Tongue. The paper he used had a curled edge that concealed its contents from view.
I sat in the chair, turning the token over and over in my palm, waiting patiently for him to finish. The light outside had shifted westward, and as the sunset's afterglow touched the windowsill, the candles in the room lit themselves at the same moment.
"Why exactly are you keeping things from me?"
I couldn't hide my distrust of him. I had come here seeking help, not to play guessing games.
He stopped. The quill hovered above the paper for a moment before he set it back beside the inkstone, fumbled in a nearby drawer, pulled out a pair of spectacles and put them on, then looked up at me.
This silence lasted longer than any of his previous ones. His gaze rested on my face as though he were looking through me at something more distant. Then he folded the letter he'd written and sealed it with his own wax.
He was evading my question again, just as he had from the beginning.
After he'd unhurriedly completed all his tasks, he stood and retrieved something from a low cabinet, placing it before me.
It was a small glass vial, shorter than my thumb, stoppered with red wax, containing a liquid of indeterminate color—it looked dark green in the dim light, but where the illumination was slightly brighter, the hue seemed more like gray-blue.
"This is Pensive Water," he said. "A potion that allows the drinker to revisit important memories, and sometimes reveals things the user themselves hadn't consciously realized."
"Side effects?"
"You'll be susceptible to interference," he said. "Some memories are so pleasant that you'll want to prolong them forever and never wake up."
I picked up the small vial, removed the wax seal, and sniffed it. No scent, just a slight astringency in my nostrils.
"You've drunk it before."
"I have, long ago." He sat back down, adjusted his spectacles, and picked up a book. "You can drink it now. If you encounter danger, I'll alert you."
His manner was casual, but I didn't miss the concern in his eyes. My obsession with the prophecy had clearly exceeded his expectations, and if he didn't give me something real, I wouldn't let the matter rest.
I didn't hesitate, draining the vial in one gulp. He certainly wouldn't harm me, and I was confident I wouldn't lose myself in these so-called memories. The murky liquid flowed down my throat without need for swallowing, its texture slightly cool, with no particular taste. I set the bottle back on the table and waited quietly with him.
About ten seconds later, my vision began to sink. I felt as though someone were gently pressing my eyelids downward, pushing the room before me into the distance. Osric's bookshelves, those stacks of documents, the orange light from the window—all these things gradually blurred into a uniform darkness, and then light appeared within that darkness.
Light from another place.
I returned to approximately when I was eight years old.
The window was the one in Mother's bedchamber. I sat on the sill, legs dangling in the air, holding a plant I'd stolen from the palace gardens—its leaves were silver-green, and when crushed they released a cool fragrance. I watched that eight-year-old version of myself from some impossible vantage point, while simultaneously feeling myself there, on that windowsill, legs dangling.
Mother reached out to take the plant from me and brought it to her nose.
"Frostcrystal. You found it in the northeast corner?"
"Yes."
"It only grows in shaded places." She handed the plant back to me, casually pressing my dangling leg back onto the sill with her hand, the gesture as offhand as straightening a small misplaced object. "Do you know what it's used for?"
"No."
"Reducing fever. It can also be used in baths, but you must use hot water—cold on cold has no meaning."
I watched the scene from within the dream, watched that eight-year-old self return to my own room and write crookedly on the blank page of a ledger: Frostcrystal, shade, fever reduction, hot water bath. That was my first notebook, my first record.
The image dispersed and then cleared again.
I was twelve. Rendell had just begun his knight's training, and his gait already possessed that deliberately upright quality that made one want to roll their eyes.
He was teaching me how to stand, how to walk. His tone had already acquired a teacher's severity. He explained in meticulous detail "how to stand in a room so that people cannot ignore you," presenting this as a fundamental lesson for knights. I stood three times, and each time he said it was wrong but wouldn't tell me what was wrong.
"You're not teaching, you're nitpicking."
I'd had enough. I sat down on the floor in a huff, my lower lip jutting out prominently. Later that day, I stole a treatise on etiquette from the study and secretly burned it in the courtyard.
The next day, when the etiquette instructor furiously demanded to know which of us had done it, Rendell silently stepped in front of me.
"I did it."
He was made to stand in the courtyard for three hours as punishment. I sat by the window pretending to tend to a nearly dead plant, watching his upright figure from the corner of my eye.
In the memory, I quickly closed the window, though I couldn't recall whether I ever watered the plant afterward.
The image dispersed again.
In this memory, I was walking through the marketplace.
No one recognized me, no one made way for me, no one said "Your Highness." A sugar sculptor told me to move aside because I was blocking his path, so I moved, and he didn't apologize but continued with his business. I bought a sugar figurine—it didn't taste good, but I ate it as I walked, and no one watched me.
On the way back to the palace, I finally understood why I'd been so happy—because for that one hour, I was just a person walking down a street, free to stop anywhere or keep going, and it was my own business, having nothing to do with anyone else.
Father discovered it later. He wasn't particularly angry, merely confiscated that brown cloak with a calm tone, almost gentle, but he never asked why I'd wanted to go out.
I watched from within the dream as my eleven-year-old self finished that sugar figurine, and something inside me ached faintly. That ache had been set aside for so long it had nearly been forgotten, but now, unearthed, it retained its original shape.
This time the image faded more slowly. I immersed myself in that emotion, unable to let go for a long while.
"Mia, you don't have much time left." Osric's muffled voice penetrated my mind, and all the images vanished at once. I steadied myself and continued toward the last remaining light.