Samut Nalir's Miraculous Elixir of Life

Chapter 3

As it turned out, working for Lapis wasn't so bad.  I wasn't getting paid quite as much as I used to make off of my scams, but it was still good work.  The flat above the shop that she gave me to live in was surprisingly comfortable and homy.  The job itself was hardly different from what I normally do; all I needed to do was convince customers that the junk on the shelves was worth buying, which is something at which I am an absolute expert.

It seemed that Lapis and I were always doing pretty much the same jobs, only with two people working for added speed.  We took it in turns to stand behind the sales counter, and we both took on the tasks of accounting and maintaing the shop and its wares.

In fact, the only thing that Lapis did which I didn't, was anything having to do with the potions.  She seldom sold any, and when she did, she made sure that she and she only was the one talking the customers up and making the sale.

The unnerving times were those she spent actually making the potions.  She would go to the back room and turn the lock in the door, leaving me to man the shop.  Occasionally, I'd be able to hear odd noises coming from the room, or see oddly-colored light seeping from the crack between the door and the floor.  At one point, I tried to confront her about it, but she can be stubborn as a mule when she wants to be, and I gave it up.

It's because of this that I seized the opportunity at a point when Lapis asked me to take care of the shop for a few days.

"Where are you going?" I asked as she handed me the store keys.

"A funeral," she replied gravely, "My Uncle Glannan passed away."

"I'm sorry," I said.  Before I had started working for her, I never would have managed to make those two words sound sincere, but lately I had been growing a bit of a bond with Lapis.  Perhaps working with someone reminded me that people are real people, not just potential buyers.  "Was he very old?" I added.

"Oh, not at all.  No, he died testing some faulty aging potion."  She must have noticed the bewildered look on my face, because she quickly explained, "You think I'm the only one who knows anything about potions?  Most of my family is learned in potion-crafting, and so are lots of other people."

"I'll take your word for it," I said, pocketing the keys.  "Enjoy the funeral."

She didn't hesitate to throw me a nasty look before heading out the door.  I stood at the counter, waiting until I could be sure that she had been gone long enough that she wouldn't come back in for anything.  The moment that I felt safe, I bolted across the store to the back room, praying she had left its key with me without thinking.

For once, luck favored me.  The third key I tried fitted neatly into the lock.  When I entered the room, I noticed that it looked much different than it had when Lapis had first shown it to me.  It was almost as though she had taken the time to clean it up specifically for my approval.  The room was now littered with potion flasks; some empty, some full, some broken.  Different objects that I could only assume were potion ingredients lay in every odd place they could find.  As I walked in, I accidentally stepped on what I was sure was an important organ from some small animal.  The room was also characterized by a potent mixture of smells, so obvious that I couldn't believe I hadn't smelled it from the shop.

I made my way to the middle of the room, unsure of what to do next.  All I wanted was to learn how to make potions like the one Lapis had shown me the very first day she blackmailed me into working for her.  The room being in the state it was, I doubted I was going to be able to figure anything out that way.  So, I knelt down next to a large box sitting in the corner, filled to bursting with papers, and began to sort through them, looking for heaven-knows-what.

Most of the papers there couldn't have interested me less.  There were receipts from apothecaries, detailed descriptions of different herbs, handwritten notes on potion testings, charts showing where to find different ingredients... It wasn't until I made my way to the bottom of the box that I found anything to pique my interest.

I had just been about to put all of the papers back in place and leave off, when a few words caught my.  One of the papers bore the heading: "Strength Potion".  I carefully tried to pry it out, and found that it was attached to a book's worth of the same type of paper.  I laid it onto my lap and took a closer look.

It was a potion recipe.  It was handwritten, but still very legible, and listed each step in great detail, with a few things crossed out, and others scribbled into the margins.  The recipe also included an illustration.  Two figures were hand-drawn onto the paper.  The first showed a frail, thin, weak-looking man, hunched over and looking downcast.  The second showed the same man, but standing proudly, muscles bulging.

I flicked through the rest of the attachments.  Some of the titles were simply wonderful.  I found a "Love Potion", "Invisibility", "Hurricane in a Bottle", "Growth Elixir", and many others that I would give anything to test.

The one that really caught my attention, however, was at the bottom of the stack.  This one was labeled "Elixir of Life".  There was no illustration on this one, and the recipe had been crossed out and revised so much that it was barely legible, but I was awestruck.  Could it really be possible?  Could I actually be holding in my hands the secret to eternal life?

I looked in wonder up and down the recipe.  The ingredients it mentioned were completely unfamiliar to me, and the instructions were the most complicated that I had seen on any of these recipes yet; but, surely, eternal life was a a much better trade than the hours put into making it.  And I had always liked coming off better in a trade...

The sound of the door opening in the shop caused me to jump.  I had all but forgotten that I was supposed to be supervising the store.  With one last glance into the back room, I pocketed the recipe and left, promising myself to give this miraculous "Elixir of Life" a worthy try.