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Taking off her backpack and setting it on the ground, she took the recipe for the Wakefulness Potion out of her pocket to look it over once again before beginning to work on it. <-- remember where we left off?
Other than the fairy apples (three, mashed), there were only a few ingredients. One measure of water, five blades of fresh grass, and one dandelion flower (petals only) completed the short list. The instructions below it were concise:
“Fill cauldron to the One Measure line. Grind mashed fairy apples, chopped grass and dandelion petals together. Add to cauldron. Stir twenty strokes counterclockwise while saying Standard Activation Incantation # 1 (found on page 7 of A Beginner’s Guide to Stirring Spells). Makes 1 dose.”
Nessie read through the passage several times. Still holding the recipe, she walked over to the cauldron and looked inside. In the early afternoon light creeping through the trees she could just make out a raised line near the bottom of the cauldron with the words “One Measure” in raised print next to it. Looking further up the side she saw that there were also marks for “Two Measures”, “Three Measures”, “Four Measures”, and so on all the way up to “Ten Measures”. Still investigating the instructions, she pulled out “A Beginner’s Guide to Stirring Spells” and turned to page 7. There were numerous short passages. Turning the page, she saw that they kept going and gradually got longer and more complicated. Some of the really long ones toward the end of the chapter were in another language. She suspected it might be Latin. Each section of text had a small number next to it. Turning back to page 7, she looked at the one labeled “Incantation #1”. It read, quite simply, “Material in my cauldron, please, come together to make something for me.” Glancing through some of the other incantations, she saw that, in addition to being longer, a few of them seemed to be specialized for certain uses. One was for making potions to use on friends, another for potions to use on enemies and another specifically for potions to use on your familiar. How was she ever going to learn all this? Everything was so complicated! Take it slow, she told herself. Calm down. Just follow the directions and everything will work out fine.
Inhaling slowly then exhaling with a huff, Nessie looked at the Wakefulness Potion recipe once again, this time with an eye to trying to figure out what she had to do first. Filling the cauldron seemed like a safe enough bet. She was glad she kept a gallon milk jug filled with water in her fort; she would have hated to have had to walk back to the house for it. After making sure that the cauldron was on a very level spot on the forest floor, Nessie poured a tiny bit of water into it. Not even close to the first mark. She added more water. Still not there. Another generous splash. Close but not quite. A little bit more. Another tiny splash. There, she decided, that looked right. Moving on, she decided to start preparing the other ingredients. It took only a moment’s work to find and chop the grass blades. She left them sitting on the stove with the petals from a dandelion she had easily harvested and plucked while she tried to figure out the best way to mash the fairy apples. Digging the granite mortar and pestle out of the supplies Cassie had given her, tried simply crushing one of the small green balls into the shallow bowl with the pestle. The ball rolled out from between them rather than being reduced to mush. Hmm, she thought. She took one of the fairy apples and very carefully cut it in half with the sharp knife, then tried to mash the halves individually with the mortar and pestle. That, she found, worked much better.
When all of the ingredients were ready, she put them all back in the shallow granite bowl and ground them together until the mixture was smooth and consistent. Carefully, Nessie scraped the paste-like mixture into the cauldron. Taking one last look at the brief incantation to make sure she didn’t blank out on it, she picked up a wooden spoon and began to stir. Her voice was clear and strong as she spoke the words for the spell. With some difficulty, she concentrated on keeping count of her stirring. After exactly 20 strokes, she stopped and took the spoon out of the cauldron. She stared down at the finished potion. It didn’t look that different, really. It looked very smooth, no stray lumps from petals or bits of grass. It did seem to be a brighter shade of green than ought to be possible, but in the face of magic that hardly seemed like something worth noticing. Well, she thought, here goes nothing. After digging through the dishes in her oven, Nessie found a tin cup with a handle on it. She rinsed it with clean water then dipped it into the potion and filled it. Strangely, the cup seemed to nearly empty the cauldron though it was not nearly large enough to have managed it logistically. Nevertheless, the cauldron was left with only drops and dregs. She took one last worried look at the potion and then quickly drank it all in one go.
“That’s strange. I don’t feel any… different…”
Izzy stared curiously as her owner crumpled to the ground.
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