The Herbwitch's Apprentice Ireen Chau (best life changing books txt) 📖

mouth. “I am now,” I said, rubbing my head. “They flipped the boat over!”

Our fall created quite a splash, in multiple senses. Lady Hortensia looked almost scandalized as we pulled up with a pool of water in our boat and both of us drenched from head to foot. I was ordered to clean myself up while someone was sent to fetch towels and a change of clothes for His Royal Highness. Lady Hortensia began fussing over Ash before he could speak.

I decided to make my escape, lest the lady blamed the disaster on me. Tori rushed over as I wrung my skirts out under the gazebo.

“Can’t you attend one of these events without something disastrous happening?” she said, picking off a sopping piece of moss from my hair.

I sighed. “It appears not.”

From the east entrance beyond the pond, a squire ran toward us, evidently in a hurry. I thought he had come with Ash’s towels, but he was empty handed besides an envelope tucked in his sash. I was all surprise when he at last approached me.

“Miss Amarante Flora?” the squire asked.

At my affirmation, he handed me the envelope and departed before I could ask him any questions.

Tori peered over my shoulder. “What’s that?”

I began to shrug until I recognized the name scrawled on the corner of the envelope.

Erasmus Lenard.

No doubt it was the symptoms of our manbane experiment.

“It’s nothing,” I said to Tori, tucking the letter into my pocket. I hoped it wouldn’t be destroyed by my damp skirts. “I should go inside and clean up.”

“You need any help? I happen to be very good at wringing out water—”

“No thanks, Tori,” I said, already up and running. Tori was a small figure when I considered myself a safe distance away. There was a wall of hedges behind the pond, a section of which there was nothing but a charred stump. I figured it was the hedge Ash said he set fire to. Wedging into the gap, I opened the letter.

The water from my skirts made the ink bleed, but it was still legible.

Little flower,

The symptoms of the manbane are as follows:

Irregular pulse

Shortness of breath

Feverish fits during the night

No severe symptoms during the day

It has come to my attention that the queen’s symptoms are similar, though from what the physicians have told me, the nightly fits are worse than they appear. They say it causes hallucination. This is solid evidence that manbane is what poisoned Her Majesty. Only time will tell how deadly this poison is, unless you ask your instructor what it does. At this moment I cannot fathom the queen recovering without a magical antidote.

Remember what you promised. Destroy this note. No one can know this is a witch-made poison.

E.

I crumpled the note and stuffed it back into my soaking pocket. Erasmus hadn’t explicitly said it, but I knew he wanted me to ask Lana to make an antidote for manbane. Queen Cordelia had no chance of recovery if the physicians didn’t know it was a witch-made poison. And if they did know, there was no saying what could happen to witchkind.

I bit my lip, both fear and thrill churning in my stomach. Could the recovery of Queen Cordelia be on my shoulders?

“Amarante?” Ash emerged behind my hedge, staring at me curiously. It took my all not to yelp. “What are you doing here?”

“Getting...dry,” I said. I inched into a patch of sunlight.

There was a towel around his neck and another on his arm, which he offered to me. “Sorry about all this. I should have paid more attention to the boat.”

I took the towel gratefully. “It’s not your fault. It’s the swans.”

Ash laughed. I was reminded of how his chest rumbled with mirth when we were submerged in the pond. I blushed.

“They were acting strange,” he admitted, “but I really don’t think they could flip over a whole boat.”

I decided not to contradict him. It was an irrelevant detail compared to what sat in my mind now. There was no doubt about it—I had to ask Lana about manbane and convince her to make an antidote.

A swan’s bugle blared into my ear as one swooped down from the hedges and flew past me. I screamed and stumbled backward into Ash, knocking us both down to the grass.

“What is wrong with those creatures?” I bemoaned, too distressed to be annoyed at Ash’s cackling or embarrassed that my back was flush against his chest. He had taken the brunt of my fall.

“Perhaps they like you,” he teased, sitting us both up. “That one followed you all the way over here.”

“It did? And no one thought to tell me?”

“It’s a swan, Amarante. What’s the worst that could happen?”

“Well, I—apologies!” I jumped up to my feet, realizing that we were in a most compromising position. I cringed to think of what Lady Hortensia would say if she saw me practically sitting on the second prince’s lap.

Ash looked relatively unbothered as he stood.

“Never mind that. Come,” he said cheerily, offering his arm. “I think we’re both overdue for a change of clothes.”

21

A few days after the Disastrous Swan Incident, my crystal called me yet again to Witch Village for another lesson with Lana. I was eager to show her the progress I had made in the past few weeks, but more urgently, I was burning to ask her about manbane.

When I arrived at Lana’s cottage, though, she was standing outside with a basket on her arm. “We’re visiting a patient today,” Lana said before I could greet her.

“A patient?” I asked, trying not to sound too disappointed. “Are you the village physician?”

“Hardly,” Lana said with a humorless smile. “But I help when I can. She is an old friend.”

There was silence after that and I didn’t try to fill it up with questions or conversation despite the urgency I felt. She seemed more solemn than usual, which couldn’t mean anything good.

After weaving through stone buildings and passing a cramped courtyard, we arrived before a tiny wooden shack with a