The following week arrived faster than I had thought.
All the potions were ready, aligned with almost military precision on the cellar shelves.
Hundreds of apparently identical vials, but each imbued with meticulous work, three days of concentration, magic, and knowledge accumulated over the years.
Ryan Bostagus arrived early in the morning.
As always, he didn't really knock.
He entered with that falsely warm assurance that characterized him, his gaze already shining, calculating, scanning the place as if evaluating the monetary value of everything.
His gaze stopped on me.
He immediately noticed the dark circles under my eyes, my drawn features, my shoulders a bit lower than usual.
— You must have worked hard, he said with a satisfied smile.
Come on, you deserve to rest a bit!
He pulled a check from his pocket, made it almost dance between his fingers before handing it to me.
— Go have fun. It's on me!
I looked at the check for a second.
Then I extended my hand… not to take it, but to refuse.
— No thank you, I replied calmly. I mainly need rest. Nothing more.
He blinked, surprised.
I continued:
— If you really want to help me, give me cash instead. I need to go shopping. I'm out of vials, and almost out.
Ryan remained silent for a short moment, then smiled again.
A different smile.
A satisfied smile.
He liked that.
He liked the fact that I never asked for much.
That I demanded neither recognition, nor visibility, nor a fair share.
In his eyes, that made me a prodigy… but also someone naive.
Almost stupid.
He was wrong.
I knew very well what I was worth.
I also knew that if I wanted to, I could demand much more.
But I didn't like the spotlight.
I even hated that idea.
What really mattered to me was that my potions saved lives.
The rest… the money, the glory, Ryan's enrichment… all that was indifferent to me.
He finally pulled out bills and handed them to me without further discussion.
Then he left, already turned toward the south of the country, toward his markets, his sales, his figures.
I watched him leave without particular emotion.
Once alone, I took a bag and went into town.
The shopping center was noisy, saturated with voices, artificial smells, aggressive lights.
I didn't like this place.
But it was necessary.
I started by buying thick glass vials, resistant to magic.
Some cheap ones cracked on contact with too concentrated essence.
I couldn't afford that kind of mistake.
I also took treated corks, fabric for filtering, dried herbs that I didn't grow myself.
Then food.
Nothing superfluous.
Vegetables, rice, some fruits, salt, honey.
I crossed people I didn't know, and who didn't know me either.
Hurried faces, empty conversations.
I paid, without haggling, without talking, and left the center as quickly as possible.
The return trip seemed longer than usual.
Once home, I put everything away methodically.
The vials on a dedicated shelf.
The herbs in separate bags.
The food in the small pantry.
Everything had its place.
Then, without even changing, I went out behind the house.
There, far from others' gaze, stretched my true treasure.
A garden.
Not an ordinary garden.
A living space, charged with greenery, where extremely rare medicinal flowers grew.
Some weren't in any manual.
Others were considered mythical.
I knelt and gently ran my hand over the leaves.
I checked the state of the roots, the soil's moisture, the plants' reaction to the ambient magic.
Some needed water.
Others, on the contrary, rest.
I watered carefully, using slightly energy-impregnated water, just enough to stimulate without forcing.
I removed the weeds by hand.
Never with tools.
They sometimes had hidden uses.
I observed them before pulling them.
The work was slow, soothing.
It was here that I truly felt like myself.
Far from cities.
Far from Ryan.
Far from the world's expectations.
Just me, the plants… and silence.
I breathed deeply.
And without knowing it, I had just closed the last parenthesis of my ordinary life.
Once I had finished tending to my plants, I went back into the house.
I prepared something to eat, mechanically, then sat in front of the television, without real intention of watching anything.
A movie was on.
A tragic movie.
The story of a little girl beaten by her classmates, humiliated, tortured under the laughter of others, while adults looked away.
Every scene tightened my chest.
It was my childhood.
I had lost my parents very young.
I was then entrusted to my uncle.
An alcoholic, violent man who beat me at the slightest opportunity.
At school, it wasn't much better.
My classmates took a sick pleasure in humiliating me.
They hit me, dunked my head in the toilets, laughed while I suffocated.
And I wasn't allowed to complain.
A shiver ran down my spine.
I perfectly remembered the day I dared to speak.
I told everything to the principal: the beatings, the insults, the humiliations.
The result was worse than anything I had known until then.
After school, they were waiting for me.
They beat me with unheard-of violence.
Someone slit my throat just deep enough for me to feel my heart falter, for my soul to threaten to detach from my body without really leaving.
Then, as I cried, exhausted, they ordered me to get on all fours.
They wanted me to walk.
To bark.
They forced me to repeat, over and over, that I was nothing.
That I would never be anything.
My voice trembled.
But I did it.
When I told my uncle… he didn't care.
He looked at me with contempt and simply said I was weak.
That I deserved what happened to me.
Those words were perhaps worse than the blows.
That day, something broke definitively in me.
I dropped out of school.
I never wanted to set foot there again.
At fifteen, I left my uncle's house and moved away from all civilization.
I know not everyone is like my tormentors.
I harbored no hatred, nor resentment.
I simply turned the page.
I wanted to write a new chapter.
A chapter where there would be no one but me.
It was far from cities that I discovered my gift.
Magic responded to my gestures, my thoughts.
It allowed me to survive where there were only trees, animals, and silence.
Over time, I became familiar with these animals.
Some followed me, others protected me.
I was also under the guard of an old shaman living in the mountains.
He taught me to listen, to feel, to understand.
He gave me purpose.
It was thanks to him that I understood I was made to heal.
At first, I healed injured animals.
Then I wanted to do more.
Saving lives brought me deep satisfaction.
A peace I had never known.
And for the first time…
I finally felt in my place.
As I had lain on the couch, sleep had finally engulfed me.
I don't know how much time had passed when a sharp noise brutally pulled me from that state — someone was knocking at my door.
I opened my eyes again, still numb.
Ryan? Had he already made the trip back from the south?
Or the shaman?
Besides them, no one knew I lived here.
I got up and slowly walked to the door. When I opened it, what I saw left me speechless.
A young boy stood there. He must have been fourteen, maybe less. His face was ravaged by tears, his body trembling as if he had walked a long time, too long.
— Ma'am… I'm lost, he said in a broken voice. I don't know where I am anymore…
I remained frozen for a moment, surprised, then stepped aside to let him in. I sat him on the couch, handed him a blanket and a glass of water. His hands were still trembling.
I asked him a few questions, gently. He came from the city.
I then told him I could take him back.
He refused immediately.
— Why do you refuse to go home? I asked.
The boy lowered his head. His voice became almost inaudible.
— I… I have nothing left there.
At first, I thought he had run away after making a mistake, like so many other children. But he continued, and what he told me dispelled that suspicion.
— My mother died from a strange fever…
He breathed heavily.
— And there's this spirit. It won't leave us alone.
I frowned.
— A spirit?
He nodded.
— It attacked me once. I was very sick… I thought I was going to die. But my mom met a young woman. She gave her a potion. She saved my life.
My heart tightened.
I understood immediately.
It was him.
The child lying on an old cloth that day. The one I had healed without a word.
— Since then… he resumed, sobbing, I've been looking for her. Again and again…
His voice broke completely.
— I hoped she could heal my mother… even from death.
I remained silent.
My eyes widened slowly, but no words came out of my mouth.
I knew it.
I had always known it.
Death is not a disease.
It's not an imbalance, nor an infection, nor a mind fever.
Death is an end.
And none of my potions, no magic, no plant — however rare — could bring a mother back to her child.