The Potion Diaries

by Amy Alward

  ‘That’s a big deal!’ says Dad.

  ‘Huge,’ I agree. I’m really happy for Molly, and I feel a weight lift from my shoulders. If the Princess is receiving official visits that means she can’t be too sick.

  Instinctively, I check my phone, as if Molly receiving this letter means that I should be receiving a text from the Princess soon too – surely her next step would be to reach out to her friends to let them know she’s okay.

  But there’s nothing. I text her: Hey! Molly got your invite – looks like she’s coming to visit you at the Palace! I miss you. Hope I can see you soon. Write back!

  Molly dances around the kitchen. ‘I’m going to the Palace!’ she sings. ‘I’m going to the Palace! Oh my god, what do you wear to the Palace?’ She stops dancing, her eyes wide.

  I laugh. ‘Probably your school uniform, silly! But you’re going to love it there. Even I’ve never really been. At least, not officially. They normally hold public meet-and-greets at the castle.’ It’s a strange set-up that the Novaen Royal family have, but it’s kept them protected for centuries: there’s the large, imposing castle at the top of Kingstown Hill, the highest point of the whole city (technically the skyscrapers that make up the industrial and business districts are outside of the city proper). But the Royal family actually live in an invisible, floating Palace somewhere above the city, totally suspended by the Royal family’s magic power. Its very existence is a symbol of their extreme Talent, and keeps them safe.

  Kept them safe.

  Until they brought danger into their midst.

  ‘I’m nervous about meeting the Prince . . .’ Molly says, jumping up onto the counter next to me.

  ‘Well, maybe I can give you a poison potion to slip into his tea?’

  ‘Sam.’ Mum’s voice is laced with her best warning tone.

  The familiar wave of anger surges up inside me but I let it wash over. At least Molly is willing to still be cautious. I give her a small smile, which she returns. I don’t want to kill her buzz with my warnings about Stefan’s true nature. But I can’t – won’t – believe he’s changed in such a short period of time. If ever I get close to believing he’s just a benign, good-looking, media-friendly Prince, all I need to do is shut my eyes and I’m sent straight back to the dark, dripping cave underneath the crumbling Visir School – to his smarmy face as he forced me to work with the dreaded Emilia Thoth.

  ‘Let’s celebrate all the good news with ice cream!’ says Mum, breaking the tension.

  After stuffing our faces with mint chocolate chip goodness, I help Mum tidy up before heading upstairs. I need to talk to Molly – privately. She’s been working on her Talented homework, wearing her special unicorn hair gloves – a gift from the Princess – as she practises channelling her magic. She has a particular gift for healing magic, and already knows she wants to go to medical school. Her help with healing Grandad after his memories were taken proved beyond doubt to me that she was going to grow up to be a great healer.

  ‘Can I come in?’ I ask, after knocking on the doorframe.

  Molly sits back from her desk and peels off her gloves. ‘Sure . . . I wasn’t making much progress anyway.’ She frowns at the little leaf in a jar that refuses to grow.

  I come in and sit on her bed. ‘Can I give you a message to give to Evie when you see her?’

  ‘Sure,’ says Molly.

  I hold out a piece of folded paper. ‘It’s sealed with a special paste I made – she’s the only one who will be able to open it.’

  ‘I understand,’ says Molly.

  ‘And you will be careful around the Prince, won’t you?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘And you’ll give me a status update of everything he says and does and how the Princess looks and acts?’

  ‘You know it.’

  ‘Thanks, Molly.’

  ‘Don’t be a worryworm, Sam.’

  Worryworms. Known for their ability to burrow deep into the ground. Used in potions to uncover buried secrets. Very rare.

  ‘I’ll try.’ But I can’t help it. I won’t stop worrying properly until I hear from the Princess herself.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Samantha

  ‘JUST A LITTLE TO THE LEFT. A LITTLE MORE. Now tilt your head. One more time, but to the other side. Perfect.’

  The camera’s flash makes stars dance in my vision, but I hold my pose, feeling increasingly like a maniac with my toothy smile and wide eyes. I try to catch Zain’s eye to show how over it I am, but he’s being fussed over by a make-up artist who is trying to convince him to put on a stronger glamour. I think he looks perfect, but then I am a little bit biased.

  I wish I had his level of comfort with glamours. My dark hair has been styled into a short bob that frames my round face; I push it back behind my ears, then in front again, then behind as the photographer snaps away. I don’t know what looks best.

  The photographer has been here for half an hour already, moving me around the shop floor. After getting permission from my parents, I spent half the night cleaning and straightening and wiping. Now the three storeys of shelving are perfectly organised, with every glass jar and container gleaming. I replaced all the old, worn books on the shelves with the fanciest looking leatherbound tomes in our library and made sure their spines were in alphabetical order. I think it helped distract me from what I’d actually agreed to. Going on TV. Again.

  ‘Do you have a particularly atmospheric potion we can use in a photograph?’ Daphne asks me. Daphne, so far, is everything that I expected from a film producer and director: effortlessly cool, with a chic chin-brushing bob that always falls back into place no matter what she does to it – whether it’s push her tortoiseshell glasses up into her hair or jab a pencil behind her ear – all thanks to a glamour. The photographer is a tall guy called Geoff with a close-shaven beard and a man-bun. These people are way too hip for me.

  I wrinkle my nose. ‘An atmospheric potion?’

  ‘You know, something pretty. That makes a lot of smoke and swirl.’ As she speaks, she gestures wildly with her arms.

  Medusa’s hair – a potion that produces smoke that invades the air in the shapes of snakes.

  Except that potion is also so noxious we have to prepare it under a hood so none of the snakes escape into the atmosphere.

  ‘I could mix a little cloud dust up?’ I say. If I put a few drops in some coloured water, it will rise out of a flask and settle around the opening like clouds around a mountain peak. It doesn’t actually serve any specific purpose, but it’s quick and fits the ‘pretty’ bill.

  ‘Sounds perfect,’ Daphne says, clapping her hands together.

  I walk through the door that separates the shop from the lab, Geoff and Daphne following close behind. I haven’t seen Grandad yet this morning – but I’m glad he’s not here to watch me ‘faking’ alchemy for the cameras. Still, it’s fun to play around with some of the ingredients, making a bit of a show. This is my favourite part, after all: the mixing. Alchemy is the blood that runs through my veins. It’s everything that I was born to do. And now that I’m a Master Alchemist – the youngest Master in Nova since my grandfather – I have equal reign over the laboratory.

  Once the potion is foaming up attractively, Daphne has Geoff take a few more photos. ‘These will be perfect for our promo shots for the docucast marketing. It’s going to be a wild ride, Sam, I hope you’re ready.’ Finally, she taps Geoff on the shoulder and tells him to put down the camera. ‘I think that’s it for you for today.’

  ‘Oh, great,’ I say, and the smile on my face is probably the first genuine one I’ve had all day. Things have happened so fast since I got my family’s permission and Daphne showed up with all the paperwork. ‘Are you doing anything else exciting?’

  ‘We should have been,’ Geoff says. The photographer and director exchange dark looks.

  ‘What do you mean?’ I ask.

  ‘We were supposed to do a big shoot with the Princess this afternoon, but it was cancel
led.’ Geoff looks at me sideways, but I cast my eyes down. I know they expect me to have an idea about what’s going on, but the truth is . . . I don’t.

  Daphne’s eyes light up. ‘Maybe she’s pregnant!’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ I say. I hate how quickly people jump to conclusions about the Princess.

  ‘Know something we don’t?’ Daphne quips back.

  I force out what I hope is a casual-sounding laugh. ‘No . . . I just know Princess Evelyn and kids aren’t on the agenda just yet.’ When it’s clear I don’t have anything juicy (or even remotely interesting) to tell them, they finish packing up.

  ‘Oh well,’ Daphne says with a shrug as she picks up a portable flashlight. ‘Everything must be okay, right? She can’t be in any real danger as no Wilde Hunt has been called. I’m sure you would be the first to know if it had!’

  ‘That’s true.’ I smile. Why didn’t I think of that? Evelyn can’t have caught the Gergon virus because there’s been no Wilde Hunt. I hadn’t realised how much the thought had been weighing on my shoulders until the anxiety lifts. But just as quickly as it lifts, a different realisation sinks in. No illness means the Princess really has just been shutting us out of her life. Zain and I exchange a look. It’s worse for him than it is for me. She’s been my friend only a few months. But Evie and Zain have been best friends since they were kids. ‘My mum says she’s probably just busy being a newlywed,’ I say.

  ‘She’d better release those wedding pictures one day,’ says Geoff with a laugh. ‘Whoever that photographer was will make a mint.’

  ‘So guys, see you tomorrow, bright and early?’ says Daphne. ‘We’ll start the day off easy, just get some establishing shots of you working in the store and doing exactly as you would normally do. Then we’ll go to the ZA building and shoot your angle, Zain. Sam, don’t change one bit of your routine without telling us.’

  ‘Unless part of my routine is picking my nose and putting it in a potion or something, right?’ I say.

  She looks at me quizzically.

  ‘Uh, I don’t do that . . . it was a joke.’

  ‘Oh.’ She laughs, but it’s only for my benefit. Since when do I make corny jokes like that, anyway? I hope being on TV doesn’t turn me into some kind of blithering idiot. ‘And will your grandad be here tomorrow too?’

  ‘He will . . . but he doesn’t want to be in the docucast, if that’s okay.’

  ‘Sure, sure, the focus is on you, anyway. You are the star, young lady! This is going to be so great. The two descendants of warring factions: old versus new. Natural versus technological. Synth versus potion. Tension . . . tension is what drives a story! I cannot wait.’ Daphne claps her hands together. ‘Just picture it. “Novacast presents: Sam Kemi, Mixer Extraordinary.” Are you done, Geoff?’

  ‘Ready to go,’ he says with a grin.

  I wave them goodbye, and when I close the door, I breathe a sigh of relief. They’re so high energy, so different to the normal vibe in the store. We prefer to maintain an atmosphere of calm. For a little while at least, we have to prepare for it to be frenetic.

  ‘That was intense,’ says Zain. He kisses me on the cheek. ‘I’d better get going – I have class in an hour.’

  ‘And I’ve got to get to school. Thanks for doing this with me,’ I say.

  ‘Are you kidding? It’s going to be fun. Daphne seems nice. Enthusiastic.’

  ‘That’s putting it mildly.’

  ‘Okay, see you tomorrow.’

  ‘See ya.’ We kiss again and I watch as he heads out of the door. My mind feels like it’s been going a million miles a minute and I haven’t had any time to prepare myself.

  ‘Have they gone?’ Grandad walks into the store with armfuls of prescriptions, ready for us to open in fifteen minutes.

  ‘They’ll be back tomorrow though,’ I say.

  He nods. Most of our time together in the store or the lab is spent in silence, focusing on our respective mixes or interpreting each other’s gestures when needed. I know that the time is coming when I won’t be working in the store any more – after graduation, I’m planning on university and then taking the Synth-Natural Research position at ZoroAster Corp. But for now, we can stick to our comfortable routine.

  That’s another thing the documentary will do for me, I realise. It will preserve these times, for the future. You never know how long the present is going to stay present – and after the close call with Grandad’s health only a month ago, I want to hold onto every moment.

  There is something I have to ask him, though. Daphne’s comment about the Wilde Hunt has been turning over and over in my brain. ‘Grandad, is there any way for a Royal family member to be seriously ill, but without a Wilde Hunt being called?’

  He looks up at me from the counter, stroking his long white beard. ‘Theoretically, a Wilde Hunt is only called if a Royal heir is in mortal danger and the bloodline is in trouble. Those are the two factors. So they could certainly be sick – or injure themselves – without a Wilde Hunt being called, if there was a viable heir.’

  ‘And Auden’s Horn is . . . wise enough to know when that is?’

  ‘It hasn’t been wrong before. But, for example, if the King fell gravely ill now, a Wilde Hunt would not be called. We would all do our best to save him, of course, but there is the Princess who would succeed him.’ Beneath his bushy eyebrows, his eyes study mine. ‘Is there a reason why this has come up?’

  ‘You know what I told you about the symptoms I saw in the Princess on the day of my ceremony?’

  ‘The coughing and the white residue on her sleeve.’

  I nod. ‘Right. The same symptoms of the virus that Prince Stefan showed me was spreading in Gergon. I saw it with my own eyes. It was so contagious it was draining all the Gergonian Talenteds of their power. But if no Wilde Hunt has been called in Nova, it can’t have spread here, can it? I shouldn’t be worried.’

  Grandad pauses, and the silence makes my insides curl.

  Eventually, I can’t take it any longer. ‘I mean, Stefan hoped that by marrying the Princess, he could end the spread of the virus. Maybe that’s what happened? He might have gone about it in a terrible way but ultimately he wanted to save his people.’ I shrug. ‘If his plan worked and the virus was cured . . . That would be a good thing, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘I’m hearing a lot of self-doubt coming from a Master Alchemist,’ says Grandad. ‘What does your gut say?’

  ‘That’s not what happened. Something is wrong.’

  ‘Then let me make some enquiries of my own. I’ll let you know if I hear anything.’

  ‘Thanks, Grandad.’

  I put it to the back of my mind for now. I just have to wait for Evelyn to get in touch. If something was wrong, she would come to me.

  I know she would.

  Wouldn’t she?

  CHAPTER SIX

  Princess Evelyn

  HER FIRST THOUGHT AS SHE SAT UP was that she felt better! Healthy, even. Finally, something had cured her of that awful coughing sickness that had left her so drained.

  Her memory was fuzzy – the last thing she remembered was seeing Prince Stefan’s face as she lay in her bedroom. She remembered thinking that as soon as Sam was done with school, she was going to make her the official alchemist to the Palace – no way was she taking that ZA job. But until that time, it was still Evelyn’s father’s choice: and her father still chose ZA to look after the Royals.

  Even so, she was confused. She wasn’t in her own room – it was much smaller for one thing, and she didn’t recognise any of the furniture. She swung her legs out of bed, letting her toes curl into the scratchy hemp carpet on the floor. Definitely not her choice of furnishings.

  She walked to the window. Outside on the street, there were people everywhere, dressed in strange, uncomfortable-looking outfits that made her think of a time centuries before. Part of her wanted to find her phone to take a picture, but that would be rude.

  Then it hit her. Of course they were dressed in su
ch an old-fashioned way. Hadn’t she heard about this a dozen times before? They were in Gergon! And she had just married their Prince. She must have come for a state visit. But why didn’t she remember arriving? Or leaving Palace Great for that matter?

  Startled by the realisation, she scanned the room for Prince Stefan, but he wasn’t there. They must have given him separate quarters, thank goodness. Someone in the street noticed her, and she waved a hand regally.

  But the Gergonian stopped and shook his fist at her, shouting something in his language that did not sound flattering. Others began to stop, too, and the anger in the crowd grew like storm clouds gathering. She let out an ‘Oh!’ of surprise.

  That was no way to treat a Princess.

  Well, she wasn’t going to stay cooped up in this room. She needed to find out what was going on, and she couldn’t do that here.

  She stepped through the door and came across the King and Queen of Gergon, sitting at a long dining-room table laden with food. Also at the table was their first son, Stefan’s brother, Prince Ilie. What kind of perverse interior design had bedrooms leading straight into a dining room?

  ‘You cannot be here!’ the Queen said when she saw Evelyn, her voice high and shrill. Evelyn had only met her once before, when she’d been a young girl. She’d been so confused when Prince Stefan hadn’t invited his parents to their wedding. Granted, it had been organised in a heartbeat, amidst the aftermath of the attack on the Laville Ball, Samantha’s abduction and the threat of her growing power. Still, they could have Transported in for the ceremony – but Stefan insisted they go ahead without them.