“Make the girl drink this,” he instructed. “Pour it in her soup, or over her dinner, or any other way you want to serve it to her,” he handed it over to Greystone. “When she falls in love with you, bring the money back here and everything will be settled.”
“And if she doesn’t love me because of this, I owe you nothing?” Greystone asked, as he clutched the jar. “I think it’s a fine way to do business.” He turned and left the shop, and Gabrielle turned to Marco.
“You’ve just done one woman a great favor,” Gabrielle told Marco. “I wish you could do the same for every other woman in the city.”
Marco smiled a sad smile, then went back to the workshop, and returned to working on the lotion intended to be rubbed on the leather that their recent customer wanted to save. By early afternoon it was finished, and he then devoted hours of work to the other lotion, the one meant for Mirra, and worked through to the evening. He wondered if he should ask Gabrielle; he was using the supplies she owned after all, but a part of him whispered that whatever he was doing for Mirra should be kept private between the two of them, and so he didn’t bring it up.
The next morning, Mirra came to awaken him. He had slept in his room instead of on the roof, due to the threat of rain. He caught her hand after she reached over to prod his shoulder, and he looked at her.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” she said with a quiet dignity.
“It’s not that,” he said. “It’s something else. I have a potion I made, just for you, to rub on your face,” he told her as he pulled the small, stoppered jar from under his bed. His hands pressed her hair away from her face, revealing all the features she worked so hard to hide. He opened the jar and dabbed some of the contents on his finger, then sat up higher and gently rubbed it over her cheeks. He dabbed another fingertip, as she sat in stonelike rigid silence, and rubbed it across her forehead, and the bridge of her nose, then took a third dip and traced his fingers down her throat, behind her ears, and his fingers began to unintentionally slip inside the neckline of her dress to reach the blemishes that extended below his sight. She gave a shudder, and her hand tentatively reached up.
“Please, don’t,” she asked in a begging tone, mistaking his intentions.
“Here, you take it and use it twice a day,” he told her as he removed his fingers from her flesh, and handed her the jar of lotion.
She took it without comment and then left the room, leaving before Marco explained the lotion, and unsure of whether she intended to use the gift or not.
Greystone returned to the shop later that morning. “I gave her the potion and nothing happened,” he said with barely controlled anger.
“Marches always told me that these potions take two or three days to fully work,” Gabrielle spoke up. “I wondered sometimes if he had given me a potion to make me love him. I was teasing him of course, but he always insisted that he hadn’t.”
“The other alchemist said that his potion would take effect immediately,” Greystone responded.
“If you want to spend your money on them, go ahead,” Marco told him. “But otherwise wait until ours has a chance.”
The man stalked out of the store, angry, but too frugal to pay for immediate satisfaction. “Did Marches say that philters take that long to work?” Marco turned to Gabrielle.
“No, not really,” she answered. “But I thought we might as well put that nasty man off for as long as we can,” she gave him a prim little smile.
“There’s something else we need to do,” she told him. She removed her small, old-fashioned purse from her belt, and took out several silvers. “I’m not sure what the terms of our agreement were, but I know that you have earned every last pinch of these coins. Take them as your wages for the past week,” she laid the coins on the counter.
It was a great deal of money to Marco, more than he had ever received at once in his life. “I don’t know if you owe me all that much,” he protested, making no move to pick up the coins.
“I owe you more than that,” Gabrielle answered. “You’ve been fair and kind to the people who come here. You’ve stopped Allied from taking advantage of me, after I trusted him to be a good neighbor. And I hear that you’ve been a very good alchemist.
“People in the neighborhood say that you are giving products – especially cures and medicines – that no one else in the city can give. I hope that if I pay you well, you’ll consider staying for a while and taking care of my neighborhood,” she pressed the coins towards him.
Marco looked at the coins. They were nearly half the value of all that he had earned for her in the past few days, and they did also represent a large first step towards the payment needed to buy passage aboard a ship bound back to the Lion City.
“I’ll use this one to buy some new supplies to replace what I’ve used so far,” Marco pushed one silver to the side. “Thank you Gabrielle,” he said.
“Now maybe you can go out some night and do something besides go swimming,” she lectured him. “There are lots of pretty girls who’d be happy to be invited out by the handsome young alchemist, I’ve been told.” She raised her eyebrows at him to emphasize the message, and he grinned in response, then picked up the coins and pocketed them.
“I’ll go down to the market now and see what I can buy,” Marco told her. He gently rubbed his hand on her shoulder affectionately, then left to go shopping.
At the market place, Marco bought a few items, but found many of the alchemy needs to be unavailable. As he wandered among the stalls he was surprised to hear his name called, then turned to see Mirra approaching him. Her skin was already noticeably smoother on her face, he realized with satisfaction, though he had only applied the first treatment a few hours earlier.
“There’s the girl you saved,” Mirra told him as she reached him and hooked her arm through his. She was carrying a market basket, but not her baby, he saw.
“What girl?” he asked in confusion, his mind wandering back to the dock in the Lion City, when he had rescued Angelica and her maid.
“Sibeal,”Mirra said. She pointed at a redheaded girl who was walking with an older woman and a younger girl. “She’s the girl Greystone wants to marry, so he can get his hands on her dowry money.”
“She’s a pretty girl,” Marco commented as he watched her smile demurely at something her companion said.
“That’s her mother; she’s a wealthy widow,” Mirra added, “and her maid.”
“What was that you put on my face this morning? My skin’s been tingling all day since then,” she asked.
“Have you looked in a mirror?” Marco asked.
“We don’t have a mirror. My brother and I barely have enough money to feed ourselves; we can’t buy knick-knacks,” she answered.
Marco looked for a vendor selling jewelry, and led Mirra to the stall, where there was a small mirror hanging on a post, so that customers could examine the jewelry they wished to buy. “Look at yourself,” Marco pointed, wrapping his arm around her shoulders and pulling her towards the mirror.
“Why? Did my skin turn green?” Mirra asked, then she gave a startled exclamation.
“The mirror is for paying customers,” the vendor in the booth, reminded Marco, who tugged at Mirra and pulled away from the jewelry.
“What did you do to me?” she asked him breathlessly, her eyes searching his face intently.
“I gave you a little potion. Keeping applying it twice a day until it’s all gone, and your complexion should be better,” he told her.
“Why? Why are you so nice? I can’t pay you. You don’t seem to really want me to sleep with you, and you could have better women if you wanted. Why are you doing this for me?” she asked.
Marco stopped, and grasped her arms, making the other shoppers strolling through the crowded aisle break around them. “I’m just treating you the way I would want to be treated. You’ve been good to me, waking me up and feeding me, and I am just trying to return the favor. You seem like a person who deserves to have so
mething nice happen for a change.”
“Where do you go at night?” she asked suddenly.
“I go down to the harbor,” he answered, caught off-guard by the question.
“And you go swimming?” she asked. “Alone?”
He paused, not sure how to answer.
“Who do you swim with?” she asked. “Do you have a girlfriend in the city? I thought you had just arrived, from what Gabrielle told me, and it sounded like you were alone.”
“No, I don’t have a girlfriend,” he said hastily. “But I need to go back to the shop and put these supplies away,” he felt that he had to escape the conversation. He released his hold on her arms, and started moving along again in the traffic.
And then he surprised himself by turning around to face her again; he wasn’t sure why. “Would you like to have dinner with me tomorrow night?” he asked suddenly, as they prepared to part ways.
“Of course, Marco, if you want. I didn’t mean to make you think you have to do anything for me. Heaven knows you’re doing enough,” she said with a winsome smile.
“I’ll see you tomorrow morning, and tomorrow night too,” he told her, then bolted away, walking towards any escape he could find to put an end to the conversation that was moving in such an unexpected and uncomfortable direction.
Marco walked back towards Marches shop, unaware of any of his surroundings, absorbed with self-analysis as he tried to decipher his own actions and thoughts. Why had he prepared the lotion for Mirra, and why had he asked her out to dinner, he wondered. Had he been trying to set up a relationship with her? He didn’t think so. He hadn’t been aware of any attraction between the two of them; but she had been taking care of him, and he had enjoyed being awoken by her every morning.
It didn’t make any sense, he told himself. He was only here while he tried to get back to the Lion City. Though he’d been away from the city for more than a month, he still considered it home, and he knew that he imagined being welcomed back as a hero when he made it back to the city. Yet here he was in Barcelon, being treated so well by Gabrielle and now stumbling into a date with Mirra.
That night he went swimming with Kieweeooee, though they swam only a short time, then stopped at a sand bar on the side of the harbor, where Marco continued to learn the language of the dolphins. He stripped his clothes off before he got in the water, the first time he had the presence of mind to do so.
”My friends think I’m crazy to play with you. I don’t tell them where I go many times,” the dolphin told Marco.
He laughed and then put his face in the water. “I don’t tell anyone about you. A girl asked me about swimming, and I didn’t tell about you.”
“Is the girl your mate?” Kieweeooee asked.
“No, not my mate. Just a friend. Part of my pod,” he answered.
“You are a boy. I see,” the dolphin told him.
“I am. Aren’t you a boy too?” he asked.
“No. I am a girl,” Kieweeooee answered, then slapped her flippers in laughter. “They tell me to mate with you, since I play with you so much!”
Marco laughed as well. “Then our babies will be little mermaids and merboys!”
They both laughed, then Marco asked to be taken back to the docks, as he saw how low the crescent moon had fallen in the sky.
When Mirra awoke Marco the next morning, they both stared at one another.
Mirra’s complexion continued to dramatically change under the influence of Marco’s potion. The skin discoloration was gone completely, and the texture was smoothing out, taking away not only the scars, but also the lines that stress and hunger had already etched around her mouth and eyes. She stared at him intently. “I used the mirror downstairs. I didn’t recognize myself this morning.
“Will this last? When I stop using your potion, will my face go back to the way it was before?” he could hear the trepidation in her voice.
“No, it shouldn’t ever change. You should always look this pretty,” he assured her.
There was a long moment of silence.
“I see you didn’t go swimming,” she pointed towards the dry clothes heaped next to him.
“It looks that way,” he agreed.
“You are looking so pretty,” he told her after another pause.
“I need to get back to the kitchen,” she said, with a last look at him, and then she was gone from his roof space.
Marco sat up, the ladies were not yet at their window to watch him, so he climbed back into his room without waving, and was soon downstairs having breakfast.
He mixed and sold a handful of alchemical solutions to problems that day, then waited nervously for Mirra to return in the evening.
“Take her someplace nice, maybe one of the inns over by the Ducal Square,” Gabrielle suggested.
When the breakfast cook tapped at the door, Marco quickly sprang up and opened it, then stared at the girl who stood there. Her transformation was complete. There were no sores, no blemishes, no scars, no lines. Her high cheek bones and almond-shaped eyes stood out with classic beauty, and she smiled a fetching shy smile at him. He was astonished as how gorgeous Mirra had become.
“I haven’t had a complexion like this since I was nine years old,” Mirra told him. She reached out and hugged him. “Glaze says I’ll be married to a nobleman soon with my looks!” she laughingly referred to her brother. “But I’m not looking for a nobleman!” she added quickly.
“Gabrielle, we’re leaving now,” Marco shouted into the shop, then closed the door and started walking. “Gabrielle said we should go to Ducal Square to eat. I don’t know where it is; can you lead the way?” he asked with a rueful smile.
“Come along,” she held out her hand, and when he took it, she began to pull him along, guiding him through the streets.
“I’ve only got enough of the lotion to put on my face one more time,” she told him. “You told me that my skin will stay pretty even after I use the lotion all up?” she sought reassurance one more time.
“Every bit of you will stay pretty, even after the lotion is gone,” he told her gallantly, and he was satisfied to see a grateful smile on her face in response.
“Why are you wearing that sword?” she asked after a moment’s pause.
Marco had not picked up the sword or worn it in the shop or around the city since the day he had faced off against Allied, when he had been emboldened by the gorgon’s blood. He felt completely safe within the shop, and saw little evidence of violence around the city. During his life in the Lion City he had not carried a weapon, and so he had fallen back into that habit in Barcelon. But tonight, he felt a premonition that he would be better off with the extraordinary weapon than without it.
“With such a pretty girl as my friend, I think I’ll need to scare the other boys away,” he laughed.
“Oh, pshaw!” she giggled. Marco could tell that she was unused to the compliments, uncertain of how to react. “Look at this dress I’m wearing,” her hands motioned along her torso, calling attention to the threadbare and plain material. “No one would possibly be interested in me.”
The dress was plain, and did detract slightly from Mirra’s emerging beauty, Marco thought, but not very much. “No boy’s going to be distracted by your dress,” he countered, “you’re too pretty.”
They arrived at Ducal Square just then, emerging from a narrow street into the open, opulent public space, where many magnificent homes displayed their rich splendor.
“Where would you like to eat?” Marco asked.
“I don’t know!” Mirra’s voice shot up. “I never dreamed of coming to a place around here to eat. I don’t know which is what; you pick,” she urged.
Marco looked around as they stood and were passed by the other pedestrians entering and leaving the square. “Over there,” he pointed. He recognized a landmark, the side of a building that had housed the inn where the cook had given him an extra chop to eat on his first miserable night in the city. He wanted to return the favor, and spend
his money on that inn.
“We’ll eat at,” he paused and squinted at the sign, “The Fence Post Inn,” he announced.
“We’d like a table for two,” he told the head waiter at the restaurant when they walked into the lobby.
“This is an expensive restaurant,” the waiter warned.
“I have money,” Marco replied instantly.
“May I see it?” the man asked looking them both up and down.
Marco was stunned, then angry. He pulled his silvers out of his pocket. “Do these look real to you?” he asked.
The waiter immediately answered. “Of course sir, I’m sure you understand. Follow me,” he said, and instantly walked out into the dining room and led them to a table.
The waiter held a chair out from the small table, then stood expectantly until Marco realized that Mirra was supposed to sit there. He gently nudged her towards the seat, and sat down in his own as the waiter pressed her seat in beneath her.
“Your first course will be here momentarily,” the waiter told them. “That will be two silvers,” he spoke quietly.
Marco fished his coins back out and handed them over, then watched the waiter leave.
“Oh Marco, with two silvers I could have fed Glaze and myself for a month! You shouldn’t have spent that money like this,” Mirra told him, nearly in tears as she watched him part with his first wages.
“We get to find out what food tastes like to cost this much,” he replied. “Don’t worry about it. Neither one of us will ever get to do this again, so we ought to enjoy it this time.”
A different waiter appeared just then and presented them each with a glass of wine.
They each tasted the wine, and both made faces that clearly showed they didn’t enjoy it.
The Gorgon's Blood Solution Page 18
