The Alchemaster's Apprentice

The Love Potion


It was late that night - just before dawn, in fact - when Echo ventured out of the castle and hurried off to Uggly Lane to help Izanuela put the finishing touches to her potion. The front door admitted him of its own accord and he made his way down to the cellar, only to find the Uggly fast asleep beside her distillation plant. She was snoring with her head on the table top, surrounded by utter chaos. Dozens of flasks and test tubes, phials and beakers were standing there. Some of them had overturned and butterflies were sipping or bathing in the mingled liquids that had spilled from them. The glass flask of chlorophyll solution was boiling over, the hop dispenser rattling away and spitting out hop pellets, the Twitching Terebinth dancing a fandango in the midst of this mess.

Echo jumped up on the table and went over to Izanuela. She was talking in her sleep.

‘No … Please don’t … Ghoolion, I’m innocent … Don’t barbecue me, I beg you …’

Echo tapped her gently on the head with his paw. She sat up with a jerk and waved her arms around. Then she saw who it was and relaxed.

‘Good heavens … er…I must have dozed off … Sheer exhaustion, I’m afraid …’ She yawned prodigiously.

‘Can we carry on now?’ Echo asked.

‘Carry on?’ Izanuela said sleepily. ‘What with?’

‘The love potion, of course.’

‘Oh, the love potion.’ She grinned. ‘It’s done already.’

‘You went ahead without me?’

‘Of course, we don’t have much time. I worked all through the night. Four disasters. The fifth time, bingo! Then I collapsed. There it is.’ She pointed to a small, unremarkable-looking flask on the table. It contained some clear, pale-green fluid.

Echo sniffed the cork inquisitively.

‘It smells and tastes of nothing at all,’ said Izanuela, ‘but it would rip the heart out of your body and squeeze it dry. A single drop of the stuff and you’d be miaowing at the moon for the next three nights.’

‘What do we do with it now?’

‘Well, we …’ She broke off. ‘I mean, you administer it to Ghoolion. The whole batch. Preferably in a glass of red wine. He does drink red wine?’

‘Certainly,’ said Echo, remembering their carousal.

‘Good. I’ve made you a receptacle we can tie round your tummy. We’ll practise how you uncork it in a minute. Tip it all into his wine and don’t even dream of sampling any yourself.’

‘I’m not that stupid.’

‘Don’t be too sure. The potion may smell and taste of nothing, but it exerts an immense attraction when it’s uncorked. I had to struggle to stop myself from drinking the lot. It was all I could do to cork it up.’

Izanuela rose and stretched. She turned off the hop dispenser and removed the boiling chlorophyll solution from the heat.

‘I’m almost as proud of the choice perfume I’ve distilled from the Cratmint,’ she said, indicating the glass retort containing the mint. Its grey leaves, now completely desiccated, were drooping limply.

She reached inside her cloak and produced another flask. ‘Cratmint perfume, the most potent scent in existence. Its effect on someone who has drunk the love potion is as powerful as that of the moon on the tides or a magnet on a piece of iron. Or a clump of Cratmint on a Crat. Only a hundred times stronger.’

She deposited the second flask beside the first.

‘Those two together’, she said, ‘constitute the bottled essence of true and everlasting love.’

‘Are you quite sure?’ Echo hazarded.

Izanuela glared at him.

‘You doubt me?’ she said coolly. ‘Then let’s test some on the Leyden Manikin. A waste, in my opinion, but it’s better to be safe than sorry. We don’t want to leave anything to chance.’

She took the flask of love potion and went over to the jar containing the Leyden Manikin, which was still languishing apathetically in its nutrient fluid. Then she removed the cork. Her expression changed in a flash. Her eyes widened, her lips trembled.

‘Aaah!’ she cried.

Now Echo, too, felt the mysterious power of attraction. He saw nothing and smelt nothing, but he experienced a fierce desire to snatch the flask from the Uggly’s hand and drain it.

‘Oooh!’ cried Izanuela as she dribbled a few drops of the precious liquid into the Leyden Manikin’s glass jar.

She clearly found it a great effort to replace the cork.

‘Phew,’ she said, ‘that was powerful.’

Echo, too, breathed a sigh of relief.

The Leyden Manikin got up and toddled around in its nutrient fluid.

‘It’ll take a little while,’ Izanuela explained. ‘It’s absorbing the potion through its feet. It’ll go to its head before long.’

Echo had gone right up to the jar. The Leyden Manikin was beginning to splash around in a more exuberant fashion.

‘It’s beginning to work,’ Izanuela said with a grin. ‘Pretend the little creature is really Ghoolion.’

The Manikin started to dance. Clumsily, it turned on the spot and waved its arms around.

Echo stared at it open-mouthed. ‘It looks drunk.’

‘It’s lovesick,’ said Izanuela, ‘but it still doesn’t know who it’s in love with. We’ll soon see about that.’

She took the flask containing the Cratmint perfume, unscrewed the top and dabbed a single drop of it on her neck. The underground chamber was instantly suffused with a glorious scent that filled Echo with a profound sense of happiness. He jumped down off the table and wound round Izanuela’s legs.

‘And you haven’t even drunk any of the love potion!‘ she said with a laugh. ‘Come, see what the Leyden Manikin is up to.’

Echo found it hard to tear himself away from her legs. He jumped back on the table and looked at the manikin in its jar.

The little thing was behaving quite dementedly. It kept butting its head against the glass in an attempt to get at Izanuela, pausing occasionally to sing to her in a high-pitched, piping voice.

‘It’s completely infatuated with me,’ she said with a touch of satisfaction. ‘And it’s only an artificial, alchemical creature without a heart or genuine feelings. Imagine what our potion could do to a real, live, sentient person!’

‘This is fantastic!’ Echo cried enthusiastically. ‘It works!’

‘Of course it works,’ Izanuela said loftily. ‘I told you it was silly to waste the stuff on the manikin. Now I’ll show you what I’ve made for you to use when emptying the potion into Ghoolion’s wine glass.’

It was a little wineskin which the Uggly had adapted by sewing two leather straps to it. These would be secured round Echo’s body. He would have to support himself carefully with his forepaws on the rim of the glass, then remove the cork with his teeth and apply pressure with one paw, squirting the potion into the wine. It became clear to him that this would entail a feat of acrobatics for which a Crat was not exactly predestined. There was a risk that the wine glass might fall over and spill its precious contents, so they practised this technique until he had mastered it perfectly.

It was early morning by the time Echo was ready to return to the castle at last. It occurred to them that they had completely forgotten about the Leyden Manikin.

They bent over the jar together. The little creature was floating on its back in the nutrient fluid, motionless. Its tiny mouth was wide open.

‘It must have fractured its skull,’ said Echo.

‘It loved me too much,’ Izanuela said with a sigh.

Echo couldn’t decide whether the Uggly’s tone of voice was dictated by compassion or pride.

‘Well,’ she said, straightening up, ‘I’ve fulfilled my part of the bargain. I’ve brewed the love potion and distilled the Cratmint perfume. Now it’s up to you to keep your promise.’

Echo nodded. ‘That’s only fair,’ he said.

‘Off you go, then.’ Izanuela flopped down on a chair. ‘But first,’ she commanded, ‘tell me about the distillation of thoughts that rotate clockwise and the preservation of volatile substances. I want to learn all of Ghoolion’s alchemical secrets. All of them!’