Mother dearest has me filling potion orders in the back again. I'm not sure if it's because she thinks I'm actually good at mixing hounds breath and slug tears, or if she just wants to keep me out of the front of the apothecary shop. I don't mind really, I can never remember to charge people and I feel out of place among all the gem colored bottles and doodads. Ol' Wizard Ozark is always accidentally charming his joints into jello (he has terrible arthritis and even worse charming skills), how can I tell him he has to pay me for fixing something he thinks he's done perfectly, especially when he comes wobbling in like a bowl full of half cooked noodles! The very sight of him makes the vein in Mother's neck stand out like a purple serpent ready to strike, so I tell him to come in the back door now. Saves mother the trouble of kicking him out of the front. The front is for pretty people like my mother, and the back is for me and the Ol' Wizard Ozark types.
My mother is the one everyone knows and loves here in Sleepy Hollow. I have the unfortunate habit of turning neon green when I start stammering. Truly. It's a curse. Also truly. When my mom realized how un-siren like I was (I was two! How was I supposed to know siren's were beautiful graceful creatures who could get people to do what the wanted with a blink or a twitch of facial muscle?) she tried one of those new fangled parenting spells on me where I would turn green as a gecko in a rainstorm if I wasn't all poised and perfect. Problem is, I'm never either of those things and no amount of trying on my part changed that, so I spent a lot of my childhood being green.
No matter though, I may make a terrible siren, but I'm the resident expert on preventing croup in pixie children and I know thirty seven different ways to cure speckled winter droughts (also called the winter doldrums where you break out in a black rash from going stir crazy). I can also coax a butterfly to loan me some color and can now milk a rainbow better than a leprechaun (at least that's what Nanny Milgrin says, and she should know, she used to be a nurse at St. Hernadine's...as in the St. Hernadine's Hospital of Magical Maladies).
The terribleness of my of my shop keeping abilities were in full form today. Mother had one of her sick headaches and reluctantly left me in charge of the front. I should have known better, but my curiosity got the better of me and I started out my afternoon as shopkeeper with a crisis of conscience: To read or not to read. There's a magical maladies textbook hidden underneath the floor board in the back of the shop, and I only dare take it out when Mother's sleeping. It's not that she doesn't like reading or thinks it's useless, she reads all the time herself, but she always says "Oh child, don't do that, it will hurt your eyes." or "I can already tell you that book is a waste of time, here shell these razor back snails instead." I've tried everything from arguing with her to hanging onto the book for dear life, but that's the magic of sirens for you.
There's a joke that goes, "...a wizard, a ogre and a siren went fishing, the wizard says "I have three doctorates from the finest universities in Ethereal, I have flown to the outermost stars and sipped mead in the center of the earth, I can catch a hundred fish with one wave of my wand" so he waves his wand and sure enough, a hundred fat rainbow trout our trounced and nicely filleted in a trunk of ice. The Ogre laughs and says "Ha, that's nothing, I've destroyed mountains for breakfast and can set an entire army of knights peeing in their pants. I bet I can catch a thousand fish with the sheer terror of my mighty voice. So he booms out across the water and a thousand fish instantly die of fright and the water hands them over like a cowardly old woman. They both then turn to the Siren smugly and wait to see what she will do. "It's true," she says "I haven't been to magic schools and I'm not very scary" (I picture her saying this as she spreads a dainty hand across a beautiful blue silk dress) "But I bet I can bring more fish home than you both." The Ogre and the Wizard laugh, but then the siren smiles...a smile so stunning and compelling that it outshines the sun and you'd best not look at it too long. But of course the Wizard and the Ogre are too proud to look away (at least I've always assumed that's why they didn't know better than to get stuck staring, but maybe they really were just that stupid?), and while they stare, she holds out her hand and they both grin like silly buffoons and hand over their fish."
Hahahaha. Ahem. Yeah, so I never really thought it was that funny either. True? Yes. Funny? Not unless you have a vendetta against uppity wizards... mostly I feel sorry for all those fish. But anyway, that's why I read books like a guilty macha addict. My mother just has that thing sirens do, and I'm about as good at combating it as I am resisting elderberry soda (my fortitude running at about minus five).
Today wasn't anything out of the ordinary. Everybody's all freaked out right now about some pirate war, butter has gone up two cents and we've had a recent crop of identical twins here in Hogswallow, but other than that it was just a day marked by my excitement to get away with inhaling all the gangrene, fungi, smears and curse information I could (that's not very ladylike to admit, is it?). Oh well. I sucked on a piece of raspberry stick candy that promised to turn your tongue fifteen different shades of purple while I read about the epidemiology of dragon flu. So one can imagine how thrilled I was when the shop bell rang and I looked up in all my blue tongued awesomeness to see the most obnoxiously perfect young wizard I could ever dream up out of a fairy tale. He was the kind of seemly gentleman who only looked more tantalizing when he scowled, which he was unfortunately doing at that moment.
"Can I help you?" I asked while I pretended I looked like a decent and respectable creature.
He gave me a slow look up and down that would have made me blush if I hadn't been already turning a brilliant shade of green. Lovely.
"I'm looking for a Lucille Wilkes?" He said. I felt like he could have at least made a paltry attempt to wipe the look of disgust off his face, but no...apparently he'd never seen anyone cursed with a stubborn parenting spell before.
"That's my mother." I said, putting out my hand. He hesitated. I should have ignored him and gone back to reading, and he could have tossed his darn letter in the fire grill for all I cared, but instead I tried most ill-fatedly to remain polite and smile.
Smile. Evidently that's where I went wrong. Who knew devastatingly handsome wizards got cranky when you smiled at them.
He glared, smoldered really (but who's asking) "Don't even try your minx like powers on me." He said "Really, there ought to be a law against you things..." He said this more to himself than me, but clearly I was meant to hear. "...swindling money out of this poor village for illnesses you make up."
Now, it's bad enough to already be a disgrace to a long line of fiercely powerful women, but it's even worse when you're getting blamed for being too beautiful and charming to exist in polite company while you're standing there all blue and green. I try not to be too vain, but apparently I have my limits.
"Ah well in that case I'm sure you're here for that wicked case of the vapors you've been suffering from, and that scratchy scrotum problem that comes from having weevils in your bedding. " I said as I flashed him my most charming raspberry colored smile. "Our remedies are on aisle three on the bottom." Ok, maybe that was taking it a bit too far.
He looked angry, and then terribly uncomfortable.
"I told Darkor this was a fool's errand." He said, he tossed the envelope on the counter and I was all prepared for another scathing glare, but it was worse. He rolled his eyes at me, shrugged and left. Left! While I stood there and wondered if I had really used the word "vapors" and "scrotum" in front of a wizard clearly so above me that even his cloak seemed to sneer at our dingy village. Bah. The rest of the afternoon, every time I thought about it I wanted to melt in mortification.
I consoled myself with the fact that surely he would never step foot here again, and I wasn't likely ever to see him again.
