The Isadora Interviews (The Network Series #1.5)(4)

“I’m sorry about the news you had last night.”

“I know.”

“I also know that you’re scared that not attending Miss Mabel’s will mean you’ll end up like me.”

Leda’s eyes widened with both shock and fear. A rush of future images came from her sudden emotions. Mama crying. The baby born. Bronwyn wearing an unfamiliar uniform. Leda took in a deep breath and forced herself to calm. The visions retreated, granting her room to think.

“Don’t try to tell me it isn’t true,” Mama said before Leda could get a word in. “I can see it in your eyes. You think I’m trapped in this life. You think I’m strapped to raising children and living a life of poverty, and you don’t want that for yourself. Am I right?”

The pictures started whistling past again. Foraging through the forest. Talking to Bronwyn. Leda raked a hand through her hair in frustration. The curse was so much stronger than her! It took several long minutes to get her mind back. Mama waited, understanding, like no one else ever did.

“Yes Mama,” she finally whispered.

“Just because I got married at a very young age and started my family right away doesn’t mean that you have to take the same path. You have very different strengths and talents than me.”

Leda was afraid to look at her, worried Mama’d take it all back and verify her biggest fear.

“Really?” she finally managed to ask.

Mama laughed. It was a low, quiet sound that wrapped Leda’s heart in comfort. She crouched down and put a floury arm around Leda’s shoulder. A part of Leda’s heart repaired itself.

“Of course not, Leda! You’re destined for far greater things than I wanted to do. You have too much talent, and too much drive, to stay in this little village.”

Leda’s momentary joy and spark of hope began to deflate.

“But that’s impossible now.”

“Is it?”

Mama’s voice rose with her question. For a split second Leda doubted her own resolve; was her dream impossible?

“You could earn the money,” Mama suggested.

Leda scoffed. “Right. It’s spring. School starts in the fall.”

Mama remained uncowed by her skeptical display and simply pressed her lips together. She straightened up, brushing the flour off Leda’s worn dress.

“I know there’s a few ideas that have been percolating in your head for a while now. A couple of challenging potions?”

With a gasp, Leda’s mind flashed to the the Forgotten Potion. Would it be possible?

“But I don’t have the ingredients,” she said slowly, “or a place to make it. We could never do it here. Not with all the kids.”

“Make it happen.”

Mama returned to the bread, humming under her breath, and left Leda to her thoughts, which churned in wild abandon.

Make it happen.

Her mind slipped into the ready images flashing through it, sending her down twenty different paths. A library at an unfamiliar school, a uniform she didn’t recognize. Standing in the kitchen, children surrounding her. Working at the grocers’ in Hansham. None of them were connected completely, and all of them were hazy.

But the fact that she saw them meant there was a chance.

She shot off the chair, kissed her mother on the cheek, grabbed her threadbare cloak, and ran for the village.

???

Three days later, Leda stared at her bubbling brew with an upturned lip.

“Hey Leda!” her best friend Camille called, hopping up into the shack with a jaunty hop. She instantly reared back.

“Whoa! What ith that thmell?” Camille asked, plugging her nose with one hand while fanning the air with the other. “Ith that yer pothun?”

“Yes,” Leda said with a frustrated sigh. “It’s the Forgotten Potion.”

“The one you’re going to thell to earn money for thcool? Are you thure anyone will buy it? It thmells like rotten cheese.”

“Yes.”

“Could you get a bigger cauldron? Jikes, Leda, that’s mathive,” Camille said, peering in over the top and grimacing again.

“It’s the only one I could find,” Leda mumbled, embarrassed. In truth, the cauldron was quite large for such a small brew. The potion simmered on the bottom, barely visible, lost to the grand blackness. “Anyway, the size of the cauldron doesn’t matter. The only thing I’m worried about is finishing before Isadora comes for the interview. If I don’t have the potion, I have no proof that we can afford it.”

Camille rolled her eyes.

“You’ll be accthepted, Leda,” she said, taking another step back, eyes watering. “Whew. That really thtinks!”

“For now.” Right then, Leda was willing to endure just about anything. “It’ll smell like juniper once it’s done.”

Camille gazed around the small shed Leda had talked the grocer into letting her borrow. The trees and vines of Letum Wood had all but consumed the forgotten shack, making it a perfect spot to leave a potion to brew, unseen by prying eyes.

“Nice place,” Camille muttered with another step back, eyeing the questionable integrity of the rotting boards and unplugging her nose in the safer air outside. “Sure it’s not going to fall in on you?”

Leda ignored the question, although she’d had that same thought herself. But the visions in Leda’s head didn’t show a collapsed shack, so she felt confident it would hold up. All the images she saw had narrowed considerably in the past three days of potion work, and so far the brew was right on track.