Dust billowed through the streets of Jefferson in thirty-foot clouds that dimmed the sun even though there wasn't a cloud in the sky. Cars sat silently in front of old buildings with false facades down Main Street, and whether the dirt covering them was old or new, one had to wonder whether the old vehicles could even run. The only thing missing from the depressing landscape were tumbleweeds...
Until a tumbleweed rolled through.
Lucja Rutkowski shielded her eyes from the dust storm, walking the unbearable twenty feet from the nearest parking spot to her own business, "Ruth's Antiques and Gift Shop". Most of the stores in town had rooms for rent above, so many of the shopkeepers of historic Jefferson never had to brave the bleak outside world. Their cars might well have stopped working entirely as they retreated into the modern comforts of air conditioning, WIFI, and Pizza Hut.
No one wanted to go to "Rutkowski's Magic Shop", but Lucja's sister Kristen had assured her that a simple change would make all the difference. In a sense, she was right. Some travelers did actually stop by, hoping to find Tiffany Lamps or paintings that covered up a copy of the Declaration of Independence. Sales were up one hundred percent - she now sold two things per week.
Kristen (who had changed her name from Krystynka, understandably) had figured out a way to save the business, and it had nothing to do with the shop. Lucja was already looking at ways to sell the shop and work from home. She was making enough money to pay the bills and save up, thanks to Etsy. It wasn't the work Lucja really wanted to do, but there was a huge market for ancient Polish remedies, organic and free from chemicals or GMOs. She sold tonics that were mostly alcohol, intended to give one smooth skin and "eliminate toxins". Kristen went through all the key phrases for advertising this junk.
Lucja went from trying to sell real magic, to selling snake oil. No one wanted a magic potion; but rejuvenating water? Age-defying cream? Pop something cosmetic-sounding on it and people will pay twenty dollars to feel more beautiful.
No one, not even Kristen, knew the truth.
Magic was real, and Lucja had finally discovered it, after a decade of trying, following the guidebooks of her great grandmother, Frydryka Rutkowski. Lucja spent countless hours trying to translate Frydryka's handwritten notes in the leather-bound journal that had been left to them when their grandmother had passed away. She hadn't expected anything, really, until she fully translated the first potion.
A sleeping draft - simple, really, but it didn't use any of the ingredients that modern sleeping pills used. Mixing together a few simple ingredients: wormwood, bloodwort, and white lichen, boiled together for three minutes before taken off to set, resulted in a concoction that was incredibly strong. It worked so well, that when Lucja read the title of the next recipe, "Potion of Mind Reading", she didn't immediately disregard it.
It was a nightmare to find the key ingredient, a beaver's musk gland, but combined with resurrection fern and crushed beetle wings, the drink was foul-smelling and looked like boiling acid. While she'd tested the sleeping draft on her rabbits first, she couldn't exactly tell whether they were able to read minds.
She drank.
It worked, and there was no scientific explanation for the thoughts that entered her head when she looked at her rabbits, or when she spoke to the mailman. It didn't work over the phone, but when she stood within a few feet of someone, she could hear their thoughts and feelings.
Lucja flipped the sign to "Open" even though she doubted anyone would step inside the whole day, and she strode past the various junk on the shelves to the back room. Her real goal was the basement, where she did her life's work. She walked carefully down the old, wooden stairs, grimacing at the cardboard boxes and shipping labels that still paid the rent.
Soon, she thought, I won't need to sell fake wrinkle cream.
She was working on the third and final recipe in the book. The rest of the book consisted of partial notes and ingredients with vague guidelines and warnings. But this potion would be undeniable. She would be world famous, she would be rich, she would have everything she ever wanted. "Attachment Potion", which Frydryka described as a drink that would attach you to the next person you saw. Lucja tried to find every possible translation of the word, but damned if this wasn't an honest to God love potion.
Step 4 was well underway, the ingredients stewing at low heat overnight, so Lucja hustled over to the vat, enough to make seven 12-ounce bottles of the stuff. Now she just had to add a pinch of moledust and ladle them into their little bottles...
The doorbell rang.
"Fuck," Lucja said, having just tossed the dust in. How important was it to move it immediately? She turned off the heat. Should have just stayed closed today.
She paused at the stairs, and grabbed a bottle from the work table. "Might as well," she said, taking a quick gulp of the Mind Reading potion. Composing herself, clearing her throat, Lucja climbed up and entered the storefront.
Sure enough, it was an out-of-towner, probably looking for some overlooked valuable for cheap. Fucking Antiques Roadshow. A true antiquarian would recognize the value in old stuff without a modern sticker value. There were a hundred things on the shelves for sale with their own stories, history, and sentimental value, even if they wouldn't sell at auction.
Lucja took a moment to curse at herself. She'd never cared about antiques until she'd started trying to sell them to these two-bit headhunters, and now she realized she was turning into that old woman yelling at kids to get off her lawn, and she was only 32.
"Can I help you?" she asked.
"Sure," the middle-aged man replied, adjusting his glasses. "Do you have any old paintings?"
Looking for valuable documents hidden in the picture frames, of course, Lucja thought, fighting to suppress an eye roll.
And so did he. She could literally hear him thinking about the millions of dollars the unidentified buyer of a four-dollar frame made, selling an original printing of the Declaration of Independence. Lucja pursed her lips.
"Sure, they are right this way, sir..." she said, walking toward the paintings, but she paused and said, "Very well preserved, and in new picture frames."
The man stopped, obviously disappointed.
"What's wrong?" she asked dryly.
"Uh, actually, I was wondering if you had any old lamps."
She didn't need the magical potion to know that he was thinking of Tiffany lamps. Time to get this graverobber to leave. Lucja stepped in front of him and said, "I know the value of my items here."
The man took a step back, surprised at her sudden change in demeanor. "What - ?"
"You aren't going to find hidden stamps, or coins, or lamps here, sir, so you might as well move on. I know the value of my items."
He didn't say it, but he thought it: `the value of your store is zero'. What he said, was "Well, I never..."
Lucja took another step forward, her long brown hair swaying forward and then back, finger pointing squarely at the man's chest, though she didn't dare poke him. "You never what? Considered how you're trying to take advantage of poor, old people trying to scrape by a living on basically no income? Never met someone willing to call you out on your predatory bullshit? Get out of my shop!"
"Madam, you don't know me...!" he protested.
Lucja narrowed her eyes. "I know you better than you know yourself. I know your name - I know what number you're thinking of..."
It was a trick she'd picked up quickly while using the potion. You could only read surface thoughts, but just a small suggestion could spark a person's mind. Of course, had he known what she was doing, he could have thought of someone else's name, but before he even knew what he was doing, he gave himself away.
"But - " he began.
"Henry Carson, and 37. Very original, Henry, that is the most common `random number' for someone to think of."
Now his jaw was dropped. "How did you - ?"
"Get out of my shop!"
He tried to protest, but she poked him in the chest each time he tried to interrupt, until he was walking out the door. With a glare, Lucja slammed the door, locked it, and swung the open sign to "Closed".
She should have felt exhilarated for standing up for herself so convincingly, but instead she just felt angry. Another scummer trying to belittle her and her shop. But he was right, she was a two-bit loser in a dead town in the middle of Texas. That was all about to change. Lucja charged back downstairs, wasting no time siphoning the potion into the nearest bottles.
She worked like a woman possessed, grinding the grave moss into each bottle and watching it curl up under the residual heat. Now, to let the mixture sit for eight hours. But how would she test the potion? She certainly didn't want to fall in love with anyone, though she doubted the spell would last more than a few hours if it followed the pattern of the other two drinks. If she put a dash in the rabbits' water dish, could she even tell if they grew a greater affection for each other? All five rabbits were pretty congenial, chewing their grass and lettuce like they were single-handedly responsible for saving the world. The three males and two females were also very close, though both does were already pregnant.
Could she feed the drink to the mailman, and see if it worked? Not exactly moral, but...
Ultimately, she decided to sleep on it.
For once, she didn't leave the shop at night, curling up instead in the basement in a set of blankets, chomping on delivery Chinese food. She was filled with excitement and energy that seemed to burst from her fingertips, but with nothing to do. She slept pathetically on the floor, tossing and turning until she had to get up and do something.
Noticing the six shipments on her Etsy page, she rubbed her eyes and set to work, gathering the health water that each person had ordered. She slapped on labels and tucked the snake oil into their cardboard boxes, taking care to address each label, adorned with a hand-drawn symbol of Polish authenticity (something she'd made up in her spare time). Twenty-five dollars for a bottle of water, essentially from her tap.
Not for long... she reminded herself.
She grabbed a few clothes and carried the packages to the mailbox, knowing that she was early on the pick-up schedule. She was sick and tired of dealing with complaints from hipster millennials that their drinks didn't arrive in two days. In the boxes went, the flag raised. When Lucja returned to her makeshift bed, all the excitement drained from her, and she crashed. Hard.
* * * * *
She woke when the sunlight flickered over her eyes, filtering in from the thin basement windows. Blinking quickly, she glanced at the clock and realized she'd overslept! It was 11:00 AM, and the shop was supposed to open at 9:00! Oh well, if anyone came, they'd probably just irritate me.
Lucja made no effort to climb upstairs and open shop. There was more important stuff to do! The potions would be done now, all seven of them, and she'd have to find some way to test them. Should she call Kristen? Her sister lived four hours away, in Oklahoma, but it might be time to let the woman in on Lucja's discovery.
She walked over to the cauldron and paused. There was only one potion.
"What?"
Glancing around, the thirty-two year old searched frantically for the bottles, only to see her workbench. There were six, pristine, empty bottles of water tonic, right next to an empty spot in the dust where the shipping packages had sat. "Ho...ly...shit," Lucja said.
She ran upstairs and didn't bother to change out of her nightgown, but when she reached the mailbox, the flag was down. The boxes were gone! She ran to her landline, having forgotten her cell phone in the basement, and hammered in the number for the post office.
Unsurprisingly, they were incredibly unhelpful. Lucja had no idea what these love potions could do, and she had sent six bottles masquerading as vitamin water! She could email the buyers about the mix-up, though that would definitely affect her Etsy buyer satisfaction scores. Though, honestly, depending on how the potions work, she might have a worse review.
Of course she would email them and tell them all to return to sender, but what if they didn't? She had their addresses. She might need to drive personally, or send friends to knock on some doors to make sure everything is okay. What if someone unknowingly drank a love potion and did something terrible they'd never have done otherwise!?
Lucja called a house sitter immediately, explaining that she would be gone for a few days and needed someone to keep track of her five bunnies. No, she didn't know how long it would take (she scanned the different cities to find a reasonable route). She'd just have to trust the house sitter not to take any stuff from the store. She left the key in a potted plant outside the front door for the sitter, and started packing up her things. She had a few hundred dollars cash that would get her to the closest places, but would have to wire in some money to make it the whole way.
She paused at the door.
"I need to test it. Now."
There was one potion left, but how could she help the customers she'd poisoned if she had no idea what the effect would be? Tossing her stuff beside the door, she walked down the rickety stairs and picked up the potion. She didn't like the risk she was taking, but she'd put other people at far greater risk.
Opening the bottle, she tipped it back and took a sip.
It tasted familiar, and the tingle she felt in her brain was just like the mind reading draft. Just like it. Blinking, Lucja looked down at the glass, and recognized the similar colors. She shuddered with realization.
She'd accidentally picked up the wrong potion.
"What the fuck is wrong with me today?" she asked aloud.
She hastily closed the bottle, tucking it into the nook in the wall, and grabbed the love potion. "Here goes nothing!" she declared, taking a small sip.
At first, nothing seemed to happen. "It needs a target..." she realized.
Grass, grass, grass, grass...
The mind reading potion was already starting to work. She could sense her rabbits, thinking what they always did. Sometimes she'd heard them thinking about sleep, or being frightened or annoyed by the other rabbits, but pretty much the only thing that went through their little heads was about food.
Lucja took a deep breath, and realized there was only one relatively safe target - the rabbits. The "attachment potion" might make her fall hopelessly in love with one of the rabbits, but considering how they'd never once even considered Lucja's presence (she figured she was just too big to be fathomed), what was the worst that could happen? For a few hours, she'd cuddle a rabbit?
She stepped toward the hutch, took a deep breath, and looked down. She saw Marlova first, one of the pregnant does. Nothing happened for a few seconds, and Lucja hoped that she'd somehow fucked up the potion entirely, and it would be as useless as the water tonic she'd meant to send.
Then, it happened.
Something she'd definitely never expected.
She began to tingle over her entire body, taking a step back. It didn't hurt, exactly, but every nerve ending was firing at once, sending alerts to her brain. What is going on!? she thought, dancing around on one foot. Then, she felt itchy - unbelievably itchy. Looking over her hand, she saw that she was spouting off-white hairs, like her grandmother's long, silky arm-hair. No, it wasn't...human...
``....!!!''
As she watched, the cream-colored fur spread down from her hands down her arm, then up to her shoulder. Her bones creaked, and she started to hunch over, yelping. Lucja had no time to ponder what was happening, she was too terrified and overwhelmed.
She could, however, tell that she was shrinking - fast.
Her hands began to curl up and lock together, her fingernails starting to stretch and curl forward into a hard black nail. There were no mirrors, but she knew that the fur had spread to her face, and she almost threw up when her vision started to warp, her eyes spreading to each side so that she could see in a 320 degree arc.
As her clothes appeared to blossom around her, Lucja finally realized what must be happening - she was turning into a rabbit! She was even matching Marlana exactly, at least judging by the fur color. Is that what the Polish notes meant by "attachment"? No, she wasn't being physically or mentally attached to Marlana. Honestly, the effects were more like a transformation potion!
While her legs shrank and her feet grew out like clown shoes, Lucja's mind was racing. She hadn't emailed the customers yet. This was far worse than she'd even suspected - someone might die! As soon as the potion wore off, she was going to try every phone number available, email each address, and then drive to wherever she couldn't contact. Dear God, what have I done!?
Blinking, Lucja hopped out of her pants, the transformation complete. She was sitting on the floor, way way down. Lucja marveled at the smells her twitching nose could pick up, not at all unpleasant. She could move her ears at will. She'd wanted a showstopper of a potion, and this...was...it. As long as she could salvage the mispackaging problem, Lucja would soon be the most famous person in the world!
Hopping tentatively, the newly formed rabbit investigated her surroundings. Unlike Marlana, her belly was svelte. She wasn't pregnant, thank goodness! She could easily hop up the stairs if she wanted to, but the door to the upper floor was closed, and she had no way of opening it. She couldn't even get up onto the workbench. Her only option was to wait until the potion wore off, which might well be up to two hours.
Only fifteen minutes passed before Lucja heard noises upstairs. Her large ears perked up and she could immediately hear the footsteps walking toward the basement door. No one should have the key, and it was more than a little unlikely that some snooper had happened upon the key hidden outside, which meant that the house-sitter was already here. Not much Lucja could do. She shuffled beneath the counter top, hiding when the door opened.
Sure enough, a young woman shuffled down the steps, looking around, holding the shop key. "Hello?" she asked to the seemingly empty room. "Oh, there they are," she said, noticing the rabbit hutch. She walked in, and Lucja could hear her thoughts now, as well. The woman was a bit weirded out, first by house-sitting in an antique shop, then by all the packing stuff just sitting by the front door.
Then, the woman noticed something that sparked her attention. The transformation potion! Lucja had managed to place the lid back on before the change had happened, but now the falsely labelled "health water" was sitting, almost full, in its attractive glass bottle. Lucja could hear the woman want to take it.
No, Lucja thought, urgently, inching forward to watch in horror as the young college girl grabbed the bottle. Too far, though, because the motion caught her eyes. She turned to see a rabbit on the ground.
"Oh shit!" she said, "One of them's out!"
Before Lucja could react, and without having enough time to adjust to a rabbit's natural fear response to run, the Polish woman was swept up into the girl's arms, and popped head first into the hutch.
"Huh, that's odd...there's only supposed to be 5. Must have miscounted or something," the woman said to herself.
Lucja was less worried about the woman, and now more worried about her sudden surroundings, trapped in a cage with five rabbits. She could hear all their thoughts now, and while two of them were focused on "grass", the three males were thinking something distinctly different.
And Lucja didn't like what they were thinking one bit.
