§ § § -- June 29, 2006
By Thursday, both Roarke and Leslie had completely forgotten about Tabitha's visit, and Leslie had been diligently studying the symbols used on the potion labels while Roarke set about replacing the labels in question. She had reached the point at which she was able to transliterate the names of the various elixirs Roarke used, though the words written in familiar Roman letters made no more sense to her than they had in their original script. It was simply a matter of being able to read what she saw, and Roarke had felt that she would gain the ability more readily if she wrote out the names in an alphabet she knew.
Then someone came into the foyer without knocking, and they looked up at the same time to see Fernando standing there, looking a bit uncertain. "Good morning, Dr. Ordoñez," said Roarke. "May we do anything for you?"
Fernando focused on him. "Funny," he remarked with amused irony, "you sound as if you're begging me to do you the great favor of letting you give me something you don't want to give me." Leslie stilled in her chair, the sudden feeling sluicing through her that she knew what Fernando was about to ask for.
Roarke, though, instead of turning him down outright, motioned him into the study and offered him a seat. "So you are still having trouble locating a new machine, and you're hoping to obtain the use of a potion that will give you…'X-ray vision'."
The doctor stared at him for a moment, then rolled his eyes. "Tabbie says you have a habit of mind-reading, but I didn't believe her till now."
Roarke laughed. "Leslie told me about your wife's visit several days ago, doctor. Did she also mention to you that Leslie had to turn her down?"
"Of course she did, but I had to try again for myself. The situation's a little different now. I've gotten a machine, but it won't arrive till the middle of next month, and some of my patients have started complaining about the time and trouble they have to go to in order to get X-rays at the hospital. And more importantly, there are a few folks whose situations are getting critical, and I need to know what the problem is right now. I can't wait another two and a half weeks. I wouldn't ask this otherwise, Mr. Roarke. This really is an urgent matter, and I'll need it only till the machine gets in. Tabbie said she managed to come up with a few hundred dollars. We still have the money at hand if you'll agree to do it."
Roarke didn't seem particularly moved by his plea. "Doctor, as I understand it, Leslie brought up several pertinent questions when Mrs. Ordoñez initially raised the request last weekend. I am afraid I must repeat them here. How, precisely, would you obtain a record of what you saw through X-ray vision? Surely you're aware that you cannot take photographs of the afflictions you discover."
"I've always taken meticulous notes to keep in my patients' records. There's no reason I can't do that in this case too." Fernando sounded stubborn.
"Indeed. And are you sure that you could handle having the ability without undue discomfort?" Roarke saw Fernando's perplexed look and clarified, "You may not realize this, but it isn't easy to adjust to a new ability that the human body did not evolve on its own. You may find yourself nauseated by the ability to see the same things your new machine will see. You may have headaches or other minor symptoms, or you may find yourself completely unable to function with the ability."
Fernando looked astonished. "Do you really think that's what would happen?"
"Perhaps not, but there is always the possibility," Roarke said. "The question is whether you feel you can handle it, and are willing to take the risk."
"Oh, I'm willing," Fernando said, that stubborn look back about him. "All I need it for is fifteen or sixteen days."
"Long enough," said Roarke, "for you to grow so accustomed to it that you may decide you can't live without it."
"I think you're making excuses," Fernando said. "I wouldn't even ask you this if I didn't feel as though I had no other option, and right now I just don't. Look, Mr. Roarke, I don't want this for myself. I want it so I can do the job my patients expect me to do. I want it so that I can do the best I can with their cases and try to help them, to find out what's wrong so that I can treat it. If it were just for me…I'd find a way to resist temptation."
Roarke chuckled a little, looking vaguely skeptical, but letting it pass. "Even the most altruistic humans are subject to temptation," he observed, as if dropping some sage piece of wisdom. "However, I have never had reason before to think that you would do this sort of thing for any reason other than to help others. I am told that the inhabitants of the fishing village are most grateful for and appreciative of your services, and they value you and what you do very highly indeed." He sat up and leaned over the desk. "So, doctor, I am therefore granting your request. When you are ready to take delivery of the potion, let me know."
"Fantastic. I'll get the money and bring it back here. Do you think you can have the potion ready by four this afternoon?"
Roarke considered it. "I believe so. I do have other tasks to handle, of course, so Leslie will be here alone, but she will have the potion ready for you."
"That's wonderful. Thank you, Mr. Roarke. Muchas, muchas gracias." Fernando, beaming with relief, jumped out of his chair and headed out the door.
"I'm amazed you agreed to it," Leslie remarked.
Roarke looked curiously at her. "Are you? Well, perhaps you should try to put that amazement aside for a while, for you have a job to do. I have far too many errands to run this afternoon and won't have time for anything else; so if we are to deliver on that request and earn the pay that was offered, you will have to be the one to concoct the formula."
Leslie thought the world tipped aslant and actually grabbed the arm of her chair. Her eyes felt as though they were preparing to burst forth from her face. "Me?!"
"Yes," Roarke said with a firm nod. "Don't worry, I'll leave you the recipe for the formula. Be warned, however—you must follow it exactly. So exactly that there will be no room for error. Even the slightest deviation from my instructions, and there may be dire consequences that even I cannot control or reverse." He peered curiously at her. "Are you all right? You've suddenly become quite pale."
"Father…you can't be serious," Leslie croaked, panic making her lightheaded. "I've barely started studying. I still have trouble reading that alphabet. I haven't even tried making the simplest potion yet, and…and you want me to do this? Especially when you've never made it up yourself?"
"What makes you so certain I've never mixed the formula?" Roarke retorted with a quirk that Leslie figured was supposed to be a wry smile. "Just because you happened not to be here at the time…"
"Okay, whatever. But I can't believe you're trusting me to do this. I'm a complete greenhorn. A total neophyte. An utter newbie. An absolute begin—"
Roarke lifted a hand, silencing her in mid-word. "How else are you to learn if you don't make the attempt yourself? Remember, Leslie, if you follow the recipe exactly as I have written it, the results will be correct and you'll have nothing to fear." He smiled at her. "I have faith and confidence in you."
"I wish I had faith and confidence in myself," Leslie mumbled weakly, already beginning to wonder whether she'd be able to hold down lunch. She saw, out of the corner of her eye, the gently reproachful look he gave her, but ignored it, already feeling the effects of the party the butterflies were throwing in her gut.
"You don't look good at all, Leslie," Christian said frankly at lunch, which they were having without Roarke, who had had to get started on the errands he'd mentioned. "Why aren't you eating anything? You're usually hungry at lunch."
Leslie shot a glance down the veranda and pleaded, "Don't tell Mariki, whatever you do. She'll hound me for the rest of the meal." She sighed heavily and pushed some fruit around on her plate. "Drat it…Christian, Father's left me in charge of mixing up a potion."
Christian paused in enormous surprise and blinked at her, then broke into a huge grin. "Well, that's wonderful, my Rose! I should think you'd take it as a compliment!"
"Are you kidding?" she exclaimed, gaping at him.
"Of course not. Don't you see? It means you must be doing so well learning about potions and their construction that he trusts you to complete one of his formulas without any help from him. I think that's spectacular. Congratulations."
"Huh. You think it's so fantastic because you're not the one who has to do it. You don't understand. This isn't something quick and straightforward—one part elixir to however many parts water. This has more than one ingredient in it."
"Oh? What's it for?"
"X-ray vision," she said reluctantly.
Christian laughed. "Oh, I like that. Well, surely he's told you how to do it."
"Yeah, well, he told me he'd leave me a recipe and warned me to follow it exactly, so I don't wind up causing horrible consequences and stuff we never intended. But having that much responsibility on my shoulders is seriously scary. I'm gonna have to have my cheat sheet so I can make sure I know what ingredients I'm putting into the thing, and I hope the proper equipment is down there so I don't overload the stuff with any one ingredient…"
"You have to be the worst worrier I've ever known." Christian put his fork down to give her his full exasperated attention. "Why don't you have any faith in yourself? Nervousness, I can understand. We all have that. Outright terror, well, that's something else again. If Mr. Roarke is leaving you detailed, precise instructions, and if you follow them exactly as he wrote them, then for fate's sake, you'll have nothing to worry about. It seems absurdly simple to me."
"Well then, if you're so sure it'll be so easy, why don't you do it?" she retorted, her patience running out. "Christian, can't you see, I'm dealing with magic here!"
He rolled his eyes and shook his head, picking up his fork again. "You baffle me sometimes, as much as I love you. If I dare ask, who is this for?"
"Fernando," she admitted through another sigh.
Christian paused again and looked up, then grinned. "Oh really? Still couldn't find a new X-ray machine, then? I must say, that's an ingenious solution. You'll be helping out a friend, Leslie, so why the balking?" He peered at her and then leaned over a little to study her more closely. "Or is it because it's for someone we know, rather than one of your regular guests? Are you afraid of repercussions if something goes wrong?"
"I'd be afraid of repercussions no matter who it was. But somehow I'd just feel worse if something happened to Fernando that wasn't supposed to. A guest knows he has to face whatever odd curves his fantasy throws at him. This isn't a fantasy for Fernando. He's just doing this till his new machine gets in—which isn't till mid-July."
"Ah, I see. So he didn't do it just for the hell of it," Christian said humorously. "He has a purpose. Well, I suppose I can understand your worries, but I still think you're overreacting. You do have a tendency to do that, you know." He winked at her and popped a bite into his mouth, reaching over with a napkin and blotting at Tobias' chin.
"Yeah, yeah, go ahead and make jokes," Leslie muttered. "We'll see just how well, or how badly, I do this. My first time ever. I can't believe Father's letting me do this."
"That doesn't deserve a response," Christian snorted. "I'm tired of trying to argue sense into you. Just eat your lunch, at least, so that when you start making the potion, you won't have shaky hands that might add too much of something to the formula." He blithely ignored her filth-riddled glare and continued eating.
However, when lunch ended and it came time for Christian to take the triplets back upstairs, where he would watch them till Haruko returned from her own lunch at home, he relented and caught her hand as they were about to leave the table. "I have no doubt you'll do just fine," he said.
She stared plaintively up at him. "I feel like I'm being tested."
"Oh, this is no test, my Rose. I know, because if it were, Mr. Roarke wouldn't be letting you hand it over to an innocent human being. He has faith in you, I have faith in you, and I think it's time you had faith in you. Now go and mix up that potion." He kissed her, smiled, then smoothed her hair before grinning at the waiting children. "Well, you three, let's go and wait for Haruko, hmm? Hurry, up the stairs now!"
Leslie watched them go, her stomach fluttering dangerously, and then blew out her breath when she was sure her husband wouldn't overhear her doing it. She ventured into the study, peered at Roarke's desk, and sighed when she saw the sheet of paper with her name on it in his handwriting. She picked it up, unfolded it and looked it over; his instructions were indeed extremely precise, somewhat to her relief. The grandfather clock read about five minutes past one; she had just under three hours in which to prepare the formula. "Okay, Leslie, here goes nothing," she mumbled and headed slowly for the stairs that ran up to the bell tower and down to the cellar, feeling her mouth going drier with every step. At the last moment she veered off to the kitchen to pour herself some mango nectar before finally giving in to the inevitable and making her foray down the stairs.
It took her nearly fifteen minutes just to find the four ingredients that went into the potion according to Roarke's "recipe", because she had to meticulously match each and every symbol in the names of all four elixirs before she was satisfied that she'd found the correct ones. When she'd gathered the bottles and set them on the stainless-steel table in the middle of the room, she paused, took a few deep breaths, and then read the next item on the instruction list. She needed to find a small bowl, a clean vial, a dropper, and a pure-silver spoon with which Roarke always mixed his potions. She remembered asking why it had to be that particular spoon, and he had said that pure silver was the only metal that didn't react with the elixirs.
A few minutes later she had all these things on the table also, along with a large clear jug of distilled water that Roarke used in nearly every potion he made. Most of the elixirs, he had taught her, were very strong in and of themselves, and needed to be diluted so that the desired effect would be produced without posing a danger to the person who took it. It made perfect sense to her; at least, she thought dismally, it had when she was merely the onlooking student and Roarke was the teacher who was actually making the stuff. It had been fascinating watching him putting together the potion for their blind guest who would be arriving in a couple of days; now it was just terrifying.
"Well, come on, dummy," she finally chided herself after catching herself matching up all the elixir names again. "If you didn't get it right the first time after all that checking, then you're just plain hopeless. Get on the stick." She peered at the instruction sheet again. The first step in the actual construction of the potion advised her to place ten drops of one of the elixirs into the bowl. Once again she carefully matched up the string of symbols on the page to the string on the bottle label before picking it up and squinting at it. It was deep cherry-red in color and, when she held it up to the light, sent shafts of red glinting onto the opposite wall. She chuckled softly and unscrewed the cap, setting it carefully aside, before dipping the dropper into the bottle and filling it. Out loud she counted the ten drops that fell into the bowl, before squeezing out the remainder back into the bottle and recapping it.
"One down, three to go, not counting the water," she mumbled, without consciously registering the fact that she was speaking her thoughts aloud, and peered at the next item on the list. She gulped down some of her mango nectar to alleviate her persistent dry throat before measuring out the required amount of the second elixir.
"So far so good," she said, feeling more cheerful and confident as she went. It didn't take her long to add the third and fourth ingredients; each one was some shade of red, so that when she viewed them all combined in the bowl, they resembled the color she had seen carnations dyed. Curiosity prompted her to lean forward and take a cautious sniff of the contents of the bowl, but there was no odor. She shrugged and went to the next item on the list. She was to add exactly six ounces of water to the mixture, and she would find the appropriate measuring cup on the shelf beneath the table surface. She located this in short order and, with great care, measured out six ounces, then poured the water into the bowl. She didn't notice a minute drop leap out of the bowl when the water hit it, nor did she see where it landed.
She stirred the stuff as thoroughly as possible, then poured the mixture into the little glass vial and capped it tightly, lifting the finished potion to the light and examining it. It now had the color of rosé wine. There was one more item on the list, which made her laugh when she read it. It said, Congratulations, you've completed a potion! "Cool," she said aloud and grinned, then slipped the vial into her pocket and carefully cleaned up the workspace, replacing all the bottles where she had found them, washing out the bowl, measuring implements and spoon, and then gathering up her glass and the instruction sheet and heading up the stairs feeling pretty good about herself and her accomplishment.
To her surprise, Christian was in the study, tinkering with the computer there. He looked around when he heard her footsteps and brightened. "Well, hi there, my Rose," he said. "You certainly look cheerful."
"Ta-da!" Leslie said grandly, whipping the vial out of her pocket and displaying it at him. "My first potion!"
"Now there you go, see? It must not have been so difficult after all," Christian said, grinning. He arose, came to her and kissed her. "What's in the other glass?"
"Oh, just some mango nectar I got before I went down," she said and swallowed some of it. "I had an awful case of dry mouth. Anyway, it's all over and done with—at least the mixing part is. The question now is if it'll do what it's supposed to do."
Christian laughed a little with resignation. "Kill off one worry, find another. I refuse to get into an argument over that one. I have something else to worry about myself."
"What's wrong with the computer?" Leslie asked.
"Nothing's really wrong with it," Christian said, "but Mr. Roarke asked me to take a look at it and see if it needs defragging, so I agreed to do it after lunch. I just waited for Haruko to come back before I started. The defragging process is going fine, but it's running much too slowly for my taste, and I was trying to find out what else was going on before I give up and start taking it apart."
"Oh, I see. Maybe it's that new font," Leslie mused, draining the last of her juice. "Well, I'd better take this back to the kitchen. Good luck, my love. Be back in a minute."
When she returned, Christian was arching back in his chair, eyes closed, trying to reach an unreachable spot on his back and grimacing. His muttered jordiska curses made Leslie blink. "You okay?"
"I just got a pain in my back, and I can't reach the damned thing," Christian complained. "Aj, det slår mej…"
Leslie squinted at him and instantly spotted the problem. "You've got a muscle cramp, that's what," she said. "I'll fix it." She zeroed in on the trouble spot and began working it out with her thumbs; a couple of minutes later Christian breathed out with relief and relaxed, groaning. "Better?"
"Much," he said and smiled at her over his shoulder. "I appreciate it." Then the smile vanished, replaced by surprise. "How did you know where it was, when I couldn't reach it to show you the exact spot?"
"Oh, I just looked and happened to see through—" The sentence died right there; Leslie froze in place, gawking at the wall, horror sluicing through her.
"Say that again?" Christian requested, rising slowly, looking a little alarmed at her expression. "You saw through—?"
Slowly her shocked eyes turned to him. "Saw through your skin to the muscle," she whispered. "I could see it, Christian, the muscle itself!"
Now he froze too, and they stared at each other. Behind her the grandfather clock chimed out the half-hour, and they both looked at it. "Two-thirty," Christian muttered. "And Fernando is supposed to come for that potion in another hour and a half, right?"
Leslie released a little shriek and slammed a hand over her mouth, gulping several times and closing her eyes. Christian stared at her, making the connections, then gasped. "You didn't."
Her eyes flew open and she began to hyperventilate. "I must have! Somehow I got a dose of that potion!"
"But how? Don't tell me you sampled it before you bottled it for Fernando," Christian said in disbelief.
"No, I didn't dare!" Leslie cried frantically. "I was too scared to! Besides, it wasn't for me, it's for him! No, I didn't!"
"Calm down, my Rose. All right then…" Christian considered it. "You had a glass of mango juice or something, didn't you? Somehow it must have ended up in that."
"But I can't imagine how!" Leslie protested, half panicking.
"Well, think back," Christian urged. "Go over all the steps in your head. Do you still have Mr. Roarke's instructions? Take the paper out and go through it, if that'll help."
She fished it out of the pocket containing the vial and unfolded it with badly shaking hands; Christian took it from her and read off each step one by one, watching her think and then shake her head. "This isn't working," she groaned.
"Now hold on, you haven't gone through them all yet," he admonished her. "Step seven: add exactly six ounces of water."
She closed her eyes and replayed the scene as she remembered it. "I measured it out, I poured it into the bowl…" She stopped there and frowned, then opened her eyes and looked at him. "Maybe that's when it happened. That is, when I poured the water in. I seem to remember that when the water hit the elixir mix, it made a little bit of a splat…but I didn't really think about it. I barely noticed it."
"That must be it," Christian said. "You must have had your juice glass nearby, and when the water hit the other ingredients, a drop must have landed in your juice." He shook his head, then suddenly grinned. "So now you have X-ray vision too."
"Eeeewwww!!" she blurted and shuddered from head to toe, so visibly that he burst out laughing and hugged her in reassurance. "Oh my God, Christian…it's one thing to give X-ray vision to someone else, but to have it yourself—!"
"I'm sure I can imagine it," he said, though in truth he couldn't. "Well, look at the bright side, my Rose. According to this, all the elixirs were mixed up before you added the water and made it splash like that, so that means that the ingredient that allows you to turn the vision on and off is also in the blend. So it's not as if you'll have to see the guts of everyone and everything, all the time, till it wears off."
"Oh, yippee," she muttered, twirling a finger in the air, and he laughed and hugged her again. She sighed and rested her head on his shoulder, hoping Roarke would be back before Fernando arrived to pick up the potion.
Unfortunately, this wasn't the case. She endured ninety minutes of consciously trying not to activate her unwanted new ability, except for when Christian asked her to take a look through the computer tower so that she could tell him if there was some foreign object in there that he might have to remove. It was easier for her to look into the guts of the machine than it would have been a person, which gave her a little consolation, but she wasn't sure she had mastered the "on-off switch" for the stuff and ended up simply sitting at the desk with her head pillowed on her arms and her eyes closed.
The grandfather clock chimed four times, and within seconds the inner-foyer door opened and Fernando came in. "Oh, hi there, Christian, how's things?" Fernando inquired genially when he saw the prince.
"Just fine, Fernando, and you?" Christian asked, rising and shaking hands with the doctor as Leslie reluctantly raised her head and looked fixedly at a spot past Fernando.
"Great. Is the potion ready?" Fernando asked, extracting an envelope from a pocket of the white lab coat he was still wearing and holding it out to Leslie.
She nodded, still without looking at him, and shifted her gaze to Roarke's date book, which lay open in front of her and showed the month of August. "Yup, here you go. Enjoy." She held it out to him without looking up, pretending to be engrossed in the date book.
"Thanks…uh, you okay, Leslie?" Fernando asked uncertainly.
"Yep, just busy," she said, still staring determinedly at the page.
She heard Christian sigh. "Leslie, look at my hand," he said. Automatically she looked up, and he prompted pointedly, "What do you see?"
"Your hand," she said blankly.
"Anything else?" he persisted.
Suddenly she got the message he was trying to send her and smiled at him in profound relief before at last meeting Fernando's gaze. "No, just your hand. Anyway, Fernando, I'm sorry, I've been…uh, kind of distracted all afternoon. Enjoy the potion."
Fernando took the vial from her hand and examined its contents. "Nice color. So this stuff is gonna allow me to get a look at people's insides, huh? I sure hope it works."
"Oh, believe me, it works perfectly," Leslie assured him, nodding so hard that Christian had to squelch a grin. "Money-back guarantee."
Fernando glanced at her in surprise and amusement, then grinned. "Well, that's a first for the fantasy business, I bet." He dropped the envelope on the desk in front of her. "I really appreciate the effort you and Mr. Roarke went to, Leslie. Tell him thanks for me, will you?"
"I will," she promised. "Incidentally, he left directions on dosage—no more than a small sip at a time, and you'll have the ability for about ten hours. Considering the length of your workday, I'd suggest taking just one sip a day right before you start your workday, and don't take any on your days off. It'll last longer that way. But if you do run out, just let us know and we'll mix up some more for you."
"Terrific. Thanks again, Leslie. Good seeing you, Christian," Fernando said, and departed on their farewells.
"Thanks for making me look," Leslie said when he was safely gone. "I wasn't sure I could control the on-off mechanism in the potion, and I didn't have any particular desire to see Fernando's insides."
Christian laughed aloud and shook his head. "I understand, but I thought I should remind you that you've actually used it only twice. You haven't seen through things otherwise, have you?"
"No, but it took your reminder to make me realize that." She settled slowly back in Roarke's chair, then frowned. "I told Fernando a dose would last about ten hours. But I don't know how long I'll be afflicted with this. I mean, first of all, I probably got just a tiny little droplet. And second, it was full strength, before I diluted it with the water. So I guess there's no telling when it'll wear off for me."
Christian shrugged. "Seems to me that the droplet, even at full strength, would have been diluted by your juice, so you'll probably have it about as long as Fernando will. Mind you, that's only an educated guess. But you never know, my Rose. You might find a way to put it to good use before you lose it." He winked at her and returned to the computer.
She peered at him, frowned a little and slowly closed the date book, reaching absently for a new stack of mail. She wouldn't have this ability for very long, but she had a feeling already that she might have some inkling of what she could do with it. She smiled to herself, made a decision, and plucked a letter opener out of a desk drawer, ready to go on reading fantasy requests.
