“Herbal teas! Herbal teas! Get your fresh teas! Very healthy, very invigorating, very… good for you!” I called to the hubbub of the market square. Bloody chaos.

Maybe my hawking still left something to be desired, but that didn’t stop the customers coming in droves! Okay, by droves I mean a dozen or two a turn, but by Braxus standards that’s a veritable stampede.

“We’re running out of the blue one, Mel!” Alicia had to yell despite being only a bench’s length away.

“Lubshave and carrot?” I asked.

“The blue one!” she insisted.

Come on, Alicia, would it kill you to learn the names? I handed her a tray of the L&C, neatly packaged in blue velvet pouches. No sooner had I passed it over than I had my own customer.

This was our first Brandsdag market. For the special occasion — just a random day that was picked to symbolically represent “the lighting of the Forge” — we’d rented stall space in Glimborough, on the western bank. It was a good deal busier than our usual spot at Crannoc, but it hadn’t driven me mad just yet. Give it until lunchtime and I might be singing a different tune.

I think it’d be fair to say we hit our stride over the previous few moons. Between the hair tonic, and now my range of teas, we were making genuinely good money. We weren’t baronesses or anything, but we got enough custom to keep the property from falling apart, with something left over to pay ourselves a small salary. I insisted that we all get paid the same, despite the protestation of the others. If I was doing extra legwork at the moment — and barely, at that — then they would have to think of this as back payment for all the times they’d looked out for me.

The nursery at home continued to flourish, and the house was looking decently liveable. I’d poured most of my effort into the ground floor nursery so far. I still hadn’t quite sussed out Iffan’s whacky climate control system for the first and second floors, and I was loathe to scrap his work while I still had space downstairs. Besides, the local forest herbs I picked up seemed to like the shadowy recess just fine.

Whether or not the success of my little greenhouse had anything to do with the mother plant remained to be seen. The enormous creeper kept to itself for the most part. It dutifully moved whenever I planted something new, but I soon found a vine across the pot or planter, resting on the top soil. It didn’t visibly do anything, seldom even made contact with the other plants, but so long as it wasn’t strangling them, drying out the soil or blocking their light, I wasn’t prepared to move it. Maybe it didn’t see me as a threat anymore, but I still remember our run in; I’m not so quick to forgive.

Vegetables were no longer a problem. The little garden had a surprisingly good yield when tended properly. I’d tried a few varieties of veg there now; they grew proudly despite feeding off of only a shaft of light. Despite the success of our little patch, I tended not to trade veg so often now. I’d graduated to tea, and I was happy there. Food we grew was largely for our own consumption, although I did always set aside a portion of each crop to bribe the neighbours with. My profile wasn’t so low that I couldn’t afford to curry a little favour.

The rest of the house had seen few changes. I bought the odd rug or curtain to try and combat some of the areas where our archaic insulation was giving out, but mostly we were lucky with the place. The structure was sound, and now we had enough furniture to make it feel less like a shed.

Without a contact in the druidic world I had no means of obtaining most of the equipment Iffan mentioned in his notes, so the lab/ workshop remained poorly stocked. Maybe I could have had bespoke apparatus made by a local glassblower, but, as well as being costly, that would inevitably raise a few eyebrows. I did go nuts on flasks and glass receptacles, but I almost exclusively used these to brew experimental teas. The biggest expenses were drying racks, and the pouches or jars I presented my blends in. That was no issue; as long as they kept flying off the shelves — or bench — these paid for themselves.

I held short of opening the shop up again, largely because I couldn’t stand the idea of people walking through my front door uninvited. Alicia had floated the suggestion a few times, but I didn’t feel ready to put myself on display that extent. The markets were pretty torturous, I must admit, but at least at the end of the day you could pack up your things and retreat to the relative sanctuary of your own home. I couldn’t quite stomach the idea of living and working in the same place, wondering if people were going to be calling at odd hours just because they ran out of their favourite mint and bulgerberry. Besides, I’d plonked a whopping great dining table on the shop floor. Do you expect us to go back to eating at the counter, Alicia?

The markets were a mixed bag as far as compromises go. Setting up a stall in Crannoc had also been Alicia’s suggestion; she managed to convince me that it was going to be close enough to our old Braxus thremonters that I would be able to cope. In reality, I came close to having a panic attack the first time, and Alicia didn’t fare much better. It was only because of a dip in hair tonic sales that we took another stab.

The next time we took a few precautions. Firstly, I made big obnoxious signs, to make it abundantly clear I was not about to haggle. Next, we modified the set up so we couldn’t be accosted from all sides. Lastly, Mirra came for emotional support.

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With the tweaks we’d made, the market days became bearable. They were a lot of work, were super stressful — on average Alicia and I fell out and made up three times a day — but they were also kind of… satisfying?

It felt good to see my products so well received. There was a decent amount of interest from the get go, and a fair number of sales, but it was the repeat custom that really made me smile on the inside. Every time I pitched my stall there was someone there to tell me how much they’d enjoyed my tea, or ask why I hadn’t come yesterday. It was validating. What can I say? I’m not immune to compliments.

I don’t know if Alicia got the same buzz as I did, but she was a stalwart worker. She stressed for both of us, but she always kept at it.

Mirra stopped coming once we got into the swing of things, preferring to keep house instead. It was a shame not to have the extra company, but I spoke to so many strangers each day that I hardly had time for socialising. To be fair, once people got used to seeing Alicia and I out there, we didn’t really need her to ward people off with her fierce side-eye.

We settled into a rhythm. It was a pretty comfortable one, too. I think we were all at least content, if not happy. I didn’t think of home nearly as much, and when I did, I mostly thought of returning triumphantly and wiping the smug look off my dad’s face. Weeks had gone by without me even hearing the D-word. What better show of blending is there than that?

“Do we have that morning tea, Mel?” Alicia called from her end of the stall. “You know, the peppy one.” Her fringe was plastered to her forehead.

“There, next to your elbow! No, behind the jars. There, there!” Seriously, we’d been through the range a dozen times.

“What’s this?” the customer in front of me asked, his hook nose deep in a sample I’d set out.

“Uhh.” Okay, maybe I should make some labels. “Oh! It’s loganberry and elderflower.”

“It’s too sweet.”

Then why ask? Just put it down if you don’t like it. “Duly noted,” I said.

“Mel, got one for you,” Alicia called again.

“Okay, send them over.” A middle-aged couple approached, looking so much like each other that I just had to smile. “What can I do for you?”

“She snores,” the gentleman in the back said. He did not look happy.

His husband gave me an apologetic look. “Apparently I snore,” he explained.

“There’s no ‘apparently’ about it,” I heard muttered from the back.

I laughed involuntarily. “Well, I can recommend this one.” I held out my midnight blend, wrapped invitingly in black velvet. “It helps you get to sleep. It tends to be quite popular.”

“He doesn’t have trouble sleeping.” The man at the back was edging forward now. “It’s doing it quietly that’s the problem.” To be fair, he did have ludicrously heavy bags under his eyes.

“Then can I recommend it for yourself?” I countered.

“I don’t see why I should have to drug myself just because his sinuses sound like they’re chewing chipboard.”

“We’ve been through this, Daniel, there’s no ‘drugging’. This is medicinal tea.” Another apologetic smile.

“Can’t you just give him something to make it stop? Please, I beg you. I really, really beg you.” It would be redundant to say there was desperation in his voice.

The guy in front — although only barely now — sighed from his boots. “It would mean a lot to me if you can help. I’m really willing to try anything.”

“Mel, customers!” Alicia prompted.

“Just a minute!” I couldn’t believe I was even considering this, but they both looked at their wits’ end! “I guess I could have a look at making something stronger. I really can’t promise anything though,” I was careful to insist.

“Please, anything you can do would be a huge help.”

“Pleeease,” the man called Daniel exhaled.

“Alright. Let me see what I can do.”

“You’re and Anvil given gift,” the first man said. “Where can we find you?”

“Oh, I don’t have a where at the moment.”

“Ooh, how mysterious.” Daniel winked. “Do you see the moneylenders on the corner?”

It was hard to miss. “Yeah?”

“You can find me there most days. Come give me a knock when you’ve cooked something up and you will find me a very, very happy customer.” He hooked his thumbs into his waistcoat instead of just outright saying, “I have money.”

“Thank you ever so much. Glen,” the first customer said, shaking my hand. “Don’t worry. I’ll try and manage his expectations.”

“Probably best you do.” I could feel butterflies already.

“Oh, and where are my manners? We’d love some of this delightful tea as well.”

Alicia and I made record sales after that, but I could barely remember any of it. My mind was fixed on a tantalising little problem. Was it even possible to stop snoring? I might be asking the impossible.

When I got home I wolfed down Mirra’s meal — which was a shame, because I’m sure it was delicious — and shot up to my room. It’d been a couple of weeks since I’d been at Iffan’s books, but now I eagerly spread them out and got searching.

Snoring? Had I read something about that before.

I ruled out the possibility of making another tea almost instantly. A couple of herbs weren’t going to cut it. This was going to need the right tool for the job. I was going to need to use some alchemy.

The thought of failing made me queasy, but spikes of excitement kept me searching ravenously. I hadn’t realised how much I’d missed that feeling I got when I first mixed up the hair tonic. It was still satisfying to nail a perfect batch, but nothing compared to that very first — almost painfully anxious — moment of seeing if it was actually going to work. This wasn’t just mixing together leaves with some berries that compliment the taste; this was making something. Something out of nothing.

I didn’t find a cure for snoring, but I did find a muscle relaxant that Iffan raved about in his normally clinical notes. It might not be the hardest thing to blend that with the ingredients of my midnight tea. It was a bit of a leap, but I imagined that would stop a person snoring. Valan was the closest thing to a doctor we had in Braxus, and he always insisted that snoring was caused by chronic stress.

I ran a finger down the list of ingredients.

Not bad at all! I had most of this growing downstairs. I just needed to check how the hambush was getting on and I might even be able to take a crack at the base for this that very night.

I ran downstairs so quickly and with such singlemindedness that when there was a knock on the door I didn’t even stop to think about how unusual that was. Instead — more than a little irritated at having my hobby interrupted — I flung it wide open to our uninvited visitor.

“Ah,” the man said, “you must be the druid.”