Love Potion

Old Margrete did not truly sell little Jenny Weaver a love potion to ensnare Will Carpenter on the eve of the Maying moon. The very idea of the flaxen-haired, apple-cheeked, green-eyed Jennivere of the Loom needing such a thing, when anyone could see Will’s infatuation with her, set Old Margrete’s raspy throat to bitter laughter. All shy Jenny ever needed was to smile at Will once, and he would be hers, and to that end, when Jenny stumbled, weepy-eyed, into Old Margrete’s cottage at the edge of the woods, Old Margrete gave her the potion she needed.

That is, a hearty draft of strong ale, mixed with chamomile and ginger root to disguise the taste.

“A love potion true?” Jenny had asked. “And ‘twill turn Will’s eyes to mine?”

“Never fret thee,” Old Margrete assured her, “but hie to the commons and catch thy beloved’s gaze. The potion be not all; for the spell to take, he must look upon thy face, and thee upon his.”

“For how long?”

Old Margrete tucked the yellow hair behind little Jenny’s ear. “For as long as is needful.”

And sure enough, two days later the banns were cried and shortly thereafter the wedding of Jenny and Will was celebrated. Old Margrete did not attend, for folk did not care to see her warty face on happy occasions, and Old Margrete did not, for the most part, care to see the townspeople who came to her under cover of darkness, begging for remedies, or the clever hands of the midwife, but made the sign of the evil eye against her should they meet in the light.

So all would have been well, had not the churchman, as he did once a year, perhaps, begin his speechifying against evil, quoting, “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live,” and casting meaningful glances in the direction of her cottage. And still and all, nothing would have come of it, save that Jenny, made bold in her nuptial joy, began to tell around town that, witch though she may be, Old Margrete was a good witch, a kind and loving and helpful witch.

Sides were taken. Eduard Atwater, the alchemist, who also served as village apothecary, had much dealing with Old Margrete, and paid a good price for her herbs. He named those whose mothers had called upon Old Margrete during complicated labors. “Many of us would not be here to today to speak against evil were it not for Old Margrete’s skill,” he said. “Her knowledge of medicinal herbs rivals mine, and comes through experience. She is no more witch than I.”

“Reject the devil in all his forms!” the churchman countered. Sent from the city when the old churchman passed, he had not been raised among them in the village and had no sense of the usefulness of a village witch. “Be not seduced by the fair face of evil.”

“Hardly a fair face,” muttered those who had seen Old Margrete in daylight, but the churchman was young, with a powerful voice that projected across the square, across the commons. It could not be shut out. The more words were spoken in Old Margrete’s defense, the more insistent was he that the old woman had seduced those souls rightly belonging to him, and that she must be put in her place.

“’Tis all my doing!” Jenny wailed, having crept to Old Margrete’s window late at night. It was the eve before the harvest moon, so there was light enough that she had no fear, and besides, little Jenny was with child already, and came also for the tea of fennel and peppermint that Old Margrete mixed so well.

But truly, she came to warn. “There’s talk of cleansing by fire!” Jenny wept. “They’ll burn thee, Margrete, and whether thee be witch or no, thee hast never harmed the merest hair on any mortal’s head.”

“Worry thy thoughts no longer, but get thee home safe to thy husband’s arms,” Old Margrete crooned, again tucking a strand of yellow hair behind the girl’s ear. “Old Margrete’s lived through witch hunts a-plenty.”

“How shall thee find succor?” Jenny sobbed. “Where in the wide world is shelter for thy good old bones?”

“Old Margrete shall stay,” she promised. “There be remedy for all life’s ills here in my pots and jars.” And she sent Little Jenny on her way with the loose tea, along with a bit of licorice to soothe her gravid belly.

Then she went among her herbs and began to mumble to herself as she mixed. “There be love potions and love potions,” she cackled. “And if it’s love that be lacking here, soon there shalt be love a-plenty, even for one with a face such as Old Margrete’s.”

And she mixed something stronger than ale, and sweeter than chamomile, and sharper than ginger, a barrel of it, and said words that were best not to speak, then corked the barrel, hooked a dipper in her belt, and rolled herself and her concoction down the lane. As she went through the moon-dark town, she ladled a dipper of this medicine into every water jug and barrel she came across, with a triple dose for the churchman’s morning ablutions, until she came at last to the village well.

With some straining, for her old joints were sore and her back long since bent under by the weight of the things she knew, Old Margrete hefted the barrel and poured its contents into the water supply, where one and all would draw their drink when the sun rose. “Oh, they’ll see a love potion now, won’t they ever,” Old Margrete muttered.

She slept very late into the afternoon, and when she hobbled out into the day, her front path was strewn with asters and chrysanthemums, her shutters hung with fresh pine wreaths, and three strong young men, the churchman chief among them, were thatching her roof with sweet heather.

Ethics

Like some morally ambiguous cartoon character, he carried an angel on his right shoulder and a devil on his left. Unlike the proverbial indecisive animation, he carried them at all times, even in the absence of ethical dilemma, and they weren’t adorable miniatures with cherubic faces. They were full size, slightly larger than his own six feet, and while they possessed no earthly mass, they still weighed him down spiritually.

They didn’t look like any popular conception of angels or devils.

The angel had a smooth, flat face, like a white pebble, with water-worn holes for eyes, nostrils, and mouth. Its head, covered in stiff, alar hairs, attached directly to its shoulders like a bird’s, and also swiveled and twisted like a bird’s. Its stick-figure body dangled from the head like strings from a helium balloon, and its wings hung in airy folds, bleached sheets clipped to wiry frames.

The devil looked almost exactly alike, except darker: the crisp and flaking black of a third degree burn. Where the angel had feathery hair, the devil had charred hair shafts. Where the angel had billowy and draping wings, the devil had ragged membranes.

To say that they enjoyed arguing with each other would be an understatement.

If there could be found a moral angle, they would exploit it. Veal, one-night stands, offering ones seat to an elderly woman on crowded public transport: all were dilemmas necessitating a screaming tirade. Even minor matters, such as the purchase of a bottle of water (“Plastic is bad for the environment; consider your carbon footprint” versus “You’re thirsty; you can’t control the packaging; it’s cleaner than tap water, and colder, too”) initiated disputes that could last for hours, long after he had made his choice, until they pounced upon the next ethical dilemma (“You can’t shop there; they underpay female employees and minorities” versus “Corporations make decisions based on feasibility, and have every right to set their own pay scales”).

The nonchalance with which other boys made decisions amazed him. They could skip homework, cheat in math, or hide in the girls’ shower at overnight camp, and appeared not to hear a word of bickering from a pair of moon-faced creatures who insisted upon being carried everywhere.

Was there nothing they could agree on? Clean coal? Small-scale local shrimp farming? Consensual polyamory?

“Too dirty,” sniffed the angel.

“Not dirty enough,” grunted the devil.

In college, he took an ethics class, believing his life experience would translate into an easy A. Instead, he failed, too overwhelmed by the running commentary to focus on lectures, retain textual information, or write a coherent paper. Korean pottery, French cinema, Egyptian history, and Ornithology 101 all proved hot-button topics. Through trial and error, he determined he could graduate only by majoring in pure, theoretical mathematics.

With prodigious application of alcohol, he tuned them out long enough to lose his virginity, but he paid with weeks of debate on the advisability of sexual purity, the ecological impact of condoms, the politics of STDs, and the legitimacy of the sexual revolution. When he got up in the morning, they were fighting. When he went to bed at night, they were fighting. They only interrupted that argument to weigh in on other important matters, such as turning up the heat versus putting on a sweater, paper versus plastic, and exactly how horrible hopping on an unprotected Linksys network really was in the grand scheme of things, but sex proved irresistible and they kept returning that the subject.

“Far beyond physical purity or moral fiber, this is about spiritual cleanliness,” the angel yelled.

“He’s built for sexual pleasure,” the devil retorted. “Denying a natural and healthy release muddies his spirit more than acceptance of his true physical nature.”

“Overcoming the base body is the path to spiritual purity!”

“Spiritual purity is shorthand for total emptiness.”

Earlier in the day, while discussing functional analysis in the library, a brainy and busty blonde had uncrossed and recrossed her legs right in front of him. After six hours of cogitation, he calculated with ninety-percent certainty that she had provided that glimpse of her lacy panties with perfect deliberation. This conviction emboldened him for the first time in his life.

“Why don’t you two just fuck each other already?” he shouted.

“I’d rather fuck a moldy apple,” said the devil.

“I beg your pardon,” the angel said. “I do not fornicate.”

“Whatever,” he said. “You obviously have a thing for each other. You enjoy arguing way too much. You’re overcompensating for your forbidden attraction. You,” he said, pointing to the angel, “get your hands dirty for once in your existence. Learn something about the world you condemn.

“And you,” he continued, pointing to the snickering devil, “get your ass up out of the mud. This will come as a complete surprise to you, but it’s possible to experience pleasure without being a selfish bastard.”

At long last, the angel and the devil fell silent. Instead they both gaped at him, round little mouth-holes open and speechless, dark little eye-divots surreptitiously glancing toward each other and then down to the floor.

“There’s no shame in admitting your feelings,” he said. “Surely you can agree on that.”

“Feelings are dangerous,” the angel whispered.

“Emotions indicate weakness,” the devil grunted.

“Whatever,” he said. “Deal with it. I’m going out. You’re not invited.”

And he brushed the astonished creatures off his shoulders like lint, with such ease that he couldn’t believe he’d never tried before, and he went out of the dorm, texting the brainy and busty blonde.

He did not return to until the next morning, at which time he was a little surprised, but not very, to find the angel and the devil, their faces deeply engaged between each other’s legs. On his bed, of course.

He shoved them to the floor and fell to sleep, scarcely noticing the faint squeaks and growls of pleasure. The next day, they were still at it, seemingly glued into an alchemical knot, and each day thereafter they appeared smaller, lighter, and stiffer, until, by the end of the semester, he was able to hang them on the wall, where they were mistaken for an ethereal and remarkable yin-yang sculpture by a string of women who truly appreciated fine art.

Bears Think They Know Everything

Bears think they know everything, and this bear was a prime example, glowering down his muzzle like a disapproving spinster with a lorgnette at the end of her nose, an eight hundred pound spinster with matted brown fur and teeth the size of my fingers.

Usually, petitioners before the king in his ice palace stood with heads bowed, eyes averted, often wringing their caps in their hands, but bears have no conception of social niceties. “You must move your people,” the bear said, looking my father in the eye. “You might have three days, or only one.”

“The ice people appreciate the concern of the bear people and thank them for it. Inform your people that we will appease the volcano gods.” My father dismissed the bear with a wave. Beneath my flowered wreaths, I smiled.

The bear did not understand. It tossed its thick head. “We bears do not know your volcano god. We only know that the mountain will rain fire and poison. Your palace will melt. Your people will die in agony. We humbly ask you to avert this tragedy.”

The king had already turned away, but I was in a unique position to teach a higher understanding. “Friend bear,” I addressed it, “the ice people can read the signs as well as the bear people, but as a creature of the forest, you do not grasp our spiritual learning. Faith marks our path.”

“Princess, it’s true that we do not understand faith. We animals have only science to guide us.”

I could see the mud caked about his ankles, the parasites crawling over his fur. My father did not believe such creatures teachable, but a queen speaks to even the simplest subject with love and compassion, out of pity for its condition. “Then let me tell you of the gods. The lord of the volcano trembles from loneliness. At dusk, we are to be wed. He shall be lonely no more.”

The creature shuddered, perhaps awed by the power of our religion. “At dusk,” he growled, “you shall suffer burning death. Your skin shall blister from your bones as you asphyxiate on choking fumes and drown in liquid fire.”

I recoiled on my dais, upsetting some of the bridal wreaths, which my maids were fast to recover. Truly, the bear people were ungodly and simple. While its words shocked me, they enraged the king. My father signaled and six soldiers advanced, axes raised. Poor, dumb creature. I had provided an extraordinary opportunity. It chose its fate.

Raising itself up on two legs, it roared, sending a flurry of ice flakes down upon my shoulders like snow. It spun around, knocking the soldiers off their feet. And then it advanced, with speed unpredictable, and plucked me from my bridal bower. Flower petals billowed away as I was heaved, face-first and upside down, over its shoulder into the stinking, lousy fur. The bear’s bones jarred my body as it barreled through the line of soldiers, slid down the ice steps, and bolted through the ice garden. I heard the snapping sound of formations breaking under the bear’s careless paw.

“Stop, beast! You do not know what you do.” I yearned to sooth the volcano god, please my lord, and save the ice people, along with the foolish bear people and the other animals of the forest. I pleaded with it not to steal my future, my right as princess to become queen and wife to the god.

But the bear did not stop. It ran along, pursued, at first, by the clattering of horse hooves, and then ran farther, into the dark forest, leaving my father’s men behind. The stench of the animal invaded my nostrils, and its coarse fur rubbed my flesh. Perhaps I lost consciousness. When I woke, bears surrounded me, a mass of bears all moving together, like a dark storm cloud blown by a strong wind, like an angry, churning river.

“Would the ice people hear reason?” a bear asked.

“What do you think?” answered another.

“I saved one of them, at any rate. One less victim for their barbaric ritual.”

“Stupid animals!” I shouted, in a voice most unbecoming a princess. “You have doomed us all.”

The bears paid me no attention, only grumbled among themselves, and walked on.