The Apothecary

The apothecary should have been quiet. It wasn’t. Even after I barred the door and shuttered the windows, the space hummed with her presence. Every surface carried the imprint of her habits, where she set her tools, how she organized her notes, the precise angle of the stool she always pulled back before standing. I could track her movements through the room without trying, as if she might step back into place if I looked away for too long.

I stood just inside the doorway and let my eyes travel the shelves. White leaf, dried and bound in twine. Dusk root wrapped in linen, labeled in her neat, looping hand. Blood bloom petals separated by shade and potency, stored with more care than most people afforded their own food.

She’d always said that respect was the first ingredient in any remedy. I touched nothing at first. The air smelled of alcohol and herbs, of clean flame and faint ash from the stove she never quite allowed to cool. I could almost hear her voice reminding me to ventilate properly, to mind the heat, to never rush a reduction unless I wanted to ruin the entire batch. I had followed those rules my whole life. That was the problem. When I finally began to work, it felt like stepping into a role she had vacated moments ago. My hands moved automatically, reaching for tools without thought, correcting small inefficiencies she’d left unaddressed because something else had demanded her attention.

I adjusted drying racks. Rebalanced shelves. Reorganized storage until the space functioned more efficiently than it ever had before. It didn’t help. Every time I turned, I expected to see her at the workbench, sleeves rolled, brow furrowed, muttering softly to herself as she tested a new infusion.

Every shadow caught my eye. Every creak of wood set my nerves on edge. Grief, I learned, had an echo. Her journal lay open near the back of the room, pages curled from use. I recognized the handwriting immediately, tight where she was uncertain, flowing where confidence carried her forward. I told myself I would only skim. I lied. She had been experimenting again. Not recklessly. Never that. My mother approached magic the way she approached everything else: methodically, cautiously, with a deep respect for its capacity to harm as much as heal. Her notes detailed reinforcement patterns, ways to let magic support the body instead of replacing it outright. Anchors designed to stabilize healing effects without draining the caster beyond recovery.

She was close. Close enough that my chest tightened painfully at the realization. She had believed she could find a better way. A way that didn’t leave healers hollowed out and spent, their lives shortened by every act of mercy. She had believed that discipline and preparation could tame even magic’s worst excesses. She had believed she could outwork the cost. I closed the journal. Slowly. Carefully. As if it might argue with me if I moved too quickly.

People came. They knocked, at first politely. Then more insistently. Word of my mother’s death had spread quickly enough. Then again, word always did spread fast. I felt like most of my time in the apothecary was spent in the threshold of the foyer taking orders as if I ran a ration station during a dry harvest season. Or receiving verbal support from people I didn’t even know. A woman with a bandaged arm asked if I would take a look at it. A man I recognized from the lower farms asked for something to ease his breathing. A boy, too young to be alone, stood in the doorway holding a bundle of cloth that smelled faintly of infection. I helped them. Of course I did. I worked in silence, measuring, mixing, binding, correcting. I didn’t explain. I didn’t linger. I didn’t ask questions I didn’t need answered. They thanked me. I nodded. They tried to offer sympathy. I ignored it.

One of them, an older man with hands worn smooth by years of labor, rested a coin on the counter and said, “She would’ve been proud Veyrith.” I slid the coin back toward him and said, “She would’ve told you not to overpay.” He didn’t smile. Neither did I.

I saw myself migrating through every corner of the apothecary throughout the day. By the main workbench, I had managed to refine three of her most common salves, improving yield and shelf life without sacrificing potency. On my mother’s desk, I recalibrated measurements my she had eyeballed out of habit, and corrected concentrations she had pushed too far in the name of efficiency. By nightfall, the apothecary was immaculate, all of the evidence of my experimentation and improvements were either swept away or safely labeled and categorized on a labeled shelf.

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The work was flawless. I was not. On the third day, a patient with memory impairment asked where my mother was, I found myself smiling wondering the same and called out for her to come to the foyer from her workspace in the back of the apothecary, only to have silence and absence meet us. The realization hit me all at once, and I had to school a neutral expression on my face. “She must be out foraging fresh herbs.” I told the patient. The patient smiled and nodded before waving me off and replying, “Veyrith, give her my regards.” The lump that formed in my throat felt nearly impossible to work through, so I just smiled and nodded as best as I could.

On the fourth morning, I found myself standing at the workbench in her workspace, fingers hovering over a mortar I could not bring myself to touch. The image of her hands overlaid mine so clearly that my vision blurred. I waited for it to pass. It didn’t. That was when I understood. No amount of discipline would make this place survivable. I wrestled the thought throughout the morning and finally landed on closing the apothecary that afternoon. I sealed the windows. Barred the door. Affixed a simple notice explaining that operations had been suspended indefinitely.

No explanations. No promises. Just a statement of fact. Some people argued. Others pleaded. A few understood without asking. I did not engage with any of them. I stood at the threshold longer than I needed to. Looking at the door. At the grain of the wood. At the faint discoloration near the handle where her hand had worn the surface smoother over time. I remembered the day my mother chose the copper handles. “It’ll start copper, and end green” she began and then looked to me and asked, “Do you know why I chose copper?” I nodded yes and said, “Because copper naturally kills germs.” She smiled at me, impressed that the answer was correct, but she chose to say, “Well yes, but when they turn green, I’ll think of your eyes”.

I could have reopened it. The door handle was right there, within reach. I knew how. I knew exactly what to do. But the grief behind the door was the problem, so I turned the lock one last time, stepped away, and didn’t look back.