Writers of the Future Volume 28: The Best New Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year

by L. Ron Hubbard

  There were hundreds of books to go though, most of which had at the very least a few legible pages, some with whole sections that’d not been burned. It took Lan weeks of working every night to collect them all as he cleared out the ash.

  It was midsummer when the house was finally back in order. Nothing like it’d been before Haigh had died. Too empty for that. But it was clean, as if ready for a new Apothecary to take up residence. Lan walked the rooms for a few nights dusting shelves that didn’t need dusting, finding imaginary specks of dirt that required cleaning, until he realized the dull feeling rising up inside of him was an echo of how his head felt on a daily basis. Empty. Hollow.

  Lonely.

  He mentioned the feeling once to Jaddi, who didn’t look up from where she was easing a layer of skin off the back of her hand, a grimace upon her face. “Were you feeling that all along?”

  He thought for a moment, then said, “No. Not at all. Just recently when the house became clean and there’s nothing left for me to do.”

  “Nothing? Maybe that’s the problem.” She looked up at him and raised her hands. “Don’t you know how to make that cream he was always giving me every week?”

  Lan shrugged. “Sure.” He knew it better than Haigh probably did these last few years, considering he’d been the one making it.

  “Well, why didn’t you say so before?” She looked almost cross. “Would have saved me a bit of frustration. This—” She waved a hand in front of his face again—“runs in the family.”

  It took all of an hour, spread out over a few nights as he had to dry a few things and grind them down, but it was an hour where the headache eased and the loneliness slipped away. Worth every second he spent.

  So thanking Jaddi profusely, he filled the dead of nights with collecting and drying. He found the old trees he’d been collecting sap from and hung new buckets, preparing for when it started running. There was no recreating some of the things Haigh had stored around his workroom, many of which had been ordered from out of country, with some, Lan suspected, on the underground market. Though, those that hadn’t been bought illegally were just as expensive. But he took to stocking what he knew he could find.

  Despite that not being very much, he still quickly ran out of jars and had to walk farther into town to visit the potter about more.

  “It’s been a long while since you’ve stopped by asking after those,” he said. Kiag was a short man, with a straight face and quiet disposition, one of those who always had Lan wondering what it was he thought about a man made entirely of woven wood and baskets.

  “Yes.” Lan bobbed his head as he spoke. “But many of Haigh’s things had been broken, and I’d like to replace them.”

  Kiag raised his eyebrows just enough for Lan to be able to tell they’d actually moved. “Have you found out what happened to him? Losing him was a blow to this town. Anyone who’d been his client has had to either send from the next town, costing at least three times as much, or suffer in silence.”

  Lan shook his head slowly. “I don’t know.”

  The potter hmmed to himself. “I’m not one for gossip. I can assure you I’d been letting the things being whispered about him wash over my back. However, if you’re taking up his mantle, I’ll be sure to spread the word.”

  Stuttering a thanks, Lan quickly put down a payment to get the potter started on his order and backed out of the shop, too flustered at the thought of doing half of what Haigh had. It was only after he’d walked halfway back to Jaddi’s house and had noticed a few people dodging his glances that he remembered the other half of what Kiag had said and wished he’d thought to ask.

  He started to ask Miss Amain when he saw her. Then, feeling all his baskets turn a notch and their contents shifting inside him uncomfortably at her bright smile, he ducked his head and shuffled off, concentrating upon his feet so that he wouldn’t fall.

  Jaddi laughed when he asked her later. “Don’t worry about them. There’re some folks who’d talk even if the world were collapsing beneath their feet.”

  “But what do they say?” Lan insisted.

  She pursed her lips and narrowed her eyes. “It’s nothing, Lan, nothing true, at least.”

  When he didn’t look or move away, she finally relented.

  “Some think that he had it coming, is all. Think that he might have had a hidden treasure somewhere.”

  Lan nodded and said quietly, “Somewhere. You mean they think I have it.”

  She shrugged. “It’s probably crossed everyone’s minds, Lan. But you’re the only one who can open those latches of yours, so you keep whatever it was safe from their greedy fingers. That’s obviously what Haigh wanted, after all.” She smiled sadly. He followed her gaze out to Haigh’s house. “He was a pretty impressive man, regardless of what he might have done.” She bowed her head and sighed. “I miss him a whole lot.”

  “But,” she continued with a happy lilt in her voice, “I have you still. So glad they didn’t burn you up like they did with the rest of his things.”

  He almost mentioned how he didn’t think they’d done that, but stopped short, not wanting the questions that might follow.

  With the jars from the potter, he began to truly fill the shelves in the workshop. He didn’t need to label them, not as Haigh had (though his labeling had been mostly haphazard and usually wrong after the jar had been emptied and refilled a few times). Perhaps it came from a life of memorizing what was contained in each part of his own body, but he knew at a glance where everything was upon each shelf.

  Upon the completion of the second order of jars from the potter, Kiag mentioned his wife’s monthly pains, sighing wistfully of the much-too-expensive prices of buying from the random merchant traveling through.

  “They have a tendency to throw their prices at the moon, knowing that if we need it we’ll have to find a way to buy it. My wife grins and bears it though, saying she’d rather not have that kind of money spent just to keep her comfortable. I married right, I know that much, though I wish I could take some of that pain away.”

  “I could take care of that for you,” said Lan. “I didn’t know it was such a problem.”

  “Great!” said Kiag. “I’ll have your payment ready upon delivery; looking forward to seeing you next week.” Then he shouted at one of his sons to be careful as he followed the boy into the back room. Lan left feeling as if he’d had no control during the whole exchange.

  But he still did as he’d promised and brought the man a painkiller for his wife’s tea the following week. And that was just the start.

  A few people caught him on his way back to Jaddi’s house that same afternoon, mentioning their own deliveries that had long ago ceased being brought. And more stopped by and left orders with Jaddi in the evenings during the following weeks.

  “You know you don’t have to stay here during the day,” she said one morning when she was reciting a cosmetic order from one of the young women in town. “You seem to be getting plenty of work, and I’ve no doubt when word spreads the neighboring towns will be sending orders.”

  “Are you sure? I really don’t mind helping you as well.”

  “I lived alone for quite a few years, Lan, ever since . . .” Her face darkened, but only for a brief moment. “You can come and visit whenever you like. I’m not telling you to leave, but you seem bored here during the day.” She winked.

  Lan nodded, knowing what she didn’t say. Ever since that fire, the one that’d hurt Haigh when he’d gone to put it out. The fire that had covered Jaddi black with ash and done much worse to her parents and older brother. Haigh had carried her out in his arms, the fire waning in his wake. Lan had been screamed at that night, for daring to get so close. He raised his hands, remembering the heat, but he’d ignored it in his fear that Haigh would never come back out.

  “You really think other towns will want my work as well?”

/>   Jaddi shrugged. “They did with Haigh.” As if that meant anything.

  But in the following days as a mild autumn kicked up cool winds that tugged upon his latches, he found himself lost in work that included towns close enough to Otaor to hear the news that the Apothecary was back up and running. He became happier in his work, though much busier than he’d ever been with Haigh, and the ache in his head was forgotten more often than not.

  When he wasn’t mixing or cooking, he delved into Haigh’s journal pages, painstakingly going through each and copying them into new journals where he added all the details he remembered from the experiments. He surprised even himself with as much as he did remember, noting even how many baskets he’d had during most of the experiments.

  There were a few that baffled him, using a coding system he didn’t recognize at all. Until he stumbled across one with what had obviously been a bright red seal stuck to the bottom of the page. A lopsided sigil pressed into the wax, drooping from where it had been reheated, much of it trying to escape from the page.

  The queen’s seal. Her royal approval of his work.

  Lan stared at that seal for a long time before going back through some of the experiments he’d found with the odd coding and reclassifying them under a new pile. Those he’d have to go over later. Right now he needed the pieces he could actually read and understand if he was going to continue going forward with Haigh’s work, taking the results of the experiments and creating his own recipes.

  So, lost as he was normally, and perhaps just a bit too trusting, he didn’t even pause when the workroom door opened one day. “Jaddi, I think I’ve managed to figure out how to take away the side effects of this . . .” He trailed off when he turned around.

  Jaddi did stand there, her eyes wide with worry and her mouth a thin line, but next to her stood a woman in a regal traveling robe, her arms crossed and a scowl affixed upon her face. Before and behind the woman stood four guards, all with the same sigil Lan had seen in Haigh’s notes stitched into the shoulder of their uniforms.

  Suddenly he felt as if he were only one or two baskets big, and feeling his distress, anything even remotely alive within him became quite agitated. “Can I help you?” His words came out stuttering, sounding childish to even his own ears.

  The woman strode forward, her cloak grazing the floor. He was suddenly glad he always kept up on the cleaning.

  “I hear you have something of mine,” she stated, stopping about a foot in front of him. She was shorter than him, by about a head, not even as tall as Jaddi. Despite that, Lan felt as if she was standing twice as tall and it was he looking up at her. The queen. Queen Yula was standing in his workshop. It made his baskets shrink slightly thinking about it.

  “I don’t think so,” he said. He glanced about the room. “I have never even been beyond Otaor. How could I have taken anything from you?”

  “Were you Haigh’s . . . assistant?” She said the word as if it wasn’t the one she wanted to say. Lan recognized the tone well enough. It hadn’t happened much as he got older, but when his baskets had been fewer and people less accepting, he’d heard that tone well enough conjoined with much worse descriptions for himself.

  “I guess.”

  “His created assistant with enchanted woven baskets where only it can remove the contents?” At his hesitant nod, she added, “A perfect hiding place, don’t you think, for something a man wishes to never see the light of day as proof of his betrayal.”

  “I . . .” Lan couldn’t think of a good response that either didn’t insult the queen or incriminate Haigh, so he shut the tiny hole of his mouth as much as possible.

  “I wish you to remove all the contents of every. . . cavity. Now.”

  “But . . .”

  “But?” She took another step forward. “Do you have any idea what that cretin stole from me?” Not waiting for a response, she continued, “When I gave birth to my second child, he was perfect and wonderful, destined to serve my daughter in a ranking position when it came time to rule. But my son sickened quickly with disease, his body becoming a frail husk, him unable to even turn his own head to suckle and swallow.

  “Haigh promised he could save him.”

  Lan glanced over at Jaddi, but she wasn’t looking at him, her eyes instead upon the floor and the thin line of her mouth turned down as when she was upset. His breathing was steady, from having a woven body and a throat that could never constrict, but his mind was racing despite the dull ever-present ache.

  “And did he?” asked Lan, when it became obvious that was what Yula wished.

  She stepped back a pace and her voice dropped some of its fierceness. “He took my son from his body, coercing my child into a trinket. A filthy bauble, not even fit for my child to play with, let alone live in. And then had the gall to tell me he could put my son into another’s body, if a boy of his age was brought to him.

  “Naturally, I refused. How could I, though I am a queen, ever force that pain on another mother? So, instead I banished him, thinking he’d given me the correct trinket he’d placed my son into. I treasured it, sang to it, as if it held my son’s soul, only to find it was empty when we finally found a boy who had a body, but no soul to use it.”

  “And you think I have it now?”

  “When my guards arrived, they found him already dead and most everything ruined, so I can only assume he anticipated that I would discover his betrayal and hid my son in you.”

  Jaddi gave a strangled cry from behind Yula. “You don’t mean . . . he couldn’t have!” She covered her mouth, swallowing whatever else she was thinking and Lan saw her shoulders shake. He wanted to comfort her, though he didn’t know how he could as he knew what Yula said to be a dreaded truth he’d not wanted to admit to before. It was easier to think Haigh had left them unwillingly than of his own accord.

  Yula glanced from Jaddi to Lan, then back again. “So, I guess that makes a sort of sense. I’d probably not have let him off as easy as he let himself.”

  Lan glowered at the side of the queen’s head, hating how she could dismiss his death as the act of a coward. “You think he was scared of what you would do to him?”

  “I know he was,” said Yula, casting a dangerous eye at him. “He was my Apothecary long before he’d brought a bunch of crappy intertwined baskets to life.”

  He bowed his head, a part of him whispering that Haigh really had no other reason but fear to do as he’d done. Lan shook the thought away, refusing to dwell upon it. “Fine, you can have your son back.”

  Behind Yula, Jaddi passed Lan a horrified expression through her tears. “Don’t . . . Lan. He—”

  One of the guards moved to drag Jaddi from the room. She gasped, but the frightened look in her eyes didn’t speak of pain.

  “Stop . . . just leave her alone. Just leave us all alone.” The guard stopped and glanced to Yula, who nodded tightly. Lan asked, “So what was he in?”

  “We don’t know,” said Yula, “But I’m sure I’ll know it when I see it.”

  Lan doubted that, not if she’d been singing to an empty bauble for over fifteen years before this, but he began to unlatch a lid (chest, leftmost column, first). Jaddi suddenly became calm in the guard’s grasp, watching with a closed expression.

  He put the vials of butterfly innards upon the workbench and began on the next latch as Yula stared in shock. Then basket, after basket he unlatched and opened and placed its contents next to those vials. The workbench overflowed onto the chair. The chair overflowed onto the floor. Broken flower petals and seeds were underfoot, crystallized tonics and the diamond beaker glinted in the sunlight. The emerald hummingbird ducked her head, hiding behind much larger things Lan pulled out and hopping away from the embalmed rat when it plopped beside her.

  He expected his body to slowly fill with aches and pains as he emptied himself, but the empty, lonely feeling of those baskets never cam
e. Maybe the anger staved it off, or maybe it was the way Jaddi calmly watched him or the truth that was buzzing about his mind.

  Maybe it was because he knew Queen Yula to be wrong about Haigh. He’d run through a burning building to rescue Jaddi once, after all. Had then yelled at Lan in a crazed voice, in fear that Lan would come too close and become kindling. No, Haigh was not afraid of a painful death. But he had been afraid of losing something dear.

  Yula searched among the things he’d spread out, mumbling occasionally to herself. “This would have been easier had Haigh been still alive. Which do you think it is?” she asked finally.

  “I have no idea. Why don’t you take it all?” He shoved the mess forward upon the workbench, startling the little hummingbird, who shot into the air, her wings flashing. Yula jumped back, and to her credit, swallowed any shout that’d risen to her throat.

  “Catch him,” she commanded. The guards moved, but too slow. The hummingbird dashed about the room for a moment, then dove over a guard’s hand and slipped through the crack in the window.

  Yula sighed angrily. “That had to be him. Go after it.” Two of the guards disappeared out the door chasing down the emerald hummingbird. “And collect the rest; we’ll bring it all back with us.”

  “It’ll take years to test it all,” started Lan, but stopped at the quick finger Jaddi put to her lips. “But I’m sure you’ll find him,” he finished.

  “Unless he was the hummingbird,” said Yula, her voice so sad, Lan almost relented and told her his suspicions.

  A few thoughts stopped him. Her horrified expression when she realized that her son was Haigh’s crappy intertwined baskets was one. However, it was knowing how happy he was, right here being the Apothecary for Otaor and the surrounding towns and maybe one day, even farther. Being happy right where he’d been raised by Haigh his whole life.