Chapter 4.43 – Freedom

Melinda sniffed her glass and recoiled. “This smells so much like feet.”

“I think it smells like cheese.”

“Exactly,” Melinda said. “Cheesy feet.”

“Do anyone’s feet really smell of cheese though?” April asked, swirling the liquid in her glass. Melinda wasn’t sure why they’d opted to drink the illusion potion from wine glasses, rather than from a traditional flask, but it felt kind of fancy. If what they were about to drink wasn’t absolutely putrid-smelling, of course.

Melinda tried to supress a gag. “My dad’s feet smell pretty cheesy after he’s been wearing his old slippers.”

“Ew, Mel, that’s disgusting!” April screwed up her little nose as she eyed her glass with distaste. “I can’t drink this now. All I’m going to be thinking about are your dad’s stinky feet.”

“Sorry.” Melinda thought for a moment. “You know what else smells like this? Souphole’s Cheesy Marshmallows.”

“I used to love those!” April gushed. She began humming the jingle that accompanied the popular salty snack as she brought the glass to her lips, delicately taking a sip of the blue liquid. “Oh sweet shit; that’s horrific.”

“Doesn’t it just taste like ash?”

“No,” April replied, bracing herself for another sip. “It’s ashy but also tastes sweaty.”

“Oh, great.” Melinda pinched her nose and took a drink. It did taste sweaty, she thought, musty almost, like old coats left in a wardrobe. Maybe it was the smell, maybe it was the taste, but almost immediately it made her light-headed. Both girls stumbled to the sofa, glasses in hand.

“Do you feel any different?” April asked. “I feel super dizzy.”

“Same. Do I look any different?”

“No… Oh! Maybe your eyes are a bit… no, I think that’s just the light.”

Melinda shrugged, somewhere between disappointment and relief. She kind of liked her face, even if she hadn’t seen it in months. “Maybe that yeast was too far expired after all.”

“Maybe,” April agreed sadly. “And Wyatt’s using the cauldron to make a spirit potion for our cure so we can’t ask him to try again. Oh bugger!” she looked down at the floor. “So what shall we do today instead? Boring beach again? Do you just want to stay in and play games?” She looked back to Melinda. “Oh!”

“What?” Melinda jumped at April’s exclamation.

“Mel! Your hair! It’s turned red!”

“Red? I’m not on fire am I?” Melinda lifted a strand and peered at it. “Oh my gosh, it has turned red! And you! You’re a brunette, April!”

“I am?” April tugged at the end of her hair, but it was too short for her to see much.

“Yes, you are! And you have dark brown eyes… wow, that’s unsettling.”

“Not as unsettling as your blue ones, Mel.”

“My eyes are blue?” Melinda thought sadly. She was thinking back to her sketchbook, the one that they’d left in a hotel months ago when they were still on the run, which was full of sketches of how she’d imagined her mother, Rose, would look. Melinda had always started her drawings with the eyes, always drawing her own. She just knew that she had her mother’s eyes.

They were one of the only things Melinda had of her birth mother. To hear that they were gone…

The girls stared at each other for a few minutes, each taking in the new appearance of their girlfriend.

“This is weird isn’t it?” Melinda whispered, as if the spell would be broken by being too loud.

“Super weird,” April agreed.

She took Melinda’s hand and a wicked smile spread across her new features. “Let’s go freak Wyatt out!”

Wyatt had taken the sad, droopy death flower and had tried to revive it. His attempt at a rejuvenation spell had done nothing but push him to the brink of overcharge, so he had instead sprayed the flower with his special blend of fertiliser and had placed it in the fridge.

The delicate bloom had perked up a little. Wyatt hoped that his efforts would be enough to preserve it until he could use it in a potion.

Now he just had to figure out what that potion would look like.

Alone in the basement, surrounded by recipe books, jars of ingredients and a wall full of herbs and flowers, Wyatt was in his element. It had taken a while – after the whole tea catastrophe – to have the confidence to brew again, but now he’d found his stride, there was no stopping him.

He wasn’t academic, book smart or scholarly, but he was a genius when it came to potions. He relished the idea of trial and erroring one that would cure the girls, his brain buzzing with all the combinations he could try. The base would definitely be a spirit potion, which he could make with his eyes closed. He’d already made a loose base just in the hour he’d been half-awake that morning. But what else to add?

According to the witches in the swamp, as relayed by Lilith, they believed the cure would comprise of three key elements: life, balance and connection. He was sure that familial blood would work for the connection aspect. The death flower was perfect for balance.

But if they couldn’t find a plasma fruit – and it was looking unlikely – what else could he use to represent the life element of the potion? And did the potion need anything else?

Stabilisers? Binding agents? Artificial colours?

With the base potion prepared, Wyatt was ready to let the pot bubble for a while. He went to light a fire under the cauldron when he let out an enormous belch and nearly sent a bolt into the pot, which would’ve been disastrous for the careful balance needed for a spirit potion.

Ugh, that dry veggie burger from the previous night was repeating on him. And he still felt a bit dopey after letting Lilith feed on him. And no, he hadn’t managed to get her to go to the arcade, which was just as well as he didn’t have two simoleons to rub together, let alone enough to play a battle round of Super Undead Zombie Blast.

Add to that that he’d received his first bill that morning and at this rate, he’d have to start opening the shop again to make ends meet. As he stewed on the prospect of spending the rest of his days tying bouquets and toiling away in a yellow shirt, a little voice from behind him hissed, “Psst, Wyatt!”

Wyatt spun round at the sound of April’s voice and looked at her. Something was different…

“Are those new jeans?”

“No, silly!” April giggled and did a little spin. “The potion worked!”

“Oh yeahhh!” he said as he took in the two sort-of-but-not-really familiar faces. “Who’s the potion master? This guy.”

“I thought you’d be a bit more like ‘who are these girls and why are they in my basement?!’” April pouted. “Are the disguises not very good?”

“They’re awesome,” Wyatt reassured her. “You look very different but who else was gonna rock up in the basement at this hour other than you two?”

“Yeah, I guess that makes sense,” Melinda said. “I wish I could see myself. Red hair and blue eyes… does it suit me?”

“It’s… unsettling,” Wyatt admitted.

“But you’re still super pretty,” April cooed.

“So are you.”

“Ew, get a room!” Wyatt joked. “Seriously though, you both look amazing. Better than when I last took the potion – turned me into a bald man with a beer gut.”

“A beer gut?” April did a slow spin, looking down at herself. “I think I am fatter.”

“I think it’s your imagination,” Melinda assured her.

“How long will the disguises last?” April asked, squeezing her waist with a pout.

“On witches? At least a few hours. On you two – who knows?” Wyatt replied. “Probably best to take a flask to top up. Have you also taken your sunlight potion?”

“Yes.”

“And no side-effects?”

“We’re both a bit light-headed.”

“Interesting,” Wyatt tapped his chin. “That might be the interaction between the sunflower seeds and the urea.” He smirked as the girls looked to each other. “I’ll tone down the latter in the next batch. So, where are you heading off to today?”

“We’re off to the Fun Beach at Brindleton Bay.”

“Okay, don’t stay out too early. Call me if you run into any problems. Do you need any cash?”

“No,” Melinda jumped in. “I’ve got plenty from my Dad.”

“’K.” Wyatt smiled, but inside he was cringing that he couldn’t give April any money for her day out. “Have fun.”

“We will!”

April and Melinda practically ran up the stairs to the store. April was super excited and she was giddy, hopefully with glee, knowing that Melinda was just as excited. But every time she looked at Melinda, she had a ‘who are you?’ moment. She hoped that she could get used to the way her girlfriend looked because what if they were stuck with it? Would they have to be ‘Maude’ and ‘Amy’ forever?

As they entered the flower shop, they were greeted by the sound of hushed voices.

Broof and Lilith were having some sort of tense conversation that they clearly didn’t want overheard. April tried ever so hard not to listen in to Broof’s thoughts as she passed them – she couldn’t hear anything from Lilith other than a static noise.

“Hi!” Melinda said gleefully as they passed on through. “Bye!”

“Bye both,” Broof said brightly. Lilith only grunted.

Outside in the crisp air under the brightest blue sky April had ever seen, she and Melinda paused, just to take in the day.

Freedom. True freedom. They could go wherever they liked, do whatever they liked, be whoever they wanted to be. As long as that someone wasn’t themselves, of course.

April had never experienced anything quite like it.

Melinda had begun singing, one of her favourite songs about a magician outside a cracker factory, and April was trying to sing along without knowing the words when a chatty background noise began in her head. April had learned enough from mind-reading to know when her radar was picking someone up. She turned her head slightly to see a slightly familiar-looking woman approaching them.

April knew her from somewhere, but where?

Melinda finished her song abruptly and lowered her voice. “Come on, we’d better get a move on. The bus arrives in five minutes. Besides,” she said lowering her voice a bit more, “That woman is looking at us funny.”

April giggled. “We’re going to get a bus, Mel!” she whispered loudly. “Like normal, common people! I’m so excited!”

Jessica watched the two teenagers skip off together, hand in hand.

She wished she could be that excited about getting a bus.

She’d taken two to get here and no one had given up their seat for her. She knew that she didn’t look that pregnant yet, but she sure felt the extra pounds she’d added. Especially when she was forced to stand around every sweeping road and every swerving corner. At one point she’d almost ended up in a stranger’s lap. That had been embarrassing, not least because she’d put her hands out to help break her fall and had inadvertently hit the poor man in the groin.

She’d made it in one piece though, back to the little flower shop in Windenburg Square. The two girls she’d just passed had exited moments earlier, so the shop was open, which was a relief. Jessica got the hunch that the shop was open sporadically; probably closed for lunch and on Wednesdays. So why she’d chosen to come on a Wednesday, she didn’t know.

But anyway, the shop looked open – lights were on and the door was ajar – and that’s all that mattered. Now she just had to hope that Wyatt was in.

As Jessica approached the door, she overheard some hushed, and angry, voices.

“…to steal a flower!”

Stealing a flower? Was a robbery in progress? Had those two girls she’d just let by been shoplifters? Jessica straightened up, ready to don her police hat.

“It was fine.”

“Fine?! Did you not see the thing? That flower was droopier than an elephant’s trunk!”

Wow, Jessica thought. They really took plants seriously here.

“Wyatt managed to perk it up!”

“But for how long? Do you know how long it might take to find— oh, hello.”

As she was noticed by the smartly-dressed man, lingering in the doorway, eavesdropping on what was clearly a very heated discussion about flower health, Jessica cleared her throat.

“Err hi. Is Wyatt around?”

The dark-haired woman only huffed, but the demeanour of the bearded man had changed swiftly into a softly-spoken and very polite one. Jessica got the sense that he was well-practiced at shifting moods like that.

“He’s busy, I’m afraid. Are you a friend of his?”

“Not exactly.”

“So, you’re a customer? Um. Can I help? Are you looking for anything in particular?” he gestured to some nearby vases. “Some peonies, maybe?”

“Like you know anything about flowers,” the woman hissed from the side of her mouth.

“That clearly makes two of us,” the man whispered back.

Jessica looked around the shop but there was no sign of Sage’s ghost, so she wasn’t sure how true it was that Wyatt was busy, or whether he was avoiding her. She looked at the smiling, waiting man who obviously thought she was there to buy something and her brain slid into gear.

She knew who this man was. She’d seen him before.

It had been on a laptop, in an image Morag had shared with her.

Of course! It was Rose’s father! Broof Hogwash!

Or at the very least a near-relative as the man standing before her looked a couple of decades younger than the mugshot of the butler she’d seen. Maybe it was his son?

“Maybe you can help me,” she began, watching him gulp but maintaining his smile unwaveringly. “Do you know Broof Hogwash?”

The man’s face fell and the woman turned to Jessica, eyes narrowed. Jessica felt a compression in her temples and a strange, cold, electrical feeling over her scalp. As the headache got more severe, she rued having sorbet and cucumber for breakfast, but her Mum really had very little else in.

The man looked to the woman, who shrugged at him. “…I am Broof Hogwash.”

“Broof Hogwash junior?”

“No, the sole Broof Hogwash.”

Jessica faltered. She hadn’t been able to find any birth records for him, so, from her calculations, Jessica had assumed that Broof would be aged around 55-60, even though he’d looked younger in his mugshot. But he looked even younger in real life, only about 35.

He’d probably had loads of plastic surgery, she thought.

The woman beside her let out a little snort.

“Is there a problem?” Broof asked politely, to Jessica.

Jessica straightened up and lifted her chin, summoning her best police-delivering-news voice. “Mr. Hogwash, I’m Jessica Spoon and I have some information about your daughter.”

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