Page 16 of Witchblood

“I’m not going to run.” Not today at least. The stitches throbbed from my movement. The part that Liam had said was my muscle, had been torn. Shifting would tear it open, even if my shift was more magic than anything else. The body shape just wasn’t the same. And I couldn’t miraculously heal like most werewolves could, which was why I had spells scrawled in ink to help. Even then my wounds still took good old fashioned time to heal.

She looked indecisive for another minute, but finally turned and walked off toward the house. I focused on the ground, peeling away the weeds and layers of dead leaves to reveal rich black dirt. This plot had been intentional. Someone had dug out the land and filled it with soil instead of clay and pine needles. An expensive plan for an area this large. It was easily half a football field if the purple stalks fading into the distance was any indication.

I found neatly planted rows. The first three were lavender, all English, and mostly still in good shape. The third was lemon balm. That was a bit more of a mess as this really wasn’t a great climate for it. I cleared a small two-foot-wide area, digging deeper into the garden by stretching out through the stalks of scented growth. The next layer was chamomile. I almost cried with joy. The flowers were tiny, half lost in the overgrowth of the lemon balm, but still fighting for their bit of sunlight.

Chapter 7

Korissa reappeared with a basket. She set it down beside me. Inside were several pairs of garden gloves and two garden shears. All of it still had tags on it. “It was in the garage. I remembered dad buying this stuff when we moved in, saying he’d have to replant the flowerbed in front of the house. He hasn’t had time.”

I picked one of the shears, not wanting the gloves as I needed to feel the dirt run through my fingers, and opened it. I emptied the basket and began trimming the lavender and lemon balm back, filling the basket with the buds and leaves.

“I can help,” Korissa said. She put on a pair of garden gloves. “Just tell me what to do.” She leaned forward to smell one of the large blooms of purple flowers. “They smell so nice.”

“I’m just clearing the weeds so the real stuff has room to grow and trimming the rest.”

“How do you know what’s real and what’s weed?”

“I know all about plants,” I said. I pointed out the rows of lavender, lemon balm, and chamomile. There might be more further in, but so far everything seemed to be planted in rows of three, and it looked like they repeated because I could see more lavender on the other side of chamomile. I’d have never planted them that close to each other. Sometimes plants would mingle roots and create odd growths or even just a different scent or flavor. Perhaps whomever had planted the garden had simply done so for a wilder prairie look with useful plants. To most people they looked like weeds, and they were technically part of the ragweed family.

“This is English lavender,” I told Korissa and listed out the reasons I knew it was English and its properties, then followed suit with the lemon balm and chamomile.

She began to carefully clear away her small section of garden, adding the weeds to the pile I’d begun, but letting me do the cutting. Some of them I added to the baskets, other cuts were just to trim back overgrowth so the plants could thrive. All of which I explained to her.

“So alchemy is just knowing plants?” She wanted to know.

“More like chemistry. Mixing plants and the like. Alchemy is responsible for the birth of science and medicine. There are a lot of cultures that had aspects of alchemy. Sort of like ancient Druidry and modern herbalism.”

“Not like the Japanese anime where the kid loses his arm and his brother’s body?”

I smiled, knowing what she was talking about. “There are some similarities. Though I’ve never really explored the darkest sides of alchemy. I suspect it’s a lot like witchcraft, in that the intent is often important. Since its evolution in Egypt, there was a lot of talk about alchemy creating eternal life, and lead into gold.”

“Water into wine?” Korissa inquired.

“I think that was Jesus, but maybe he was into alchemy too. Technically you can create a water to wine sort of thing. Again chemistry. Lead into gold is a bit more complicated, especially if you want real gold and not just fool’s gold.”

“And eternal life?”

“A myth.”

“Does anyone really want to live forever?”

“Sure. Not me, but talk to vampires or even most weres and you’ll hear a lot of them fear death the most,” I said.

“But they can live forever.”

“Not really. Weres die all the time. I thinkApadid a study and found that weres only live twenty years once changed. Mostly because the wolf takes them over or dominance fights whittle out the rest. Vampires are much the same, though I think they average half a century or so. They also don’t reproduce as fast.”

“What?” She demanded. “Vampires can have babies?”

I laughed. “Not like that. It takes hundreds of blood exchanges and a lot of blood sharing to change someone into a vampire. It’s not like the movies. No three bites and you’re done.” What I didn’t tell her, is that I’d seen enough vampires in my life to know that a lot of their existence had roots in ancient magic not all that unlike alchemy. Which meant they were just a mix of elements that could be taken apart if the right thread was pulled. Soul, spirit, and body. Alchemy was trinity just like every other major religion out there. “Alchemy is sort of where science and magic meet.”

“For real?”

“For real.” I lifted my arm to show her my tattoos. “The symbols are alchemy, but they create magic, sort of binding spells. Mostly protection and healing. They are written on my skin because they use my spirit as energy. I can also use them to empower a mix of herbs to enhance healing.”

She stared at me in awe. “Can you teach me?”

“This is pretty advanced stuff. How about we start with simple chemistry and go from there? Baking is chemistry. Herbs are a building block. Many cultures use them in their own mixtures. And in fact, modern science takes things from herbs to make pharmaceuticals. It’s all about the mixture of elements. Some plants can be deadly if you eat a leaf, but the stem could cure a cold. Combine the leaf of one plant with the stem of another and you can make an aphrodisiac. It’s all about the chemistry.” The spirit and soul came later. I didn’t think I’d be around long enough to teach her any of that. Some people sort of just fell into the spiritual side like I had. Others really had to work for it. It was all about perception and I didn’t know Korissa well enough to know which way she leaned.