In the well-lit kitchen of the thatched cottage she called home, Oleandra toiled tirelessly, chopping her ingredients into fine slices. A cauldron bubbled over the fireplace, occasionally releasing puffs of purplish fumes. She'd fashioned it from an old cast-iron pot, so she wasn't sure if it would hold, or if her potion would melt a hole through the base.
Well, she'd just have to wait and see.
"Madam Witch! Madam Witch!"
A young boy burst into the kitchen, his small fist clutching a bundle of wildflowers. Oleandra looked away from her cutting board and smiled at him warmly.
"Is that the plant I asked you to find?" she asked serenely. "Let me take a closer look."
The boy darted forwards and, standing on the tip of his toes, he deposited a handful of white flowers on the kitchen table. Oleandra set her knife aside and leaned in to examine the plants, while he watched her with wide eyes, eager for her approval.
"This isn't hemlock, Jowan," said Oleandra, slightly disappointed. "These are elderflowers— the flowers of the elder tree. Herbaceous plants don't have tree trunks, you see?"
"Oh…"
Seeing that her young helper was close to tears, Oleandra reached out and ruffled his hair affectionately.
"It's all right, I'm not mad," she whispered in his ear. "I can still brew a nice pot of herbal tea with these flower petals. Why don't you go out and look for the correct flowers while I make that for you? And remember—"
"—don't put anything brightly coloured in your mouth!" Oleandra and Jowan sang in unison.
"Good boy," said Oleandra, patting him on the head. "Run along, then."
As she watched the young boy trotting away, she was reminded of a certain errand she needed to run— one that couldn't be delegated to anyone else.
"Jowan, would you mind calling your father?" Oleandra called out to him just as he was about to exit the house. "Let him know I'd like to speak with him."
The boy nodded and slipped outside, where his father would be tilling the fields after a rather mild winter. While she waited, Oleandra filled an iron kettle with a wave of her wand and set it on the fire beside the cauldron. While she waited for the water to warm and for her visitor to arrive, Oleandra resumed chopping her ingredients.
Two months.
That's how long she'd been stranded in this godforsaken time period. No more rubber-banding between the present and the past; this time, she was well and truly stuck. And she had only herself to blame.
Well, actually, it was all Theo's fault. But at this point, assigning blame was pointless— she wouldn't get the chance to punch him in the gut for another few thousand years.
"Enter," said Oleandra, hearing a knock at the door.
A thin, scruffy-looking man wearing a dirty straw hat stepped into the room. Oleandra could only imagine what it must feel like, to be forced to knock on his own door before being allowed into his own home. And from the nasty glint in his eye, she could tell that her magic was already wearing off…
"Damned Witch… Y-you led those G-Giants to our home…" he groaned, holding his head. "G-g-get… out… get out of my head!"
"Imperio," said Oleandra, flicking her wand lazily in his direction.
The man's eyes glazed over.
"That should do for the next month," Oleandra said dismissively. "You may return to your work in the fields. If anything happens in town— soldiers looking for me, rumours of other magic users— you drop everything and come straight back here. Unless that would make you look suspicious. Use your own discretion."
Oleandra frowned.
It was risky to use such vague instructions when using the Imperius Curse. Depending on how he interpreted the words 'use your own discretion,' he might see it as permission to call for help and escape her mental control.
"Don't do anything stupid, understand?" Oleandra added warningly, layering her voice with the echoes of thousands of women's voices of all ages. "Or else."
This wasn't part of the Imperius Curse, but a Fairy trick used to impress mortals.
Mortals? She meant humans. She was human, just like him.
She was just a little bit more powerful than most— no more, no less.
"Understood," the man said stiffly, and then he walked out the door as rigidly as if he had a broomstick up his arse instead of a spine.
Oleandra felt a twinge of guilt as she watched the man leave his house, but she quickly quashed it. Not long ago, she and the Wanderer had saved him and his fellow villagers from certain death at the hands of hungry Giants that had come down from the mountains. And yet, when she'd shown up on his doorstep— shivering, hungry, and alone, asking for help— he'd tried to turn her in to the town guard. She was a wanted woman, it turned out.
In Oleandra's opinion, having his house and mind temporarily occupied by a Witch was a small price to pay for repaying friendship with enmity… compared to being turned into a newt. Besides, the Herbology knowledge she was passing on to his son was worth far more than the time she was stealing from him. Plus, it's not like he had anything better to do with his time than tend his fields, and that's what she was having him do anyway.
Or at least, that's how Oleandra's good conscience chose to rationalise it. Dark magic was a slippery slope, one that led to darker states of mind— and she preferred not to dwell on it more than necessary.
"This has to work…" Oleandra murmured to herself, standing alone in the kitchen once more. "It just has to..."
It was only after killing her that Oleandra had realised the Dusk-Elf had been the only thing anchoring her to the present. Theo's experiment had unmoored her from her rightful time, but the blood she shared with the Dusk-Elf had kept her from drifting completely off the axis of time. But once that blood had been spilled, it could not be returned to the cold veins it had left.
At any rate, after letting despair take her for a week, a thought had struck Oleandra.
She was alone in this time, with no teachers and no deep knowledge of Alchemy or Time… but that didn't necessarily have to remain the case. She remembered Mai's words— and how the Sword of the Lake might be the key to restoring her soul's Shadow, along with Viviane and her past incarnations. Her selves had existed since the dawn of time, so one of them had to know a way out of her predicament.
By falling in a deep, dreamless coma and sleeping for seven days and seven nights next to her naked blade, the soul imprint Viviane had left on the Sword of the Lake during the forging process would imprint back onto her, helping her piece back the shattered puzzle that was her mind… in theory.
And so, with this new goal in mind, Oleandra set herself to brewing the Draught of Living Death. Before leaving the Druids' home in Nottingham Forest, she'd ransacked their cupboards, stealing every herb and potion ingredient she could find, so she wasn't lacking in that department.
Yet, the recipe called for certain ingredients to be fresh— and it also required ingredients that would only get imported to the British Isles during the Middle Ages, thousands of years from now. Common herbs such as dittany, fluxweed, mallowsweet, knotgrass, vervain, mandragora and wolfsbane (hemlock)— all grew wild across the British Isles. But others, like the elusive asphodel root, came from faraway, Mediterranean lands…