Sitting in my cottage with the window open, I can hear the wind blow the dry leaves outside. Many of the branches, besides those of the evergreens, are now bare. Another fall come and gone. I sip my cup of hot tea, study its amber color and note how similar it is to the remedy I finished with Dorothy’s help. It turned out quite nicely too, dear reader.
When I arrived at Dorothy’s home a few days ago to tell her of my plan, she thought it was “just the thing” and invited me in to sit and draw Impressions with her. At first we weren’t sure of where to begin. Funny how that sometimes happens when trying to start up a conversation, but then I thought to ask her about the things in her home. There was a rusty, old, punched tin lantern, in many ways like the Long Night Lantern I keep in my own cottage. Dorothy picked it up, a wistful smile spreading across her aged face, and she told me it had belonged to her grandparents, and then to her parents, and now to her. She talked of the nights when she was just a girl and had fallen asleep gazing at its twinkling lights, listening to her grandmother’s soft humming from the other room. She told me of her father, who had known the ways of the forest; it was he who had taught her to forage and listen to the animals. And she remembered her mother, mending a bird’s broken wing, then showing her how to draw the strength from herself and give it to another living creature: the art of healing magic.
As she recalled all these things, sweet memories from autumns past, I began to pull the Impressions from the air and let them trickle down into one vial after another, until finally Dorothy stopped and the table was full of liquid memories —or at least the feeling of those memories. She smiled and held one up. Most of them had turned out the color of the falling leaves, and when I added them to the base of the remedy that color remained: the color of fall, the color of tea, the color of memories.
There came a tapping at the window, and one of Dorothy’s crow friends croaked in that hoarse but gentle manner they have. I said I had begun getting to know the crows too, and she mentioned it was nice that one had stopped by in this moment. “You see,” she explained “when I was growing up, my father used to tell me that crows are special birds; they are the keepers of memories.” In one sense I could understand that, having seen for myself their extraordinary ability to remember things, like words and the faces of people who were kind to them. It seemed fitting somehow, but now, dear reader, I feel it to be doubly true after what the white-eyed crow showed me later that same day.
I said goodbye to Dorothy and Tibbs for the fall, leaving the now completed Memories remedy with them, and decided I’d like to spend the rest of the day at the Well of the Green Sister. Seeing the crow had reminded me of the hollow tree and the room with the painted wall. So I passed through the dark hollow, and quietly walked those ancient, shady halls alone. A silent reverence lingered there, from the faces of the stone giants to the simple furnishings of the small rooms. I went and sat upon the floor of the room with the alcoves and the mural, as I had with Alexander, and enjoyed the tranquil hush I felt there.
After some time of studying the painting, a shadow flew in through the arched doorway. “Hello there,” I said with a wry smile, for I recognized it to be the white-eyed crow. It flapped about the room for a moment before landing in one of the alcoves. It cawed then picked up something in its beak. Surely nothing of consequence, I had thought to myself, but it flew over to me and dropped the object in my lap before flying away again. A curious thing it was, small and round like a river rock and the same clear color as amber. It was warm to the touch, and the longer I held it, well… dear reader, it felt like the memories I had drawn for Dorothy. Not precisely like hers, but similar, and somehow older... yes, much older. It was like that little stone was an Impression or a memory, or maybe both. I’ve never seen any Impressional magic in solid form; it’s always fluid. But even as I held it I felt… pensiveness… wistfulness… time passing… melancholy and hope.
Oh goodness, I still don’t fully grasp it, dear reader. I left the little stone in its alcove for safe keeping, but now, as I sit in my cottage, I wonder what it could be. I drink my tea and regard its color: the color of the stone, the color of fall, the color of memories.