A Touch of Death

Chapter 16

The stairs up to the tower seemed positively endless.

The workshop she was supposed to navigate her way towards was tucked away in the topmost area of the backmost tower of the castle, the highest point of the building. Aoife had no earthly idea what the Enchanter was thinking when he chose to put his main workshop up here, but it definitely was not for the convenience of visitors. The thought crossed her mind that he must have truly incredible discipline to be able to make this climb every day, quickly followed by the realization that she would need to have incredible discipline to be able to meet him up here when he wanted to use this space for lessons.

It was surprising to her that he even wanted her to come here. Days had passed since their meeting in the dead of night, and neither one of them spoke of it. She'd thought about it though. Endlessly. His words echoed in her head until she wasn't sure what to do with them any longer, until she pushed them aside with the intent to never think about it again, only to pull out and pick apart the memories mere hours later. She was distracted during training and couldn't keep focused long enough to practice her reading, and finally the Enchanter seemed to realize why.

The night before, at dinner, he'd invited her up to the tower.

Well, ordered her to come to the tower was a little more accurate. However, thinking of it as an invitation somewhat helped how much she wanted to complain about the interminable climb to the top. Perhaps now she would have her answers. Perhaps not. In any case, this was a chance to see what he really did during the day, when he wasn't teaching her. The majority of the time he was simply locked away doing experiments. Aoife's heart beat wildly in panic when she wondered what he might want her to do for those studies, but though she still wasn't comfortable with the idea, she found that she wasn't as entirely fearful as before. The Enchanter had shown himself to be not only a fearsome Fae, but an intuitive person who was, she thought, not unkind when he wished to be.

The spiral staircase eventually came to an end, even though at some point she had been positive that it was an infinite climbing torture device. At the top of the stairs, there was a large, wooden doorway with a small window, but it was too high for Aoife to see into the room. Instead, she knocked.

"Um, hello? Enchanter?" It felt strange to call him that, by a title and not a name, but she didn't have anything else to use. Only a moment later the door creaked open, and his pale face came into view as he beckoned her inside.

"Welcome to the workshop."

Aoife wanted to say that it was incredible, she really did, but the only word she could think of to describe it was catastrophic.

The room was a complete disaster, to say the least. It looked like three tornadoes and a tidal wave had crashed through, and then the Enchanter had just picked up and kept on with his research as though nothing was wrong. Without cleaning up. Ever. It was much larger than she'd expected it to be, for a tower workspace, but the incredible amount of clutter made it seem smaller than it was. The room was circular, with an open space in the very middle. A fireplace with a roaring fire was across from the door, providing heat and light in the isolated space. A large cauldron hung over the fire, full of bubbling brown liquid that gave off a cloyingly sweet scent.

There was a window to the right of the door looking out on the forest, the same view that Aoife's window had, except much, much higher. In front of the window was a large, wooden table, covered in glasses, beakers, bowls, and knives. It looked like he'd been making potions and poultices for weeks without cleaning anything up! The sight of it made Aoife shudder— with that kind of workspace, you were practically sabotaging yourself with contamination for precise measurements.

Beside the table was a large cabinet with its doors hanging lackadaisically open, full of glass jars and bottles, none of which appeared to have any labels. Another cabinet appeared to be full of scrolls and books, notes and journals, practically bulging at the seams with papers. Finally, to the left of the door, there was a long, red sofa. It was the only relatively clean thing in the room, though there were a few blankets draped haphazardly over the back. Presumably, he slept up here sometimes.