Howl's Twisted Castle

6: A Little Red Door

Spring.

Spring is my favourite season for so many reasons; the colours in bloom; the fragrance of new blossoms that poke out of the ground after a long winter, washing the countryside with the warm breeze that rolls through, melting away the last bits of offending snow. 

Today though, spring was not my friend.

Every bone in my body ached from the crisp breeze. It nipped at my exposed cheeks and numbed my fingers until they felt raw and sore. I kept the blanket wrapped tightly around my shoulders, muttering curse words under my breath. Markel, on the other hand, followed quietly beside me, matching my stride and waiting each time I needed to rest. He smiled at me jovially, remarking on the lovely weather we were having. It took every bit of my effort to smile back rather than tell him how I felt about the bloody weather. My old age was making me cynical.

Markel stopped for what seemed like the thousandth time and pulled a pair of pruning shears out of the satchel he had strapped to his back. Kneeling next to the dirt road we'd been travelling on, he rubbed his fingers on the leaves of a little plant that jutted out from the ground and sniffed them. The first time I saw him do this, I thought it was strange, but Markel was quick to explain his method when it was apparent that I was perplexed. Markel was a botanist by trade; he collected herbs he found during his travels and cultivated the herbs he couldn't see. The herbs were then dried, packaged, and sold for a modest fee. He explained that some herbs were the sort used for cooking and others had critical medicinal properties for healing. The more he told me about it, the more I was amazed by his work.

Markel pushed up from his knees, tucking the bundle of herbs into his satchel. He held out his hand in offering, and I leaned in and inhaled the crisp, refreshing fragrance on his fingertips. It smelled of the little candies we kept in a glass dish back home.

"Peppermint," I hummed, inhaling the sweet scent once again. "It's incredible that you can spot all these different plants so easily, I feel like I'd be plucking grass and weeds all day if I tried!" 

He merely shrugged, keeping his eyes on the road ahead of us. "You make it sound more difficult than it is. Botany requires no amount of real skill, only memorization of pictures in a book. I don't apply the remedies; I just collect them. Healers are the ones with the real work, making poultices and medicines out of all this stuff," he gestured to the now bulging satchel of herbs. 

"You're too hard on yourself," I remarked. "If not for all your hard work, healers wouldn't have the ingredients for their remedies." 

"I suppose you're right," he chuckled, running a free hand through the mess of curly red hair.

"I must ask though, why botany?" I gave him a quizzical look.

"Money I suppose," he adjusted the strap on his shoulder, thinking about it more. "Master and I have to pay for food somehow, and he's not exactly inclined to work. I took up botany, and I like it well enough." He dropped the conversation at that, but it only served to raise more questions for me. 

For the first time, I seriously considered where we were going. Markel seemed to live far on the outskirts of town, really, really far out. We'd been walking for almost an hour, and the only change of scenery was the town as it slowly disappeared into the background. Nothing but rolling hills lay ahead of us and to my right was a dense forest so thick with underbrush we couldn't possibly walk through it. The further we walked, the less certain I was about our destination.