Potion
The scent of musty damp in this wine cellar pervades your senses as the inky darkness weighs on your shoulders. You shine your phone light around at the shelves, lined with dusty bottles. Blindingly bright, slicing through the darkness, illuminating trailing cobwebs and grime. You try not to look too closely at the floor, in case you find evidence of the rodents which almost certainly dwell down here.
It felt a little strange that the owner of this old hotel allowed you to simply walk down here to pick out whichever bottle you wanted, but you certainly weren’t going to refuse the offer. These rural hotels are obviously more relaxed than the ones you’re more familiar with, and it’s not like you’ve even been to this country before. For all you know, it might have been rude of you to refuse the offer.
You round a corner and find a secluded shelf under a stone archway. Three bottles stand on it, their labels obscured by dust. It’s hard to say how long they’ve been here. They almost look like they could be even older than the hotel owner, with his white hair and thick spectacles. You wipe the label a little but can’t really get through the grime. Wiping a little of the dust from the glass, you could swear you catch a glimpse of a brief opalescent shimmer inside the bottle from the light you’re holding. Probably just a reflection, and your eyes playing tricks here in the darkness.
You stifle the urge to wipe your fingers against your jeans to rid them of the thick dust from the bottle. You fleetingly consider finding a cleaner bottle, but your father always said that the older a bottle of wine was, the better it must be. These must certainly be some of the oldest bottles here. Shrugging, you lift the bottle from the shelf. It’s heavier than you expect. Carefully, you make your way back over the damp stone tiles and up the steep, narrow steps. This old place was most certainly not built with safety in mind!
You make your way back to the lounge above. Wind whistles under a doorway, making a tortured groaning sound as you walk past it. Danica is sitting at the low coffee table by the fireplace right where you left her, looking at something on her phone. In front of her are two clean glasses. She looks up as she sees you approaching and flashes you a smile.
“You were gone a while,” she says, reclining into the cracked leather of her chair. “I was starting to think I should call mountain rescue or something.”
You laugh as you sit back down in a similarly decrepit chair with worn brocade upholstery. Behind you, a crumbling sound as a piece of firewood falls apart and the flames dip slightly lower. “Do they rescue people from caves too? Because they’d need specialist gear down there.”
“I don’t think there are many options for emergency services out in a place like this,” she shrugs. “So let’s see then! What treasures did you dig up?”
You place the old bottle on the table, still thick with dust.
“Holy crap, seriously?” Danica looks at you, incredulous. “You know I was just kidding about digging stuff up, right?”
“Hey, the guy said any bottle we wanted,” you shrug. “Where did he go anyway?”
“I guess maybe he went to bed? It’s pretty late.”
“We should probably clean this, I guess.”
Danica replies by giving you a scathing look which you take to mean ‘obviously, fool.’ You walk over to the nearby bar and return with a bowl of water and some paper towels and the two of you swab the bottle down, removing as much of the encrusted grime as you can. Underneath, the bottle has a strange sheen, with a slightly purplish hue. As you look at it, you catch a brief opalescent shimmer cross the glass. The label is yellowed and its derelict condition was not helped by the swabbing, but it still appears legible. Or at least, it would be legible if you could read it.
“Do you know what language this even is?” you ask.
“No clue,” Danica scratches her brow.
You look at the label closely. The writing is made of bold glyphs with strangely graceful curves and sharp angles. It’s like no script you’ve ever seen before. You could almost imagine it carved into a clay tablet you might see in a museum.
“Should we really open this?” you ask, looking at it with the kind of reverence a palaeontologist might reserve for a freshly excavated dinosaur skull.
Danica shrugs and stares at the two empty glasses. “I finished my last drink half an hour ago.”
“Ok ok.”
You break a wax seal off the top of the bottle, and work a corkscrew into an ancient cork, hoping it doesn’t break apart as you do so. At first it’s stuck fast, and takes a little coaxing to pull out. Carefully, you ease it up and out and with a loud pop, you finally free the cork. As you pull the cork from the bottle, your ears catch the sound of... whispering voices?
You frown. “Did you hear that?” you ask.
“Hear what?”
“I thought I heard something.”
“Wind in the chimney, maybe?” Danica glances over at the fire. Only a few flames remain on the dwindling firewood.
You nod. That must be it. Old buildings like this are full of strange sounds. You lift the bottle, which seems somehow even heavier now, and carefully pour some into the two glasses.
Danica lifts her glass and inspects it, raising an eyebrow. “Weird,” she says.
You look at yours. Is it just because of the dim firelight, or is it strangely dark? Lifting it, you catch the fragrance of raspberries and old oak barrels. You hold it up in front of the fireplace, but you can’t see a hint of light passing through it. It absorbs all the light, appearing almost blacker than black,
You look over to Danica. You meet her eyes and she grins. You raise your glass. “Cheers,” you say.
“Cheers,” she clinks her glass to yours. “Here’s to the strangest and most remote hotel I’ve ever stayed in!”
“And the creepy jagged mountains outside!” you laugh.
You take a sip from the glass. It certainly tastes like wine. A warm flavour, with flavours of roses, blackberries, and the feeling of being wrapped in a warm blanket on a cold winter evening after stepping inside out of the wind. Wait, how do you know what that tastes like? You look up at Danica.
She looks back at you, her mouth open in surprise. “This tastes like,” she fumbles for words, “like waking up refreshed on a Saturday morning and having no reason to get out of bed.”
You almost laugh, but the serious look on her face stops you from doing so. You look into your glass. You think you see a brief opalescent shimmer run across the surface of it. You tentatively take another sip and taste a relaxing walk through a rose garden, with a lover, on a warm summer evening. You blink, taken aback.
The two of you sit together quietly, sipping from your glasses, enjoying the flavours of warm, soothing feelings in the black wine. You barely exchange words with each other, but it almost feels like you don’t need to. Once or twice, you’re almost certain that the two of you must have tasted the same... experience? Memory? You’re not even sure.
As you finish your glass, you glance over your shoulder at the fireplace. The last flames have died away now, leaving only glowing red embers. “Do you think we should tend the fire?” you ask.
You look over to Danica. You meet her eyes and a brief opalescent shimmer crosses her irises. “Don’t worry,” she says. “I’ll take care of that.” She casts her gaze at the fireplace and it immediately erupts into flames, casting a soothing glow throughout the room.
You look at the fire, and then slowly, bemusedly, you look back over at Danica.
She gives you a warm smile. “Shall we have another glass?” she asks.