“Still,” said the Nanny, continuing to rummage about, “who of us really can see our own deaths coming?”

I didn’t know back then that this would be a problem of mine decades hence: that I couldn’t find my own death. “Have you got anything in there?” I asked.

The Nanny withdrew some prettily carved beads, ivory or the like, and a golden garter worked with repoussé trim. “The beads were made by Melena’s husband, the minister,” she said. “They’re inscribed with symbols of the Unnamed God, I’m told. To me they look like denomination emblems from foreign monetary systems, but what do I know. Like I said, I haven’t traveled much.”

I took the beads. They felt cool and aloof in my hands, and spoke nothing to me. If I’d hoped for a jolt of spiritual connection, I was disappointed. “Let’s see the garter,” I said. “And this belongs to your Ladyship?”

“Did. Does. That is…” And here the Nanny began to blush, remembering I was supposed to be a truth-teller. “I came away with it in my belongings, somehow, last time I visited,” she admitted. Meaning she stole it. I nodded without disapproval; I wasn’t above theft myself, though it was the edible thing rather than the beautiful that I usually lifted.

I felt it, to little benefit. The woman who wore such a decorated legging expected her legs to be explored by admirers. That was all, and I’d already figured out as much. I handed it back. “Is there nothing else?”

“Oh, you are good,” said the client. “Here you go.” Next she fished out a small bottle made of green glass with a cork stopper in it. It stood so-high, about, and a paper label was affixed to the front. Yes, I remember what it said; give me a moment. It read MIRACLE ELIXIR.

“You have miracle elixirs, so what are you coming to me for?” I asked.

“I need all the help I can get,” she replied.

I picked at the label with my finger and some of it came off. A scrap of paper at the end of the word, showing part of the ornately inscribed X and IR-XIR, it looked like, or-LIR. I examined the dried glue on the back, as if it might be a pale word in a secret language. It was a glob of dried glue, no more, no less.

Still, the client wanted theatrics, and I think I was more alert than I’d ever been. I found a porcelain mortar and I burned the scrap of paper, and looked to see if I could read words forming in the arabesques of smoke. I couldn’t. I mashed up herbs and crystals and added some oil of gomba, and heated the whole mess in an alembic. I counted backward by seventeens. All the usual party tricks.

Then I popped off the cork and took a swig of the miracle potion.

I’m not a poet, and despite my profession I’m not particularly good at description. The taste burned and stank, and I felt the liquor in my eyes stew. Waves rose and fell in half formation, like apathetic ghosts, like anemic fogs. I could almost see-I reached, mentally-I could almost read what it meant. But it was shapeless as most dreams really are; we put onto our dreams the shapes we think with during the day, depriving our dreams of the message they are trying to deliver. Such it was with me. There was so much life, it was so vivid: but I could only think of it with the experience of life I had already had. And despite my evident age, that wasn’t much experience at all. It was like a five-year-old, upon learning the alphabet, being presented with a copy of the annotated Great Morphologies of the ancient tutorix Gorpha vin Tesserine. A child might be able to count the numbers marking off the footnotes, but not much more than that.