Amused, Lily climbed the last few stairs. ‘I would say I won’t do it again’—she lifted her hand to her hair, picking out the bits of foliage that had found their way into her curls—‘but you insist that no one tells lies in this house so…’

She smirked, went up on her tiptoes to kiss her uncle’s cheek, and then skipped past him, disappearing into her room. Just before she closed the door, she called out to him, ‘I’ll be down to open the shop before we even catch a sniff of the first customer of the day, I promise!’ and then she vanished in a flurry of skirts.

Uncle Alf’s apothecary was a breathtaking space and it was practically impossible to walk past his window without stopping to gaze at the myriad wares on offer. In the centre of the room sat the workbench where he concocted natural remedies, salves, herbal teas, and tinctures. This bench, much like the entire shop, was organised chaos. It was covered in old, dusty books that smelled of must, afternoon sunshine, and petrichor. The books were stuffed with separate pages of notes and sprigs of lavender to mark particularly important chapters. To the untrained eye, it was a mess that needed a good tidy. But to the Knights, it was their creative space; it was organised exactly as it should be without a page or speck of dust out of place.

The rest of the room was similarly wild in its organisation. On the right wall, hiding the staircase up to the residential rooms beyond, stood a hulking walnut cabinet which housed every single remedy Uncle Alf and Lily had ever made (and not yet sold). The cabinet was bursting with dark glass jars and bottles filled with dried herbs, unlabelled liquids, and other less distinguishable products that gave the entire room a sweet, rich smell. In the window, to brighten the room and catch the eye of passers-by, Lily had wrapped crystals and sea glass in old string and hung them just above the window frame where they refracted the sunlight that streamed through the huge open windows. Drifting in the breeze they hung there, glass tears falling silently, frozen in time.

Lily’s parents had died when she was a small child, long before Lily could remember the sound of their voices singing lullabies or telling ghost stories. Uncle Alf had taken her into his care and started to teach her the wonders of nature and its healing properties. He had thought that a useful vocation could help to distract this bright-eyed, wild-natured child from her grief. Uncle Alf had taught Lily how to brew every single potion he knew, so that now the two of them could quietly create new remedies from the base knowledge they both possessed. Bunches of lavender, nettle, marigolds, sage, and thyme hung from the ceiling, drying in preparation to be ground up and used in a variety of concoctions. These hanging herbs were the main reason why Lily frequently had petals and leaves caught in her curls. She had long since given up ducking and fighting her way around them. Instead, she’d made a habit of charging through them, much to the chagrin of her uncle.