And so it was that I fell into disbelief again. For, as we stood on the bridge together and I prepared to jump, just as the word run had tumbled off my tongue, the girl lifted her thin legs over the railing of Blackfriars Bridge. She glanced back at me with a gentle gaze, the edges of her skirt whipping in the breeze that pushed up against her from the River Thames.

Was this a trick? Or were my eyes deceiving me, perhaps under attack by the demon inside me, ravaging me of this valuable sense in my final moments? I heaved my weight forward to grab her, but she slid away from me along the railing, my efforts no match for her nimble movements. This left me furious, as her little game had taken precious seconds from me. Somehow, I must find the strength to lift my own bones over the metal railing before the officer seized me.

One hand on the railing, Eliza’s other hand clutched the tiny blue vial that she had just offered me. She lifted it to her lips, sucked the liquid from it like a starving infant and tossed it into the water below.

“It will save me,” she whispered. Then her fingers, one by one, slid from the railing like ribbons.

Everything placed unto the body removes something from it, calls it forth or represses it.

My mother taught me this simple lesson, the power of earth-borne remedies, when I was a child. They were the words of the great philosopher Aulus, of whom little was known. Some, in fact, doubted his very existence, much less the veracity of this claim.

His words flooded over me as I watched Eliza’s body fall. I had never before experienced the strangeness of this vantage point, to watch someone fall directly below me. Her hair pulled upward as though I had an invisible hold on it. Her arms crossed over her chest as though she meant to protect something inside. She looked directly ahead, her gaze on the river outstretched before her.

I clung to the promise of Aulus’s words. I knew that, placed unto the body, oils and tinctures and draughts could remove—indeed, unweave and destroy—the creation of one’s womb. They could remove the thing one most desired.

I knew, too, that they could call forth pain and hatred and revenge. They could call forth evil within oneself, the rotting of bones, the splitting of joints.

Yet placed unto the body, these things could repress...what? Could they repress death?