“So, I just have to measure these herbs on the scales and toss them in a pot?” she asked.
“Yep. It’s just a bit tedious to make since it requires many different kinds.”
“Don’t be silly. This is nothing for me!”
Rob had his head on Olivia’s knee the whole time, his tail wagging furiously.
Snow bounced up into her lap and purred, Been long.
Dale nipped Olivia’s ankles, saying, You gone, I sad. It did hurt a tiny bit.
Eventually, the pot started to bubble, and the three animals ran from the kitchen into the restaurant saying, Ew, smell so bad, bad smell.
“I’m sorry, it does smell,” said Olivia.
“And dogs and cats have a strong sense of smell,” said Lara. “Right, so, it’s been simmering for just about the twenty minutes it says in the recipe. Want to try some?”
“Yep. I felt so bad for how sad Arthur was when I was stuck in bed.”
“I know what you mean. It almost seemed like his world was ending. It made me wonder if I’d end up making Colin that sad, someday.”
“His world was ending… Yeah, that’s exactly what he seemed like. I’m going to take this tonic every day from now on and be very careful, so I don’t get another cold like that.”
“Please do.”
Olivia pinched her nose and downed the tonic in one go. “Urgh. That’s not nice. But my grandparents drank this every day, morning and night, and they lived a long life.”
“Maybe I’ll try it. Urk. It’s bitter. And kind of…grassy.”
“Yeah. You did a good job making it. It tastes just like the tonic my grandmother would drink.”
“By the way, Olivia, something weird happened. There were deer tracks in the snow in the garden every morning when you were sick.”
“Deer tracks?” Olivia thought it must be the golden deer, though she obviously couldn’t say that to Lara.
“It looked like this deer came every single night. And it must’ve been a pretty big one, based on the size of the tracks. I wonder what that’s about.”
“I don’t know. Though, I imagine the deer will stop coming.”
“Why do you think that?”
“I just have a feeling.”
That evening, the customers who came to the restaurant would ask about the smell, and quite a few of them wanted to try it for themselves once Lara explained it was a health tonic.
“Would you stick some in a flask for me? How much you charging? Really? That’s cheap. Think I’ll buy more next time I come, too,” said one.
“This is the one Marguerite and Jenkins used to drink all the time, isn’t it? I remember that smell,” said another.
“Those two were always in good health up until the day they traveled to God’s garden. I want to be like that, too.”
“If I bring you bottles tomorrow, will you sell me the tonic? I want to buy extra for the missus.”
Lara was very insistent that it tasted terrible, but the customers, primarily middle-aged or older, just said, “I don’t care about taste as long as it works,” and said they’d still buy it even after having a taste test.
Soup Forest was never lacking in customers, not with how popular its soup, sides, and health tonic was.
One day, they once again sold out of both soup and tonic. Olivia decided to close the restaurant a little early and spend the time knitting a sweater for Arthur.
“Olivia, I’m home,” he called when he came back.
“Hello, Arthur. Dinner will be ready soon.”
“Were you knitting? If you’re free to knit, you should be lying down.”
“I’m fine. I’m completely back to normal.”
“You work too much.”
Olivia looked back from where she was reheating the soup and placed a hand on either side of Arthur’s face while he was trying to see what she’d had in her hands.
“What?” asked Arthur.
“Every day I’ve been drinking the tonic my grandparents used to have.”
“Are you feeling sick again?”
“No. It’s for your general health. I’m going to outlive you, so I never make you feel sad.”
Arthur pulled her into a hug as she looked up at him. “I hope you do just that. I definitely want you to outlive me.”
“I know.”
“I don’t ever want you to worry me like that again.”
“I won’t.”
“And give me some of that tonic, too.”
“Sure, but I recommend having it with dinner.”
“I can handle it if you can.” He took a swig. “Urgh. Ack. It’s like my whole mouth is filled with grass. And it’s bitter. And sour!”
“I told you. Here. It’s a bit better if you put some honey in your mouth.”
Olivia put the spoonful of honey in Arthur’s mouth, and he pushed it around. Even once they started eating, he kept grumbling, “Should’ve waited till after dinner.”
For some reason, the foul-tasting tonic exploded in popularity and customers brought empty bottles whenever they visited Soup Forest.
Olivia, having fully recovered from her cold, was one day simmering the tonic in a large pot. She would pass it through a sieve and use a funnel to pour it into the bottles the customers brought.
Arthur frowned at this, saying she was only working more now, even though she’d just recovered from her illness, but Olivia insisted she wasn’t pushing herself.
“Besides,” she said, “I never manage to use all the medicinal herbs I dry and store each year. I just end up throwing them out. It’s good that I can use them like this. They start to lose their potency after summer, even being dried.” Then she busily went to make the tonic.
The so-called Soup Forest Tonic sold well, the primary buyers being the restaurant’s regulars, giving Olivia an unexpected income.
“Lara, use this to buy something,” she said one day.
“Huh, a gold coin? Are you sure?”
“Yep. You helped make the tonic, after all.”
“Thank you! I’m going to save this and use it to buy furniture when Colin and I move in together.”
“Good idea. Once the snow melts, we’ll go out together and forage for more medicinal herbs, then we will make lots of the tonic again.”
“All right!”
Snow and Dale were complaining every day.
Gross.
Bad smell.
Rob had a better nose than the cats and never came back into the kitchen since the first day. Lately, he’d run away to some corner the minute they started boiling the tonic. Sometimes he’d even go out into the cold to escape.
Olivia’s regular customers were all in good health that winter. No one died of contagious illnesses, and no one even ended up laid up in bed for a long time. They would tell each other, “I’m certain it’s ’cause of that tonic,” and some never stopped saying, “I want to keep buying it even once spring comes.”
The goats Pete and Pepe actually seemed to like the smell of the tonic. If Olivia went to the goat barn after making it, they would baa at her and say, Smell good, and, Tasty smell, as they sniffed her.
Every morning since Olivia recovered from her cold, the first thing she did was go out in the garden and look for hoofprints, but there were never any.
“He must have been concerned for me,” she murmured.
Even when I was a child and thought I didn’t belong anywhere, there might have been animals like him who cared about me.
She’d never realized that before.