The Apothecary of Athens (Part 3): Let's Go with Apothecary
Medea.
The linen cloth I was folding slipped past my knees and pooled onto the floor.
“Hm? What’s the matter?”
“…No. It’s nothing.”
Medea. The Witch of Colchis.
The woman who butchered her own younger brother for the man she loved, boiled an aged king alive into broth, and, upon being betrayed by that same man, slaughtered the very children she had borne him.
Back when I had cracked open that comic book thinking of the pretty Caster from a certain moon franchise, my jaw had dropped in sheer, unadulterated horror by the time she flew off in her dragon chariot.
That really wasn't a story meant for kids to handle…
The problem came after.
In my memory, Medea’s tale ended right there with the Dragon Chariot of Helios. I vaguely recalled a small text box summarizing what came next, but I couldn't remember a single detail.
Is it after that? Or is it before that story even began? Well, this isn't Colchis, so it has to be after she left, right?
Granted, there was no law saying only one Medea could exist in this world. In Korea alone, how many people were named Choi Jiwoo? But with the Bear himself walking around in the flesh, the odds of her not being the Medea I knew were…
The Bear’s stepmother is that psychopathic witch…?!
“So, are you not going?”
Melissa scooped the cloth up from the floor.
Quickly composing myself, I took the linen from her hands. “I’ll go. Just need to take care of something in the square first.”
“The square? Ah, that huge guy from yesterday?”
“You saw him?”
“The mistress told me about it,” Melissa said, giving a light shrug.
I let out an “Ah,” bobbed my head slightly, and turned back to the cloth. “I promised I’d check on his arm one more time.”
“Mmh, quite the responsible one, aren’t you?”
“If I start something, I have to see it through properly.”
If I abandoned a patient with trauma of that severity without even monitoring his progress, my conscience would give me no peace even if I someday managed to return to Seoul.
Besides, there’s something I need to confirm.
I finished folding the cloth and rose to my feet. The mistress cast a critical eye over the folds before handing me a piece of bread.
“Off you go, then.”
“For the dispensary work, head to the palace’s back gate and ask for an old gentleman named Theon,” Melissa chimed in, pointing out the window while chewing on her own bread. “Tell him Doris sent you, and he’ll know what to do.”
I popped a bite of bread into my mouth and nodded.
Hiss—
“Eeeek?!”
The snake gave me a long, unblinking look, then slithered right back beside the hearth where I had slept last night and coiled itself up.
“Doesn’t look like it plans on following me to the palace, at least.”
“Why is it acting like this is its house?!”
“Hush, girl. I told you it’s a house snake,” the mistress scolded, rapping Melissa lightly on the noggin.
Suppressing a chuckle, I stepped over to the hearth.
The Bear, and now Medea.
The situation had grown decidedly more complicated, but my objective remained the same: sell my knowledge, not my body.
I plucked a piece of cooled charcoal from the ashes. A light scratch against my skin left a clean streak of soot on my fingertips.
By midday, the sun hung high in the sky.
The Bear was already waiting in the square when I arrived. Gone were the ragged clothes from yesterday; he was dressed in crisp, clean white robes, though the ostentatious sword still hung at his hip.
“Well, look who’s here—our little doctor.”
“I told you, I’m not a doctor.”
“What should I call you, then? Apothecary? Healer?”
“…Let’s go with apothecary.”
Healer sounded like some sort of quack cultist.
“Let’s see that wound first.”
The Bear complied without fuss, extending his left arm. Sitting down beside him, I began unwrapping the cloth.
The swelling has gone down… and there’s no sign of spreading infection.
Fortunately, yesterday’s treatment hadn't been in vain. Keeping my eyes on the perimeter of the wound, I asked, “Did you feel any chills or shivering during the night?”
“Nope. Slept like a rock.”
“And the pain compared to yesterday?”
“Way better. As long as I don't poke at it, it barely hurts at all.”
I checked his other arm, then pressed the back of my hand against his forehead. The Bear cleared his throat with a faint cough.
“Your hands are warm.”
“Are they?”
Did children naturally run a little hot? Shrugging it off as nothing important, I lowered my hand.
No noticeable fever either… So there are no signs of deterioration.
I pulled the piece of charcoal from my pocket and traced a line along the outer margin of the erythema. The Bear looked back and forth between his arm and my face.
“What’s that for?”
“It marks how far the redness extends today. If the red spreads beyond this line, you have to let me know immediately.”
“And if it doesn’t?”
“If it doesn’t, that’s good news.”
I took the fresh cloth he had brought and unrolled it. “By the way, did things go well up there yesterday?”
“Yeah. The king welcomed me as a guest. Said he’s even throwing a banquet the day after tomorrow.”
“And did you find that magnificent father of yours?”
The corner of his mouth curved up into a grin. “Not yet. There’s something I have to show him first.”
Honestly, this guy is so high-maintenance.
Tightening the knot with a firm tug, I changed the subject. “Where did you say you came from again?”
“Troezen.”
“You walked all the way here from there?”
“Naturally. Heroic epics begin on solid ground, not aboard a ship.”
As if he’d been waiting for an opening, the Bear turned fully toward me, his eyes sparkling with anticipation. “Don’t tell me you’re actually interested in my story now?”
It was the face of someone practically begging to be asked. Having finished bandaging his arm, I straightened my posture and nodded.
“Yes.”
“Great! Then I’ll lay it out step by step.” He held up a single finger. “On my way through Epidaurus, I ran into this club-footed brute wielding an iron mace. So I tossed him aside and took the mace for myself.”
In my mind’s eye, the first page of the comic book flipped.
A second finger went up.
“The next bastard was a lunatic who tied folks between two bent pine trees to rip them in half. He didn't seem particularly remorseful, so I gave him a taste of his own medicine.”
Two pages.
The third finger.
“Then there was this wild sow tearing up not just people, but entire fields. Roasted her whole and ate her. Tasted pretty good, too.”
Three pages.
The Bear went to raise a fourth finger, but realizing he was quickly going to run out of fingers at this rate, he just lowered his hand.
“Next was an old geezer perched on a cliff who insisted travelers wash his feet.”
“His feet?”
“Whenever someone bent over to wash them, he’d kick them right off the ledge. Straight into the sea below.”
“Ha.”
Now, that wasn't in the comic book. And somehow, I had a pretty good idea why.
I suppose a children’s comic couldn't exactly feature a moral like ‘show someone kindness and you get kicked off a cliff.’
Ancient Greece was truly a wild place. If these people had that much energy to burn, why didn't they put it into farming instead of coming up with such creative ways to be menaces by the roadside?
“I kicked that old fart off instead, and then in Eleusis, I slammed this king into the dirt after he demanded we wrestle to the death. And the last one was that bed business I told you about yesterday.”
“…I see.”
There was no room left for doubt. The bear-like brute sitting right in front of me was, without a shadow of a doubt…
Theseus.
Admiring his newly wrapped arm, the Bear beamed with satisfaction. “Anyway, little apothecary, care to take on a job?”
“You mean the palace dispensary looking for an extra pair of hands?”
“Whoa.”
The Bear blinked, caught entirely off guard. Washing my hands as if it were no big deal, I tossed back a question of my own.
“So, what kind of person is this queen?”
He pondered for a moment before answering. “She’s a young, gorgeous lady from a far-off eastern realm. Though… she does give off a bit of a chilling vibe.”
“A chilling vibe?”
“She asked me three times where I came from. Even after I answered, she kept asking, over and over… Then she asked for my mother’s name.”
“What did you tell her?”
“The truth, of course. Aethra.”
“Hmm.”
A psychopathic stepmother digging into the background of her husband’s illegitimate son.
…Isn't this insanely dangerous?
Of course, I had no idea how the timeline played out from here. In my memory, Medea was the witch who flew off in a dragon chariot, and the next chapter of Theseus’s legend was sailing to Crete to brawl with the Minotaur. But knowing the kind of woman Medea was…
“Oh, come to think of it, there was one peculiar thing.”
A massive hand suddenly descended upon the crown of my head. The Bear grinned broadly, ruffling my hair with his palm.
“Turns out the queen has quite the soft spot for cute things.”
The palace’s back gate smelled of boiled onions. Slipping past a pair of water urns, I mentioned that Doris had sent me, and a woman stirring a cauldron pointed toward an inner door with her chin.
“Old man Theon! You’ve got another one!”
Stepping through the doorway, I was greeted by the scent of dried herbs and resin. Jars and wicker baskets lined the shelves along the walls in dense, orderly rows.
“Can you read?”
An old man seated at a low table looked up at me. A few wisps of hair trailed over his hunched back, and he held a wooden label so close to his nose it nearly grazed the tip. Behind him, half a dozen young kids were scurrying about—carrying bundles of herbs, sweeping the floor, sorting through baskets.
Nothing but little kids.
“No,” I answered, stepping closer to his side.
As I approached, I took a discreet look at his eyes.
A cataract?
His pupils were clouded, like water tainted with a drop of milk. When looking at me while I stood silhouetted against the sunlight, he had squinted sharply; now that the light had shifted, the squint relaxed. It was a textbook presentation.
“Old gentleman.”
“What is it?”
“You have a haze over your vision, don’t you? And when you go out into the bright light, it’s actually harder to see than in the shade.”
The old man pulled his face away from the label he had been glaring at. “It is the falling of the waters. It happens to all who grow old.”
The falling of the waters.
In English, a cataract was called just that—cataract, meaning a waterfall. My professor had never bothered to explain why a disease that turns the crystalline lens white was named after a waterfall, but standing here now, it finally clicked.
“You can’t cure it.”
My blunt assessment drew a scoff from the old man. “I know that well enough. It is only the scoundrels selling eyewash who claim otherwise.”
“You can’t cure it, but you can slow it down.”
The old man’s eyes narrowed ever so slightly. “Slow it down, you say?”
“Wear a broad-brimmed hat whenever you go out in the sun, and stay clear of kitchen smoke. And if possible, eat plenty of egg yolks and dark leafy greens.”
“Egg yolks?”
“They contain a great deal of what is good for the eyes.”
Blocking ultraviolet light, avoiding irritants, and loading up on lutein. In an era without surgical facilities, that was the only advice I could offer.
“…”
Instead of answering, the old man brought the label back up to the bridge of his nose. Only after a long silence did he speak again.
“You said you cannot read.”
I glanced back at the markings carved into each shelf. To my eyes, they still looked like nothing more than bent, jagged scribbles.
“Yes.”
“Follow me.”
He led me deeper into the interior of the dispensary. In that considerably quieter room, a boy even smaller than me was sweeping the floor all by himself. Theon stopped in the center of the room and turned back to face me.
“Do not open what has a lid. Do not untie what is bound. If anything falls, do not rush to pick it up—call for me first. Understood?”
“Understood.”
He presented a basket brimming with dried plants. “First, fennel. It is the same as the bundle hanging at the far end.”
I leaned down to compare the herbs. Slender, withered stalks tipped with tiny lingering seeds. The twine binding it was wound in a double loop.
“This is frankincense, and this is myrrh.”
Theon continued his explanations, and I channeled every ounce of focus I had into burning the samples into my memory.
This is turning out to be tougher than I thought…
I knew all the pharmacological names, but seeing the raw, unrefined plants in person was an entirely different story. The national licensing exam had never featured a practical question where you had to sniff baskets of dried aromatics to tell them apart.
“Now then, let us begin at once. Gather the fennel first.”
“…Yes, sir.”
I moved with deliberate care. Whenever I felt uncertain, I hurried back to the reference basket to double-check. After hauling several armfuls, I began to grasp where the herbs I had just learned belonged.
That brief flash of confidence evaporated the moment I was handed two bundles that looked practically identical.
“Are these two… um, from different regions?”
“No. Only the one on the left is fennel. The one beside it is dill.”
I set the right-hand bundle down. Then my gaze drifted down to the label underneath.
I definitely need to learn the script first.
From that point on, every time I moved an herb, I traced the carved letters beneath it with my finger.
Lunch consisted of thin bean porridge and barley bread.
Frugal.
Sitting on the threshold, I tore off a piece of bread. That was when I noticed the little boy who had been sweeping earlier. He was carefully gathering the crumbs dropped by the others and slipping them into his mouth. The portion of bread he had been given was hidden inside his tunic, creating a round, bulging lump at his waist.
“Hey.”
I snapped my bread in half and held it out. The boy looked at me, then down at the bread, and snatched it up like a hawk.
Probably has a starving sibling waiting at home.
It was as clear as day. He was far too emaciated for it to be mere greed. When I set the porridge bowl on my knees, the boy hesitated for a second before shuffling over to sit beside me.
“What’s your name?”
“…Lykos.”
“Wolf?”
“My mother gave it to me. So I’d grow up big and strong.”
“I see.”
Hard to believe when you’re the tiniest runt among all the kids here, though.
“Have you been working here long?”
“I work in the kitchens, too. Hauling water, clearing tables.”
“You do both?”
“Yeah. I like the kitchen better. There are leftovers from the guests.” Lykos rubbed his knees with his palms. “Did old man Theon bring you in himself, Noona?”
The hand lifting my porridge spoon froze midair.
Never in my life did I think the day would come where someone calls me 'Noona.'
Swallowing the heavy sigh threatening to burst out, I turned my head toward him. “What makes you think that?”
“Because the old man doesn't show that inner room to just anybody. That’s where the poison herbs are kept.”
“Poison herbs?”
“Yeah. Like koneion, or akoniton…”
Just then.
“Your Majesty.”
Theon’s voice rang out, instantly silencing the lively chatter of the children eating their meal.
“…”
Lykos dropped his bread and dropped to his hands and knees against the stone floor. A voice like glass marbles rolling across a silver tray chimed into the stillness.
“I heard a clever child had joined our ranks.”
“Yes, right over—”
Theon turned toward me with a slight smile, only for the color to instantly drain from his face.
Ah. The Queen.
Snapping back to reality, I pulled my knees together and dropped into a kowtow. Theon’s voice trembled as though he had just aged ten years in a heartbeat.
“Right over there. Allow me to guide you.”
“Please do.”
Footsteps approached in tandem. Before long, two pairs of feet entered the edge of my lowered vision: the gnarled, wrinkled feet of the old herbalist, and a pair of flawless, alabaster-white feet without a single blemish.
“Raise your—”
“No, there is no need.”
Without the slightest hesitation, the woman sank onto one knee before me. A shadow fell over my vision, and before I could even process it, slender, cool fingers slid beneath my chin.
…What the?!
Without giving me a chance to resist, she tilted my head upward. Filling my entire field of view was a pair of radiant, unnervingly golden eyes. They burned with a brilliant luminosity, as though the midday sun itself had been captured and bound within them. She blinked slowly, taking in every line of my face.
Then, her crimson lips curled into a gentle, exquisite arch, blossoming into a smile so tender it felt almost like an illusion.
“So you are the little doctor everyone has been whispering about?”