Charlotte E. English

Jessamine knew this bottle (a clear glass, just faintly tinted with emerald) for the one she sought by the great eye that slowly opened within, blinked once at her, and then slid sleepily closed.

But the sylph thought still of knowledge. ‘Do they, then, craft books out of silk?’ said the sylph, intrigued. ‘I hadn’t thought it so.’
‘The Wizard would have such an oddity,’ said Jessamine. ‘He has one of everything somewhere, I’m sure of it.’
Including a sleeping and fearsome old power stopped up in a bottle, on the topic of which, she ought by now to be halfway to the Dispensary with it.
With a bob of a curtsey for the sylphs — it never hurt to be polite, with ethereal things — Jessamine hurried out of the glittering, colour-drenched Potionery, closing the door upon its old oak shelves and bottled secrets.
Her lithe little feet carried her post-haste down the three passages that divided the Potionery from the Dispensary, one hand cupped protectively around her velvet potion-bag as she went.
Wizard Garstang sat ensconced in the best-of-all-chairs, the thing having taken up a station in the shadowiest corner of the Dispensary. It did not belong in there, of course; there was scant room for so oversized an article, and its jewel-coloured upholstery and curlicued conceits were ill-matched with the scrubbed, dark wood of the walls and floors. But the chair, like most of Castle Chansany, obeyed the Wizard’s bidding; where it was wanted, it was wont to appear.
The Wizard wore an embroidered surcoat and a velvet mantle, as befit his status. It wasn’t called frivolity when a man wore finery, Jessamine knew; perhaps because there were no ribbons. The jewels adorning his fingers, and the curls to the toes of his shoes, didn’t count.
Wizard Garstang’s swarthy countenance lit with something upon seeing Jessamine; was it relief? ‘Ah! You have it,’ he said, leaping lightly out of his chair.
‘Of course,’ said Jessamine, a touch crossly, for did he have no faith in her at all? (Or in the sylphs, at any rate; she need not mention how many bottles they had saved from a messy demise).

She was prickly, too, like the tips of holly leaves.

faintly; ‘Hoy,’ she

They called her Summerthorn, for though the frost curled her toes in her boots the colour of violets, and the snow turned her pale as the moon, came the sun and she blossomed like a daffodil, and the roses came out in her cheeks.

They called her Summerthorn, for though the frost curled her toes in her boots the colour of violets, and the snow turned her pale as the moon, came the sun and she blossomed like a daffodil, and the roses came out in her cheeks.