The Plant the Vairoc Tea Is Made From, and What It Is Not For

A woman was brought to the Guild Hall two nights past, pulse quick and thin, pupils too wide for the lamp, flinching from a shape at the door that was only the coat hook once I lit a second one. She recovered within the hour, slept heavy, and told me herself once the shaking passed: tea, at a gathering, poured more than once because the first pour seemed to do nothing.

Duskcap is up now, at the season’s first true cooling — the shaded lip of the wells, the damp foot of north walls, ground bare ten days ago. Dried and steeped a pinch to the cup, it is old medicine: it quiets the shaking before a hard labor, and it has sat through more than one dying patient’s last frightened hour, doing exactly what a pinch does and no more.

It is not for gathering wet and steeping heavy, passed hand to hand until someone drinks three cups thinking the first did nothing. Dried, the effect is small and brief. Fresh and strong, it does what it did to the woman on my table — the wide eyes, the shape at the door, a fear that outlasts the drink by a day. The plant has not changed. Only the hand steeping it, and how many times the cup came back around.

I record this so that whoever receives the next one carried in from Vairoc’s gatherings knows what they are looking at before they guess.