Chapter - 7 Herbs

Chapter – 7

Herbs

When we reached the yard, we all had at least spotted at least one thing of metal and very old. Bill set to work with an old sprinkler which had rusted. I had spotted some old metallic projections out of the brick wall which enclosed our house. As for Martha, I didn’t know what she was doing except that she was rummaging in the garden hedge. Jack was curiously examining the old sink mentioned earlier. After half-an-hour Jack gave a sudden shout and hailed us. We came running and falling in the short distance. He explained that he had opened the knob of the tap in the sink and many small balls had rolled out with a paper. We all fell upon the paper and we could hardly read what was written in the long struggle, but Jack (who was holding the paper) said it aloud, “Dilute 1, Crush 2, Melt 3, mix together.” Suddenly the struggle stopped and we were silent for a lot of time. Until Bill began to examine the 3 balls which had rolled out. He said, “These balls have numbers printed on them. One has a ‘1’ and the others have ‘2’ and ‘3’ respectively and they seem to be some sort of herbs”. As the meaning of the message slowly unfolded to us, we realized that we had to prepare a concoction made of the balls present. Suddenly a voice hailed us and an enormous figure casting its shadow down to us appeared. I ground my teeth for it was the Rex!

          Jack hid the balls and the note in his pocket and we turned around with false smiles pasted on our faces. Why, why did he have to appear at the worst time? ” Hey uncle we were busy collecting some flowers and please don’t disturb us now” I lied. He didn’t seem to approve of the story. A frown crossed his face and he said,” So where are these flowers of yours. I’d like to smell some.” Busted! “We  ... we didn’t find any yet.” said Martha with a burst of inspiration. He smiled. That’s why I think that he likes Martha (and hates me due to the circumstances of his departure last time). He went (or rather stampeded) away. We breathed a sigh of relief.

          Soon enough we got a kettle for making our potion, some water, another pot, a hammer and a Bunsen burner without attracting any suspicion. We put the ball ‘3’ into the kettle and lighted the burner under it. We crushed the ball ‘2’; put ball’1’ into the pot added water and stirred. In the end, we put the entire concoction into the kettle. While it processed, we thought what to do with it when it was done. As usual, Jack had a suggestion,” You know that only two sorts of code written on metals have been ‘presented’ to us - one on the iron plate and one on the gold plate. I suggest that we put some quantity of it on both the plates and see if we can make some sort of ‘invisible’ writing on it ‘visible’ which can explain the ‘hidden recipe of making the unseen seen’.” We were stupefied (again) by this brainwave of Jack’s.