Sasha and Puck and the Potion of Luck Read online

  DANIEL NAYERI was born in Iran and spent a couple of years as a refugee before immigrating to Oklahoma at age eight with his family. He is the author of several books for young readers, including Straw House, Wood House, Brick House, Blow.

  ANNELIESE MAK is an Australian illustrator and animator currently living and working in Canada, with a love for animals, scarves, checking the weather, and bread. She revels in the challenge of telling stories in a single image.

  SASHA’S FATHER SELLS MAGIC POTIONS.

  THERE’S ONLY ONE PROBLEM—HIS POTIONS DON’T WORK.

  Sasha knows they don’t work—they can’t work! Magic isn’t real! But everyone in town buys Papa’s potions, so Sasha has to take magic into her own hands.

  When local chocolate maker Ms. Kozlow comes to the potion shop asking for luck, it’s up to Sasha to find out why. Ms. K has a matchmaking appointment with Granny Yenta this afternoon—is that why she needs luck? How can Sasha make it her lucky day?

  Albert Whitman & Co.

  100 Years of Good Books

  www.albertwhitman.com

  Printed in the United States of America

  Jacket art copyright © 2019 by Anneliese Mak

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data is on file with the publisher.

  Text copyright © 2019 by Daniel Nayeri

  Illustrations copyright © 2019 by Anneliese Mak

  First published in the United States of America in 2019 by Albert Whitman & Company

  ISBN 978-0-8075-7242-9

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Printed in the United States of America

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  Design by Ellen Kokontis

  For more information about Albert Whitman & Company,

  visit our website at www.albertwhitman.com.

  To Adventure

  Chapter 1

  Sasha hid behind a display of glass bottles and held her breath. She made a bad spy. She was bad at being silent.

  Her toes tapped. Her fingers wiggled with the desire to order the bottles just so. She groaned every time Papa made an unfunny joke to a customer of their alchemy shop.

  Ms. Kozlow fussed with the clasp of her coin purse as she stood at the counter. She seemed very nervous, even though she was very elegant, thought Sasha, and must have been twenty years old at least.

  Papa studied a muddy brew in a glass vial through his spectacles.

  “Now, Mr. Bebbin,” said Ms. Kozlow, “I don’t want this…this—”

  “Potion, madam,” said Papa.

  “Yes, potion. I don’t want this potion to give me too much luck. I only need just enough luck.”

  “Of course, of course,” said Papa as he grated a wrinkly, old mushroom into the drink.

  Sasha ran out of breath. She let out a gust of air and inhaled another. She slapped her hand over her mouth, hoping they hadn’t heard her in the far corner of the shop. She ducked down below the display of bottles filled with sleep sand and squatted next to a crate of bird eggs. She paused to make sure the giant stone phoenix egg hadn’t crushed the tiny, speckled quail eggs.

  Ms. Kozlow went on. “I’ve got a lovely little place in the Village, you see. And my bonbons are selling quite well. I wouldn’t want too much luck to ruin it all. I could inherit some far-off castle, for example, and then I’d have to go clean out the moat every Thursday.”

  “Hmm,” said Papa. He was focused on measuring the ingredients.

  “Or imagine if I won some sort of contest to have a pet tiger. What would I do with a tiger in my chocolate shop?”

  Sasha could think of about a thousand things one could do with a tiger in a chocolate shop. She wished she could list each one for Ms. Kozlow, but she was spying on their conversation, as she always did with the customers. That meant no interrupting. She let out a sigh instead.

  “No, no,” said Ms. Kozlow, “I need a precise amount of luck.”

  Sasha sighed again. She couldn’t believe how many people in the Village believed in things like potions, magic, and alchemy—including her father, of course. It was all so…silly.

  “It would help my calculations,” said Papa, “if I knew what this precise amount of luck was for.”

  “Oh, no, no, no,” said Ms. Kozlow, bringing her purse up to her chest. “It’s a private matter, I’m afraid.”

  Sasha noticed that Ms. K wore gloves. No one else in the Downside of the Village wore gloves. Sasha guessed she was either from Upside, or she didn’t have the time to get all the chocolate out from under her nails.

  “Very well,” said Papa, stirring the liquid with a dried stalk of mandrake root. “Then I’ll need to know your exact hair color.”

  “I’d say 60 percent dark-chocolate brown,” said Ms. K, patting her crown of braids.

  “I see,” said Papa. “And do you prefer a hamster or a ham bone?”

  Ms. K blinked a few times. “I suppose I prefer hamsters…but not to eat.”

  “Of course not,” said Papa. “That would be a silly question. And when was the last time you ate a green apple?”

  Ms. K thought for a moment. “Last Tuesday, at noon.”

  “Excellent.” Papa plucked a yellow berry from a potted plant sitting on the far side of the counter and dropped it into the mixture. The potion fizzed up to the rim and made a PLIP PLOP sound. Papa seized the mandrake root and stirred the brew furiously until the liquid calmed back down. “All right then,” he said. “Yes, I think so. This is exactly the amount for just enough luck.” He plugged the glass vial with a cork and handed it to Ms. Kozlow.

  “Why is it…that color?” asked Ms. Kozlow, wrinkling her nose.

  Sasha thought it looked like swamp water.

  “I could add some strawberry jam,” said Papa. “That would help the color and with the taste of dung beetle.”

  Ms. Kozlow held the potion bottle with two fingers as Papa looked around his messy shelves.

  Finally, he turned around and said, “I’ve got good news and bad news. I found the jar of jam. Unfortunately, it’s empty.”

  He held up the jar that Sasha had finished that morning.

  Ms. Kozlow frowned. “What terrible luck. It looks like I came to you just in time.” Ms. K gave Papa a few coins from her purse. Then she pulled out two chocolate bonbons and placed them on the counter. “One for you, and one for your daughter,” she said. “Thank you, Mr. Bebbin. You’ve saved my life.”

  Papa blushed.

  From behind the display shelf, Sasha wanted to shout, Don’t take it! Have some sense, woman! It’s not safe! There was no telling what someone would do if they thought they were magically lucky. What if Ms. K jumped off a barn thinking she might be lucky enough to land on a passing sheep?

  The door swung shut behind the chocolate maker, and Sasha was about to stand up when a head suddenly appeared over her.

  “You can come out now,” Papa said as he wiped down the counter. “You need to get better at sneaking, if you’re going to spy on our customers.”

  Chapter 2

  Sasha sprang from her hiding spot, feeling a bit childish. She smoothed her tunic and straightened her shoulders. Another sale was another disaster waiting to happen. Sasha much preferred the customers who bought fancy eggs for decorating or milk from Cordelia, their dairy cow. Papa was a respectable apothecary and had a wondrous garden of strange plants that could help sick people get better. But whenever he used them for his craz
y potions, Sasha was fear-stricken and furious at the same time.

  Customers like Ms. K, who believed in all that hocus-pocus, were bound to be disappointed. Potions didn’t work—at least, not Papa’s potions. Sasha had a vague memory that her mother was the alchemist of the family, and maybe her potions had worked, but that was a long time ago. These days, it was Papa working from her mother’s recipe books, and Sasha wasn’t convinced. She was certain the magic was gone.

  And soon, the few customers they had would complain. But Papa would insist that his calculations were correct. And then they would take Papa to the constable. And the constable would make Papa pay a huge fine for lying. And Papa wouldn’t be able to pay it. And then she and Papa would go bankrupt. And then Vadim Gentry would buy up their store. And then they would be homeless. And then they would wander the countryside in poverty.

  And when Mother returned from her long journey, she would never find them.

  It had happened to a potion-maker in Sandtown last summer and in Rozny the year before. Papa needed to be more careful.

  Sasha’s heart was pounding with her runaway fears by the time she approached the counter. “Why did you promise her magic luck?”

  “All luck is magic,” said her father, as he poured the chalk dust he had used earlier into its porcelain container. “And I didn’t promise it to her. That’s simply what the potion does.”

  Sasha sighed and puffed her cheeks. She didn’t have time to argue magic and science again. Ms. Kozlow would be walking back to the Village now, expecting some sort of extra-special luckiness.

  “Of all the odds and oddity, Papa,” she said in her most imposing voice, “chances are she won’t get whatever she wants, and then she’ll blame you. You must go to Ms. Kozlow and take back the potion.”

  Her father was a kind man. Tall, thin, with a ring of brown hair around his bald head. He wore the thickest glasses Sasha had ever seen. His mustache had already gone white and would shake whenever he was trying to hold back a laugh.

  Sasha added, “You can tell her the mandrake root was moldy.”

  Her father chuckled. “But moldy mandrake doesn’t affect anything,” he said.

  “I know,” she said.

  “I know you know, darling.”

  “That’s because the whole potion doesn’t affect anything,” she said.

  “Ah. There, my sweet daughter, you are wrong.”

  Sasha sighed and moved on to plan B. These days, plan B was pretty much plan A. It was up to Sasha to make sure the potions worked—not magically, but scientifically. And to do that, she had to do some detective work. She grabbed her satchel of tools from behind the counter.

  “Would you like me to make a batch for you?” asked her father. “Then you might have some luck convincing your father.”

  “Gregor says there’s no such thing as magic and there’s no such thing as luck.”

  “Pah, Gregor is too narrow-minded. Scientists only know what other scientists tell them. You should be spending more time learning the family trade.”

  Sasha could hear him gearing up for a long speech. “Papa, this is serious.”

  “So am I! You’re a lucky child! Having a loving father is lucky,” he mused.

  Sasha was ready to leave, but the countertop was still a mess of ingredients. As he walked around the shop putting bottles away, Sasha walked behind him, rearranging them into their proper places.

  “Getting your mother’s sharp mind,” he added, “that’s very lucky.”

  Sasha didn’t mention that having a wandering alchemist for a mother was the unluckiest thing she could imagine. It would have sounded like she was blaming him. But in the silence, she realized they were both thinking it.

  She looked at her papa, who was cleaning the oil burner and the hot plate that sat on top of it. He gave her an apologetic smile.

  Sasha said, “Oh, Papa, why couldn’t you give Ms. Kozlow some borgum root? Or peach tea? That would have lowered her blood pressure. People feel luckier when they’re relaxed.”

  “That would be a trick,” said her father.

  “With better odds of working.”

  “Didn’t you see her face?” said her father. “This was a case for magic.”

  Sasha turned to leave.

  “Sasha Liliana Bebbin,” said Papa.

  She stopped.

  She turned back.

  “We have an agreement, the two of us, do we not?”

  “Yes, Papa. We never leave each other angry.”

  She rushed over to hug him. She would never abandon him, she thought. And the truth was that Sasha had never disproved magic, and so, scientifically speaking, she had to make room for the possibility that it existed. Maybe there was real magic somewhere out in the world. But not in their boring valley. Magic didn’t happen there.

  Ms. Kozlow would be nearing the Village by now, and Sasha had to catch her.

  “Here,” said her father. “Ms. Kozlow left you a couple of bonbons.”

  Sasha knew that one of those chocolates had been for him. He was giving up his own treat for her. But she didn’t want to refuse his kind gesture. She wrapped them in her handkerchief and put them in her satchel.

  “You worry so much, Sasha.”

  “I really must go,” she said.

  But he didn’t hear her. “Your mother would know what to say. She understood all this,” he said, nodding at the alchemy lab. “Do you know she used to leave candies in the woods behind the shop?”

  “What for?” said Sasha.

  “For luck, of course.”

  “For Otto to find and devour, you mean,” said Sasha. Otto was their family pig. A very stuck-up pig. A runt-sized pig, about as big as a loaf of bread, who ruled their yard like a goblin king. He was usually calm when he was well fed. But if anything crossed him—if he smelled griddle cakes or saw the color orange—then the whole Village trembled.

  “No. They weren’t for Otto. Even he won’t go into the dark part of the forest. There are wood elves in there, don’t you know? And little sprites who dance in the river with the rusalkas. If you listen on moon nights, you can hear their music—the children of Veles, the trickster, who makes luck. They loved your mother, you know. That’s why they live so close. They grow the ether pearls we find in the riverbank. Sometimes, their tangled hair sprinkles pollen from fields beyond the fairy kingdom, and flowers come up in our forest that we haven’t seen for two chapters of the world.”

  “Really?” said Sasha. “Mother left them food?”

  “Every moon night.”

  “For luck?”

  “For luck. For you.”

  Sasha thought about it for a moment. If there were any sprites in the woods, they had yet to hold up their part of the bargain with her mother. And, scientifically speaking, that made them liars. Sasha looked out the window and wondered if they would ever see her mother walking back down the lane.

  “Not everything can be explained,” her father was saying.

  “Uh, Papa?” said Sasha, sitting up suddenly to get a better look out the window.

  “What is luck, anyway—”

  “Father!”

  “Yes? What is it?”

  “Ms. Kozlow didn’t leave. She’s outside.”

  Sasha pointed at the young chocolatier, who had seen their newborn chickens in the coop.

  “She’s just petting the chicks,” said Papa, adjusting his glasses. Ms. Kozlow was bending over to offer the babies gentle rubs on their heads.

  “Yes,” said Sasha, “but look at what she’s wearing!”

  “Uh-oh,” said Papa. “That’s unlucky.”

  Sasha ran out of the shop as quickly as she could, hoping to catch Ms. Kozlow before Otto caught sight of her bright-orange skirt.

  Chapter 3

  Crumbsy bumsy, thought Sasha as she jumped down the stairs of the alchemy shop and onto the dirt lane.

  Ms. Kozlow was still bent over, petting chickens.

  She didn’t notice Otto at all.

/>   The little pig was ten feet away. He had already spotted her orange skirt. He was stamping his hooves in rage.

  “Look out!” shouted Sasha.

  But it was too late.

  Otto charged.

  Sasha sprinted.

  “Look out! Look out!”

  Otto was almost there.

  This is going to hurt, thought Sasha.

  BAM!

  Sasha tackled the pig just as he was about to ram into Ms. K.

  They fell into the yard and scared all the chickens.

  Ms. Kozlow finally noticed. When she saw Sasha and Otto smash into each other, she said, “Oh my!”

  Sasha’s head spun. She held on to Otto with all her might. The little pig kicked and snorted and still wanted to attack Ms. K.

  Ms. K had no idea, of course.

  “What’s this?” she said. “A game?”

  “Nnnnnoooooo,” said Sasha, her jaw rattling.

  “Oh,” said Ms. K. “Is this pig bothering you? Should I get the constable?”

  “Nnnoo help. My bag. Get my bag,” said Sasha. Otto wiggled and bucked while Ms. K grabbed Sasha’s satchel from the dirt.

  “OK,” she said, “should I hit him with it?”

  That would only anger Otto more.

  “No!” said Sasha. “The bonbons. Give him the bonbons.”

  Her arms were so tired she could hardly feel them.

  Ms. K said, “But these are 72 percent Teluvian chocolate with wildberry cordial filling. We couldn’t give them to a…a pig.”

  “Now!” said Sasha. “If you want to live!”

  She had to let go. He was too slippery. And he kicked harder than a mule. How could such a little creature have such powerful wiggles?

  As soon as Sasha let go, Otto charged at Ms. K.

  She let out a yelp and dropped the bonbons.

  Otto stopped short when he saw the chocolates. He gobbled them up.

  He loved chocolate.