The Lost Apothecary

by Sarah Penner

“I mean that you can be anything you want in London,” she replied. “Nothing great awaits you in the farm fields. The fences would have kept you in, as they do the pigs and as they’ve done to me. But in London? Well, in time, if you are clever about it, you can wield your own power like a magician. In a city so grand, even a poor girl can transform into whatever she desires to be.”

It is the most distressing thing, Eliza, to issue pain to someone, even when you know it is for the best.”

“For many of these women,” Nella whispered, “this may be the only place their names are recorded. The only place they will be remembered. It is a promise I made to my mother, to preserve the existence of these women whose names would otherwise be erased from history. The world is not kind to us... There are few places for a woman to leave an indelible mark.” I finished tracing an entry, moving on to the next one. “But this register preserves them—their names, their memories, their worth.”

And while my story is terrible, every woman has faced a man’s wickedness to some degree. Even you.”