Her name is Lyuben and she doesn’t know how far she can lean out of the window before she’ll fall out into the warm sunlight.

Spring reminds her of her grandmother’s attic, and she has crawled, toddled, stumbled, galloped, skipped, and wandered reverently amongst the littered treasures that each year seem to engulf one more floorboard. Spring cleaning never seemed to be a chore, and often Lyuben would find herself going on jungle explorations in the armoire, wading amongst moth eaten dresses and suits, or tumbling across the carpet dunes to rest against the ancient dollhouses that line one wall.

She has already dusted and tidied up, and all that is left of the tradition is to air the room this one hour in a late afternoon one day of the year, the orange sunlight eagerly splashing across rediscovered artefacts in a hasty reunion. Downstairs she can hear the creak of her grandmother’s rocking chair.

It has always been the two of them, her grandmother kneeling and Lyuben prancing around, touching this fur mantle and that porcelain teapot with the missing handle. Each spring she has helped more and more, abandoning expeditions in favour of sifting through yellowed pages following her grandmother’s wrinkled fingers, dusting, and moving the heavier books.

This year it’s just Lyuben, her grandmother’s broken her leg. She apologised, waving frail hands, skin so translucent they seem to be blue rather than white, and laughed, strangely brittle beneath the hearty voice, telling Lyuben she’s grown, she’s a big girl now (woman, Lyuben wants to interrupt), and next year she’ll teach her more remedies. But the laboured breathing that she tries to hide and the look in her grandmother’s eyes makes Lyuben wonder whether next spring she’ll have to clean alone, without even the company of the familiar creak creak.

Lyuben wants to get angry, because she hasn’t learned enough yet, hasn’t yet memorised her grandmother’s wrinkled hands, hasn’t yet explored that part of the attic enough, the small kingdom to the left of the window, the one that makes the villagers call her grandmother a witch.

It’s said with reverence; Lyuben knows this from the small gifts she finds on the porch, milk and fresh eggs, hams and sausages, ribbons and buttons, each from of grateful families. She sometimes wonders whether one day she can be one too, her own hands flying across the pages, fingers remembering remedies to brew.

The heaviest of books lie here, as well as crystals, pressed herbs, and things that Lyuben cannot even put a name to. She has been shown most of the books, and can recite most of the easy recipes by heart: valerian, sage, chamomile, red clover for restful dreams; yarrow, elder, and ginger for when the fever is burning you up.

Lyuben remembers a spring when she was nine and flipping through the pages, giddy with pride to remember the names, when she spotted a book she had never seen before. It must have been hidden beneath the pile for a long time, its velvet burgundy cover was coated with dust. Tentatively sliding her fingers in between the pages, she spies the words “angel water” before it is taken away by her grandmother. Lyuben has never been scolded, but she half expects to be. Instead her grandmother smiles, patting her hair and telling her to let it be, she’s too young to want the matters of the heart. When Lyuben asks what exactly her grandmother means, she’s awarded with another smile and pat, and her grandmother promises that when the time comes she’ll find the book and understand.

This year, Lyuben’s grandmother tells her she’ll find the burgundy book behind the tallest pile, nestled in a gossamer veil and calfskin gloves.

Lyuben knows that her grandmother is a witch only for her successful remedies, but she wonders whether she can read minds too when she reads the title. Nonetheless, Lyuben familiarises herself with this new set of herbs: myrtle, southernwood, orange blossoms, and periwinkle. If she was brave enough maybe she’d mix them all together, to make sure, but she can’t help but feel like a fraud.

Lyuben imagines the mixture tasting the same as her grandmother’s homemade remedies for fevers, bitter and rich and soothing as it slides down her throat, like the foreign spirits she once tasted.

She remembers a time when she was burning up, half-delirious and stumbling behind her eyelids, threatening to overflow before she felt the chipped mug against her lips, the one with the lavender flowers, and the lukewarm tea tipped into her mouth. It tasted burgundy, and not pleasant at all, but she fell asleep soon after that, the soothing cold blanketing her too-thin skin and binding her up to keep her in.

And now she remembers a time not too long ago, when she first drank these foreign spirits, and in a moment of euphoria she believed they were like her grandmother’s remedies, only the heat is spreading, down to her fingertips, and she’s stretching, seeping through her own skin, unbound.

She feels warm long after she’s stopped.

Her grandmother always told her that some remedies work only once, and Lyuben can’t help but think that she must have meant these ones. And sometimes, when she’s layering the sweaters, cotton, wool, cashmere, plaid, she wonders whether she’ll ever feel this warm again.

Lyuben is leaning out the window, the spring sun warming her back, and that’s enough.