round amber glass, fluted in fours so the hand knows by touch in a dark cabinet which bottle is the bitter one. about a third remains — a thumb's depth of pale gold powder slumped to one side, and the sharp small smell of cinchona when the cap is loosened. labelled poison on the obverse in raised letters cast into the glass itself; the paper says it more politely.
the label is buff card, foxed and curling at one corner where the damp of a long sea-voyage got in. a small red cross at the top; the compound in micro-type small-caps; the firm's name in slow italic, the dosage and count below. on the lower edge an embossed seal so worn it now resembles a moon behind weather.
kept once by a clerk who had been to the harbour twice and ordered to keep on taking it through the english october "in case". used now by no one. the bitter is the point of it; the cure tastes like the fever it does not have to mean.
shake before midnight. the powder settles in two minutes flat. count the seconds and you will hear, faintly, the ship that never carried you.
on the same shelf as the lavender water and the quink; for fever-dreams see four am and vigil.