A helpless maiden pursued by a lovesick god, a mother defeated by an envious witch, a helpful spirit imprisoned by a hateful crone—well, that's what the stories have always said happened, so it must be true. Mustn't it?
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Wild of Branch and Root
by Silverr
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1. Laurel
Swift
as water,
joyous
as light,
weaving
through brambles,
raucous
as crows,
tumbling
through myrtle
they—
Silence descends.
The others dart away like hares.
A mistake to
think he would be
like sunlight,
gently warming: no,
he rends the glade, tearing
open the canopy.
The forest recoils,
sears, glows orange.
crumbles into ash.
He sees her. His radiance
dims, clouded by greed.
(He will claim—for who doubts the shining brow?—
that a leaden arrow forced her to deny him
that he wears the leaves to honor her.)
The truth?
Chase and capture
end in sundering and death for the prey.
She will not let him feast on her corpse.
She plants her feet
firm,
holds her arms
high
curls her toes
into the unscorched earth
calls to the Sister.
Her toes shatter into roots.
An eruption of bark
climbs ankle, calf, knee
merging her thighs
numbing her skin.
The flesh melts from her hands
bone becomes twig
an agony of leaves bursts from her fingertips
as her lips seal, escaping his mouth.
As the bark closes over her eyes
his astonished frown is the last thing she sees
as his godhood stabs at her trunk.
Her only regret
is that she can no longer laugh.
He can think what he likes
mistake her wind-tossed branches
for maidenly surrender,
for divine victory.
He can command horses of fire
send death from his golden bow
unmake the walls of the shining city
in less than a hour
but he cannot
will not
will never
touch her.
He tears sprigs from her branches
false proof of his conquest.
No matter: she will grow more.
She will offer her dark-eyed berries to the sparrows
and at night, when the moon
comforts her leaves with silver
she will step from her refuge
and with her bloody, broken arms
she will embrace her sisters
and, godless, dance.
2. Birch
They so often unfairly blame a witch
but this time, it truly was a witch.
Spit on the knife, spit in the sheath
run between my legs, black wool
she'd said, and just like that
I was a sheep,
and she had my face.
(Had I known it was coming, I could have
climbed a different hill, worn a charm
stayed home with my daughter
waited for the sheep to come home on her own.)
I didn't know.
We never know the pattern being woven:
one moment you have the milk-jug in your hands
the next, there is a crash, and the thirsty floor is drinking a star.
I don't remember much
about being a sheep
other than trotting home, led by a rope
my thoughts like boiled turnips.
My husband didn't notice the change
but then, it's not every day
that your spouse comes home as livestock.
My daughter, clever lamb, she knew
she ran from the imposter,
and buried her face in my neck.
The sight of her sweet face
cleared the mutton from my thoughts.
My sheep's tongue was not adequate
to express myself: all I could do was bleat
and nuzzle her hand, frustrated that I couldn't tell her
that I hoped that when she grew up
she would find someone who would truly see her
even if she had been turned into a bird, or a deer.
The smell of sweet grass in the meadow
kept trying to fog my thoughts,
but I held on to my anger: I would not forget
how it felt to comb my daughter's hair,
or sing to her when she was frightened
or teach her how to be clever and brave and kind.
I kicked at the fence, and butted the gate.
If I escaped, I could find a kinder witch to change me back.
You know what happened next.
My dear, stupid husband, the father of my child
let the witch talk him into slitting my throat
so that she could make me into stew.
I thought that was the end, but then
I woke, a seed surrounded by bones.
I unfurled in darkness
blind, seeking wetness, food
struggling to lift a too-heavy head
above a too-slender neck
a clenched green fist
straining through the soil
toward the warmth above
encouraged by sun and rain
(mater, pater)
braced by my roots
(wider, deeper)
I grew
Before I woke in this field
I thought I understood patience, joy, strength
but once I found the bliss of spread branches,
I realized I had understood nothing.
Being a sheep had made me angry
about what had been taken from me;
being a tree made me grateful for what I still had.
Seasons passed, leaves fell.
I never stopped listening for the sound of her voice.
When she found me, her thin arms hugged my trunk.
I taught her the slow song of wind-in-branches
and wished I had come back as a pear-tree
so that I could drop luscious fruit for her.
She took my fallen branches for a broom
and from the corner, I listened.
The witch had her own daughter now
a hemlock child, splotchy and resentful.
Mine is tossed aside as midden-trash,
not even good enough for the soup-pot.
No matter: my twigs will sweep
the barley and flax-seed from the ashes;
I will sweep the milk spilled upon the hearth.
I will reach into Saturn's realm, curling around gold
and worms bringing pearls from the sea.
I will tug the threads of the sky, and reel in dresses of silk
and slippers of glass, and call a horse with a bridle of silver,
and then, before she leaves me,
I will give her a comb made of my own heart's-wood,
and teach her the last of my songs.
3. Pine
I should have let him drown.
When we saw the speck on the horizon
I sent a portion of my magic into the sky;
hoping it was it the sailors who
on a storm-lashed night twelve years before
had tossed me into the surge
my swollen belly an anchor
my desperation oars and sail.
Clawing through brine, foam, sand
to the rocky, broken shore
That night I had no breath to spare for curses;
screams eaten by the gale
squatting amid kelp and rotting detritus
I had delivered my jetsam.
But now… if they were returning
righteously red-faced that I had clung to life
thinking to hurl me beneath the waves a second time
they would find that I had learned to curse without breath.
I flew as a sliver of air, swooped low.
A small ship, hardly more than a canoe
decrepit timbers, held together by desperation and hope
(oh well I knew that caulking!)
low in the water, weighted with ornate chests;
its cargo a bearded man, richly dressed,
who cling to a child, barely older than three.
This mystery, delivered from the seam
where sky met darker blue, intrigued me.
I coaxed the winds and sea creatures to bring them to my shore
then soared back to join my greater self.
Ten years and two since I had been
uprooted from my gentle husband
cast out for curing those too poor to pay
forced with my child into desolate exile.
Those first days, the watery milk from my flat dugs
was barely enough to nourish either of us.
I had no snares, no nets, no bow
no knowledge of the veins and currents
moving beneath this bitter and flowerless isle;
and so, never ne'er eager to embrace the grave,
I dug with my nails in the dirt
chewing clay and worms alike
and licked the furrows of the earth
until She began to open her secrets to me.
I charmed the spirits of bitter pools and salt cascades
and those that, knife-like, haunted the sere trees;
I tamed the sparks that drove the needled wasp
and bound them to me. With these servants and our labor,
my son and I carved out a paradise; and it was a paradise,
not because it was sweet, but because it was ours.
All this the stranger could have shared with us
the catalogue of the isle's secrets would have been open to him
but then, as he splashed ashore, in the very cove
whose rocks in honor of my son's birthplace I had enchanted red
it seemed the old fool took more care to keep his books dry
than he did to keep the child's head above the waves.
The mother cheetah in me wanted to slash his throat, but my cooler half argued
that he might be addled, knocked askew by hunger, thirst, despair.
He would reveal his true nature in time, and if he would not serve me as plough
he could fish for his dinner hence.
I sent my son to greet them, and then
in the ancient pine that o'erlooked my hut—
a hag of a tree, bent and twisted as if in agonized concentration
its bare, ropy roots draped in rivulets across the rocks—
incanted a knothole, and split the greater part of my power,
my dominion over tempest and flame, into a second Sycorax,
leaving behind, like a shed snakeskin, a Sycorax of earth,
an ancient with a visage of cracked mud.
And then, although freedom is what I treasure most—far better
to be a ragged queen here than a well-dressed servant elsewhere—
I poured my airy watery fiery form—or should I say myself—into the tree
bidding my earthen reflection seal me in, lest I seep forth and be revealed
before I had observed how the visitor would treat an old woman and a child.
It greatly pained me to be spooled. threadlike, around the heartwood
bound by cambium and phloem, cork and bark. The branches shook
with the chafe of my discontent, but I calmed myself
with the thought that I need not hide for long.
He was polite, flirtatious even, scattering prego and grazie and mio tesoro
until he saw the peeled-bark spellbook, written in my blood,
in which I had recorded all I knew; the residence of each spirit
which elementals could be summoned, which demigods needed appeasing.
Feigning disinterest in this arcane knowledge, he sweetly asked my son
to take the poppet Miranda off and amuse her; and then,
the instant they were gone, this 'honorable' Milanese bashed my skull
And threw my body down the cliffside. Later he would claim
that I had fallen—which was true
insofar as no corpse stands upright.
All this I observed from my wooden prison. Enraged,
I thought to drop my wooden disguise and allow my wrath to descend.
But what the earth has placed, the earth must remove.
I called to the wolves, the bears, the vultures
but they did not come. I thought to burst the pine
with boiling sap, or lightning called from the cloudless sky
but tongueless in my close quarters, I could no more work magic
than the shattered clay Sycorax melting in the brine.
I had to watch as the murderous glutton gorged himself on my harvest
copying out my spells, locking them behind his own secret language,
before burning them. The bark darkened, resisted, choked him with a foul smoke
but still he proclaimed the isle his duchy, and my son his slave.
Over the years, he has so often repeated the story of loathsome Sycorax—
perished long before his arrival, of course—and of how he had adopted
the monstrous and ungrateful orphan Caliban,
that I think he has come to believe his own lies.
No matter. I have had years to plan, here in my narrow prison
and know that soon the spells he stole from me
(how long, and how laboriously, it has taken him to master them!)
will make him powerful enough to free me.
On that day, I will rid my island of this droning blowfly
and then, once again, dwell in paradise.
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Written as a pinch hit for Wendelah1 in the Once Upon a Fic Exchange.
© 2018 revised 22 May 2018
