By Caroline Ashley
In the distance, people were calling her name.
The trees encircled and embraced her. A swelling moon cast highlights across their limbs. Cross-legged she sat, bare legs scratched by fallen leaves and thorned stems. Blood welled upon her skin, then fell to the soil.
Four candles marked the cardinal points – she lit them one by one, watching each flame dance like a child, reaching up to the sky. When the wind sung through the trees, the flame and wick fought to remain entwined. She thrust her fingers into the earthen womb. It fought against her invasion, tearing at her nails, then sending a chill to her bones.
But she knew the earth. It carried her daughter, its tendrils swaddling the infant’s fragile form as she was never able to. In day long past, she caressed her belly as her daughter reached outward, contemplating a world beyond her mother’s heartbeat. Then the desperation to escape. The rhythmic pains of expulsion as her precious child sought its first breath in a world of cold and light. Her body ripped asunder, blood pooling on the floor in sacrifice to the act. But there was no first breath; no long awaited meeting. Her daughter lay lifeless in her trembling arms while she screamed her sorrows to the heavens. She buried the most fragile piece of her heart wrapped in a blanket, knitted to ward off the night’s chill – though that was the earth’s role now.
Her husband mourned as well, but he hadn’t shared a life-line, he hadn’t fought and lost a battle of creation. His arms around her body were little consolation to her empty breast. And in the end, even that was taken from her.
She remembered him lying in their bed, his heart fluttering like a caged butterfly, skin sallow and cold. Medicine had failed him and so his body also failed. His shaking hand gripped her own, bones protruding from sagging skin. A sickly sweet scent in the air forewarned his passing, a premature decomposition of cells abandoning their home as it crumbled to ruin. A decade of partnership was not enough to bind his body to life.
In the hole she dug in the earth, she placed two wooden forms, carved by her own hands from the rowan tree that stood sentry in their garden. She brushed the soil as she covered the carvings. Help them find me once more.
A knife sliced her arm and crimson life flowed along the line of her veins, before being swallowed into the world below. She reached for the bottle of wine at her side and raised it aloft in a toast to the stars. The rim of the bottle skimmed her lips as the dry liquid burned her throat then filled her belly with the heat of a smouldering fire. The remainder was poured in a protective circle around her body, burgundy mixing with crimson.
Of course, the earth’s dominion was not only over death. She once walked these paths with her mother, twirling in circles and dancing over protruding roots. They would pluck garlic flowers, wild sorrel, brambles and elderberries. Her mother would sit by the river, watching the water as it flowed over ancient stone, her slender form nestled amongst elderflower and water-crowfoot. Her blonde hair would shine in the summer sun like woven gold.
“Beautiful, ain’t it, Mhairi?” her mother asked, crows feet forming as she lifted her head to the warm rays above and embraced the ever-changing, ever un-changing, world.
Children don’t see beauty the same as adults though. She would splash in the water and go searching for fish or insects, her clothes sacrificed on nature’s altar as she searched for adventure.
Her mother was old now and rarely ventured to the woods. She would rest in her garden, warmed by the same sun as she cultivated her own herbs and plants. She tried to offer comfort to her daughter. She held Mhairi close when her husband no longer could; she held Mhairi’s hand and willed the pain to flow into her own body instead. But her child still lived and she had never loved a man as Mhairi had – the lack of shared experience formed a gulf between them that her mother didn’t know how to cross.
The voices were growing closer. She heard heavy footfall crashing through ferns and bushes. Her name echoed in the air, joining with the calls of the nightingales and corncrakes.
They don’t understand.
The candles still burned before her, the heat warming her knees. She lay on the ground, hair tangling around stems and branches. She watched the flickering stars, imagining herself dancing away on the aether. She was the wind in the leaves; she was a network of roots below ground; she was a star burning in the cold.
And she was not alone.
Among the voices of the earth she knew so well, she heard her family. They did not speak in the way of the living. Their form was as fragile as gossamer, particles of life coalescing through the power of her spell. They willed her to move forward, find joy in life once more. She wished she knew how.
Together they soared above the trees and danced among the stars. Their brief return restored her fractured soul… but they could not stay – they never stayed. A rejuvenation wrapped in loss; a reunion laced with sorrow.
When the search party arrived, they dragged her to her feet, bound her in polyester blankets and spoke of psychiatric care. They trampled her offerings and ignored the whispers on the wind.
She paid them no mind. She had what she came for – until next time. Her gaze settled on a candle flame. The orange light danced across her vision, a will o’ wisp lulling her mind, spreading across her cornea until the flame was all she knew.
About the Author
Caroline Ashley is a clinical psychologist who works for the NHS in Scotland. She primarily writes fantasy with the occasional foray into sci-fi and horror. Her favourite authors will always be JRR Tolkien and Terry Pratchett but she also has a soft spot for the romantasy genre. If she had any spare time around raising her two young children, she would spend it playing board games.
Caroline Ashley 