Virginia Carraway Stark
The cool autumn mist that coated the branches of the birch trees and the stubble of hay left in the dying fields reminded me of memories I couldn’t possibly have. I had been born in the late spring, after the fields had melted and the garden planted. I had never seen fall before and yet it coursed through my essence. Even though my purpose had been to stand in the fields and guard the tiny blazes of life that germinated there from greedy beaks, my strength only started to come to me as the nights grew chill and the leaves fell. Before, I was a sleepy observer, watching the world through the caul of half-closed eyes.
I had a dreamy awareness after Edith’s strong fingers and thick sewing needle made me out of a pair of old coveralls and her dead husband’s snap up plaid shirt taken from the rag box.
She stuffed me with hay until I stood rigid and then my arms stood out at awkward angles no living person would hold themselves and formed my head from a burlap sack.
She embroidered a mouth on me. Large and smiling, with the edges of teeth showing, then pulled the burlap so my lips puckered and my face stretched beyond the two dimensions that would leave me only a paper doll. That was the important part, that my head be the right shape to convince the birds the garden wasn’t worth the risk of braving me, to convince the canny living that I too was alive and a threat. She added large glass beads in sun-catching blue for my eyes so they would sparkle like I was alive.
That’s when I first saw her broad, careworn face.
She had the thread in her mouth, smoothing the frayed ends to rethread the needle so she could sew my eyelashes She added a black curly wig from last Halloween to my head and sewed it and the floppy fisherman’s hat in place. She looked at me critically, added some hay to thicken my neck and jammed my abruptly ending legs into large rubber boots.
This was the start of me. My birth. I didn’t feel pain then—I rustled with newly-settling hay as she jammed the post up the back of my shirt and now surveilled the kingdom my goddess had given to me.
It was muddy and lay in dark furrows of barren readiness. Magpies and crows at the far end of the garden hunted for worms and beetles in the freshly-plowed ground and watched us… sizing me up, appraising me. I knew even then, in my dream of life, that I had to be threatening as well as lively. I had to emote danger and be ever ready to pounce without the power of movement. Edith needed me and I couldn’t fail her. Serving her was my sole purpose in life.
The seasons passed and I was successful in my menacing.
It wasn’t easy.
I pulled up energy from the warming soil and radiated menace. I drew up a shudder if the crows came near, the trembling, convincing earth energy of the living. I thanked my creator for my features that captured the sunlight and the wind that rustled my hair and wobbled me about on my anchored spine. The seeds had the time they needed and germinated.
I watched them come up out of the ground, little coy green pokes and spirals. I smiled at them with my teeth and guarded their fragrant beauty with new energy. These were my children with my Lady. They were a part of her, a part of me, and a part of the sun and rain that landed on us all. They had to be guarded for what was to come, for the shortening of days and the fullness of their harvest.
I stood with her while she tended them. She talked to me and I listened to the rise and fall of her words without a need for comprehension. She sang songs her mother had sung and recited poetry with playful formality. She stood like a schoolgirl with her hands folded on the handle of spade as she orated to me and the new plants. Sometimes, with sparkling, laughing malice she would say the poems at the birds who watched her from a safe distance. Her voice would rise and the birds’ voice would follow in angry response at her daring to confront them with the magic words her father had taught her.
She would sing, her voice low, roughened with age, while squishing the pests that plagued the garden. These were dangers my eyes could not see and I had only my faith in my goddess that she would bring the young plantlings through yet another danger.
Eventually, they plumped up with flowers and fruits. Soon I was hidden up to my waist, then vines climbed my shoulders and twined around my face. Flowers bloomed like trumpets on me and then came the bees and then the fruits. First small, then large and larger still. Before long I was burdened with their heaviness, but my spine was strong and it didn’t trouble me. I slept through the hot, sun-filled days, buried in the life I had helped nurture.
It was the chill in the air that woke me once more. Night time chill that left me and the children of the garden covered in heavy, wet dew. The moon was high and full and Edith was standing before me in the fey light. She smiled when she saw I was awake and lifted a glass of wine high to the moon above us. Her feet were bare and her dress hung down to her knees in tatters. Her sun-browned face was wrinkled and her eyes were those of a young girl. She drank the wine, spilled some on my galoshes and drank the rest lifting her voice in triumphant song. Then she turned and walked away but I could hear her song even after the door to the house closed and the flicker of candles beckoned to me from her window.
I had slept too long, my feet were rooted to the ground and the crops depended on me. I fell asleep under the moon with the vision of Edith pouring wine on my feet filling my mind.
I watched her on her knees in front of me as she rooted up the carrots. She worked with her head down, humming and talking as she tested and uprooted the orange miracles. Soon it was the corn and then the gourds, one by one the fruits of our labours were brought in. She walked by me on the path, pushing the wheelbarrow in front of her, and later I could hear her in her kitchen preparing the vegetables for winter storage.
I came awake to the landscape. I could see clearly now, beyond the gently sloping garden, past the thin line of trees to the hay field beyond. Nothing was growing anymore. The nights were too cold and the autumn sun too thin and weak to push plants out of the ground.
That was the first reaping and another soon followed. With the garden harvested, Edith drove the pigs into the garden. They rooted through the soil and tugged the vines off of my shoulders. They ate everything in their path and tromped the fertilizer they left behind into the soil. The weeds were sought out and mercilessly destroyed along with the ruins of the year that was now dying. Next year’s harvest would be a rich one.
And still, my energy surged upward. The pigs rutted, mated and fought over the last snippets of green the soil harboured.
Edith watched them and fed them her scraps. She no longer had the eyes of a young mother. She had aged along with the year and she watched the pigs with the same canny appraisal that the magpies and crows had watched us plant our seeds that spring. She was the crone now and barren. We must prepare for the maiden of spring together, we must make the path rich and clear for her young, bare feet when she awoke in the growing light of spring.
The next day she brought the kitchen knife with her. It was long and sharp. The blade curved inward from being repeatedly being sharpened year after year. It was the same one she had cut the gourd’s free from their vines with.
She drove the pigs one by one into a wire cage and plunged the knife into their throats. Their screams echoed throughout the rolling hills and they panicked as she sought out the ones she had marked in her mind for slaughter. Her criteria was invisible to me, perhaps it was invisible to the pigs as well, or maybe not. They didn’t talk to me so I don’t know.
Their blood soaked into the field. This was needed, it had always been needed. Life sprung from blood. The blood of the mother on her birthing bed, the blood of the sacrifice in the field.
The land hummed. It was bare on the surface, the leaves had all fallen to the ground, but to me, it felt more alive than ever before.
That night, snowflakes fell and the little pools of blood turned them red and then pink and then a thin blanket of white covered the garden and me.
I ripped free of my moorings and, with my heavy rainboot feet shuffled across the snow. The snow under my feet sounded crisp. I had shed my spine behind me and my head lay against my right shoulder.
I leaned against Edith’s windowpane, crushing the brim of my hat. She must have gone to bed but she’d left a candle to burn in a brass bowl in each of the windows.
With my slow, shuffling pace I made my way to the front porch. I rested on the forced-willow bench with my head against the frame of the door. I would rest awhile longer, I would see if the moon penetrated the clouds and if the stars shone against the snow.
I would pick my time and I would knock on Edith’s door.
I would knock and see if she answered and if maiden’s blood still stirred her in the dark, secret places or if she slept now the sleep of the crone.
I thought of the look of promise in her eyes as she spilled wine at my feet and thought I heard the creak of slow footsteps on the wooden floor inside.
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Virginia Carraway Stark started her writing career with three successful screenplays and went on to write speculative fiction as well as writing plays and for various blogs. She has written for several anthologies and three novels as well. Her novel, Dalton’s Daughter is available now through Amazon and Starklight Press. Detachment’s Daughter and Carnival Fun are coming later this year. You can find her on Twitter @tweetsbyvc, on Facebook Facebook.com/virginiacarrawaystark.
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