The Making and Unmaking of a Witch

When she lies down among the tansy flowers, a seed that didn’t take proper root in the end bleeds into the dirt. Her quiet mind echoes with cricket chirrups in the late summer breeze. Is this a blessing or a curse? The stars twinkle silently and the garden accepts her offering, drop by drop. ∘ A blessing, she decides in the end. Six months of passion that fizzled in winter is no sort of home for a child. She says goodbye to her lover as amicably as one can when he screams witch! in her face over the evening primrose she gave Betta to ease the body aches her menses brought, the feverfew for Arn’s headaches so strong it hurt to open his eyes, and the St. John’s wort that made the days a little more bearable for Old Man Glicken. Did you kill our child? No, but you slaughtered our love. Each morning, she thanks the tansy, lavender, and chamomile for their strength. Each night, she pricks her finger and gives the dirt one more drop of blood. ∘ She starts to grow safflower; she plants a red juniper tree; bright eyes pop up, pink and periwinkle, on the mossy path to her water well. The tansy and chamomile continue to dance innocently in the breeze whenever someone comes to call—hawthorn for the heart, ginseng for stress. Whispers of witch are met with she helps more than the priest’s prayers do. It’s only her blood in the garden until, one rainy afternoon, Camelia knocks on her door with tears in her eyes and begs for help. ∘ Camelia stays with her for three days, bleeding the unwanted blessing into the dirt by the juniper sapling. Romeli stays for a full week when she comes; her blood was thicker because she was farther along. Gimmia sobs the whole time, wondering which sin is worse: the lust she succumbed to or what she does now. “They are seedlings, not plants,” she tells her. “They might have been flowers, but not every seed survives the winter. Even without teas.” She spreads the bloodied dirt throughout the garden and, come spring, her plants are the lusher for it. “You bring forth a different kind of life,” she tells Gimmia when she is back again. The young woman has purple bruises on her throat, but she only asks for teas to rip a seedling out by the roots. “Look at how beautifully my garden grows?” She rubs a salve into Gimmia’s bruises, feeds her hearty stews, and promises her to teach her about herbs if Gimmia ever wants a different path. ∘ Alys refuses to bear a sixth child; stony-faced Mera brings a daughter whose breasts are barely more than buds and who refuses to say a word but drinks her tea with relief and bleeds into the garden like the rest; Gimmia returns a third time. Others still come for St. John’s wort and hawthorn, and tell her how her medicines are even more efficacious than they were before. In autumn, when her plants wither and prepare to sleep, she drops a single teardrop of blood into each’s roots. ∘ Winter is a brutal season, and though she tries to keep her home warm to comfort her guests, they can still hear winter’s roaring wind outside. Gimmia comes for a fourth time; she doesn’t need tea, but a place to hide. She puts the girl in her second room and spends her day teaching her about herbs and aches. Gimmia learns with a desperate hunger, her mind quick to memorize the shape of each dried leaf and the point of each flower. After a week, the girl’s lips even start to twitch towards a smile. ∘ The howling that wakes her in the night isn’t the winter wind—it is an angry brute whose hands put bruises around Gimmia’s throat, whose temper sent her flying from his fists. She is out of bed as he screams his rage into the night, because she will not let him touch this girl who ran in fear again. “Murderer!” he howls when the door opens, and there’s a fire in his eyes that burns the brighter for the three teas she gave his beaten beloved. “Witch! Murdering witch!” He punctuates each word with a fist against her chest, against the side of her head as she reels back, vision blurring. Murderer, he calls me, she thinks from the ground, right before his booted foot connects with her skull, but he condemns himself to his own accusation. ∘ Gimmia screams when Sylana's chest stops rising and falling. Horst didn’t see her where she’d been cowering in the kitchen, but he does see the cast iron frying pan right before it cracks his skull wide open. She stands there shaking over the bodies of someone who cared about her and someone who didn’t. She can’t bear the sight of him, broken and bloodied, so she drags him out of the house, past the garden and into the woods. It is the middle of winter and hungry wolves prowl and will make quick work of his remains. Gimmia treats Sylana’s body far more gently. She digs a deep hole in the garden, though the frozen earth is hard to dig. It is where she would want to be buried. She didn’t teach Gimmia about blood, but Gimmia bled among the tansy three times; she knows the garden draws its strength from what is given. Come spring, she will plant herbs over this spot when their seeds will take root and reach for more in the dirt below. “Feverfew, St. John’s wort, evening primrose,” she whispers to herself, determined to remember. “And some tansy, too.” She doesn’t know nearly as much as the one she grieves. But she knows enough. ∘ ∘ ∘