Wild Greens

Wild Greens 3, no. 05 (March 2023)

Myths and Legends

Welcome to the March 2023 issue of Wild Greens

The Final Dirge

by Kristi Schirtzinger

I need to be alone more than I need shelter or food. The relentless tide of war songs (even my own name had become one: Boudicca! Boudicca!), the feuding clans, and the scorched earth stole the very marrow from my bones more than hunger ever had. I tell only Eilish, my general, that I am taking leave for a short respite and that no one is to follow me or be told where I am. As much as she vexes me with her insolence and single-mindedness, she is the only one who could begin to understand. She asks no probing questions, as I expect, and even kisses my cheek as I leave, though we had argued only hours before. I realized at that moment how much she reminds me of the sister I so miss.

I take no mare, but stroll through the courtyard and well beyond the stables, to a small feral meadow where late summer intybus blooms. The bees are in their harvest frenzy, gathering resources to make it through another winter, and their methodic buzzing as I lay among them lulls me into a daydream. Behind my eyes, I visit myself at an earlier time, a time when I lay in this very meadow beside Prasutagus. Between us lay two-year-old Ceridwen, her bow-shaped mouth going slack against one breast as she falls into a milk stupor, and new-born Rhiannon, feeding greedily at my other nipple—her eyes, even then—searching the horizon. 

On the heels of that tranquility comes the memory of a dream from two nights past. I stood in a scruffy, flat moorland, encased in fog so dense it had weight. As I moved through it, I felt bones and the instruments of war at my feet. I tread cautiously, sometimes stepping on bone shards that made me wince, sometimes stumbling on shields and helmets. I could see no horizon, only a blind distance of white. 

I stopped when my toes slid beneath a tiny, intact skeleton. I knelt and picked it up, cradling the fragile head and torso in my hands. It was a baby, perhaps four moons old, whose hollow eyes came to life suddenly. The eyes, identical to mine, looked expectantly up to me, then the mouth began to coo or cry; I could not tell which, for it was voiceless. I put the skeleton to my breast and walked farther into the fog. As we trudged on, its brittle baby mouth turned soft and took its fill from my body. The fog began to clear, and the sun illuminated the bones, thick as autumn leaves at my feet. The skeleton at my breast smiled with her green eyes and full, dimpled cheeks. As I walked, her bones took on flesh and strength as my legs weakened and faltered. In the distance stood a cloaked woman, too far away to see her features, but close enough to see her beckoning hand. I felt she would interpret this strangeness if I could make it to her.

Energy seeped from my legs like water from a cracked bowl, and I fell to my knees, coming down hard on bones that splintered under my weight. The baby showed no fear, only smiled into my eyes and grasped at my hair. I wrapped her and her kicking legs up in my cloak and tied it to my chest. Then, on my hands and knees, I crawled inch by slow inch toward the woman as the child watched the sunlight that danced across my gold torc.

At long last, I reached the woman, and though I could not see her face, I knew when she held out her hands that she wanted the baby. I unwrapped her from my cloak. Her chubby arms reached toward the woman, and as she left my hands, I fell among the bones as the last strength in my body ebbed away. When I woke, I knew the meaning of the dream immediately. 

*

I rise reluctantly from the bees’ kingdom. Oh, what I would give to be in that queen’s army, a worker bee with one, sacred mission: food. I thank the bees for the music—it was a dirge, and I could ask for none finer—then walk farther out, to the little woodland we call Coed Bach, where I brought Ceridwen and Rhiannon often when they were too little to ride down the winding ramparts to Coetir Santaidd. In some ways I prefer Coed Bach. It was our private sanctuary, with no pressure to worship at the great oak. I showed them plants used for medicine and food, and a plant never to touch that grew along the tiny brook. These are the memories I want to relive with my grandchildren. Anger rears up in me as I make my way to the soggy ground, where the aconite grows. The hood-shaped flowers—pretty, purple things—that belie their true danger, reach my knees. With the protection of linden leaves between my palms and the plant, I tug one out of the soil. The root is starchy and dense, with many spindly tendrils. It will provide more than enough when the time comes to use it. 

As I near the stables, I put on a mask of unwavering certainty. I remind myself that I am the face of this war, and my people need to see it. Our enemies need to see it. Yet I had come to believe, and now know for certain, that my children’s and grandchildren’s freedom will cost me my life. It is not too high of a price to pay.

La Peña

by Erika Pettersen

From where I grew, another followed

by Carly Lewis

I remember the fires. How they painted the sky like a bloodied sunrise in the east, swallowing the cold blue winter with withering heat. 

The acrid smoke drew me out of my home, tunneled deep in the earth through the door of a hollow tree. Had I not been awake, the fires would have trapped me and many. I crawled from the hollow with eyes still sore from weeping—I’d felt the coming of the flames for weeks. And still, no one was wise to believe me. It is easier to smell the coming smoke when my eyes can see so far; moments that haven’t happened yet, but will soon enough. They always do. 

My people put faith in the gods of known chance and entrust their souls to the hands of expected circumstance. It is not all bad, to live by the measured sway of the air, the timely turn of the season. But danger is the difference. 

The air is changing. 

The fire’s riders care not for custom. Hooves tramping verdant ground to ash, consuming, consuming. Not for need, but hunger. A flame’s gluttony is never satisfied and rarely stopped. They know of little else. 

Many will die today, I thought, keeping low to the ground so the smoke couldn’t blind me, and their ignorance will follow them. My gut churned at the thought, though I knew it was true. It didn’t make leaving any more bearable. 

Like something more beast than human, I crawled from tree to tree, scraping and knocking on the bark doors until those inside heard, pleading for them to come out and flee. Some answered and took their families far before the first wild flames reached their thresholds. Others refused and shoved me from their plots. “What will you have us fear, beguiled one?” they spat. In the back of my mind, I saw their beautiful oak doors turn to darkened soot. I wasted no time waiting for their change of mind. No need to linger for those who were already lost. 

I ran with the hoards I managed to save, fast as we could to beat the riders that pursued us. A pang ran through my chest. Though I knew we were right to run, I longed to turn and face the flames. Wild as they were, they hungered for the peace they could never have. I’d watched for months in my mind as the fire’s riders consumed lands beyond this one with hope in their empty eyes. After this one, they thought, we will slow, we will be satisfied. We will be freed. But peace never did come to them. It never would. 

We made it to the grasslands when the sun rose, cleaving the sky with unbearable light. The heat of it razed the back of my neck. I hurried the others on—“Keep going further and further now!”—when I heard her. 

Beyond the gnashing of flames, the rider’s gorge—the gentle coo of a child just waking up. 

I closed my eyes to look ahead and came up coughing. Even my mind grew dark with this smoke. 

The child called again. 

For a moment, some bitter part of me begrudged the fools I’d left behind. The ones who had taught me duty to the land and the people on it, though they cursed my gift of seeing. It wasn’t a choice to move without thought, and it never had been.

With something like hate in my heart, I turned away from the masses. The blistering air sucked me back into the forest, dragging me with guiding hands to the fallen tree where an infant lay just out of reach of her mother’s arms. The woman lay motionless, crushed by a twisted branch. 

I took up the child and turned back in the direction of the grasslands. Just then, a large oak timbered and fell before me, walls of flame spreading and trapping. The roar of hooves was deafening. This I had not seen. I had not wanted to. 

Stepping in circles made no difference. Until I saw before me, mere paces from her poor mother, the child’s home rising tall and strong. The branches were just beginning to alight with feasting sparks. Resolve replaced hate and I fell to my knees, clawing at the tree’s bark with my free hand until some crumbled free. I stuffed it into my mouth, swallowed, and began to pray. To the gods of circumstance. To the forest and trees. To the unnamable eye that saw through me. To take myself and the child, to hold us safe. Alive. 

From my knees, roots sprung. They dug and gripped into the earth quicker than I could catch my breath. Upwards I unfolded. Along my arms I grew branches that wove taller until I could reach the flames above me. But, trying to grasp my hands and the bark of my face, they hissed away in steam. In the hollow knot where my womb once was, the baby slept, strangely calm amid the fires as if she did not hear their feasting at all. 

I remained until the riders moved on and every tree around me burnt away. Until the child I cradled grew big enough to crawl from the hollow and turn over the soot-stained soil with her own hands to plant things new. I remained when she left—to find her own and be her own—and when she returned. I remained until her own children grew and she waned, tired and wise. Until she came to me and took from my bark. 

I remained with her by my side, our leaves billowing, growing, dying.  

And I will always remain. This I have seen. 

Icarus

by Megan Jauregui Eccles

My son is more than wax wings. He is long eyelashes and mischievous smiles and curly, golden hair. He is untied sandals and scraped knees and impetuous eye rolls. He is loud whispers and made-up songs and boisterous laughter. And when he falls like a star from the sky to the sea, he ceases.

But no one remembers him as anything more than a warning. No one knows the boy, just the myth. And here am I, a father, foolish to love such a flawed young man. Because that’s what he’ll always be—young. 

He’ll never know the touch of grey in his beard, or the taste of a sweet apple on a crisp, autumn morn, or the tide of love when a father holds his child for the first time.

He is, he was, but he never will be.

Love is a labyrinth meant to trap and trick you. Love is a monster made of flesh and bones and drowned son. Love is a curse for things you can’t hold forever. I see his face in the fractured reflection of the sun on the sea and try to remember him as that bright, endless boy instead of the look of rapturous pain and regret on his face in those final moments. 

We are not the sum of our imperfections. We are not one brash moment, a final mistake. We are all suns, bright and burning and falling and dying. We are universal, unicursal. We are everything.