Interlude 1750 #2
Isaac dropped his gaze to the hat he carried between his hands.
“My Rebecca.” He lifted his chin toward the eldest child.
A girl with a tangle of dark waist-length hair.
I remembered the pox on her body. Her fever.
The paste of marigold flowers and witch hazel I gave her mother.
The burdock root and rosemary. “She would have died had you not…” He cleared his throat and looked away.
Hope placed a steady hand on his arm and looked to me, her gaze clear and determined. “Wherever you go, we will follow.”
“We swear it,” Lewis said.
I glanced at Florence, who swayed on her feet, overwhelmed as I was with astonishment.
Unsteady and unsure of the magnitude of such a blessing and the gratitude now filling my heart near to bursting.
These people saw the world as I did and chose the same path no matter the difficulty.
No matter the danger to themselves. I could not help but smile, my own tears coming quick as the children and their parents smiled back.
I dropped the ax and held out my hands to them. “Then you are all welcome.”
I SHOWED HOPE and Joan and Florence how to tap the tree. They all wondered at the taste, sweet with a delicate note of greenery and soil. Like drinking from a spring never touched by man.
They came to the tree reverently, stricken by the same sense of immense power I felt.
Their hands were the lightest touch against the bark even as they cut into it.
There was a duality in this cutting, as was the way in all things.
To come with such softness to enact a violence that did not carry the intention to harm.
“Touched by God,” Florence said as she sat beneath its branches, her head tipped toward the sky.
She clung yet to the ways she’d learned as a girl, but neither Hope nor Joan faulted her for it.
They themselves were not so far removed from Reverend Brenton’s indoctrinations to be so harsh.
They would not name the power they felt at the tree God, but they saw it as greater than themselves.
A mutable force that bent based only on what it was rather than what others wished it to be.
“Lewis has found another town not far from here. Says there is a man there who will sell him a heifer and a bull. We have some coin left, and we would have milk. Butter,” Joan said as she wiped a sticky hand against her apron.
I froze, the bucket I was filling suddenly heavy in my grip.
I knew we were isolated here, but our number had grown, and it would be impossible to remain completely hidden.
Florence and I could have lived on our garden and what we caught, but it would have been a meager existence.
There were others now. Children. They would need more.
“He was careful and said nothing of this place. Only that he was readying a new homestead and was in need,” Joan said, and placed a reassuring hand on my shoulder. “We would not flee persecution only to endanger our place here.”
I bowed my head, grateful for this gesture. Their families were at as much risk as Florence and I. My fear would be hard erased, but I knew it would lessen in time.
Together, Lewis and Isaac tilled the earth by hand and planted what seeds they’d brought with them.
Wheat. Corn. Barley. They cleared a separate pasture and raised a fence where the cows Lewis purchased happily grazed.
They cut wood, smoothing the logs so they could build their own small cabins, plus another for Florence and me.
“It is too much,” I said when they led me to it, pride shining in their eyes as they watched me take it in. Eyes damp with tears, I touched the walls one by one and marveled at their kindness. They said nothing but stole away so I might revel in their gift without their eyes on me.
There, in the doorway, I wept. To taste such joy after so many years of darkness. It was a gift.
The crops grew with a swiftness none of us had ever seen.
Their first yield overfilled our baskets, and the men clapped each other on the back as they looked upon their reward.
The heifer gave up bucket after bucket of milk, thick as cream, and the children drank it down, their cheeks flushed with good health as their mothers looked on with pride.
The chickens laid eggs with yolks the deep orange of sunset.
The air was golden-tinted and filled with the sounds of children’s laughter as their fathers chased them about, scattering the chickens as they roared with their own mirth.
If ever there was a utopia on this earth, we had found it.
WITH OUR SURPLUS crops and milk and butter in tow, Isaac and Lewis returned to the neighboring town.
The next day they came home, their pockets full of coins and another heifer trailing behind them.
The trade between men inspired no queries or accusations, and while we were part of the world, we did not live within its sphere of influence.
But Florence grew ever distant. Sullen as she worked alongside me. She no longer visited the tree, and I watched her face darken each night I returned, my bucket filled with sap.
Finally, one night, as we settled in for sleep, she spoke. “It is a false god. Your tree.”
“Perhaps there is something of a god in it. Perhaps it is only as nature intended it. But it has served us well. I would not deny my gratitude.”
She turned over on her pallet so I could no longer see her face. “It is only a tree. Set down by God’s hand.”
I opened my mouth to tell her the tree’s power had saved her life, but I had no energy to give voice to the words.
Florence’s beliefs in opposition to mine had been a long, bloody war, and I was tired of fighting.
Tired of waiting for her to understand. To become the woman I’d raised rather than the one she’d become.
She did not have to believe in the power, or the tree, or that the sap we took from it ensured we would thrive in this new land. I and Hope and Joan had enough belief for all of us. We would live well here. We would thrive.
I spent many nights thinking of the tree, of the magic that fed it, and how we might further channel it.
A sacred rite for the good of each of us.
Our children and their children after them.
A fulfillment of all that Reverend Brenton had suspected of me.
A witch born of a deeper magic than his god. I smiled at the thought of it.
The following night, we met as we always did at the tree. Three women. Three mothers. We who had given up so much in the names of our children and would continue to do so if it meant they would know comfort.
“Sisters.” I called them such for that is what I felt they were.
They circled about me, eyes keen in the moonlight.
I could only hope they would listen and understand what I was about to ask of them.
I passed my hands over their mouths, their cheeks, the earth beneath a warm, trembling thing that waited for an offering. For what I would ask it.
“Together, we have seen such blessings. Together, we have watched our families flourish.” I pointed to the tree, to its spreading branches and its strange bark I had come to know as a second skin.
I felt no fear, only a growing sense of joyful anticipation as I withdrew the curved knife from my apron, brought it to my palm, and closed my hand around it.
“You all know the power here. You have sensed how it casts a golden light over all that we touch. I gave the sap to Florence when she fell ill, and it saved her. For everything we have asked, it has heard and granted our wishes. We wanted to flourish. To see our children grow strong and happy. And we have. Do you not agree?”
Their heads nodded as one.
Wincing, I drew the knife through the soft flesh of my hand, the pain both lovely and sharp, and then extended the weapon.
“Join me, sisters. We know of the power in blood. How it is sacrifice and sacrament. Let us give an offering so our bloodline, our daughters, will know good fortune forever.” I stepped toward the tree, its exposed interior still weeping from earlier taps, and pressed my hand against it, the blood melding with the thick, dark sap.
I had always felt set apart. I moved through the world aware of the energies around me and how they ebbed and flowed.
Not a vessel that created its own magic but one that could channel it.
Make use of it. But now, as my blood soaked into the tree, I could feel it spark against whatever more ancient magic existed there.
That same hum we’d felt since we’d first come to this land found root in me—an oath wrought in blood that every woman born of our line would live richly.
Hope and then Joan stepped forward. “For our daughters,” they whispered as they pressed their bloodied hands to the tree. We stood, arms linked, tears streaming down our faces, as we let the magic move through us in gentle waves.
“Florence! Thou art come!” Joan stared over my shoulder, and I turned to look, desperate in my hope I would see my daughter walking toward us.
When I saw her striding through the grass, her nightshift under her cloak a pale bloom, my knees buckled. I opened my arms to my daughter and let out a ragged sob. Florence made no move to come to me. It did not matter. My girl was here, and it was enough.
Her gaze fell to our hands. The thin lines of blood still staining our wrists. “What have you done?”
Joan caught at Florence’s shoulders, spinning her like a child, and laughed. “It is a wonderful feeling! To have such magic flowing through you. Like capturing sunshine.” She held out the knife. “Will you join us?”
Florence did not look at the blade offered her, but only at me, her gaze heavy with judgment. With accusation. “I will not.”
“Oh, Florence.” Joan chattered on, unconcerned with my daughter’s denial, drunk on the power coursing through her.
“I cannot tell you how pleased I was to see you happy in your place here. Benjamin would be glad to know you are content. He never felt any malice toward you, only a sadness you could not be what he wanted.”
I felt the precipice then. The world tipping toward an end I could no longer hold at bay. I’d thought myself safe from discovery, but I could not keep Joan from speaking. Could not keep Florence from hearing. Any attempt to do so would only be further damnation.
“He has married happily and well. His wife was newly with child before we left. It is as he wanted, to have children, but I did wish it would have been you despite your not being able to bear children. I always found the two of you well matched.”
A deep chill settled over my skin, nausea worming its way up my throat as I watched my daughter’s face go pale.
“Cannot bear children?” Florence said.
“Yes,” Joan mumbled, her brow creasing with confusion. “I visited her shortly after they married, and she said Benjamin had mentioned it. It bothered her that he still spoke of you, so imprinted upon him as you were that even she could not erase your memory.”
“Strange that he would think such a thing was true when it isn’t.
I cannot help but wonder how such an idea was planted in his head.
” Her tone was restrained. A measured cadence that could not hide her rage.
Her sorrow. As her mother, I heard what lay hidden beneath the words. Each syllable was a small death.
“Florence, I only meant to keep you safe.” I had nothing else to offer.
Nothing that would serve as a balm for the wound I dealt her.
I could have opened myself up, my ribs pried apart so she might see the heart that bled for her since she came screaming into the world, but it would have done no good.
Florence moved so quickly I saw only the knife’s glint as she snatched it from Joan. When she drew the blade over her palm, she did not cry out, but held her hand steady as she approached the tree.
She paused, her hand hovering over the spot where we’d offered our blood, and then pressed it to the bark. Only then did she look at me, her lip lifted in a sneer.
“You will live to regret this sacrilege. Whether in this life or the next.”