76. Then Piss
THEN: PISS
Ispent half a moon in my bed. I bathed every few days when I could no longer stand my own stench. I would let Fox sit behind me on my bed and comb my hair. I would eat whatever Jade served me, but only to pick at it.
At night, I would be joined by either my apprentice or my friend, their smaller bodies taking up the space Avery had once. I was listless and dull.
“It’s nearing the time to collect moss this moon,” Jade said one day, sitting on the side of the bed, looking down at me.
I sighed. I knew what she meant. I was the only soul with magic in these parts, the only person who could step inside a god tree. “I don’t know if I can do it,” I whispered. “I don’t know if I can get that far into the forest. I feel like I cannot move.”
“I know,” she said. “But without you, what will the women of Sheridan do?”
“They can reap the harvest their men sowed by backing their priest’s relentless campaign to destroy me,” I bit out. “They drove my man to his death. You know that.”
The fact that Avery may have borne any responsibility for his demise went unsaid between us.
“Can you try?” she pleaded. “Fox is scared, I think. She needs to see you carry on. I need to see you carry on.”
I felt my face crumple. “I can’t do it,” I bleated and began to weep.
Jade lay down next to me and held me for some time.
Then she rose and brought me a wet cloth for my face.
She brought me broth and toast. She brought me a chewstick to clean out my mouth.
Then she sat back down on her original perch on the bedside and said, “You will get up and gather the moss in the morning. I will come help you in any way I can.”
I shook my head. “I can go alone.” Before she could protest, I said, “I need to go alone. Please.”
In the morning, I did as she had said I would.
I rose. I bathed with well water and soap.
I washed my hair and braided it out of the way.
I pulled on a clean tunic of Avery’s that somehow still smelled like forge fire and put it on over my breeches.
With my hunting knife and foraging bag, I set out for Nyossa’s god trees, eyes on the ground, searching for god snakes and blackberries.
Before I left the farmhouse, I had smiled and nodded at Jade sitting at the worktable drinking her bark tea. She had smiled and nodded back.
Fox had put her thin arms around my waist and squeezed.
My hand on her head, I said, “And what will you do today?”
I will set up the table with the mortar and pestle and tins for making the paste, she signed. Before that I will help Jade with the laundry.
“What a gift you are, child,” I said and kissed her forehead, but my eyes were on Jade. I mouthed thank you, but she waved her hand dismissively.
In the forest, I found a pretty pink-and-brown god snake, its little forked tongue flicking at nothing in particular, sunning itself on a root.
“Good morning,” I greeted her gently. I liked to think they were all girls. “Is there a blackberry bush nearby?”
There was. When I found it, I realized I had visited these trees just a few moons prior. And in my head, I heard Magda.
You’re not to visit the same trees twice in a row. Best to forget a tree once you’ve harvested from it. Let the forest tell you where to go.
And now Nyossa or Mother Earth or some other source had deemed these trees ready for gleaning. And I found myself lit within from wrath. I stomped a foot into the dirt.
The god snake slithered away with such speed she was but a blur.
There was a nearby clearing that I recognized. In some seasons, it was marsh-like, a shallow leaking in from one of the Nyossa creeks. It was likely why the god trees were here. Magda had said they liked water.
But now it was autumn. Now there was a chill in the night air and a dryness to the forest, the sounds of life more a scraping than a brush when trees were bent by the wind. Brittle grass crunching beneath my boots, I walked into the clearing and looked up at the sky.
“I would like to know,” I hollered, “what in the ever-loving fuck it is you expect me to do now? I would really, really like to know. Could I be granted that? Is it so very much to ask?” My chest was heaving and my throat had already started to ache from the volume I emitted, but I was alive for the first time since I had seen my poor man’s drowned body.
And though I was experiencing a grief like no other grief I had endured, I felt a certainty and a potency.
I felt safe in my anger, my lifelong companion.
“I don’t know which one of you horse’s asses is listening to me, and I don’t care!
” I declared and threw my arms above me, turning in a circle.
“One of you bloody, suffering pricks should have the godsdamn decency to answer! One of you!” I was breathless now and had to pitch forward and put my hands on my knees.
Had I the breath, I would have almost laughed.
I was amazed that I had yet to descend into weeping again.
When I collected myself, I straightened.
And without yelling, but still calling out with a raised voice, I held my arms out again and said, “As far as I am concerned, you can all fuck right off! I don’t want a godsdamn thing to do with any of you!
Worshipping you hasn’t done a thing for me, I can tell you that!
In fact, you’ve made my life hell! And my family’s life hell, and my mentor’s life. You’ve made it all worse!”
A voice in my head reminded me that it was the tyranny of the church that had really done this, but I was drunk on my indignation. I felt far too good to stop.
“I’m done praying to you,” I continued. “I don’t even need you.
I don’t even practice magic. I don’t bleed and pray.
If I’ve magic in me, all it’s good for is mother’s moss.
I’m not one of your Tintarians. I care nothing for your lawless, misunderstood, useless wild magic.
I’m a mad woman of the low country, and I piss on your wild. ”
I turned on my heel, returned to the god trees, and stepped inside one.