Chapter Nine
Hazel
Shortly after sunrise, we went out to collect botanicals for the shop. An elder in my old pack used to take me with her when she went out to find flowers and herbs and other plant matter, and she had insisted that the time to do that was early in the day.
“When the dew clings to the flora, little one. That’s when the scents are most concentrated.”
She had passed on while I was still too young to learn everything she had to share, but she’d created in me a thirst for knowledge about the plants and how their scents could help people.
And she left me her box of recipes. The most precious thing I owned, and the one memento I did not leave behind.
“This late in the year, a lot of things have come and gone,” I told my friends as we padded along the trail through the forest. “But I have a list of what we should be looking for.” I stopped and read it aloud to them. Barks, some types of fallen leaves, Russian sage, verbena…
“There are a lot more than I would have thought,” Goldie said. “I always thought things grew in spring, bloomed in summer, and died in fall.”
“A lot do, but the things we can find now have their own special beauty and intensity. I’ll show you.
” We walked on, the trees rising so tall over us, sheltering the things we’re there to find.
In comparison, the sages and such were tiny, but a careful eye could find them.
After old Matilda died, I’d studied her cards and tried out as many of her recipes as I could.
I’d also learned more online, which helped me because there were things here I couldn’t find there and vice versa.
“Next year, if I can find a patch of land, I will grow some things but without your help, Clover, I would never have been able to stock the shop.”
“And without you, I’d still be stuck in the pack lands waiting for someone to make my parents sell me off. Then my new alpha would have control of my money. Your escape saved us all.”
“You don’t know that for sure.”
“Yes, she does.” Goldie set down the basket she carried, intended for our harvested plant matter but currently occupied by a three-legged cat.
She hung out with us quite a bit, but Alice didn’t mind.
She said Divina was a free spirit and entitled to be where she wanted when she wanted. “Do you remember Tulip?”
“I’m not sure.” The name sounded vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t put a face to it. “Was she a pack member? Several years older than us?”
“Ten years or so older. An omega who disappeared when we were about eight. She came from a good family with parents who loved her, but the pack sold her off for the building materials for the new alpha house. I overheard my mom talking about it.”
“How does that even happen?” My father was a pathetic drug user, drunk, and gambler.
Most of the alphas were not like that, but they also felt omegas were chattel.
I’d known to some extent, but when my friends came, I thought they were just doing it for me.
I half expected them to go home after they found me a safe place, but nothing could be further from the truth.
They were helping me get started and making plans for their own futures.
They were never going back.
Thank the goddess for that.
“Hey, is this one of the barks you said to look for?” I followed Stine’s excited voice to find her kneeling by a downed tree. “Or am I about to poison someone?”
“It’s not one I mentioned.”
“Oh.” She moved to stand, but I put a hand on her shoulder.
“It’s one I never dreamed we could find here. You are amazing! What a gatherer.”
From that point, we found a lot of things I did have on my list and a few other unicorn-type items. This forest held a deep magic with so many plants that could be used for health or scent or so many other things. I rested my forehead on the trunk of an ancient tree and whispered thanks.
Matilda had taught me so much more than how to identify plants and their uses.
She’d taught me about the life that surged through them, the trees who spoke through tiny threads connecting their root systems, and how they shared resources far underground.
How a fallen tree became a whole colony of different fungi and insects and rotted into mulch for the forest floor.
How even fallen leaves were useful in creating scents.
Everyone talked about things like roses and jasmine and orange blossoms, and they were great.
I hoped to have some of those things in my garden when I had one.
But the gifts of the forest, the ones that came without any intervention by people.
Ones that did better left on their own were even more valuable in many ways.
Untamed nature, a gift from the goddess.
We collected so much, out pockets bulged and we filled the fronts of our sweatshirts.
The basket was still full of Divina who looked too happy to be disturbed.
The sun had risen a lot higher and the plants were drying off in the patches of sunlight that made it through the trees.
It was time to return to the shop and open for the day.
In the short time we’d been operating, word had traveled outside the town and customers were coming in wanting all sorts of things. What a joy to be able to help people.
Very different from the way I’d struggled to help a man who didn’t deserve my assistance.
It was difficult to write off my father from my mind.
I’d loved him so much when I was younger and always thought with enough of my care, he’d get better.
But he couldn’t. Maybe he didn’t want to.
It was always going to end the way it did.
Eventually, I was the only thing left to keep him in drugs and gambling and whatever.
“Hazel, are you coming?” Goldie called. Divina watched me from the basket, and I had a feeling she knew why my steps had slowed.
“Yes, of course.” I shook off the past and took a step into the future. Another one. The one I’d chosen for myself.