|
|
|
by M.K. Hobson
Fantasy, 13 pages.
Originally Published in Realms of Fantasy, 2008
Rate this Story
The Eve of St. John falls at the highest point of summer, the night before the longest day of the year, when everything in the garden is growing so fast the sound of unfurling keeps you awake at night, and the plants strain against their ropes and trellises like hot-air balloons, dropping fruits like sand-bags.
It is a very inconvenient time to dance with the Devil.
I have weeds to dig and seedlings to nurse, honey to coax from the comb and bees to soothe after I do it. There is powdery mildew on the roses; I must keep after it with a yellow tincture of boiled sulfur. There are babies to bring and summer-dreaming mothers to scold, newborn kittens to save from the burlap and foundlings to raise (and contrary to what the gossiping women of Matar— say, I only ever stole one of them; my little Butterfly, who I took from the loft of a drunken butcher in Barcelona. And that was on Christmas Eve, and everyone knows that a child left home alone on Christmas Eve will be stolen by witches. Should be stolen by witches, to look at her today; when I put her in my bag ten years ago, her bones were hollow as horsetails and there were yellow-purple bruises on her throat. Since then she has grown plump on honey and cream.)
I have loved them all, my foundlings. I have raised and taught them, dozens of them, and set each one on the way to meet her Destiny. But none of them have made my heart ache as it does when Butterfly asks if she too has a Destiny. The dread keeps me from answering; I frown and say nothing.
There is so much to be done in the long hot days before St. John’s Eve that many of us—the Middle Ones especially—grumble over the time lost as we pack our things and mutter spells of protection over locks and windows, reciting an ever-growing list of detailed instructions to the ones we leave behind.
Auntie, why do you fuss so? Butterfly sighs with irritation as I go over the list with her one more time. You act as if you do not want to go.
Perhaps I do not, I say.
You want to, she is weary with the wisdom of the young. Already, she can see clearly into me, though she has not gone to the sea. When I am silent, she adds: If you don’t want to go, then don’t. There is challenge in her eyes.
I remind her once again about not eating all the lavender honey, and leave it at that.
There is no question of not going, of course. It is the highest point of summer and His words are screaming between my ears, demanding release. They ache to be spoken, they ache to summon Him. It is so with all witches in the time of Midsummer’s approach. And so, on St. John’s Eve, we all come to the Valley of the Valley, era Val d’Aran, to give His words back to him. To summon Him and dance with Him, to gather the herbs and savories planted for us in past years, back into time beyond remembering. To bring our own gifts to plant for the Young Ones, now woozy with beauty and new power, who wear flowers in their hair and make God’s men and women sick with desire. The Young Ones cannot believe they will ever be interested in the plants that we bring for their future use. They move within a diffuse glow, a semi-sacred stupor; His words ring loud in their heads like a constant song of love, send them reeling from pleasure to pleasure. They believe it will be so forever. We have all believed it in our turn, a foolishness certainly, but a forgivable one.
This year, I am bringing a large pot of purple basil. It is not the most impressive offering that will be brought to the high valley. It cannot be used to induce soothsaying dreams, or cool plague-fever, or breed remorse in the heart of a man who deserves to feel it. Other sisters work the whole year to develop cultivars of just such power and potency, herbs that will be admired and envied by all, but I scorn such competition. The purple basil is hearty and useful and pretty. Butterfly says that when she tastes it in a tomato sauce, it makes her think of every moment in her life she’s ever known happiness.
It is witchcraft enough.
* * *
It is a three-days climb from the sea to the mountains, to the end of the highest valley in the Pyrennes. Across farmlands and fields, up past the last village, beyond which the road becomes the merest sketch and God’s men and women are warded off by ancient sigils and boneworks. Sawtoothed cliffs jut up around a flat-bottomed cirque, and we are enfolded, our songs and smoke amplified by ancient flint and schist.
In the smooth green bowl of the valley’s end, the campment of tents and bent-willow lean-tos bustles with the activity of new arrivals. The witches gather from hundreds of miles around, from France and Andorra in the East, Aragon in the West. Some come across the sea, from Algiers, Corsica, Morocco. Some arrive on brooms, in the traditional fashion. Some ride cats or -- [End of Preview.]