ATROPA

I still remember when he was not near, and was no more than a neighbour. Some distant presence, belonging to the land across the river, to the house far yonder, where I had never been and could not picture.

And I knew well that when he came to the river he did not come to fish, he came for me. Wondering eyes, hopeful. He sees me, and he wants, as all men want, but he didn’t understand this yet. My father accepts a dowry, and perhaps a choice for the choiceless, there was not another family for miles. So on a day when I did not get to speak, it was decided, my father’s only daughter and the man from across the river.

Now my land is his land, and my father is gone. We are alone here, without anything but abundance. Nature does provide, and when she doesn’t, my husband will take from her.

And he has changed the landscape, and around my home he has unwilded the wild things. Tamed the plants. Drilled the ground. Cut the tree. He has challenged everything, to prove to us all his dominion, and by powerful hands we will subdue that which he says we do not like. Irrational temperaments, stormy weather, but I liked the wood when it was naked. He tells me without words that I will yield, as the ground yields, as the animals fold in his hunt.

Broken horses, in the yard, fenced by round pen and stick. Tied at the feet, your other captives, and I feed them.

So day to day, I make good, I make bad, I make bread. Grindstone and turn, cutting of corn, wheat and stores, forage and leaf. He sits and waits, mostly, then from my hand to his mouth. As he expects me to.

The seasons come and pass, but this year, something falls out of line. Nature does not yield to you as she always has before, and you have underestimated her. You misjudged, now our mistake both, so consequences must follow, and the grains swell in the stores. The crops blight. Spring comes early, but so does the frost.

And when there is none to blame, except time, except the earth, except the air around you, you will turn to me with hate. My insolence, an extension of hers, of this injustice and all the world's wrongs against you.

We survive the winter, barely. Hardly, in great difficulty, with misery, and we wonder if this will be the last. His traps lay empty, and nature still does not offer her favour. We eat the horses. And when we do, a madness takes you. Truly from the pit of despair and hunger, then in all directions I find your anger. As though I have answers which you do not. And worse news still, of mouths we cannot feed. My stomach has begun to swell.

And you begin to rant and rave. The ground is poisoned, you say. This place is cursed, you say again. Something in the forest frightens you, at night you feel it crawling through the darkness and imagine it all around. In the water, in the river, in the air you breathe. You say that there is evil here, but I know what you cannot say. What does not surrender to your will, what is out of our control, makes weak men afraid.

You tell me you will ward, day and night, keeping safely, and fires light. You still believe we can be spared it, you still believe the woods will give as they always have before. By your acts of domination, and I must prove my loyalty, with acts of servitude and gentle words affirm. An offering, your next demand, to rid the forest of this wicked. A creature, whose eyes can see even in the blackest of holes, on the darkest of nights and the most unholy of places. To be interred, inside, bricked into the wall.

As we lay down to sleep I hear it, scratching, pushing, trying with every breath it has left. It calls, it cries. I close my eyes.

Clawing, plaster, nails inches deep into stone lime, burning at my hands, skin pinching creases, prints erased by horrid walls. I will endure. I pull at the stone again, tumbles broken parts down. I know his rage will find me and when it does perhaps it may be me encased by stone. He says I am haunted, the one who would disobey, as the land had, as time had. I had chased the cat through the house. Never come back. She needs not us, and I need not him.

I can hear him, but I do not listen. I am in the forest. Each time he speaks in ill tone or raised voice, I am no longer there. I am standing outside, in a clearing, bare feet, hardly touching the ground.

He believes he is owed, and eventually will receive. I know she can endure him, so she waits, silently, because she knows she will outlast him. And how I envied the earth, she had both housed and resisted for as long as time. Walked over, bought, sold, owned. And still would only give what she wished to give. And she knew. From the day that you were born. That she would outlast you.

So I walk in the forest at night, with all the things that make him itch, that make the pit of your stomach rise up, but I am not afraid. I pick the berries he says not to pick, I walk the paths he tells me not to walk, and in this time I am my own. I eat of the land, and I see things he can’t understand. Black smooth gifts from the ground, creeping vines and pestle grind. Spread over my skin, until my eyes are open wide.

The future comes like a memory, and all of the outside rushes in. I see stars and know their meanings. Everything around me speaks. Everything bends for a moment, and I laugh in the darkness. Further still out of reach.

And when I return home, my home, long before it was his. I know his discipline, cruel. You would not subject to any other the way that you are, reserved just for me. In all this world. It does not matter what he may think, what he can take, or what he will do. I say to only myself again, I see who you are, the mortal child of man. And I know you are alike, to the many that came before. I will outlast you. I will endure.

He shouts louder still, and once more I am no longer there. As he speaks, my mind eye shows all things that he does not wish me to see. I stand under the moon. I stand naked in the river and she surrounds me, banks burst all around. All these places that I go, and you, who will never know. I see the snake, coiled. Third eye. Strike blind.

And he cannot control me now, any more than he can change the tides, shift fault lines or rearrange the skies. I stand in the water, surrounded by a thousand eyes.

The next day he learned not to speak, or try to reach, a quiet convenience, and he hates that I am pleased. That I do not need favour or kind.

He can no longer reach me with his voice, because I am not there. And he can no longer touch me with cruel hands, because I am not here. What he sees is not me, and never was. I am so much more. And now I pity him, afraid, hungry. An animal, pale white, thin-skinned, eats everything, unspecialised. A miracle it survived. You unlikely animal.

Time has been unkind. In just days now I must endure the birth of this monster's child. In my most primitive of natures, the oldest of instinct, I want nothing more than to run, leave this all behind, and my body once again be my own.

So again to the riverbanks, forbidden tracks, of winding paths, and back to the berries, I eat my fill. The world tumbles all around. This empty forest becomes a garden mine.

And when it is time, my body, lay me down on the ground, where I begin to melt and run like rivers from my fingertips, in every direction. To places he can never see.

His child wraps inside me, and folds and rolls. The pain comes now. Held by the night, held by waters, born outside, as all ancient things are. Born of blood, and cries of pain. A thousand hands reach from the night and begin to lift me into the sky.

I had wished for my child, born under a different moon, fathered by a different man. Then, through laborious breaths, I begin to understand how she waits. By decades, not in minutes or hours. She stood still, she would lay me back down on the ground, and fingers spread through grass.

A daughter, like me. And I understand, the circle. Alone, alone because she is mine, and I see her, and I know she will outlast you.

And I fill the cloth with berries and bounty. I see the coiled snake from my vision. He knows not how I wait. As liquid, as venom.

I bring home the fruit and our child, and from my hand to his mouth. As he expects me to. ‘Til he has not a chance, not a sword or a word that can fight or undo what has been done to him. All the evil that he fought to keep outside. He now shares my vision. I can smell your guts bleeding, I can smell your gums receding. Eyes dark and skin white.

Chew holes in wood, teeth tight with anger bite. What have you done, you ask, and I do not speak. Too much for his body to take, fever grips and sweats soak. He has no place he can go, afraid of the waters running deep. He calls out, but I am not here, and I do not hear him, I do not see him.

I nurse my child, and we will outlast you, as I have learned my body to endure.