Ursula Pflug - Seeds and Other Stories

Siena herself had always been a quiet unassuming sort and so people had largely left her alone even though they knew what she was. And if anyone ever pointed a finger right at her and began to speak of what was wrong with her witchery, how ungodly it was, she knew how to deflect them with a joke, or flattery, or a spoonful of hope for their poor little brokenhearted souls, and so they put down their pebbles and unkind words. But all that had been before they’d stoned her daughter, and Noelle had gone mad or missing or maybe both, and the mildly, as most everyone’s are, broken hearts of her men had broken further and they’d left. They’d asked Siena to go with them, but she hadn’t.

If she moved and her daughter returned to find her, Siena had to be there, didn’t she?

She knitted, wondering as always why her burrowing and her knitting didn’t coerce the villagers to give her daughter back. It was witchy magic, after all. It was supposed to work. Her mother had taught her that, taught her how clear intent poured into the creation of an object would amplify its power to heal.

But they hadn’t worked, not one of them, and there were thirty or forty spider webs now, strung here and there in the woods. No wonder no one came down here much anymore, not even the dog walkers. Siena’s daughter catchers were disturbing, never mind unsuccessful. Perhaps she’d take them all down. And so she wandered the woods with a new purpose, ostensibly to find and detach and burn all her creepy hanging things. She found and detached and bagged six, and where she thought she’d hung the seventh, she instead found a tall boy with wild red hair, stuffing it into his pocket.

“Why do you want that?” Siena asked.

“Want what?” he asked, his hand covering the bulge in his pocket.

“My spider webs. I made them.”

“Oh!” he said. “We thought Noelle made them. They bring luck in love.”

“How could Noelle make them if she’s gone?”

“Maybe she’s a ghost,” the young man offered. How old was he? Had he known Noelle, or did they just talk about her, like everyone else? How old would Noelle be now, if she were here?

Siena began to stare and stutter, as if to prove everything he’d heard about her was true.

“You look cold,” he said. “Come to the fire for tea?”

“Okay,” Siena said, surprised. And she did. There were four or five of them, sitting on logs and stumps and one broken chair arranged around one of her stick piles that they’d set alight. They made tea and gave her some, and when they poured a little rum in their own and asked her if she wanted any, she didn’t refuse.

“Just don’t break the bottles, okay? I cut my fingers when I clean up down here.”

“I wouldn’t,” the boy said. “What’s your name?”

“Siena. You?”

“Peter.”

“Hello, Peter. Why aren’t you afraid of me?”

“Because you’re Noelle’s mother.”

“Maybe. But I’m evil. And she must’ve been evil too, or they wouldn’t have stoned her.” It was only saying it aloud that made Siena realize some small part of her believed it to be true.

“You’re not evil, you just went crazy because you lost Noelle. That would happen to anyone. But don’t stop making those weird string things. They’re magic. They’re infallible.”

“Who do you love?” Siena asked.

“I don’t like anyone in that way, and no one likes me. Although Liz has been my best friend since kindergarten, so I’m not exactly alone either.”

One of the girls in the circle smiled at Siena. She had black braids and wore a little skirt that in better light Siena would’ve known wasn’t made of leaves, and striped knee socks and sneakers. “But they’ve worked for lots of us,” the girl said.

Siena smiled to herself, and fell asleep, the fire and the rum so warm. When she woke the moon had risen, the youngsters gone home to their families. Siena too should walk back to her igloo, but on the way she saw a glimmer of water beneath a heap of deadfall. She investigated further, stepping in it, and was shocked; the icy water came almost to her hips. Siena would’ve fallen as if she’d stepped off a creek bank, which was precisely what she’d done, except the mounds of deadfall and garbage prevented it. She hauled herself out before her muscles could seize up from the cold.

Had there always been a creek here? It was as if she’d forgotten it even existed, but how could that be so? It was so full of garbage it was obliterated from sight, but that didn’t account for its absence from her mind.

Siena saw another daughter catcher then, hanging just out of reach as if blown by the wind. She didn’t care what the young people said, to Siena it radiated evil. Her thoughts after all were full of malice when she made them; some tiny secret part of her wished terrible things upon the townsfolk because of what had happened to Noelle. But by the old laws of mirrors Siena knew this was a dangerous thing to do, that she brought judgement upon herself when she wove malice into her magic. People would talk about her even more than before, and she’d grow even more bitter and solitary because of it, and weave even more hate into her webs, and the villagers, sensing her hate, would call her an evil witch, and so on, in an unending circle of fear and hate.

Still, she hiked her skirt and shinnied up the tree and pulled it down. There was love in the webs too, the yearning she felt for Noelle, or they wouldn’t work to find the kids the love they so craved. She took it home to her stick and Styrofoam shelter. Peter was right, she had gone mad. The villagers were right about her. How could she not have seen it? Still, the shelter was a step up from the stick piles she used to burrow beneath. When had she built it? After she’d talked to Sally, she thought. And after she realized birds took better care of themselves than she did.

In the morning she hoped the youngsters would invite her for tea again, but they would be in school. The same two geese flew overhead. They took a long time to make their decision of where to build their nest, or else they just wanted to drag out their weeks of dinners out and movies and sex, before the long work of raising a family began. Seeing them, Siena wished again her men hadn’t left. She wished her husband had stayed behind and helped her dig for her daughter’s body.

She wished he’d believed, as she’d believed, that they could still find Noelle, that their love could find a way. Siena allowed herself a little resentment then, towards her missing husband. There was a streak of weakness in him, she’d always secretly felt, an inability to hold on, hold out. If he’d stood beside her it would’ve been easier to say, “You shouldn’t have stoned Noelle. She was just letting her hair down, letting off a little steam. Things would’ve felt better for you if you’d done it a little more yourselves.” She could’ve spoken before it even happened, but when she already felt it coming, said something like, “Noelle’s a little frisky, it’s true, but great care must be taken of the free-spirited; they teach us all that joy is still possible. To judge them is to judge ourselves. We’d do better to imitate than to decry.”

But she hadn’t. Or if she had, she hadn’t done it enough. Or if she’d done it enough, it hadn’t made enough of a difference. They’d still stoned Noelle. She’d still gone mad or missing or both.

Siena went to investigate the missing creek, had a memory then, of a time when the creek had been beautiful. One spring it had flooded its banks so that when she and her daughter and her son, maybe nine and eleven then, had sat on the swing at the edge, their feet dangling in the risen water. The current was fierce that spring, and they had slipped into the water and been pulled with huge force around two bends until the place where several fallen trees slowed the stream.