To Soothe the SpiritValerie Hunter
4300 words Lan came across the field of wildflowers suddenly on one of the evening walks that he felt compelled to take even when he was exhausted from a long day plowing. Somehow keeping his feet moving kept his mind from completely racing away, going places he didn’t want it to dwell. But when he came across that field just beyond his own property, everything stopped. He stood still, and the only thought in his head was the absolute beauty of it. He drank it in— the array of colors and shapes, the earthy scent, and the movement of the flowers’ dance in the slight breeze. He’d been numb for so long that it was a shock to realize he could still feel such awe and wonder deep in his bones. He stayed until the sun set. He had to stumble home in the dark, and all but fell into bed, sleeping so deeply that his nightmares didn’t wake him like they usually did. Perhaps he managed to avoid them altogether; he couldn’t remember when he woke up. He returned to the flowers the next evening, and every evening after that. The sight wasn’t the same glorious shock that it had been that first time, but it was still wondrous, still managed to soothe something inside of him every time. He came to appreciate the individual flowers, none of which he knew the names of— the yellow ones with their wild, asymmetrical petals; the blues so deep he could almost drown in them; the delicate purple ones that were rarest and most beautiful. Did flowers like this exist all over the countryside, or was this some kind of magic? He rubbed at his arm. No, magic would never be used for something so frivolous. Besides, no mages had come to the new territory. It was part of its appeal to Lan, who had claimed a homestead in the area nicknamed the Back End of Nowhere because he couldn’t think of anywhere else to go. Certainly not home; he didn’t have the nerve for that. He loved his family, but they seemed to belong to a different Lan, that pre-war boy that he had trouble believing was him. If he’d gone back to them, they’d want him to still be that boy, and that would break him. Or else they’d accept him for who he was now, and that might break something in them. He didn’t want to be responsible for that. So he wrote them bland letters that bordered on cheerfulness because he could almost manage to be his old self for the duration of a letter. He pretended he was enjoying his independence, enjoying farming, when in truth he was just surviving. He’d tried his best. Built himself a soddie and told himself that he didn’t mind living in such a small, suffocating abode made out of the earth himself. He was little better than an animal, but wood was dear out here and he needed shelter. He focused on surviving, plowing as many acres as he could manage with his sorry mules and his sorry self. He still looked as though he might snap in half in a strong wind, but if he took it slow, he could manage. He liked being outdoors, breathing in the clean air and not being able to see another soul. The neighbors were far enough away that he rarely saw them— a broad-shouldered, one-armed man named Uster on one side, and a woman, Demyra, on the other. Neither seemed inclined to socialize, which suited Lan just fine. He didn’t need anyone. The Back End of Nowhere was the antithesis of the prison camp in Corett. Even the sky and the sun overhead seemed different. He tried to convince himself he was in a completely different world, but he only truly believed that when he was looking at those wildflowers. It was, perhaps, a little like an addiction. He didn’t realize how much he depended on seeing the flowers until it rained one evening. He contemplated going anyway, but after seeing a flash of lightning, he thought better of it. Of course he should stay in. And so he did, but he slept poorly. He told himself it was the walk he missed, that last bit of physical exertion that made him sleep soundly, but he knew it was really the flowers. When morning came, the sun bright and the sky cloudless, he set out across the fields as though he might perish if he had to wait until evening to see them again. They were still damp from last night’s rain, and seemed to shimmer ever so slightly in the newly risen sun. He wondered how the same sun could rise here as rose in Corett, how such extremes of beauty and ugliness could exist in the world, how he could set eyes on both of them. Was anyone else from the prison camp looking at such beauty now? Was-- “It’s the most glorious spot in the whole countryside, isn’t it?” a voice behind him asked, and Lan flinched. He turned as she added, “Sorry. Didn’t mean to startle you.” It was the woman from the neighboring claim, Demyra, along with her thin brown dog, who pushed its wet nose into Lan’s fingers. He tried to collect himself. “It is glorious,” he said, attempting a smile that felt wrong on his lips. He was too out of practice. “Anyhow, I’ll let you get on with your morning,” she said, and was walking away before he could think of a response, the dog gamboling at her feet. 
After that Lan went for a walk each morning as well as the evening. He told himself he was building up stamina, but really he just needed to drink in those flowers like a tonic, fill his head with their rich colors and his nose with the balm of their scent twice a day to keep himself going. He frequently saw Demyra in the mornings. They exchanged hellos and not much else, but he found himself looking forward to that, too. He didn’t need anyone, but it was still nice to be acknowledged, to know he wasn’t the last person on earth. He judged her to be around his age, perhaps a little older since a person was supposed to be twenty-one to claim land in the new territory. (Veterans were exempt from this rule; if you were old enough to have fought, no one questioned whether you were old enough to farm.) He didn’t ask her why she’d decided to come out here, as that was none of his business. She seemed more than capable; she was near as tall as Lan and sturdier, and she’d managed to break more acreage than him with the help of her hired boy, a coltish youth who didn’t look more than thirteen. Occasionally they’d discuss how the crops were doing, or what tasks they had planned for the day. When he mentioned he needed to sure up the roof of his soddie, she offered him the assistance of Guz, her hired boy, and though Lan was on the verge of refusing, he found himself saying yes instead. Truth be told, he wasn’t sure how he could manage without a second set of hands. The next day Demyra sent Guz over as promised, and they got to work. Guz was diligent, doing his best to make up for lack of size with sheer determination. Between the two of them they managed in two days what most men could have probably done in one, but Lan told himself it wasn’t a race, and he appreciated the help even if he wished he didn’t need it. At the end of the second day, he gave Guz a coin and told him to come to supper tomorrow and to bring Demyra with him. “And Caraway?” Guz asked. It took Lan a moment to realize Caraway was the dog, but then he nodded. “And Caraway.” By the next morning he was already regretting this attempt at neighborliness. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d eaten a proper meal with other people, and the thought of small talk with Demyra in the confines of the soddie rather than the edge of the field of wildflowers made him shudder. In the end he decided to move his table outside and eat in the open. He worried she’d think it was strange, but he did it anyhow because it was a comfort to have space, to be able to see the wide blue sky. He tried his best with the meal, and had it ready to serve as Demyra, Guz, and Caraway came across the fields toward him. He ignored the twinge in his stomach and set the table. Demyra brought a barley loaf that nearly undid him; he couldn’t stomach anything with barley. It had been one of the staples at Corett, if barley littered with bugs and mixed with sawdust could be considered a staple. Of course Demyra’s loaf was undoubtedly lovely and vermin-free, but he knew he couldn’t eat it, and he stumbled over his thanks. Demyra, meanwhile, complimented the meal and the idea of sitting outdoors. She talked of the weather and how well the crops were doing, and when she didn’t speak the silences managed not to seem awkward. Guz was mainly quiet, shoveling food in his mouth like he thought it might disappear if he paused overlong. Lan could remember being thirteen, when it seemed like no matter how much he ate he was still hungry. Now food never seemed to sit right in his belly, as though going for so long without had transformed his innards. He ate slowly, hoping it would make it seem as though he was eating more than he was. Guz wasn’t fooled. “You don’t eat more’n a fly.” “Be polite, Guz,” Demyra murmured. “What? It’s true. You’ll make yourself ill that way.” Lan swallowed the lump in his throat. “I’ve been ill,” he replied. He wasn’t sure if it was a lie. Corett was hardly an illness, but it had broken his health, hadn’t it? “Can’t stomach too much food at once.” “That why you’re such a beanpole?” Guz asked while Demyra hissed his name again. “I reckon so.” “Well, if you need any more help around the place, you let me know.” Lan knew the boy was probably thinking of the extra money he might make rather than any altruistic motive, but he nodded anyway and said, “I will.” The meal ended pleasantly enough, and Guz helped him wrestle the table back inside. Afterwards Lan walked them to the edge of the property, then circled around to the wildflowers. Their colors seemed particularly rich tonight, and he breathed deeply and tried to float in them. 
The next morning he saw Demyra again. “Thank you for having us to supper,” she said as though she hadn’t already thanked him last night. “We’ll return the favor soon.” “You needn’t,” he said quickly, only realizing how harsh the words sounded after they’d fallen from his mouth. “Sorry. I didn’t mean…” “It’s all right.” She paused. “I don’t mean to be nosy, and I didn’t want to ask yesterday in front of Guz because he’d badger the life out of you, but… did you fight? In the war?” How to answer that? He kept his eyes on the deep blue of a flower, the same color as the tunic he’d worn. How had he never seen the similarity before? “I joined up when I was eighteen,” he said carefully. “Two summers ago.” “I thought as much. You remind me of the soldiers I’ve known. It takes time to move on from such an experience, doesn’t it?” He wanted to laugh and say he didn’t know. But more than anything, he didn’t want to pretend to be something he wasn’t. “I never even saw a battle. Got captured during a patrol, and spent the rest of the war in Corett.” “Goodness, how terrible,” Demyra said, and he was surprised to hear genuine sympathy in her tone. When he dared glance at her, she added, “I heard about Corett. You were lucky to survive.” He wanted to ask what she’d heard. Surely if she knew the truth, that the prisoners had been bled, used for blood magic against their own army, she wouldn’t be so sympathetic. But he kept his mouth shut, wishing he hadn’t said anything at all. He barely knew this young woman; why had he told her as much as he had? He mumbled a quick good-bye and walked home, busying himself in farm tasks for the rest of the day. He didn’t go on his evening walk even though he never saw Demyra in the evenings, nor did he go the next morning. He told himself he didn’t need it, ignoring his growing twitchiness and his sleeplessness at night. Talking to Demyra had undone something within him, and all he wanted to do was button it back up. Finally, late on the third afternoon, the antsy feeling overcame him and he headed towards the field. Only the flowers could soothe him. When he got there he blinked, unable to comprehend what he was seeing. Carnage. The flowers mown down like bodies, destroyed and cast aside to be replaced by neat furrows. He could see Uster walking away in the distance with his oxen, as though it was all in a day’s work to destroy a bit of paradise for the sake of planting an acre of late potatoes. Lan had never gotten into a true fight in his life, but right now his entire body shook with the urge to run after this man, pitch into him, pound him into the ground, bury him beneath the destroyed flowers. He had just enough self-control left to not actually do this, but the desire coursed through his blood until he was afraid he might burst, and then something did burst, and he was sobbing. He didn’t think he could stop. His mind was a quagmire of too many emotions that couldn’t be named, but the tiny portion that could still grasp a thought was aware that never in his life had he cried like this, never in his life had he unleashed such a torrent of feelings, and therefore he had no idea how to spool them back in. He was going to empty every last thing inside of him, and once he had—once he had-- Something enveloped him, a gentle pressure on both arms, and then a voice in his ear, just loud enough that he could hear it above his own cries. “All right. It’s all right.” Demyra. He tried to tell her it wasn’t. Tried to apologize for the state he was in, tried to explain, tried to ask her to leave him be. But he was incapable of forming coherent words, just continued to cry, choking back the sobs because it was terribly shameful to cry in front of another person, but he couldn’t stop, couldn’t-- “It’s all right,” she repeated, keeping a tight hold on him as though she knew how close he was to shattering. “You’re all right. You’ll be all right.” She kept saying it until, at long last, the tears subsided. He felt drained, dazed. Demyra’s arms were still snaked around him, possibly the only thing holding him together. Caraway sat beside him, a small sentinel. “Let’s take a walk,” Demyra said quietly, the way someone might talk to a spooked horse or a cringing dog. He let her lead him away because perhaps that was all he was now, just a dumb beast who went to pieces over something as simple as flowers. “I’m sorry,” he said, finally finding his voice. “What for?” He didn’t have words enough for that. “You’ve nothing to be sorry for.” Her voice was still quiet, but it was fierce now, too, needle-sharp, as though it was very important he heard her. “You should never have to apologize for feelings.” They kept walking, and he realized she was leading him towards her soddie. He wanted to tell her that wasn’t necessary, that he might as well go to his own soddie and attempt to pretend that none of this had happened (an impossible task, yet one he was eager to try), but his voice still didn’t seem to be working properly. Guz was in the yard feeding the chickens, and he gaped when he saw Lan, but Demyra just waved Guz away and steered Lan around the side of the soddie, where he stumbled to a halt, staring. “Not the same, I know, but I thought you might appreciate it all the same,” she said. Flowers. Not nearly as many as in the desecrated field, but just as vibrant and riotous. More variety, more colors. He’d never seen a garden so wild. His mother’s back home had been orderly and completely soulless, everything in careful rows. This was chaos, an explosion of blooms, though he could tell Demyra must have planned it carefully. There was a little bench, and Demyra sat, pulling him down with her. Caraway plopped himself on Lan’s feet, a warm anchor. “I did so much planting for food and livelihood that I figured I owed it to myself to plant something for sheer happiness, too,” Demyra said. “Very wise,” he said quietly, and then added, “I didn’t even realize that field was Uster’s land.” “I don’t know that it is, actually. I think he figured he’d take advantage of a little stretch that didn’t belong to anyone.” Lan could feel his chest hitch and shudder, and he willed himself not to cry again. What was done was done. “You must think me a terrible fool.” She frowned. “What did I say about apologizing?” “I don’t think I’ve ever cried like that in my life,” he admitted. “Then you were overdue. All the things you went though, as a soldier…maybe it was time to shed some tears.” He scoffed. “I wasn’t much of a soldier. I never even saw a battle, remember?” “Didn’t you live through one every day you were in that prison?” He shut his eyes, shook his head. “Not a battle, no, just…a nightmare to be endured. There wasn’t enough food, or space, or…anything, really.” They’d been penned up like animals, kept for one purpose. Blood couldn’t come from a corpse. “Every month the blood-letting… knowing that your blood was being used for magic against your own people…” “Both sides did it,” Demyra said quietly. “Doesn’t make it right.” “No.” “Sometimes I think I haven’t woken up yet. From that nightmare.” A hand closed over his, and he opened his eyes, looked over at Demyra who had a strange expression on her face. “Can I tell you something?” she asked, and her voice sounded similarly strange, even strangled. He tried to pull himself back to the here and now. “Of course.” She nodded but remained silent another few moments, continuing to stare at the flowers as though they might provide her with the words she was looking for. “It’s a war story,” she said finally. “All right.” Her hand was still on top of his, and he wiggled out from under it and held it properly, as though that might help. “We were orphaned as babies,” she said. “Me and my twin brother Berdie. We only ever had each other. We got passed around to all sorts of relations and neighbors and…” Her voice caught for a moment, but she cleared her throat and went on. “But anyhow, we always managed to stay together. He was all the family I needed.” Lan had two brothers, both good men whom he loved, but he was pretty sure he had never spoken of them, or any other member of his family, with the love and reverence that was in Demyra’s voice right now. There was sadness, too. He already knew the ending to this story, didn’t he? He didn’t need to have it told, but he got the feeling Demyra needed to tell it, so he kept quiet. “The war began when we were fourteen, and two years later Berdie decided he was going to go. We were living with a cousin and his wife then. They weren’t…they weren’t good people. They weren’t family, even if they were blood. So I told Berdie if he was going, I was going with him. And I did.” She paused. Lan tried to sort out what, exactly, she was saying, and came up short. “I joined the king’s army,” she said, as though realizing she’d have to say it outright in order for him to comprehend. “Pretended to be a boy.” He stared at her as though this might make her words make more sense. “And that…worked?” She gave a short laugh. “It did. No one questioned it. We were just two brothers doing our duty. I’m sure they suspected we weren’t eighteen, but they took us anyway. No one but Berdie knew I was Demyra and not Dem.” He continued to stare, trying to piece her into his memories of the war. The two refused to go together. Surely she must have been found out quickly; surely she hadn’t had to live through the misery or the horror or the-- “Stop looking at me like that,” Demyra said, and he turned his gaze back to the flowers instead, his mind still balking. “Did you…” He took a deep breath and tried again. “The whole rest of the war?” “The whole rest of the war. Two years of pretending to be someone I wasn’t, until sometimes I nearly forgot who I was. Pretend long enough and it starts to feel real, eh?” He nodded. That was what he’d done in Corett, wasn’t it? Pretended to be a man instead of a boy, pretended he was brave and not terrified, pretended away one moment at a time until he’d finally been freed, only to find he couldn’t get his own self back. “It wasn’t so bad as long as I had Berdie. We never talked about it, never had a moment’s privacy, but knowing he knew I was Demyra felt like…oh, I don’t know, an anchor of sorts. “But he died seven months in. Got bad sick in his belly. Seems a silly thing to die of in the middle of a war. Hardly heroic.” “Death usually isn’t,” Lan said, thinking of all the terrible deaths he’d witnessed, men rotting away with illness and starvation, perishing from lack of hope as much as loss of blood. “No, I suppose not. Anyhow, I thought of deserting after Berdie passed, but it hardly seemed worthwhile. I didn’t have anywhere to go back to, and I felt loyal to my mates. I was a soldier, for better or worse, so I got on with being one.” “You saw battle,” he said. It wasn’t a question because he knew she must have, but it horrified him to envisage it. “I did. The terrible part was right before, that feeling you’d get in the pit of your stomach like the world was about to end. In the midst of it, everything just moved quickly, there was no time to think. And after, you just wanted to forget, to feel glad you survived and joke around with your mates and try to pretend you’d never have to do it again.” Her hand was still in his, and he squeezed it because he didn’t know what to say, just wanted to remind her he was here. “Anyhow, I survived. Thought about staying Dem, but there didn’t seem much point. So I came out here and became Demyra again. Tried to figure out what that meant. “That was late last summer. I was fine for a while. I discovered the field of wildflowers, and it just about bowled me over with its beauty. But when winter came…” She shook her head. “The cold and the snow, and being stuck inside with my thoughts and my memories, all alone…there were days I thought I might go mad. Days I was sure I already had. So I made plans for the future, for my hope and my happiness. Dreamed of the garden I’d have come spring. Made arrangements to get myself a dog and a hired boy, someone else who had nobody, just like I did. Made myself a home and a family because that was what I needed.” “To forget?” he asked. “Nah. No forgetting, is there? But it helped me move on. Create a self I could live with. I’ll have always been the orphan and the soldier, but I’m someone else now, or at least I’m trying to be.” Was it really as simple as that? He let his eyes wander around the tumult of flowers. No, not simple. The garden, the homestead, the being responsible for other living things, be they boy or dog, all of that took effort, didn’t it? All of that took trying. All of that took giving of yourself, taking a chance, continuing to hope. As did telling your greatest secret to a neighbor you barely knew, just because you realized he needed to hear it. “Thank you,” he said. “For telling me all that. For sharing this with me.” He gestured to the garden. “Do you know all their names?” “Most of them. Phlox. Anemone. Mallow. Aster. Larkspur. Fritillaries. Eglantine.” He followed her pointing finger, feeling as though he was being introduced to friends. “I always wanted a garden,” she said. “I never stayed in one place long enough to grow one, or had anyone willing to let me. There’s something about flowers that just…” She trailed off, shaking her head. “Soothes the spirit?” he offered. Demyra smiled, a slow and radiant bloom. “Exactly that,” she agreed, and they sat there in comfortable silence and appreciated the view. |
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Valerie Hunter
Valerie Hunter teaches high school English and has an MFA in writing for children and young adults from Vermont College of Fine Arts. Her stories have appeared in publications including Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Capsule Stories, OFIC, and Sonder, as well as multiple anthologies.
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