Westward I ReachJennifer Jeanne McArdle
6000 words Mamma says we need to wear long sleeves, ankle-length skirts, and thick stockings because we mustn't show the hair on our heads or our bodies when the Sasanach men come. We still call what grows from our moist skin “hair,” but if someone looked closely they would see what grows is not like the hair of humans, or dogs, they are little tubes, and when I stick my hands deep into the soil, my tubes stretch toward the tubes under the earth, toward what blooms mushrooms and connects the roots, and we communicate with the grasses and the flowers, the crops, the bushes that whisper of once great forests, wolves that howled and hunted stags, kings, heroes, dances, and fairies; a great past long gone. Mamma says we aren't to tell the Sasanach men that we can do this; we can't let them see us use the language of the soil. Rich Sasanach who live across the sea own our land and never visit, but sell what we grow. The government inspectors surveying for famine relief efforts hardly ever come here because most of them feel we are different, even if they do not know it yet. The children gossip that someone in our parish hundreds of years ago, twenty years ago, perhaps just five years ago, stepped into a circle of mushrooms, sold his blood, his soul, something of the animal inside him to the Sidhe, and we all were changed. Anyway, the old lord is dead, is what is whispered by the men, by the grass, too, and the Queen of the Sasanach and her soldiers say our land, the land we creep in and through and out, the land in which we bury ourselves, the land we dig up the foreign, blighted roots from, she says this land and everything we grow is hers now, not ours, never ours, and Mamma says we have to pretend, pretend we're not special and that we're starving like the others, and that we want to be Sasanach and have hair, not mushroom threads. We must not dance or sing when the Sasanach men arrive, but on special nights, we light a great fire and play our bodhrán drums and whistles into the night, our feet stomping on the earth, connecting, disconnecting with the land. Before, you could travel the countryside and everyone would dance, but since the blight and famine, fewer folks dance, the nights grow quieter, and even my neighbors and parents are forgetting so many songs, preferring the soil to air. Other folks fear us because of our mushroom threads. They wonder, if we can eat blighted food, can we eat blighted people, too? Yet we fear them because they are so very hungry. Sasanach in very white shirts and black coats come to our hamlet. They carry pistols and are afraid; across the countryside lurks famished ghouls, White Boy rebels in masks, families too fae-touched to be sane—maybe. We have a cabin of just two rooms that smell of wet straw and dying fire and nothing to offer them to eat because their bodies aren’t changed like ours. The thin eyebrows of the Sasanach are pushed down as the leader writes things in a little book. “Mrs. Rafferty,” he says to Mamma. “How is it that people are starving throughout this whole county, but here everyone looks so plump and healthy?” He speaks Bearla slowly, but ma and pa made me go to school for years at the church and the brothers and sisters taught me both tongues before the great hunger, before we were changed. Sometimes I remember being more human and sometimes, I think, we were always this way, but maybe I am remembering the former life of the fungus inside me. “I don’t know,” Mamma answers. “I guess the Lord has blessed us.” She forces a smile, and the leader Sasanach writes more in his book. Maybe it was Sidhe who helped us, as the rumors say, or the Lord, like Mamma just claimed, or even the devil himself, but we can eat the blighted potatoes without getting sick, unlike other folks who don’t have the mushroom threads living inside them. The elders in our parish are proud because so many young folks are leaving Eireann, but not our hamlet; we're holding tight to one another. The Sasanach leave after talking to our neighbors, but before they go, one of the officials says that our village smells strange, that something about us makes them fearful. I suppose I can't blame him because I feel the same about them. A chill runs up my spine as the officials look me up and down. “These ones look healthy, I suppose. And they speak English. There might be hope yet for this damned island.” *** A month passes. So few people visit us; in other parishes, folks with infants born thin and long and shrieking for breast milk that dried up long ago are toiling away in workhouses. The wandering beggars are afraid to come to our hamlet, but they are so desperate; they wander near the edges of the field or dig through our blighted crops, ransack homes in the night, wondering if we aren’t hiding good food somewhere or if somehow they too can become like us; but none of us know how to change others, and they don’t believe us that we would if we could. I return from playing with my friends in the nearby creek. We like to bury each other in the soil, to spread ourselves, reaching as far as we can, connecting to the roots and the worms, and the empty burrows of digging animals. Mamma looks pale. Dad's clouded eyes are sunken deep in his face, his mushroom threads are twisted and bent. “They wanna take you away, Brigid.” “Who?” I ask, my tongue feeling heavy in my mouth; we don’t usually speak aloud anymore, just communicate through the threads. Speaking means that maybe her feelings are too big, too dangerous. “They say there's a Lady over in Alba. She has a school for girls, and she wants to help the hungry Irish. They say she feels pity for the Irish, so she wants to take our children. They want to take you, Brigid.” “Why choose me?” I ask. “Everyone says you're bright and pretty, and you do what your mamma asks.” I don't know what to say. I look at my sisters, but they don't connect to me. I think of the Sasanach men with their pink skin. My neighbors, the other little girls, have skin with a yellow-green undertone but my skin remains almost as pink as the Sasanach men’s. If someone stares too deeply into our eyes, they will see things twisting and moving, ready for grasping, but I look away when spoken to; compared to the other children, I appear more normal. “Must I go?” Mamma gets up and sweeps, sweeps, sweeps, though the floor of our tiny cabin will never be clean. I repeat my question. “If the Sasanach knew what we've become, they'd burn us like they used to burn their witches. You don't have to go, but ...” my father responds and rubs the temples in his head. He moves more quickly than usual, less steady and patient, like the mushroom threads like, as though the seriousness of our situation has blanched the magic from his blood. “We think if you go, you will appease them for a while,” my oldest sister crosses her arms, “and maybe once you leave here, you'll change back. Other Éireannach are begging to leave. They've nothing to eat. They'd swim to America, if they could, and you got the chance to study for free at some fancy school in Alba. They'd think we were cruel or mad to keep you here.” I'd forgotten the sound of her voice; it scrapes the inside of her throat, and her yellowed eyes glow from her dark corner of the room. “We cannot make her depart,” Mamma says suddenly. “She carries us with her. What will happen if she leaves—” She sits down. “Brigid is lucky enough to go to Alba, not as far as Australia or New York.” My sister takes my hand, and we connect. You leave or you will destroy us, is what she tells me with her whole self. *** The English men—if I’m to live with them, I should call them as they want to be called—come to take me. We will go by carriage to Dublin, and I am desperately sad but excited because Mamma and Papa haven't taken us out of our hamlet in months, not since our dresses and scarves were torn by the hungry in the nearby town because they saw our fat, round arms and thought we had something to give them. They followed us first with hollowed eyes, then shambling steps, begging in two tongues because if we could eat, we were likely rich, perhaps English or simply fashioning ourselves to be. They smelled of rot, of diarrhea, of sicknesses too foul to name, and the fungus inside me thought maybe they were food, but we did not, and Mamma says we won’t ever eat human flesh because we may be different but we’re still good souls. From our carriage, I watch lines of the poor in the distance, waiting, huddling with children unable to keep their eyes open, wailing for the government men to give them food, trying to prove they are both desperate and dignified enough to deserve charity. On the roads, men and women slap stones with rusted hammers, attempting to earn their relief, as their naked skin fries in the weak sunlight. The hungriest and most naked are wandering, like dying bees at the end of summer, buzzing in circles, their homes destroyed by their landlord and no one willing to care for walking corpses. Their hunger has made them too tired; we do not fear violence, not from them, but there are men still fueled by spite, hiding in the hills of the countryside ready to devour the helpless. “Lazy wretches,” Mr. Bradford, the Englishman who collected me, does not move his hand from the holster of his pistol. “Are your parents still Papists—Pope worshippers?” he speaks directly to me for the first time, as though conversation with a child is finally preferable to dwelling on the wretchedness of the countryside. “Not anymore,” I answer. Mr. Bradford smiles. He thinks I mean to say they have become some other kind of Christian, an English type of Christian, but really my parents pray to the land, the things older than names because that’s who had answered us. Mamma said God takes many forms, but Papa said God hates us. Regardless of where God is or what he likes, I feel alone, my dress scratching the mushroom gills breathing from in my armpits and elbows and behind my knees, and I am praying to anyone who will listen that they do not bring us to a doctor who will know that I am different, who will destroy me, and I will never go home. The masses of poor people in Dublin hang in the shadows while men in suits and carriages bounce along the cobbled streets busy with papers and other official business, reminding me of ants, when we used to have piles of food they could swarm. We must stop at checkpoints with Englishmen and local police, and each time Mr. Bradford explains that I am a pitiable creature from the countryside benefiting from the charity of England for schooling, and each time the men look at me like our dog used to look at small rabbits before he died and before the rabbits vanished. “She's tall and handsome as a horse. Her parents must be the few hardworking ones.” Mr. Bradford introduces me to Mr. Griffiths and Mrs. Teedle; the mister’s suit is fitted, his waist small, and in his gloved hands, he carries a can topped with a fat, gold bear. The missus is plainly dressed, her hair in a severe bun. The man is brave or stupid, wearing such nice clothes around so many poor people. There are five Irish girls already with them. They are not as thin as bare skeletons; they are not the truly hungry, but they are not like me, either. They do not have the threads of the earth woven under their skin. My stomach contracts and rumbles and my head spins as the noise of Dublin booms around me, as Mr. Bradford again explains who I am, as the other children stare at me with clear resentment and just a dollop of shared pain and fear, as Mrs. Teedle scrutinizes my face and pulls at my clothes. “Do not touch me,” I yelp in Irish first and Mrs. Teedle reels backward, her sharp nose flaring. “Please do not handle my clothes. Ma'am,” I say in English, more quietly. “Your ma and pa never taught to respect your betters?” she asks as her bony fingers dig deep into my shoulders. “This one is fat and spoiled. And strange. The best child you could find, Mr. Bradford?” “In that county, you can choose from fat, strange children or children too sick to survive the trip to England.” Mr. Bradford coughs into his elbow. “Beggars can't be choosers.” “Surely you exaggerate, Mr. Bradford. Our Lady has sent us on a fool’s errand. These children will struggle to study alongside proper English pupils. I can only hope they will be sent home before they bring their blight to our girls.” Mr. Bradford shrugs. “My dear Lady Allard has a heart that is too kind, but I shall endeavor to see her happy. Some lessons must be learned through experience. The sooner we can get back to Great Yew with these rapscallions and out of this God forsaken hell pit of a country, the better,” Mr. Griffiths tells the woman while twisting the right end of his curled mustache. Mr. Bradford gives me a nod and hands me my bags before leaving. Mrs. Teedle warns us to be quiet and to behave as we wait until we can board the boat bound for England. There is little green here; my body screams for fresh soil as I look out onto the brackish ocean, the docks with barnacles and seagulls. To keep myself from imagining the ocean swallowing me up, I talk to a girl with patchy blonde hair and a face marked with red and purple spots. “Speak English,” Mr. Griffiths reminds me before the girl answers, so I decide not to speak at all. *** On the ocean, waves of sickness keep me dizzy, sleepy. Teedle and Griffiths make us stay inside in our shared cabin, tell us not to look at the scores of our countrymen huddled on the lower decks. I vomit much of the food given to me, the lack of soil and land confusing my body and all its parts. Teedle and Griffiths call me ungrateful. “Do you know how much you countrymen would envy your supper? This one fancies herself an Irish princess.” When we reach the soil of England, I am barraged with a whirlwind of sights, sounds, reprimands, and great waves of feelings. At least, at night, while the others sleep, I can remove my shoes and socks and stick my feet and my hands into the dirt. Like the people, the plants and fungi of England speak a language different from the one I am accustomed to. I am more than a little afraid as I feel the tickle of their tiny parts examining my tiny bits; how can I trust them and give my whole self over to them? They, too, do not not trust me; I may carry disease, destruction. I cannot lose myself in this foreign place, so I remove my hands from the soil. If the Englishmen knew about the mushroom threads inside me, they would likely kill me. The cities of England are smoggier, more crowded. The countryside has larger trees, dense forests. There are poor people here, but they’re not as hungry, and the land is louder, more birds and large insects, trees and bushes with ripe, round berries, lively, succulent. In my daydreams, I imagine gathering up the berries, the fluffy chickens, the robust cows, and the bouncing sheep in my arms grown huge, leaping over the ocean, and raining down gifts on the wandering corpses of my countrymen. Honey would flow from the clouds, and they could drink, and things would be as they once were. The birds, and the insects, and the humans, would sing, they'd dance the night away in the pubs and in Mass every Sunday, and the sheep would grow heavy with wool, and we'd no longer be naked and laid bare. I caught the faintest smile, twinkle, of one of the girls as she watches a starling on a tree we pass, just a bit of drool leaking from the side of her mouth. She is hungry enough, in spirit, to eat even the beautiful, delicate things with spikes and feathers; her mind holding fast to the memory of a lovely, free thing. We both look toward Mrs. Teedle, in the carriage with us, sleeping soundly, no dreams and nightmares; she appears more at peace than we'll ever be. The school is known as Great Yew because of the yew tree that has been growing on the grounds since medieval times. Our carriages enter the gates of the walled grounds as the sun is setting. We stop near a stone building with the biggest doors I have ever seen. Standing in front of them is a thin, tall woman, especially pale in a maroon dress with a wide skirt and white bonnet tied tightly around her chin. The dress is the most glorious man-made thing I’ve ever seen; I wish to weave my mushroom threads into something just as beautiful. Mr. Griffiths greets her with a hairy kiss on her hand. Mrs. Teedle snaps to attention and hastily slaps our shoulders and bodies to smooth our wrinkled, dirty clothing. “That is Lady Allard. Her family has owned this land and Great Yew for generations and she is the one who insisted, out of the goodness of her gentle heart, that we bring you Irish whelps to school here. She is paying for your education, room, and board. You must be sure to curtsey and thank her for her kindness, kiss her hand. And speak English. Show her that you're worth the trouble I—she's endured to bring you here.” Mr. Griffiths announces to the Lady with the spin of a cane; a gesture suggesting he’s both showing-off and threatening. Lady Allard appears to want to protest, but decides against arguing and turns her sleepy eyes back to us. We line up, under the glare of Griffiths and Teedle, and each of us do as we were told. Lady Allard looks unmoved, and her hand is freezing cold beneath the brush of my lips. I feel a stirring as I smell her skin, as the mushroom threads under my skin react to her scent, wanting to reach out to her, to her blood filled with rich foods, aged wine, the blood of rare animals and plants and spices, to taste it. To drink it up. No, I tell my body. We cannot do such a thing. Even here, we must not disappoint Mamma. With hardly any comments from the Lady, we are ushered to our rooms. *** During the days before the other students arrive for the beginning of the fall term, we are given tours of the school grounds and assigned chores. The doctor examines me, and though he looks right at my gills and mushroom threads, he says nothing, and I wonder if I am imagining that I am different or if the fairy magic protects me, or if he sees everything and will secretly tell Lady Allard, or he sees everything but believes that all Irish children are less human, so he expects differences. The Englishmen whisper loudly about how poor our education must have been, how it will be impossible to teach us the same way they teach their own children. They will need to discipline us harshly, and that if we cry and wail, it is a sign that we are learning. As we are given a rare choice in the matter, for my daily chores, I ask to help the groundskeeper, so that I can spend a couple of hours each day with my hands in the soil, getting to know the growing things of this country. The roots are so much older, more complex; communing with them pulls me in hundreds of ways. The groundskeeper does not know what to think of me. I hear him tell Mrs. Teedle that sometimes I work hard and that he cannot explain it, but the plants turn towards me, seem to be healthier under my care. Yet sometimes, I appear as though I am sleeping with my eyes open and unresponsive to instructions. “Is she ill? Something wrong with her?” “The Irish have strange customs. These children have suffered from parental neglect, you see. The Irish don't feed them and have let them run wild without discipline.” Later that day, as I help the groundskeeper with some weeding, I turn to him, still mulling over what Mrs. Teedle said. “She’s wrong about my ma and pa. They loved me and sent me to learn at church.” The groundskeeper stands and brushes dirt from his gloves. “You can’t be worrying about that kind of thing, child. You’re in England now. Count your blessings and move on. We might not even have a school anymore in a few years, so learn what you can.” “Why do you say that?” “Mr. Griffiths has money from his businesses, but he wants a fancy title, too. The Lady told him he seemed too selfish to be a good husband. He heard the Lady was aggrieved about the Irish famine, so he collected you Irish scholarship children to prove his kindness. If he does convince her to marry him, the school becomes his. It all seems kind of backward, though, to bring more girls here, considering he wants to close the school and build factories on the land.” I laugh suddenly, a great burst of noise from my belly to my whole shaking body, human and fungus, giddy with the idea that this old English school might be destroyed, just like the homes of of my countrymen because of the whims of a landlord eager to take more and more from tired soil. “Hey! What’s wrong with ya?” the groundskeeper shouts, but I’m not listening as tears leak from my eyes, tiny spores leap from my skin. I put my hands forward, press them to the ground to keep from toppling over, and suddenly, a command, a feeling of something great and old and powerful blasts my body like a gust of wind before a storm. Come here. I hear the call in every bit of me. The laughs suddenly choke in my throat, spit and tears drip from my frozen face. I turn my head slowly. Behind the school buildings is a large, open field used for games and gatherings as needed. In the center of this field stands the Great Yew itself, the namesake of the school. The underground fungus I communicate with connects to plant roots, but this is the first time that a plant has spoken so clearly to me. Back in Eire, so many of the forests are long gone, but this is a tree who’s survived centuries of the world changing around it. This is a thing whose will could not be ignored. A slight breeze shakes the Yew’s low-to-the-ground branches, whistling through the spaces between its multiple trunks. “Child, perhaps you should go inside,” the groundskeeper tells me and grabs my arm, pulling me up onto my feet. “I…yes. Thank you.” I shake my head, the acidic, almost urine-like smell of the Yew still in my nostrils and on my tongue. Now, my hands away from the earth, I can use my mind again. I head back inside, knowing the tree will not let me ignore him for too long. *** I wake up in the middle of the night, a light rain pattering outside. Though there is little light, I can connect to the mold and lichens in the wall to navigate, in secret, to an unlocked door leading outside to the field. I walk to the Yew. Small drops of rain drip between its branches and needles. The fungus connected to its root network tickles the strands growing from my feet. This is my land. If the school is closed and replaced with factories, I will die. I wish to live. “The Englishman will not listen to me. I can’t help you. I only wish to return home.” Then, kill him? The tree speaks as though choosing to murder a man is as simple as choosing whether one would like to wear a green dress or a blue one. Of course, he is a tree, so why should any human be precious to him? Should any human be precious to me? I wonder. I hear hard breathing, feel the vibration of approaching steps, and turn to see candlelight in the distance. “You. Brigid! Have you gone mad, leaving your bed in the middle of the night to play in the dirt?” The broad-shouldered woman is carrying a long, thin cane that she whips on the ground. A practical threat so much plainer than Mr. Griffith’s flashy instrument. She loves to whip us with her weapon; my knuckles are still raw from many whacks I received during the day. My skin prickles, the threads wiggling against my veins and muscles and bones. Why don’t you practice by killing this one? “The term starts in two days, you weak-minded ninny. Are you trying to run away? I told the Lady you would attempt to escape. You are too poorly raised to become a student at our school. We could have had six more, deserving, English girls, instead of you lot. We hear endlessly about the poor Irish, how they suffer, and we give and give, but you Irish just ask for more with no shame. As if we don’t have our own poor! As if we must care for all the world’s children!” I am frozen, the threads creeping from my bare toes into the soil, growing, reaching. She approaches me and whips my bare calf and then my waist with her cane; the sting of pain echoing through me and the fungus; I think of my ma, her once big, soft belly to distract from the shame, but instead I feel hot and venomous. “You’re barely dressed! You would run into town naked, you little whore.” She grabs my cheeks with her right hand and squeezes. She smells of yeast, of bread and beer; the fungus wants to reach from me and take her food. She squeezes harder, slapping my ankle with her cane. I reach up and grab her wrists, my muscles clenching, the fungus, feeling thicker, tougher--hungrier. Without much struggle I pull her arm from my face and hold her wrists. “Let me go!” she screams. “You ghoul!” I squeeze harder, her wrist bones snapping, her voice shredding the quiet night air. Her screams will call someone here! When insects threaten me, my poison destroys them. I let go of her hands and grab her head, my hand covering her open mouth—I can taste her, her juices, the food of her with my hands. The threads erupt; crawl down her throat, gagging her. This isn’t a thing I want to do, but it is what I desire, and the fungus feeds from her flesh, making me full. Her body shudders, twists as the fungus moves through her tubes while I feel lost and far away; the Great Yew encourages me to keep growing. When I can free myself of this trance, it’s clear that Mrs. Teedle is dead. I gag, feeling pain in my throat, gasping for air before spitting out a tangled mess of white and red fungus threads that stink as much as the ship to Liverpool filled with dying folks stank; the twisting mass sinks into the soil, dragging the dried-out corpse with them. The Yew shudders as though his roots make room for what once was Mrs. Teedle. I have never vomited up moving fungus before, but I’ve never killed and eaten a human before, either; I think of saying sorry to God or Mamma or Mrs. Teedle, but I am too venomous, spitting, and angry for shame. I can only assume that the light rain becoming a downpour at this moment is a miracle, a gift as much as the fungus is, even if my skin still burns with unfocused rage. The other Irish girl who shares my room sees me enter our room, soaking wet; her eyes are open though she pretends to sleep, but she does not say anything as I remove my wet nightclothes. She chooses to say nothing, out of fear of me or sisterhood with me, I do not know. *** The English students and more teachers arrive and the adults whisper among themselves, about where Mrs. Teedle went to, if she is really gone, and about the Irish charity children somehow turning the word charity into a curse. The teachers do not tell the returning English students that Mrs. Teedle vanished shortly before the term started, and they don’t believe the Irish children need reassurance. I am in a class with children a few years younger than me because the English assume I cannot be as smart or educated as English girls my age. The English words march through my brain, arresting my Irish words for dancing too much, and at night, the Yew calls to me. The fungus inside me moves more, burns and itches my muscles. Memories of my old life scatter, salt my dreams, interrupt my waking life, my eyes and ears unable to focus on what is in front of me. The tree wants Mr. Griffiths—the tree is hungry for him. I only see him at a distance, most days, walking with the languid Lady Allard, his eyes looking over the land, always, his fingers twisting his growing mustache, always, and hiding from the eyes of the students, always. When I watch him, drool and the threads inside me stretch. The English students mock our accents, how we are dressed. They ask us how many of our family members have died, if we’ve ever eaten human flesh. “Yes,” I tell one honestly, not sure if I should feel guilty or proud. The small girl stares at me before running away. Along with my own memories, I dream of growing up in London, of my father wacking me with a thin cane, of my mother screaming. This is Mrs. Teedle, but now it is me, and the hate, the pain, she carried now moves inside me, feeds my poison, my digestive juices. I try not to remember Mrs. Teedle and think of my family: the sound of ma singing, my sisters playing the tin whistles, my father’s fingers dancing, thumping his bodhrán, a memory of a place that no longer exists, a place that felt, when I left it, like the last living leaf of a rotting branch about to fall from the tree of the world. *** On a bright, clear morning, Mr. Griffiths and Lady Allard take our class outside for a stroll. The Lady tells us that she plans to marry Mr. Griffiths and will close the school in two years; she tries to smile, but her eyes sparkle with unshed tears, as if fate is pulling her along by its threads and she has no choice in the matter. The Mister talks about history and progress and our futures, but really his future. The sounds of the whistles and drums suddenly rise to the top of my mind. I imagine myself receiving lashes from Mrs. Teedle. I imagine Mrs. Teedle receiving lashes from her father, who is Mr. Griffiths speaking and is not. He is Mr. Bradford who took me from my home, or the one beating a weak laborer hitting stones for Irish roads going nowhere. His face stretches, shrinks; he is a rotten potato. His skin falls from his frame, like shit, like bog mush, as he desperately grasps for power, for food, like a fish opening and closing its mouth in the air, and fish is food, isn’t it? We are all hungry. My hands find the soil, the English fungus reaches to touch mine. Destroy him for me, the Yew speaks, his voice louder than ever. I am sitting in the front row and Griffiths is just a couple of feet from me, spit spraying from his mouth as he speaks and waves his hands, smelling warm and spiced and nourishing. I stand, human and fungus threads bulging, shuddering and leap at Mr. Griffiths, wrapping my fingers around his neck and squeezing. The noises of my memories are too loud, I can barely hear the others screaming. I squeeze and squeeze, the fungus threads raising wildly, like hair full of static. Dozens of hands are pulling at me, my clothes, my body, trying to remove me from the Mister, but my tubes wrap around him, grow into his nooks and crannies, digest his flesh. We connect; I see tiny moments of life as a boy in a modest home, he is a hungry boy, always demanding more, we deserve power and he grows powerful; the whole green and blue Earth is his, is mine to take. And I take, take, take. Bits of my old body are pulled away from me, ripped painfully from me, shredded, jagged, burst into spores, but now me has become bigger. The Yew is connected to the whole field, to each root, the grass, the shrubs, the dirt moving beneath us; he is pulling us down, deeper. There is screaming, and thumping, colors and light till it all goes dim, and I am spread, deep into the earth with Mr. Griffiths. His fear and disgust bubbles and pop pop pops, but the loam, the soil pushes down on him, comforts us like a blanket--you’ve had enough. The Yew hugs tightly, but also flings us in thousands of directions. The roots and fungus spread; at their fullest, touching all of Britain. The fungus grows south under the London factories, past the Thames River, eastward to the North Sea, north of Loch Ness and westward to the ports of Liverpool. The threads become thick under the headstones and broken crosses, the memories of thousands of years of Englishman melting softly over the last bits of my mind. My soul swoons as I feel the lives of each of them, falling faintly from the past until now. I am among all the living and dead of Britain. As I fade from one mind to those of the many, the Yew asks me if I am grateful, if he’s cured my pain, satisfied my hunger. Thank you, I tell him, but part of me betrays my true feelings: westward, I reach, where my threads stop at the brackish waves, the forever deep sea, the space between me now and the land where my countrymen starve, rot, reach toward me, mamma and my family ask me how I could eat human flesh--I am sorry. In response, their voices and ghosts singing softer and softer, my name lost to time and the wind, our threads never to be woven together again. |
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Jennifer Jeanne McArdle
Jennifer works in animal conservation and lives in New York. You can find a list of her published work here: https://jenniferjeannemcardle.blogspot.com/p/list-of-published-and-upcoming-work.html.
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