Poison Diaries: Nightshade. Maryrose Wood

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СКАЧАТЬ their thoughts.” At the time I did not understand what she meant. Why would human thoughts be scattered among the trees?

      For me, being in the forest is like going to market day at Alnwick, but instead of people’s elbows jostling me, it is the low branches whipping across my face, leaves sticking to my hair, roots rising up to trip me.

      There is no place to hide from the trees. They know everything I do – every grouse I kill to eat, every sip I take from the stream, every shelter I build for myself of leaves and moss. I cannot move behind a laurel to make water but they are there.

      Most often they speak according to their kind – the deep rumble of oak, the whisper of the birch, or the singsong chant of the alder. The evergreen stands of pine have voices sharp as needles.

      But the forest can speak as one, when it must. When the trees so choose, they think with one mind. When there is danger, especially, they speak in one voice of a thousand echoes.

      I hate it when they do this. For the forest mind is always right, and will hear no argument.

      I climb uphill, following the path of a stream. Its trickle soothes me. When I am thirsty, I stop and kneel to drink.

      You have spent half a season with us, Weed. And you are still unhappy. Filled with rage. We do not know how to help you.

      “You cannot help me.” I splash water on my face, again and again, but I cannot cool off. “My love has been taken from me. I have promised to stay away, and I can never be happy again.”

      Seasons change, Weed, the forest says. Seasons change.

      I find my way to where the stream opens up to a quiet pool. Stripping myself of my stolen clothes, I gulp a breath and dive in. It feels good to use my muscles and to feel the cool water against my skin, but even that does little to soothe my temper.

      I have the body of a man now, but of what use is my strength? I have already failed at being human. That I go on, hiding in this deep forest like an outcast, belonging nowhere, banished and alone, is a mystery even to me.

      After I climb out I sit on the bank and stare at my reflection. It is the only human face I have looked at since fleeing to the forest. My hair is long and tangled, and my cheeks are covered with a rough growth of beard. My skin is brown from the sun and the dirt. In my eyes there is loneliness and a cold glint of fury.

      I toss in a stone, and the image shatters. When I was a child, taunted for my oddness and scorned by other people, I often thought that if I could only live among the plants, I would be happy. Now I am here, and all I feel is rage.

      Do not deceive yourself, Weed. Your anger is not for us. It lives within you.

      Enough. I shake the water drops from my wild hair like a dog, and head for the clearing at the highest point of the woods. At least there I can see the sky and get away from this chattering canopy of leaves. But the lecture follows me as I stumble and climb.

      Your ears have the power to hear us, but your heart is bitter as a rhubarb leaf. This bitterness makes you deaf to the truth…

      “Leave me be,” I growl, kicking at a root.

      You have erred, Weed. That is why you suffer. You chose one being and elevated her above the others, as if all life did not have the same worth. You did terrible things for her sake – for the sake of the human girl, the one with the golden hair, yellow as a flower –

      Jessamine. The leaves flutter her name. The air shimmers with the sound. It pierces me like a thorn.

      Remember, Weed: The good of one tree is not important. The good of the forest is what matters.

      “Enough!” I press my hands to my ears; will they ever let me be? “Humans do not think as you think. They – we – do not feel the way you feel.”

      We know.

      “And not all plants are so selfless and noble as you describe. There is evil in the human world, and evil in the plant world, too.”

      Throughout the forest, the leaves go perfectly still. It is a silence that is most unnatural.

      We know, says the mind of the forest. All too well, we know.

      On bruised hands and raw knees I continue my climb, to the flattened ridge that rises past the edge of the wood. The clearing on the hilltop is small, compared to the rolling meadows of Hulne Park. It is an open field of high moorland, with clumps of rough grass surrounding a low growth of heath and a blanket bog of peat.

      The grey clouds hang heavy and low. Still, it is a relief to be at least a little distance from the trees, and to see the open sky.

      The cloudberries are ripe. The crowberries are, too. I help myself to the amber and purple fruits. The plants do not mind that I harvest from them, for it is how they spread their seed. They hum with pride when I choose the plumpest berries from each and praise their sweetness.

      I follow the stream as it cuts through the centre of the clearing. Soon I hear a familiar chant.

      Touch me, touch me not. Touch me, touch me not.

      If I were not in such a bad temper, the tune would make me smile. At the damp edge of the far side of the clearing, near where the stream disappears back into the forest, grow those whom I call, for lack of a better word, my friends. These simple flowers are my only pleasant companions. Their talk has the power to soothe my unhappiness, the same way the sap from their stems soothes the itch from a nettle scratch.

      They grow in a tidy cluster, with upright stems. Even now, in late summer, when darkness falls earlier every night, the touch-me-nots are covered with blooms. The bell-shaped orange-yellow blossoms droop under the broad leaves, like ladies shading themselves beneath green parasols.

      On calmer days, the reddish spots on their petals have made me think of the golden freckles that would bloom on Jessamine’s skin after a walk in the sun. Right now they remind me of other things: scarlet pinpricks left by a hungry bite. A spatter of fresh blood on dry earth. The mottled flush of a killing fever, dappled across a pale, beloved cheek.

      I step around the prickly heath and stretch out on the soft peat. I watch the speckled blossoms bob and dance, and feel my clenched fists loosen.

      “The forest is angry with me,” I say. “Everywhere I go, I am scolded.”

      The touch-me-nots murmur sympathy, then fall silent. They were made to offer balm. It is why I seek them out.

      “Tell me,” I say after a while. “Tell me what is happening at Hulne Abbey.” Not often, but sometimes, the touch-me-nots have news for me. From Jessamine’s kitchen garden at the cottage, the potted lilies on the altar at her church, the sheep meadows that cover the slopes of Hulne Park where she walks, the morning glories that twine around the shutters of her bedchamber window – now and then they send word, whispered from one plant to another, until it arrives at my ear.

      Each time the news has been the same. She is well. There is a changed hue to her eyes – they were once a soft, trusting blue, but now they are the colour of ice. There is something unyielding in the carriage of her spine. But she is alive, and strong.

      If she were not, Thomas Luxton would be a dead man. But as long as she thrives, I will accept my fate. I will obey Oleander’s СКАЧАТЬ