Weed: The Poison Diaries

by Jane Northumberland

  Morose and full of self-pity, I walk for what seems like hours until finally the alcohol wears off and my stumbling gait relaxes into an easy rhythm. I unclench my mind’s eye and almost laugh at my mawkish dejection. However, before I have time to laugh I hear a panicked clamour of voices.

  ‘WEED!’

  ‘WHAT’S WRONG WITH HIM?!’

  ‘WHY DOESN’T HE LISTEN?’

  ‘TURN BACK! ANSWER US, WEED!’

  ‘Hello?’ I reply.

  ‘By Mab’s root what have you been doing? Turn back, you’ve almost stumbled into –’

  The familiar gabbing voices are cut off. Instead, a strange green vibration echoes in my mind, chanting an alien dirge.

  ‘What are you? Answer me!’ The grasses ripple unpleasantly beneath my feet but I get no reply. Only this steady keening. It is as if the ground itself is in thrall to something nearby. Something I’ve never encountered before.

  Perhaps I should turn on my heel, thread my way carefully back to Fala or to Soutra Aisle. Retreat to the cold safe ground that I know and which holds no surprises. But I am tired of the dry predictability of the moss clogged earth hereabouts. There are no green things with wisdom to advise me and so I listen to the red heart beating hotly in my chest. I resolve to go on, picking my way silently towards the focus of the ghostly hymn.

  And then two things happen at once. The strange requiem in the land around me abruptly ceases as if I have entered deadlands, and I hear the living voice of a word-breather pitched high into the silent night.

  ‘Ah-nal nath-rahck oughth-bah’s beth-od doch-iel dien-may’

  ‘Ah-nal nath-rahck oughth-bah’s beth-od doch-iel dien-may’

  And then an explosion of sound assails my ears as a chorus of growing things rings painfully in the cold air. It is as if a piercing scream has been wrenched from them all at once.

  ‘Serpent’s breath, charm of death and life. Thy omen of making.’

  ‘Serpent’s breath, charm of death and life. Thy omen of making.’

  I’m overwhelmed by the titanic din. I feel on the brink of passing out. The call continues, the living voice and the voice of the Green vying together in a shriek so loud it lights up the dark sky. White hot sparks fly in front of me and I see that it is not just the sound that has riven the darkness: an engulfing flame leaps into the heavens. It is so bright that the moon seems to shrink away from its touch. I duck down to the ground and am glad of the sure cool earth running between my fingers. In the blackness of night, the fire roars. It is so close that I can feel its mighty heat.

  I see fast moving hands dance around the burning pyre. They cast strange shades and arcane forms against the wailing grasses. The fire draws me to it like a moth to a killing flame. I am not an intruder on this ritual; I am its focus. Amid the dance of flickering light and shadow I am moved to rise up, to let myself be known to the practitioner of many hands who conducts this awful liturgy. I concentrate hard and think on Green, pulling strength from the earth. The cord that binds me to this fierce rite slackens, though it is not broken altogether. I feel rage tremble in the air. The atmosphere changes. The architect of this ceremony gathers energy to itself.

  ‘Ah-nal nath-rahck oughth-bah’s beth-od doch-iel dien-may.’ Those glottal exclamations are uttered deep in an animal throat. The fire incandesces to a crescendo and I see a figure gesturing above the flames. It is a woman with bared breasts and her face is masked by a skull sporting the horns of a beast. In the glare of sparking ember I notice a smaller body presented in the frenzy, that of a child. Then a strange sound arrests my ears. It is the bleating of a tiny lamb held fast in the child’s hands.

  I see the two figures but I am irresistibly drawn to the black eyes of the innocent lamb. They are alive with terror and reflect the bright blaze like a dark mirror. The child holds the animal high, cruelly arching its neck to the master of this dreadful scene. A flash of metal glints and the fear in the creature’s scream is silenced by the sharp edge of a knife. The poor lamb’s head stares on, throat pulsing, blood draining, vein, tendon and bone rent in a single thrust. There is no air to bleat its final protest and life is extinguished forever.

  The woman casts the dismembered head to the ground and grasps the twitching body of the dead beast. The child moves next to the flame and holds a metal plate up to the bright moon. The knife wielder opens the animal’s gut in one stroke and its innards pour forth into the dish now held over the fire. She stares transfixed at the steaming entrails as they spit and fizz in the cold night air. I can see her pale belly ghostly illuminated by the flames. The dreadful smell of singeing offal greets my nostrils and I can’t help myself; my throat tightens and I gag. Sharp as pain the child looks in my direction and then immediately back to the grisly pan.

  ‘Ah-nal nath-rahck oughth-bah’s beth-od doch-iel dien-may’

  The woman pauses and looks directly at me. I have never beheld such brazen power before. I should be revolted but the frenzy excites me. Albeit midnight, the flowers around me bud, bloom and spread. The child retreats to a distance and the woman, smeared with blood, talks to me and I hear her voice.

  ‘Weed! You are mine. See this flesh? It is for you. See this sacrifice? It is for you. You belong to me now.’

  My blood rushes inside my head. An animal urge to go to her is suffused within me but instead I find my feet and run. I scramble and stumble through the gorse, careless of the noise I make and desperate to escape that horrible scene. I run blindly; the chill air is a medicine to my flushed cheeks and I tear my shirt from my body, trying to cool my raging temperature. I thank the roots and leaves of the earth as I find by chance the rough-hewn stone chapel of Soutra Aisle. Exhausted, I grope around the edges, glad of the cold hard wall under my touch until I find the doorway. Once inside I collapse, utterly spent, in shelter. My retinas are scorched with the image of that horned woman and when the profound darkness of sleep washes over me I am grateful.

  Chapter 8

  I wake to the sounds of birds in my bare stone room. I feel chill and I’m shivering. My memory of yesterday night is strangely clouded. Images flash in my mind of a fire. A terrible sacrifice. A terrible yearning for the body of a woman. In the half light of dawn I raise myself unsteadily to my feet and take in my surroundings. I look to the back of the chapel and I am alone. I have escaped something but my heart is heavy with loneliness. I freeze right into my very bones and I can’t think straight. I have never felt cold before.

  I lay my hand against my hip and feel my pocket belt. There is still a small piece of hashish in one of the compartments. I carefully remove the soft lump and it tastes bitter in my mouth. I falter towards the solid walls of the chapel. My head swims and when I touch the icy rock of this barren hollow, I gasp. I feel as if a great shutter flashes before my eyes, stealing instants and seconds. I have lost my shirt in the bushes somewhere on the heath. My boots are discarded in the corner of the chapel and my trousers are shredded from running madly through bracken. Lurid red scratches criss-cross my calves, thighs and buttocks and my body aches.

  Then, without warning and as if by the granting of my heart’s desire, I feel a warm, soft body at my back. I stand completely still, drinking in the delicious heat as it caresses my naked skin, unfreezing first the base of my spine, travelling up to my shoulders and finally blessing my neck. The suppleness of the figure behind me steeps into my own and I melt gratefully into it. I am embraced and at once my shivering gives way to a different sort of trembling. Two slender arms encircle my waist and long fingers find my tight belly. There is strength in those fingers, as though they might pierce my white skin and delve deep within me, but instead they touch me lightly sending sparks of electricity up and down my body.

  I rock against her flesh and at last I turn to the woman. She is entirely naked and as she sees me her spectral grey eyes dilate in pleasure. Her smooth oval face is framed by long straight hair of silken silver so perfect that when I run my hands through it, I expect to feel the touch of
spun metal. Her delicate skin rivals my own for paleness yet when I touch her cheek it burns hot. I know that this is the woman from the fireside and although her mouth remains demure I can see a smile dance in her eyes as if she easily reads my thoughts.

  Her bearing is powerful and yet she dissembles, submitting beneath my touch as I draw her to me. When my chest touches her breasts a charge of energy builds between us, gathering strength like a storm cloud brewing bright lightning. In a moment her skilful fingers find the remnants of my ragged trousers and belt. She slips them to the floor I stand naked with her. Our hands learn each other’s bodies, weaving caresses, lingering at first but hastening speed until we kiss; four arms, four legs, man and woman joined in passion.

  She breaks the kiss and my fast-beating heart almost arrests at the sudden absence of her soft lips. She cups my chin and gently takes my hand, drawing me to the ground on top of her. Hard kisses and soft touches envelop us and she pours her passion into me. Her fingers graze across my strong back and shoulders and every stroke vibrates within me. I pull her hard body from the stone floor, burning with anticipation. I am consumed by my first taste of pleasure and my breath comes in ragged, shallow gasps. I hunger for more. She takes me in her hands and moves expertly against me as we become one; my wild, dark hair and her delicate silver blended together in a single variegated bloom.

  She cocks her head, turning up her neck in supplication and I take her throat in my teeth, feeling her blood pulsing between my lips. She laughs and with strength she rolls on top of me, her hair sweeping around her head. I lie prone beneath her. She knows I cannot stop and she uses me for her pleasure from a position of equality, superiority perhaps. She takes each of my hands in her own and holds them to the ground cruciform. Her nails dig hard into my wrists as she plays me like a musical adept, reaching for the highest notes, before plunging to a different rhythm. I am a drum beating, but she is the conductor orchestrating the tempo as we burn on the hard stone floor.

  Her teeth are bared as her back arches, her body moving to meet mine. My animal nature heaves and sounds of passion ring in the hollow chamber. I feel like I am drunk again, my senses are fuddled but my body and blood know their cues. I sense a sudden approach and see white light in the power of my first orgasm. I look up and my lover’s lips are locked together, her eyes tightly closed as she contains the power of her own pleasure within her silently. Our chests are quaking as she lies down on top of me. She kisses me again, her pale silver hair falling around my head. I am held in the comfort of her body and I see her face smiling down at me. I lose all sense of time and space and closing my eyes I allow myself a moment of sweet slumber.

  This time when I wake I see the woman in the full light of day. She is still naked and delicately beautiful yet now she sits cross-legged and still in the middle of the chamber. Her eyes are closed and her clear face is fixed in concentration. I prop myself on one arm to lie on my side and look at her with a great contentment glowing within me. I am naked and the tattered remnants of my trousers lie nearby. I reach for them as she stirs:

  ‘You don’t need them anymore.’ Her grey eyes flash brilliance at me and my mouth is dry.

  ‘Please, tell me who you are.’ I leave the trousers where they lie.

  ‘I’m called Malina.’ She smiles at me though still in her odd fixed posture. ‘It means Raspberry. You are Weed.’

  ‘It was you at the fire last night. I heard you calling to me.’

  ‘Thunder and the flights of owls have been speaking of you for some time now.’ She breaks her pose, moves over to me and takes my hand in hers. I am transfixed by her voice and her stark glamour. My head is filled with images of her in the cold night air, lit by fire, and I can’t think of anything else.

  ‘What you did last night. With that lamb… surely it is a sin.’

  She raises my hand to her mouth and gently kisses it. ‘No, nonsense, Weed. Ones like us needn’t think of sin. The creature died for good reason. I am a Haruspex.’

  ‘What is that?’ I do not withdraw my hand from her lips.

  ‘Haruspex is Haruspex.’ She waves her hand in front of her and I pull back. She pauses and smiles at me again. ‘The Haruspex are an old order that practise the art of augury. It can be learned if one has talent, and I have talent. We watch the birds of the sky, the patterns of weather and the beasts of field. I am gifted with the sight to read the spit and sizzle of entrails to show what is to come.’

  ‘I remember the terror in the eyes of that creature you sacrificed last night.’

  ‘There is nourishment in blood. Kill or be killed. It is the way of those with red blood in the artery.’ She rises from the ground and the fullness of her figure is exposed to me; every vein, nerve and tendon in my body reaches out to her. ‘I am who I am. I cannot change who I am. But you, however. Wild patterns whisper that you are something other. You are the walker who roots in the earth. Green sap and red blood. Together we could accomplish great things.’

  She pulls me to my feet and I want her again. I feel cherished in Malina’s company. She bares her pale full breasts to me and I kiss them, holding her close. I savour her body. I look up at her and she nods her head. She lets me touch her again and I am admitted. This woman is special. In her embrace I can think of nothing but my desire for her. She loves me. I don’t care what she has done or is to do.

  Chapter 9

  The day is warm by the time we emerge sleepy and contented from my sanctuary at Soutra Aisle. Yet I think I must still be dreaming when I look to the medicine garden. A whirling cloud of jewels eddy and spiral there as if caught in a tight gyre. There is a madness of chirping in the air and I see that rather than jewels it is a churn of many coloured birds flocking together. They skim low along the grass before arching up and around, their bird-song mingling with the sound of whipped wind as their wings cut the breeze.

  Malina makes a sound high in the back of her throat and at once the many flashing wings straighten and order themselves into a file before flying off to the west. At the centre of the departing storm, hair flying in the vortex, I see a little girl sitting quietly. Astonished, I approach, and as I get closer I notice a swarm of mice, voles and rats boiling over and around her legs. Looking up at me the child blinks its deep, dark eyes once and the field creatures scatter in all directions.

  ‘Good Mab, Weed. What have you brought with you this time?’ Asks Narcissus, its buds rolling in shock. ‘And where’s your shirt? You look like you’ve been chewed on by a deer.’

  ‘Be quiet.’ I say aloud.

  ‘Don’t admonish the child, Weed. She cannot speak.’ Malina says as she comes up behind me silently. She is wearing a simple white dress. I do not know from where she has conjured it.

  ‘I didn’t mean–’ She places her hand on my hip and at her touch I lose all sense of thought; chattering Narcissus seems very far away in her presence. ‘Is this your child?’ I ask, gesturing towards the cross-legged girl. She wears a smock of the same material as Malina and sits looking at me, unblinking. ‘I’ve never seen the animals and fowl so tame as to approach a human let alone play with one.’

  ‘She is not of my flesh but I have taught her some of the arts of wild nature as you can see. The birds will come to her call and the beasts will eat from her hands.’

  ‘Men and beasts are foreign to me.’ I look at this woman of silver hair; it shimmers in the daylight, unreal. I feel something for her. Is this what men call trust? I want to lift the veil on my strange isolated existence and invite her in but I feel unsure, like a plant seeded in a foreign garden. If I could only seek council from my growing friends but when I open myself to nature I feel a stilted silence in the earth. It has been a day of daring and so I dare again. ‘I have more kinship with what grows in the ground, Malina. I am able to commune with the living plants and herbs.’

  She looks at me askance as if weighing her words carefully. ‘Ah then. That must be what I augured these few days past. Five turtles joined me on the path that b
rought me to you. The turtle is a strange creature, so slow and certain and measured; it is the sacred animal of plants and the growing earth. It presents but rarely to those who run with the wild creatures of the field like the child and me. When I saw them I knew it must be important.’

  ‘Did you kill them too?’

  Her grey eyes seem watery under the light of the sun. If she hears my rebuke she doesn’t acknowledge it and replies simply. ‘Kill or be killed is the oldest law. But there is more to blood magic than death.’

  ‘Why doesn’t the child speak?’

  ‘She is mute. Years ago I found her in a friary to the north. The monks presumed that she was a dullard and were caring for her. Young as she was, a monastery is no place for a girl and when I offered to foster her they made no protest. Once outside the grey walls of that dusty old place her spirits improved and I hoped she might speak to me but she never did and never has. However, you can see she is far from senseless.’

  ‘So you know nothing of her at all.’

  ‘Not quite nothing at all.’ She takes my arm in hers and we look at the child. A great black raven has returned to the medicine garden. It weaves curious patterns around the little girl sitting among the herbs and poisons. ‘At times I am able to speak with her in a certain way. She joins me in the dance when we burn the great fires.’

  ‘Like last night.’

  ‘Yes. Beltane is a powerful time, a dangerous time. Even the men and women who live in towns can feel its lasting echo. It marks the midpoint of the year when the spirits are hungriest and before the growing season starts. We sacrifice beasts to sate their greed and when the flames leap high into the sky I can sense her grief and suffering. Her mind hides inside stillness and quiet. As one in my care I would help her. It is my ardent wish.’