Battles of Time
On this, the longest day of the year, her majesty North Star shone all colors of the
visible light spectrum.
Willow Grace used these halos to guide her into the unknown.
She brought a map and only enough to keep pace.
Speed was more important than comfort for this task.
The first time she accepted a courier assignment from this group, it was an easy route
and paid with room and board as well as a few silver coins.
Her fingertips touched the rough satchel still smelling of tannin and thick with
marked scrolls, thinking of how much she’ll earn if she completes it as expected.
She wore soft leather soles, and they silenced her hurried steps over the rounded river
rocks from an ancient, but not forgotten stream.
That’s when the birds stopped singing.
Willow Grace saw subtle changes in the terrain.
The old growth forest opened to swaying grasses, bog berries, and tamaracks
unnaturally planted in straight lines.
She saw the pink lady slippers and knew she found a bog, but was it the bog?
Bloodied skin from where a tangle of wild rosehips painfully gashed deep into her skin
felt raw against wet saw grass.
The trees mirrored her each time she bled, and oozed sticky sap.
Willow Grace’s arms pumped in cadence with her disciplined breathing.
She didn’t know all the details for her journey but knew enough to feel reasonably
certain that her diligence would be rewarded.
The bog pulled her foot deeply into the land that wasn’t fully water and not fully solid
earth.
This earthen compost was aged in ideal conditions of decay and rot, but through the
softening of time, now held cranberries and other promises of new life.
To her reckoning, as soon as her foot entered the acidic soil it felt like needles
neuropathically punctured her.
After she pulled her foot out of the bog, her leather boot was missing, and her foot was
the color of lye mixed with ash on soap making days.
She took her ‘kerchief’ off from around her neck and tenderly wrapped her foot with it
before continuing her mission.
Willow Grace felt that if she successfully accomplished her task, she’d have a new home.
That’s what the note promised, anyway.
Willow Grace clasped her hands together and held them close to her promise that was
almost too perfect.
A hearth? Her own orchard?
It was all too wonderful to think of the possibilities.
Thus, distracted because from imagining what her new home would look like, she didn’t
notice the tamaracks weren’t in neat rows anymore.
They seemed to surround her.
Behind her, a man spoke, “You brought the messages?”
Willow Grace’s eyes bulged as she came to a complete stop.
Every muscle in her body tensed.
She kept her hand tight against her throat and the other against a nearby tamarack to
keep her from collapsing.
Her long-lashed eyes the color of acorns noticed all the details of the giant of a man
with weathered skin and deep lines who stood before her.
His eyes, like knots, examined her with hardened strength.
“What’s that?” he said.
The man pointed with his gnarled finger at a scar on her forehead.
“Are you blemished?”
“Childhood accident,” Willow said.
Her hesitant voice quivered.
The man seemed to think for a moment before answering.
“You’ll do,” he said.
At his command, the raised tamarack roots, and boughs of stooped branches whipped
around Willow Grace’s arms and legs and held her securely.
The more she fought, the tighter the tree shoots wrapped around her.
Her chance for running away stopped when the birds stopped singing earlier.
He yanked the satchel away from her neck.
“You won’t need this anymore.”
One by one he read the markings on each of the scrolls, then brought it to the named
tree.
As soon as he did, the tree sank into the spongy bog and a person emerged crawling out
from the mire in the same place.
Willow Grace couldn’t stop screaming.
She watched in horror as these emerged persons sprung forth and walked over to where
she was lashed.
He bent over and picked up a branch perfectly sized to fit inside her mouth.
Silence replaced her shrill delirium.
“I am Hawthorne.
Have you ever heard that the giants who walked the earth believed bogs were holy land?
Not fully water, not fully land, they said it is in these places where our wise ones are
buried.”
All transformed tamaracks formed military ranks behind Hawthorne and waited for his
command.
“We have work to do and pleasures to enjoy.
How else can we fill our scrolls?
We also must find someone to deliver our scrolls next year.
Naivete is our camouflage.
You’ll have a new life and a new home as promised.
I see you’ve already grown attached to your new home.
As for your new life, you’ll have to be patient and wait until next year’s spring
solstice.”
Willow Grace felt suffocating branches twisting around her like a boa constrictor.
With time-lapse speed, another branch grew into the back of her skull, neck, and throat.
These personal battles of how we use our time, and which will be more successful,
patience or diligence, form within each of us.
“Her eyes can stay for now,” Hawthorne said.
“Birds will delight in those lovelies.”
Hawthorne snapped his fingers and birdsongs filled the airwaves with new life.
She watched a raven fly toward her.
