“After all, you too, have killed,” the dropwort adds. “And there was no nourishment involved. Was there?”
I do not answer. For yes, I have killed. Shamefully I have taken innocent life. And I would kill again, right now, if I had the means.
My victims would be two in number: Thomas Luxton, father of my beloved Jessamine. And Oleander, the Prince of Poisons.
It is for Jessamine’s sake alone that I stay away.
Of its own will, my hand strays to the book of evil I carry with me day and night. Thomas Luxton’s book of poisons. It is wrapped safe and dry in a square of oilcloth I stole from a farm wife’s washing line.
Every day I swear I will burn it. It is like that wicked garden of his: something unnatural that should never have been created. But I cannot bring myself to do it. It is the one link I have to the past – to all that was stolen from me. To happiness. To Jessamine.
“Answer, fleshbody. Do not ignore, like an ordinary half-sensed human. We know you can hear us.”
“Yes, I can.” I rake pebbles into my hand with my fingers and toss them one by one against a large out-cropping of rock. They bounce off the stone, narrowly missing my delicate, deadly accuser. “Alone among my kind, I can hear you. But that does not mean I am interested in what you have to say.”
The notched leaves flare in outrage. I feel pleasure at their hurt. This is the sort of creature I have become. Bitter. Angry. With too little respect for others, and far too much pity for myself.
I rise to leave. It makes the plants angry that I can do that. Walk away.
“Listen to the fleshbody,” the dropwort retorts. “A mere seventeen turns of the seasons on this ancient earth of ours, and yet he dismisses us. What is your answer, coward? Have you killed, or have you not killed?”
Through a canopy of alder leaves I glance up at the sky. It is grey, and thick with clouds. I half expect to see a shadow in the shape of wings, blotting out what little light is left. A gash of nothingness inked across the heavens.
“Yes. I have,” I snarl. “We are killers both. Do not make me prove it.”
With the poison diary under my arm, I turn and run.
“What do you hope to find in the forest, fleshbody? She is not here, you know!”
I plug my ears and run faster, deeper into the woods.
Jessamine once told me that humans go for walks in the forest to be alone and “collect 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