Asphodel winced as grit thudded on to her. Not hail, that would
be too much. She had only asked for a few showers not a bombardment of ice
balls.
‘Sorry, I didn’t
mean to throw them your way. I’m trying to spread them around evenly. Lord this
is exhausting work. Normally I don’t have to do anything.’ The seed master
collapsed onto fallen trunk, clutching a bulging satchel inside his greatcoat.
‘I don’t need competition this close,’ she
said, wriggling to dislodge a seed from between her base leaves, which was
itching. ‘How’s Donny coping?’
‘Not in good humour
at all. He’s got a shocking hangover so don’t let him hear you calling him
that. He’ll live with Dion, though he prefers Dionysus in full. Or Bacchus,
though I doubt there’ll be much of that this year.’
‘All gone are they?
The vines?’
‘Some left to the
west. The fire stopped when it hit the bare ground around them. Just as well
they weren’t bio vineyards, where they leave the weeds to grow. They’d have
gone up with the rest.’
‘What’s he fussing
about?’
‘No one to pick
them or press them. The houses were burnt, so the folks will be rebuilding, not
preparing for the Saturnalia. And the crops are gone so they won’t be in a mood
to celebrate. They’ll starve this winter or have to move to the towns for
work.’
‘What’s he going to
do? He’s got responsibilities to prepare for next spring. Getting drunk on last
year’s wine and giving up isn’t an option.’ She adjusted her leaves to make
room for a flower stalk, beginning its slow ascent from her roots.
‘He’s gone off to
see his mother to ask for her help. But it’s always a slow process. You’ve
never lived through a fire, have you?’
‘No, but I’ve been
given the knowledge. My grand-daddy lived through two, including that dreadful
one two decades back which cleared 200,000 hectares.’
‘Nearly gave me a
nervous breakdown that one.’ He rubbed his whiskery cheeks with a grubby finger.
‘I thought we’d never recover. But do you know?’ His leathery face broke into a smile of
delight. ‘Within a month it was a paradise, with wild flowers kicking up their
heels like can-can dancers, shimmering colour as far as the eye could see.
Honey bees and bumble bees we hadn’t seen in years came to visit, pollinate and
set up honey factories. The grass was growing, so the mice could refurbish
their nests and start breeding.’
‘But not the same
as it had been,’ she said, irked at his positivity. ‘Many died in that fire.
There should have been a time of respectful mourning, not a vulgar display by
pushy arrivistes.’
‘Now, now, you know
that isn’t how nature works, Asph. Everything has its season. Trees grow like
thugs and their shade crowds out the pretties, who lay down their seeds and
wait. Then the forest gets overgrown
with fallen needles souring the soil. We need a major house-clean once in a
while to re-set the balance.’
He cracked his
knuckles and extended one leg stiffly, kicking up a pile of ash with his sturdy
boot. A large black stag beetle emerged, bleary eyed, and waved a horn in
thanks as the branch that had been blocking the exit to its underground layer
was pushed aside.
‘What’s the death
toll, this time?’ she asked the seed master, determined not to let him off the
hook.
‘Not as bad as you
might imagine. A few late breeders lost their young, rabbits, foxes and the
like, and will have to wait till next year. Two eagle nests unfortunately. Now
that was sad.’ His huge hand dug into his greatcoat pocket and emerged with a
pipe and packet of tobacco. He pulled forward the brim of his hat to keep the
rain away, lit it and sighed.
‘Suppose you could
be right,’ she said grudgingly. ‘The deer left early and the birds. The boar
too caused quite a stampede. Ma pig and her little humbugs were going like the
clappers last I saw. Pa’s gone after them.’
His laughter echoed
round the clearing.
‘There’s another of
nature’s tricks. Cutest babies you ever saw, growing into plug-ugly adults.
Nothing stays the same for long. Get used to it.’
A flash of red and
a flutter of wings was followed by sharp knocking on a seared trunk nearby.
‘Woodpecker, you’re
ahead of yourself’ she said, glad of the distraction. ‘Your insects haven’t
arrived yet.’
‘I’m forward
reconnaissance,’ he said, arching his long neck, his red crest buffed to
military pomp above a pristine white stripe and gleaming black body. ‘I’ll let
the others know on first sighting.’
‘Did you see many
corpses on your way here?’ she asked.
‘Apart from the
trees, you mean? Wasn’t looking. Dead animals are no use to us. Mind you, didn’t see any vultures so there
can’t be many. I’ll try that grove lower down. The borers will likely find the
burnt oaks tastier than these crispy craturs.’ He flew off with a bravura sweep
of his long tail feathers.
‘Too uppity for his
own good,’ she muttered.
‘But very
beautiful, my dear, you must admit. Always lifts my heart when I see him. And
he’s right. Everything has its purpose and its place.’
They sat in
companionable silence for a few minutes until pools of water threatened to seep
into his boots. With a gruff nod, he pocketed his pipe, groaned to his feet and
walked off, his precious cargo of seeds clutched to his chest. She braced
herself against a rivulet that was spilling down from the bank above her.
‘Enough then,’ she
said, conjuring up the tousle-feathered rain god again. ‘I only asked for a
shower not a torrent. Row it back.’ Sheets of rain redoubled in strength, obscuring
the far side of the glade. To survive a fire and then drown was too much. Then
to her astonishment, it stopped and the puddles receded as the thirsty soil
drank them down to nothing.
‘What are you
doing, Asphodel? Messing around with nature. That’s my job.’ A sulky youth, his
coarse robe drenched, strode in front of her. He jabbed his staff within an
inch of her leaves, the pine cone on the end glinting in the pale sun. His
beardless face, too soft to be handsome, was redeemed by a high brow and penetrating
green eyes.
‘No, it’s not,
Dionysus. It’s the Great Mother’s. You’re just her plaything, on an endless
groundhog spin of seed, grow, harvest, die and then start all over again.’
‘True enough.’ He
sank onto a fallen trunk with a weary expression, wiping tears from his face,
leaving a smudge across his cheek. ‘Problem is the cycle’s been ruptured. The
peasants have fled which means the few grapes left will rot on the vines, and the
wheat, oats and maize are all toast. No harvest, no celebrations. What am I
going to do?’
As she searched for
an ecnouraging slogan, he leapt to his feet, ran across to the upended tree
roots and waved his fennel rod so excitedly the ivy entwined round sprayed
out.
‘Look, it’s a
catacomb entrance. You’re a miracle Asphodel.’
‘I am?’
‘Yes. It’s why
you’re here. You protected this clearing. Standing guard, waiting for the trees
to fall and an old doorway to the underworld to open again. We can have the
rituals here. I could kiss you.’
So many compliments
in one day were beginning to make her feel queasy and she hadn’t even got her
finery on yet.
‘There must be
other ways down,’ she said, anxious about hordes of drunken feet tramping around.
‘No, it has to be
this one. Mama’s oracle said the usual one won’t do. Bad joss, she said,
because of exigent circumstances, or something. She was jabbering so fast I
only caught a few soundbytes. A beautiful star would show us the way. That’s
you. How quickly can you dress up?’
‘My jewels are
buried and will take time to unpack,’ she said, clamping her leaves round the
flower stalk, attempting to push it back down.
‘Tomorrow will be
time enough. Just one star that’s all I ask. I’ll go round up the celebrants.
Ma will be so pleased with me.’ He tossed the ivy crown on his head high into
the air and caught it with his staff, twirling it round and round, as he
skipped off to the west.
Overnight she
pondered long and hard about the pine’s last remark before darkness fell. ‘You
preside over the graveyard, my dear. That’s your role. But even you can’t live
in perpetual winter. The life cycle has to push on through decay and
destruction and emerge into new growth. Dionysus’s ritual will help humans
reconnect to this natural imperative, and show them that demanding constant
summer and plenty is arrogant and self-defeating.’
Her grand-daddy had
once related the Dionysian Mysteries to her. He had lived beside a tree grown
from a seed dropped by a partridge who had been in attendance. The seedling
tree knew from its forbears, who surrounded the holy grove, what went on and
explained them in great detail. In turn the story was handed down to her.
Truthfully she hadn’t listened too closely to her aged relative’s rambling yarn
since it seemed irrelevant. And she’d been embarrassed by him lingering on
graphic images of sexual depravity, some of which involved a goat’s penis and a
fig-wood dildo, all fuelled by a booze-sodden, narco-high. Too much information.
She shuddered at the memory.
They could call
her a prude if they liked, but she was very glad she was a plant and didn’t
have to engage in all that sweaty, groaning, squeaking and screaming animal
coupling. When it happened in her vicinity, she always went into a meditative
trance to block out the noise and foxy smell. Which was going to make the next
few days quite a trial.
From what little
she could recollect, most of the action happened in the underground chamber, so
she would be spared everything bar her imagination. Men and women went down
separately into the darkness, were stripped of their status, rich clothes and
pride, suffered a painful initiation ceremony, and emerged better people, or so
the theory went.
What was the point
of it? Mirroring nature’s way was what the pine had implied. Her flowers faded
and died by late summer and her leaves crinkled into trash at the first chill
of autumn. Did she feel humiliated at not being a diva through winter? Perhaps
a little, but she knew she would come back twice as beautiful next year.
Didn’t humans know
that? Maybe they had forgotten their place in the eternal cycle, so loss became
a cataclysmic reversal, not a preparation for better to come.
By next morning,
her flower stalk had emerged though the buds were tightly shut. How did that
happen? Normally it took a week or more. Dionysus up to his tricks as usual. He
really was a spoilt brat. What he wanted had to happen instantly, otherwise
teddies went in all directions. Disrupting her orderly timeline made her cross
and uneasy. What if she couldn’t manage a star flower to open his ceremony?
‘Be calm, Asphodel.
If the oracle says it will happen, all you have to do is believe,’ the pine
murmured, as he welcomed the breeze, riffling through the few fronded twigs
still perched on top. ‘We’ll all have to look our best to help the poor people
recover. Show them how it can be done.’
Part 3 next week: The Nature Cycle Rolls Round
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