Hawthorn This wicked thicket grasped and stung her. The thorns were natural witches' blades seeking sacrifice for the land; long and sleek, they let the blood. She had stopped struggling now. Her limp body echoed the long-gone hanging men that awoke the land. The thorns embraced her in a final welcome, as she slowly seeped into the softening loam below. *** Weeks ago, a wagging-tailed dog had started the obsession, that and an acid green tennis ball carelessly thrown. “Shush you, shush!” she had admonished her wriggly friend, as she crawled belly down in the mud to retrieve the treasure. Dogs never strayed too close to the Hawthorn bush; they knew the tax they had to pay. “Shush! For heaven's sake!” A rattling, high-pitched warning volley of barks issued from this small guardian as the bush shimmered in the wind, wafting its peculiar fragrance. White constellations of flowers grouped along stark branches turned their delicate faces to her, graceful stamen bending in the unfelt breeze. It captivated her. The peculiar magic of scent clung to her clothes and her hair. Later, cooking dinner for the two of them, she smelt the sweet summons on her hair, paused,
pressed a handful to her nose, and breathed in deeply. Lost, she tried to remember that scent, that sweet, sour taint from the flowers; it recalled something old and primal but so fresh. The beeping of the fire alarm frightened her from her trance; the lasagna had burnt, and the dog was barking. Her constant companion slept on the floor from that night on, away from his usual on the bed, between the legs station. *** Now here, where she is supplicant, inches from her outstretched hand, is a healing wound on the Hawthorn trunk. It remembers those who steal. A price must always be paid. Thorns tighten as she utters a low moan, and her life heals the damage she causes. She is not the first; the land learned from a man long ago who hung his own that this is the way to heal, protect, and stay safe. It finds those who willingly take from the tree to pay the price, an unknowingly signed contract. *** After the scent enthralled her, they walked the river again the next day and strolled until they reached the hedge. She stopped and stared and watched. Beyond the hedge was a field protected by the wide floral band. Vast, green, lush and inviting, it beckoned a perfect spot for a girl and her dog to run and play. High above her, impressionist clouds parted, allowing light to pillar down into the field, creating an oasis of painterly springtime charm amongst the perpetual drizzle of the Somerset countryside. She shrugged deeper into her rain jacket and glanced down at her oddly quiet walking friend.
“What's wrong, good-boy? Bad belly?” she murmured, concerned about the only constant in her life. He whimpered, pressing into her leg as she absent-mindedly silked his ears through her fingers. Sweet scent swam through the air again. Breathing deeply, she meandered towards the hedge and, turning, strolled along its length. She let its leaves brush against her arm, frilled like a child's drawing of a leaf. Almost she expected to look later and see the smudges of a crayon along her arm. Really, she was looking for an entrance, an ingress, a hidden archway into the promised land. Someway to get into that patch of light beyond the boundary, the thicket of leaves and flowers far more forbidding close up, the scent far headier, sickly sweet. The field meant something, she was sure. Taking a step back, she'd frowned at the hedge before reaching out to a high bough. It was richly fruited, laden with flowers, promises of berries to come. “If I can't get in, I can at least bring some home!” she muttered, surprising herself with her annoyance. It was surprisingly difficult to break the branch away from its kin. Unlike her expectation there was no clean snap of a dry break, no surrender to a higher being on the food pyramid. Instead, she had to wiggle and twist, work the angle of the join, until at last, with a flesh-like tear, it came free, sticky and wet with plant fluids. Panting with a mix of exertion and triumph, she had clutched her prize, the bough of flowers and thorns; now she saw them, long and promising. Overhead, the sky darkened, and rain suddenly lashed; the hedgerow no longer seemed friendly and promising but a forbidden place, a barrier of nature's making that she had transgressed. The scent had changed. Pulling her hood up and grabbing the dog lead, she ran for the car and the safety of her home.
*** The price of one branch is more than she was willing to pay, she knows now. The accord between her and the land was signed there, a lonely girl, perfect for the needs of the field. The first one who took from the Hawthorn did it to offer three men a surfeit of blood, rushing all at once, flooding the loam and turf with that miracle of life. He bound them with thorns to stop them struggling when they wore their hessian necklaces, their flowers to disguise their stench of release. The branches were stolen with iron, switched away in great swathes; the peasants watched wide-eyed. She used her hands and twisted and tore, but the crime was the same. As far as the land was concerned, humans stole, so they must repay. She was waking now in the hedge as it slowly closed behind her, encasing her in this sweet-scented tomb. *** Purple swirled Murano glass. Only the best vase for this oddly sacred branch, displayed in the sun of the kitchen window. The dog slunk under the lounge coffee table and refused to surface, wouldn't accept strokes or pats, and growled at her if she came too close. Must be the weather and the cold on his old bones, she thought, ordering a heated bed online, nothing more. The kitchen stunk, sickly, sweet, rancid. Throwing the door open the next morning to make her morning coffee, she forensically searched for the cause of the rotting flesh stench. She sniffed the chicken breast in the fridge and touched for that tell-tale slimy veil; it seemed OK, but it was thrown out any way to be safe. She peeled the film on packages of cold cuts
opened and half eaten, sniffed and deemed not the culprit, cautiously sipped milk two days from turning and poured away. Bins were emptied and bleached out, and the kitchen was scrubbed and disinfected. Yet still, the stink hovered, drove her out of the house to seek refuge at the pub for a midweek fish and chips and a book in front of the fire, with refills of red wine until the tendrils of nagging warnings had ebbed from her mind. The field and its guardian hedgerow had been in her dreams last night, taunting her with a gateway to the secrets within. Purposefully, she'd not returned today; the rain would've turned the riverway into a slurry of mud, and more so, she wanted to prove she didn't have to. The denizens of the pubs were of the natural sort, inherited noses and jaws atop piles of heritage wax jackets and worn in scarves. You could trace the family trees by watching how the eyes crinkled at the corners or listening to how the men ordered their drinks, a happily settled community since the time of frog-weeded rhynes and unbordered pastures. Easy to fall into conversation at the bar; they were all of passing acquaintance. Ingratiated with the help of ale, the traditional rounds for the older faces, and she was at ease enough to question, poke at the sore spot of the evening. “The hedgerow by the river, what is that? It smells so sweet; I’ve not noticed it before….” A hush, tense, upon the older folk as they shared glances that clearly say she wasn’t born here, do we talk about our secrets, our history? And she wasn’t, she’s an import from the city looking for quiet, but does it matter? “That's the Judges field, girl, that is.” Finally, one of the oldest wax coats spoke. He's never addressed her before, never even looked at her.
“He hung our boys. He hung too many boys. He took things he should have not, should have left well alone.” A susurration of agreement rippled through the listeners. “I'd not trouble it, lass. Nothing good comes from a Hawthorn.” Tankard empty, he waved it at the barman; the moment over, she was suddenly faced with a different wall. No one would talk to the import again tonight; she'd had her warning. Draining her scarlet glass of wine, she winced as it splashed off her white scarf, the stain draining malevolently through the fine wool. No getting that out. It's just country rumours, she thought. Superstition and silliness, even as she opened the door, and the rotting stink hit her heavy in the still air of the house. It stuck in her throat, choking her and making her retch; the dog slunk around her feet, guilty at the evidence of a similar reaction in the lounge. In the kitchen she stopped dead, stared at the branch in her prized vase. Black and putrid, slumped to the side it was rotted through. Once white petals were now green-grey of decimated flesh, the same slimy countenance as of rotting meat. The stink now made sense; it was rotten flesh, that same sweet, sickly scent that floated in the air of a three-day-old body. Gasping, she grasped it and flung the whole thing into the garden, glass shattering into prisms under the night sky, a thousand reflections gasping back at her. *** Plague, death and rotting, that's when the flowers bloom. They say that's why you never cut a branch from a Hawthorn tree, that death walks over the door with you. The Hawthorn guards the fields and villages where the contracts still stand. She is awake now and slowly
realises her fate. The screaming won't help, she will just tire as she struggles. Struggling hurts more, the stinging of the thorns. The little biting mites. Below her, the ground is muddy and rich, seeping out its nutrients. *** Midnight, and she barely knows why she is here. Carrying the remains of the branch, milling thoughts that if she puts it back, repairs the insult, she will be let go…. but she knows that it won't be that easy. Taking a deep breath, she pushes through, gritting her teeth against the peculiar stings from thorns and ignoring scuttles as unnamed bugs and creatures flee. She must get through. Deeper she pushes and presses, it seems like a cavern, and it's harder to move now, clothes are catching, and her skin is jammed against hard wood objects. She surges forward, a brave move, an unlucky move, an unseen bough at eye height ripe with thorns and the pain renders her inert and limp. Slowly, quietly, the thorns start their work. She will make a grand part of the cycle; the land will feed richly, and the small animals feast upon fresh meat, and insects and grubs the leavings. Her body will renew what she stole, fulfilling the contract signed so many hundreds of years ago. In the pub, her poster will wither, turn yellow. The old man in the wax jacket will shake his head. He knows the rules and the boundaries and knows she is not the first. When no one is looking, he will cast the paper in the fire and say a prayer for the dead. The land remembers what you take. The land remembers what it is owed. And the land will take it back, always.
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