It was that time of year again. Despite her fondest wishes.
Trish stared at the door to the shed as if it would vanish if she refused to blink for long enough. Unbidden, her treacherous left hand slowly found its way to the handle and shoved it open.
The boiling air sizzled against her neck. June had come, and was already trying to make itself into July. The air tasted like sweat and evaporated dirt. Something had died six blocks over ten minutes ago and had already ripened into a fly-ridden maggotblot that could be smelt from one side of the town to the other.
And there was a little fleck of dried straw in one of Trish’s gloves that had already embedded itself under her fingernail.
God she fucking hated gardening.
***
The hedges were first. They’d gotten unruly over the winter, creeping roots where they shouldn’t be and whispering secrets amongst themselves while the other plants slept bare and lifeless under blankets of snow. Cedar roared with fierce venom as Trish’s chainsaw snarled and gnawed through branch after branch, lashing her with curses and hexes and some good-old-fashioned invective against her family unto the nineteenth generation.
Trish was pretty glad she didn’t have or want kids, because after doing this for half a decade anyone she pushed out would probably be born with one eye two noses and a satan for a backside.
She took a break to clear the chainsaw of sap, bark, and malice and wiped some of the venom from her face. Ugh. At least it wasn’t hemlock. She still had nightmares sometimes about the photos they showed back in the arborist classes. A chug of electrolytes pushed that and her thirst from her head, then she revved up the motor again.
The wind hissed with fresh hatred as the blade was lowered to the hedge-rim, and some of the nearby grass died.
Great. Just great.
***
The lawn was even more tiresome than usual. First Trish had to burn all the pruned cedar branches she’d just trimmed as an offering to the Council of Blades to even HOPE to make amends, and then began the traditional long, hard negotiations.
“No lower than four inches,” First-Grower of the Council whispered.
An insulting opening offer. “Two,” said Trish. That was insulting too, but fuck them for starting it this way.
“After you bring the curses of the not-grasses upon us?” demanded Sharpest-Edge. “Five inches!”
“One and a half.”
“Three, perhaps,” mumbled Drought-Dried.
“THREE?” said Sharpest-Edge.
“Two and a half and you’ll like it,” said Trish.
And after two hours more debate, this was eventually deemed acceptable, provided the lawnmower was purified with the sap-blood of the cedar hedge, and Trish could finally cut the fucking grass.
Politics. Always the politics. God. She’d never taken a single polysci elective for a REASON, and here she was.
But at least it wasn’t as bad as the screaming as she drove over the green acres, faint as it was. Like an unignorable whisper on the wind, almost possible to mistake for her imagination.
So she wore earmuffs, and if anyone asked she pretended they were because of the lawnmower.
***
After THAT mess, the garden was relaxing. The soft crumble of the soil underhand. The reassuring stench of the manure in Trish’s nostrils. The neverending litany of murmured prayers and chants and charms as she pressed each bulb into the earth and extolled it to grow tall, bloom beautifully, rend its perfumes and colours into the air like a striking serpent, then die quietly and gracefully.
Taming flowers was always easiest when they were youngest. Her fingers had scars from the time she’d come across a feral crocus lurking in a patch of geraniums.
Shush shush, grow big, dream of tall stems and warm breezes and many bees and fine pollen. Do not fear the hands that come to stroke and prune and groom you into beauty. Do not lust for the sap of the gardener. Do not hunger for the xylem of the fleshy. Do not become bent on destruction. Do not scream for the dying of all light.
Grow well, and think of blossoms.
Her neck was swimming in sweat. She had all the time in the world, yes. All the time in the world.
But still. One little slip, and she’d have a wild rose on her hands. And a lot of blood on her conscience.
Ssshhh. Warm earth. Warm prayers. Shhh, tuck yourself in. Bear your thorns calmly. Stand stately.
Do not fear. Do not hate. Do not prey.
Shhhhhhhhhhhh.
Please.
***
The sun was setting. The timing was perfect, in defiance of every delay and exacerbation and insult of the day’s contempt for Trish’s schedule.
If only the fucking matches would light.
“You don’t have to do this,” begged the man for the sixteenth time in the past two minutes. Ruddy-red glow from the horizon made the sweat and tears shiny beautifully like blood on his pleading face.
“Fuck,” said Trish. “Goddamnit, how did people live before lighters?”
“Please. Please don’t. Please. Pleasepleasepleaseplease.”
“Piss. OW!”
“Why? Why are you doing this to me?” he asked. He wasn’t even struggling anymore; the wicker bonds held his arms and legs too tightly to do anything more than raise welts on his limbs. “Why?”
“Burnt my thumb! Won’t stay lit for longer than a fraction of a second, but you’ll burn my thumb? What kind of shittery is this?”
“What did I DO?!”
Trish pulled the last match from the box and focused her hatred on it until she fancied it almost smouldered. “Lived in an apartment block for your entire life without a lawn,” she said absently, rage making her voice tranquil. “It’s personal that way. The lawn likes it when it’s personal.”
She dragged the match slow. It lit, then broke.”
“FUCK. Guess we can’t light the wickerman tonight. Fire’s right out.”
The man couldn’t sag in his bonds, they were so tight. But his eyes did unbug a little.
At least until Trish pulled out the knife.
Second-best beat nothing at all.
***
After an entire day spent with no time to waste and every second ruining everything, the time from dusk to midnight crawled along like a paralyzed sloth. Trish sat impatiently, burping the baby with one hand.
“Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah,” it opined.
“There, there,” she said, for the forty trillionth time. “There, there.”
And there, there it was. The moon hung in the sky, the right stars twinkled the right way, and her watch rang as finally, blessed finally, the hour had come.
3 AM on the dot. She picked up the shovel and dug like a demented badger, dredging up the last, last, last reserves of her willpower and strength and dug the hole and plunked the baby in it and filled the hole and bowed to the apple tree.
“Harvest bless,” she said, in a ceremony-perfect picture-polite voice her tutors would have applauded at. “Go fuck yourself,” she added in those same tones, which they would not have.
The apples ignored her. That was fine. They had no choice now. A good crop would be coming around by autumn, and they could like it or lump it all the same, everyone else would be eating it.
And that was the rewarding part of this job, really, thought Trish as she threw the shovel into her truck and finally, finally, finally drove home to a shower and a bed and a stale bag of chips that would pretend to be a dinner.
The feeling that you were giving something back to the community.