Poison of Perception by Miriam Barnes

The skin of the apple split perfectly beneath the woman’s knife. The soft flesh was red and vibrant and juicy, and a not small part of her hummed with contentment that it had come from a tree grown by her own hands. The woman watched the woods just beyond her window and bit into the apple’s flesh.

To some the branches of the elm and ash trees dancing in the quiet morning breeze would curve dangerously. Like the grasping fingers of cruel giants, they would threaten to pluck you, push you, pull you from safety. The dappled shadows would play tricks on the eyes of some, rocks blending together with earth, tripping their careless feet. Predators would be easily concealed just beyond sight, hovering in the twilight dark. To some it would be as if they could feel the hot breath of wolves whenever the forest breeze grazed their necks. And this was simply because they believed. Wolves and forests, darkness and depravity, fear and danger must go hand in hand.

To others the trunks of the great trees would bend gently down, emerald leaves tracing their skin delicately as they walked unhindered through the soft twilight shade. They would see rabbit prints and hear the call of songbirds, and if they were lucky, glimpse the deer and her fawn bounding lithely through the rich undergrowth. The intermittent sunlight would reveal the glistening hues of the fawn’s new coat and illuminate the golden depths of the doe’s eyes more artfully than the full blaze of an afternoon sun ever could. To some this place would sing of life, not death. Mostly, because they believed it to be so.

The woman who watched through the window knew that perception had the power to twist and bend men’s minds more effectively than the weight of a mountain would crush their spines. She stood at her window thinking over the many distorted and varied perceptions people had piled on her throughout the years. She was Charmer and Charlatan, Nurse, Midwife, Healer, Witch and Wise Woman, Priestess, Trickster, and ultimately Poisoner. She had been named with every word that can be used to describe a woman with an intelligent mind and a tie to magic. All of them were true. And all of them were wrong, at least in part.

While musing, the woman was watching the clever wind play amongst the great branches sheltering her home when she felt a tug at her navel. Someone was beginning their journey at the edge of the forest and she could feel them coming. It was always like this, some invisible cord connecting her to the ones who dared to enter the woods, the feeling of that tug telling her much about them before they arrived on her doorstep.

A small smile curled the woman’s pink lips, tinged bloody by apple flesh. This was a gentle tug. The girl was nervous, but determined, like a foal hesitating on the bank of a stream, afraid to cross the summer swell, but determined to get to the fresh grass on the other side. It was a feeling edged by desperation, like the rest of the wild herd would not brave the water, and had turned their backs on her, opting for dried out pastures closer to home. And the herd did not glance back. They did not wait to see if she would make the crossing successfully or drown in the rapids.

The woman breathed words of kindness to the trees that encircled her clearing and that stretched far beyond it, asking safe passage for this weary traveler. Then she busied herself clearing away scraps of apple from her spotless wooden counters, and placing a black kettle on the fire. No matter what journey you made she thought, a cup of tea rarely went amiss upon its conclusion.

At the woman’s words the wind sighed and gentled in its play, the strong trunks of the elms and ashes relaxed, their supple branches parting and allowing more sunlight to stream through, revealing the path this girl was to take. With the sun shining more brightly, the wolves of the girl’s imagination retreated into the darker bits of the forest. And at the woman’s quiet request the rocks buried themselves deeper in the earth so as not to trip the girl’s uncertain feet.

The woman’s perception of the girl was sharpening as she neared, and about halfway through the forest she felt the girl stutter in her path forward. The whispers of the girl’s own mind and the judgments of the people in the village stalled her more than any fallen log or boulder could have. The girl’s mind whirled with doubt and uncertainty. The loudest of her thoughts, the darkest ones around which all the others swirled, came through clearly to the woman: What if the woman at the center of the forest really was a witch? What if she was a murderer? What if she fed the girl poison instead of antidote?

The woman sighed heavily, retreating from the kitchen and settling into one of the two plush chairs by the fire. Nothing can hold all the pieces of truth, not even death, not even poison, not even murder. Simplicity is not the nature of this world, no matter how much we wish to perceive black and white instead of gray. A deep tiredness gnawed at her bones, and it had nothing to do with the early hour of the morning.

The woman closed her black eyes, dark as obsidian, the lines on her face deepening, betraying her ancientness which had been muted by the morning sun. Amber light and warmth from the strong fire stole across her aching body, soothing her some. The fire’s flickering sent her and the chair’s shadows shifting on the wall behind her. Sometimes those shadows had the appearance of a young woman lounging, other times she appeared curled up and catlike, and at other times still, her shadow seemed to dwarf that of the armchair, like a great gorgon was perched there.

And yet, as the girl stumbled still deeper through the forest, hindered but not halted by her fears, the flickers of amber firelight seemed to bend the woman’s figure, curving her spine, until only a crone was left wasting away in the shadows.

And that was how the woman waited. She sent no thoughts or guidance out to the girl, allowing her to traipse the gentle path through the forest unhindered and uninfluenced. Well, as uninfluenced as a sunlit passage through the Twilit Forest can be.

There had been a time when the woman tried to change their minds, tried to sway them one way or the other. But that had been long ago and she had discovered since then that her influence was as likely to poison them against her as it was to turn them in her favor. The only way for there to be any truth to people’s perceptions of her was for her to simply be, and leave them to choose their own descriptions of her.

Eventually the girl knocked, the woman’s small hut appearing suddenly before her in a clearing. Its heavy oak door had almost blended into the trunks of the trees around her and she’d nearly walked straight into it. The woman, too tired from waiting and hoping in spite of herself, did not rise. She simply waved her hand and the door flicked open.

The girl jumped at the door’s sharp opening and hesitated in the cramped doorway, peering forward, eyes failing to adjust as quickly as she wished to the firelit shadows. They were darker than the sunlit ones she would be leaving behind.

“Come in,” a soft velvety voice echoed from within, giving the hut a more cavernous feeling than its squat outside appearance hinted at.

The girl still hesitated but the words were more invitation than command so she stepped forward, hands placed unconsciously protective over the slight bump of her stomach. As her bare feet crossed the threshold the heavy oaken door creaked slowly shut behind her. Almost as if it was giving her a chance to change her mind.

With its closure the last glimmers of sunlight faded from the girl's mind, even as a few sunbeams still filtered through the foggy glass of the kitchen windows.  For the girl, sunlight could not penetrate the shadows of the forest woman’s home.

The hut smelled of earth and unfamiliar herbs. The rich cloying scent and the warmth of the fire gave the girl a heady feeling. She felt simultaneously as if she had walked into her grandmother’s house, a warm pot of unfamiliar but delicious tea brewing on the fire, and at the same time as if she had unwittingly stepped into a witch’s lair, an unknown potion brewing on the fire. The black pot hanging over the hearth seemed more cauldron than kettle to her in that moment.

“There’s a seat if you’d like it,” the woman gestured with a gnarled hand to the other plush armchair situated across from her.

Feeling as if she’d come too far to not see this through now, the girl moved forward and sat gingerly on the seat cushion, back straight, hands folded across her slightly swollen belly. She couldn’t allow herself to relax fully into the chair, but she no longer hovered in the doorway. The girl didn’t realize it yet, but the moment she sat down was the moment she made her decision. Before her eyes the woman transformed from witch to healer, poisoner to liberator. The person across from her offered a chance at salvation more than she offered the certainty of death.

“Would you like something to drink?” the woman asked. Her black eyes held the girl’s own blue ones, unblinking.

“What is it?” the girl asked. Eyes that reminded the woman of bluebells frozen in an early winter’s chill, flicked briefly to the steaming kettle before returning.

The old woman’s dark pupilless eyes unnerved the girl, but she found it hard to look away from them for long. They drew her in like a concealed pit in a forest draws in unsuspecting prey. But those eyes also gave the girl something to disappear into, somewhere to hide, a cave to crawl into for a moment, and let the world pass by.

“What do you want it to be?” the old woman asked. The question was not meant to be answered aloud, only to tell the girl she must decide before she drank.

The girl involuntarily glanced down at the distension of her tattered gown where normally it would have lain flat Staring at that tiny bump under her young fingers, hesitation released its hold on her. It was her choice. The old woman’s words made that clear. And the desperation that had carried the girl from the safety of her home to the unknown of this hut, that had guided her feet through the Twilit Forest away from everything she held dear, begged in her heart. Freedom, it cried, plaintive and howling, freedom.

She rubbed the barely there swell for the last time, then dropped her hands from her stomach, releasing the sliver of a dream that she had held clasped like a piece of broken glass digging into her heart long before her trek through the forest had begun. She willed that sliver to hit the floor of the hut and shatter into a thousand pieces. Then she closed her eyes and ground the shards of that broken dream, that false dream, borne from what other people told her she should want, into sand, and prayed for the wind playing in the trees to whisk it away from her. The wind obliged.

When the girl opened her eyes, the woman could see bluebells blooming, frost melting, and a deep vein of hope reaching up from the soil to the sky.

 “I know now. I wasn’t sure before. But I am now,” the girl said, a quiet certainty giving her voice a depth it had lacked before. In that moment she sounded more woman than girl.

Only then did the old woman, the witch, the liberator pour the tea, the potion, the poison.

Afterwards, when the blood had stopped flowing down the girl’s legs. After her skin had been cleansed and wiped with warm cloth scented with chamomile and jasmine flowers. After the throbbing ache of the girl’s insides had been eased with the bitterness of willow bark. After she had slept as long as she needed and woken from a deep but not dreamless sleep. The girl, the young woman, hesitated again in the doorway of the old woman’s home and turned to face her.

“Do I have to go back?” the girl asked.

The old woman looked at her, obsidian, unblinking. “No,” she said simply.

Permission to return to the girl’s home, as well as permission to forge a new path, were both present in the old woman’s answer.

Bluebells exploded in the spring sunlight of the girl’s eyes, and she departed. The memory of what she left behind at the center of the forest would stay rooted in the girl’s heart forever. But that hut would be just one pitstop in the great journey of her life.