Songs of Bathsheba Evergreen
by Gretchen Tessmer
...wrap my heart in birch bark
my skin scarred
in black-and-white calligraphy...
In spring, while wet snow still clings to my boughs and frost nips at my roots, a man in rags comes by to ask if he might cut me. The knife in his hand is small and in need of a whetstone.
"Just a scratch while the sap runs hot, my lady?" he begs.
"What's a scratch?" I muse, coming to the bark between us, letting my hand come up to melt the latticed ice patterns to better mark his desperate face.
"A thimble?" he swallows hard. "Two, if you can spare it? My children are starving...."
"Your queen's made a crime of this sort of thing," I warn him. "Are you sure you want to risk it?"
"Yes, my lady," the man nods, eagerly. Oh, he's more than desperate. I wonder if his children are sleeping right now, huddled together under threadbare blankets, or if they're up, crying with hunger. This winter's been harder than most.
He grips the hilt of his sad, little knife in a way that says he'd risk much more than this. He'd do nearly anything to see his children survive.
I give him his thimblefuls and send him on his way.
...bathe my heart in ash and water
a lye to wash the blood right out
a lie...
Not long after, the queen sends her favorite knight--he protects her heart, as well as her crown--to scold me and tell me not to do it again. Matthew says she'll give me one last chance before she sends woodsmen into the forest with axes.
"And how is my sister, sir?" I ask him, once he's finished delivering those empty threats. Emmeline could no more cut me down for firewood than she could give up her pursuit of living a life beyond branch and leaf. She just wants to forget me, that's all. She wants to forget the old ways and where she comes from.
"Tired," Matthew replies, too honestly, running a hand through his ash-blond hair. He's fretting and I wonder...
In late summer, songbirds bring me news from the castle. Emmeline is to have a baby.
...brace my heart in oak and elm
I mustn't bow, I mustn't bend
no weeping willow will I be
when, at last, she makes amends...
Emmeline comes to me in autumn. Alone, desperate. I smell new life growing in her womb, seeded strongly, scent mulched by earthy foliage.
"What do you want, Emmeline?" I mutter, crossing the divide between worlds, crawling out of my roots to meet her face-to-face. How tired she looks! Matthew was right. This child's life drains her own, and it's no wonder.
Dryads can't bear children without sap. She knows this. She was reckless to try.
"I need your help," she replies, in a voice that doesn't sound much like a queen. Too uncertain, too lost, her chestnut-brown eyes showing fear.
"You can transform anytime you like," I remind her. "You're the one who won't do it."
"I can't," she admits, in a halting voice, eyes brimming. "I didn't just leave the roots. I...I had the mage cut them off clean. Bathsheba, please..."
She cut them? What possessed her to do something so drastic? So lasting? Did she hate who she was before so much? The anger in my breast turns to pity and sorrow. It burns like nettles, it stings like thorns.
