Fields of Red

Persephonus looked up at his mother. Her dark, curly hair was shining with a red ochre halo from the window’s light, framing her in glory. The light was sharp and illuminated only her, with all else cast into shadowy, unknowable darkness. His home was familiar, a soft feeling, but it felt fuzzier than usual. He longed for the sunlight ringing his mother’s hair to kiss his skin, and then he remembered the back garden, and all the flowers in bloom outside. 

“Can I go out back and pick a bouquet? There’s someone special in my life that I think deserves a gift.” It was her, of course. He always gave flowers to his mom, but they never failed to bring a smile to her face, so he never stopped doing it, even when the freezes came and all that remained were dried seed pods that as a small child he’d mistakenly called ‘winter flowers.’ 

She usually guided him while in the garden picking, and would carefully supervise while he cut each stem, advising him where to cut and how many of each flower was acceptable to take. This time, she allowed him to go on his own. He was thrilled, and he spun around the room wildly, taking in only small bits of their home while he did. A table. Blurred wall. Some buckets and a broom in the corner. Swirls of light and shadow. Two chairs. A soft place to sleep. A hearth for warmth. Love. 

He stopped short, his eyes now glued on the table. He envisioned how lovely a splash of red blooms, all perfectly placed in a jar, would look just there on the table. He could already see the afternoon sun in his mind, lazily streaming in through the window, dust motes and blooms both dancing in the light. His mom would be so impressed that he’d done it all by himself. It would be a magical moment his mother would love, and he could make her feel special.

He took the small knife they used to harvest herbs and tried his best to keep himself contained, but in his excitement, he skipped through the house and burst through the back door, running full tilt out to the blooming patch of Anemone. He loved them himself, but he knew they were his mother’s favorite. He often felt somehow his mother was akin to them, and for a moment Persephonus imagined his mother drifting off on the winds to flower in new meadows just like the Anemones. 

The thin-lipped, full teeth smile that a fully blooming patch of anemone’s brought to his mother’s face was rarely matched, and Persephonus wanted to bring her joy in a basket. He began picking, and with each new, perfect bloom added to his basket he felt a thrill. He reveled in his freedom, slicing with wild abandon. Pers couldn’t wait to surprise his mom with her favorite flower. He chopped and chopped each beautiful bloom he found, completely filling the basket he’d taken to hold his bouquet. 

Just as he thought That ought to be about enough. Maybe just one more… He looked around him only to realize he’d gotten quite carried away with himself, and now every single red bloom from the patch was bunched together and sitting in his basket. His stomach dropped, and he suddenly felt awful for not leaving any flowers for her to enjoy outside. Then it came flooding in, recalling the times when his mother would caution him not to take too much of any one herb or flower. He hadn’t meant to pick them all. He was terrified they’d never come back, and he didn’t know what to do. The world around him seemed to swirl, collapsing in on him and bearing down so much weight that he could hardly move.

He tried to cry, but he couldn’t. Perse attempted to straighten himself and shake the sudden cloud cover, throwing everything into a diffused sort of light, tinged with blues and greens, then thought to himself, What’s the next right thing?

Frantically grabbing a flower, he tried to stick its stem down into the dirt, but it simply bent and broke. No good. He thought about trying to dig a hole and bury some of the stems back in the dirt to see if they would still grow, but ultimately, he decided to swallow his fear as best he could and tell his mother what he’d done. 

Persephonus sheepishly slunk back inside with his basket behind his back. He looked up at his mom, eyes already welling, and started to try to explain himself through a wall of tears and sobs. The room swam around him. In a swirl of shadowed furniture and darkened walls, he blinked away tears and produced the basket, expecting disappointment to color her face, but she just beamed. Her smile lit the room, illuminating even the corners of their small house, and filling it with warmth. He felt a little better somehow.

“Sweetheart, you’ve only picked the blossoming flowers. These are perfect, Perse, and I can assure you, there will be many more blooms in our anemone patch throughout the coming moon cycles.” His mother leaned in and smelled the basket of perfect crimson and vermillion blooms, as anyone surely does when presented with flowers.

“These daughters of the wind spread like wildfire in the meadows, and their petals shine just as bright in the light of day,” her hand caressed his cheek and then rested there, cradling his face. “You needn’t worry, my love.” She then wrapped him up in a hug, and more warmth bloomed inside him, and he felt even better, but he was still worried he’d picked too many. Shadows had crept back into the corners of his home, and he just wished he hadn’t picked all the flowers at once.

“Let’s go and take another look outside, how about it? If it will give you peace of mind, we can look for some new buds and see if there are any that you missed for the bees to enjoy.”

“Thanks, mom. That would help me feel better, I think.”

They crossed the threshold out the back door, and Persephonus watched his mother take a deep, refreshing breath of salty air and smile from her eyes. The sun had returned, and the garden sang a sunny melody for them. He believed she could hear it, too. He took a deep breath, in, in, in, and then all the way out, just like his mother. She lightly tapped his shoulder, and then gestured out to the field on their left. 

From their tiny back porch, he looked out at their magical little garden and then out across the fields, and he could see them. Little pops of crimson were present in patches all around the field. He felt silly. He’d gotten so focused on that little patch he was picking. Of course, there were other patches of Anemones he’d yet to notice.

He heard a familiar tune. At first the melody was light, made of air and smoke wafting in and out on the breeze, but soon it was coming from everywhere. Suddenly, he remembered. This happened years ago. This happened before I learned he’d left us for good…I must be drea—

In his sleepy stupor, cuddled up under his warm blanket, Persephonus could hear sounds coming from the hearth. For a moment, the salty scent of the ocean nearby was overtaken by the smell of fresh bread. The aroma drifted under the blanket and found his nostrils, mingling with the savory notes of leftover stew, which had been kept warm on last night’s coals with a tightly lidded pot, ready to be eaten with his mother’s morning flatbread.

He blinked, and through the crusted sleepiness in his eyes, he could see the morning sun streaming through the open window. He immediately shut them again. The light was unbearable. He pulled the blanket over his head to block it out.

Then he heard his mother continue humming a familiar tune. Almost like taking a warm sip of tea after coming in from the cold, he felt warmth suffuse his insides. An unavoidable grin tugged at the corners of his lips. Her song continued, and the once unwelcome sun now shone softly. After all these years, their ritual never changed because it always worked.

As a very young child, his mother discovered that Persephonus was a little night owl. He thrived at night. The evening would set, and his personality would come alive. He would smile and laugh, always wanting to play. In the mornings, however, the pendulum swung far in the other direction. Each day the sun would rise, but he would not budge.

His mother mostly tried to be sweet when waking him, but that never worked. Some days, when she grew desperate, she would try stealing his blanket, but that only angered him and brought about a day of misery. She tried splashing water on him, pleading, begging, appealing to reason, but nothing inspired him to leave the bed at a reasonable time to get morning chores done. When he did have to rise before he was ready, mornings were always a challenge.

One fateful morning, after failing miserably to rouse her little one from bed, she prayed to his namesake, Persephone, to help her find a kind way to start his day. Inspired, she began to sing him a song, hoping to help Persephonus find the beauty in waking up along with the world around him, to see each new morning as its own springtime in miniature, and to feel the connection she felt in rising with the sun—pure potential in every dawn.

As she began her song, he stirred. By the end of the second verse, he was sitting up and looking at her, beaming with joy. From then on, each morning she would wake him up and help him find his peace with her gentle wake-up song.

Persephonus knew it was now time to get up and prepare for the day. He rubbed the crust from his eyelashes and sat up. "Good morning, Mom."

She stopped singing when she saw he was sitting up and smiled at him while splitting the remainder of last night’s fish stew into two bowls. “Good morning, dear. How did you sleep?” She placed two fresh flatbreads on top of the bowls.

“Okay.” He saw a palm frond on the end of his bed and picked it up. “I think the winds from last night’s storm blew a tree into the house.”

His mother looked quizzically at the frond he was holding and then chuckled lightly. “It looks that way, doesn’t it?”

Persephonus got out of bed and walked over to the table, where his mother was already laying out the spread for breakfast. Together they sat and ate in comfortable silence. After they finished eating and cleaning up, they prepared to spend the day hunting for oysters, clams, and other edible seafood they could gather.

They were not alone in this lifestyle; many of their neighbors would also be headed down to the beach for low tide. It was a meager life they lived on the island, but as his mother would say, “We must choose to find happiness every day, even when it is hiding from us. If we remember to love what we have, instead of only wishing for more, we will hold more love in our hearts, and gratitude will keep our course true.”

As they walked down the path toward their usual beach, the briny air hit his face and filled his nostrils with the unmistakable aroma of the ocean at low tide. That particular scent would usually send a shiver of excitement down his spine, always an indicator of a treasure hunt for fun and delicious creatures caught up in the tide pools and their primary source of tradable goods, but today the heavy waft of ocean sent a trickle of unease through his body, suffusing it and then concentrating in the pit of his stomach. He almost asked his mother if they could turn around. He couldn’t put his finger on why, but it didn’t feel like the day for this, no matter the tide.

Suddenly, they heard a loud raucous up ahead. Men were shouting on the beach, though they were not quite over the last outcropping of rocks between the beach and them. One of their neighbors, an old man who practically lived on the beach, suddenly crested the rocky hill, and when he saw them, began shouting for anyone nearby to flee.

Persephonus flinched at the sudden clang of swords and then, fear coursing through him, looked to his mother for guidance. She grabbed him by the hand and immediately made for the trees. The ringing of swords echoed over the rocks, but he could barely hear a thing above the loud and rapid beating of his heart sending waves of pressure crashing through his body. The world went sideways, and ringing filled his ears as loudly as the ocean crashing violently against a cliffside. They did their best to navigate between boulders, trying to stay low and out of sight, but loose rocks and fear kept them from making quick progress to safety.

The trees grew closer. He couldn’t stop himself from constantly looking over his shoulder and scanning the horizon, hoping beyond hope that he wouldn’t see whoever was fighting down on the beach crest that hill between them before they found refuge. As it was, they were helplessly climbing between rocks without real cover. They were totally exposed.

Just as they made it to the trees, a place of refuge where they could hide from whomever was causing this havoc on the beach, Persephonus saw him. On the ridge, he spotted a burly, leather-skinned man come into sight. He’d scrambled up from the beach. Even from a distance, he could tell that the man was not one of his neighbors and likely not from their island, judging by his dirty, greasy, tattoo-covered barrel chest, his tattered brown pants, and generally soiled appearance. He had to be a pirate.

“Did he see us?” he whispered aloud while his mother pulled him fully behind the trunk of a large cypress.

“He will certainly see us if you don’t stop trying to sneak a peek at him! Gods have mercy. We must hide!” she chided him sternly, the whisper accentuating a biting and harsher undertone than usual. He was so scared he could barely think, and he struggled to keep his breath under control. His mother held him tightly, clutching at him like he might vanish at any moment. He felt a seam in his shirt give way a little, ripping from the strength of his mother’s grasp. Both huddled and shaking, he held his breath and watched his mother’s lips rapidly moving in silent prayer.

They heard the muffled shout of a deep, rough voice call out, “You, down there – with me!”

A stifled scream barely escaped his mother’s mouth before she remembered herself and clapped one hand over her mouth, then looked with wild horror to her dear Perse. He was calling for backup. Persephonus tilted his head up to his mother for reassurance, met her eyes, and there he saw it for the first time. True fear.

It sent a wild feeling from the center of his body all the way out to the tips of his fingers and toes and made them ache. He could feel the burning ache in his palms, the soles of his feet, and even up his arms and legs. Then, an odd pain in his inner thighs, akin to the feeling in one’s jaw when eating too much lemon by itself. Fire and ice at once coursed inside him with a blinding intensity, blotting out all else. It was his mother and him against the world.

The moments between then and when the pirates finally reached the trees stretched out and warped for Persephonus, seeming to last forever and yet no time at all.

In his life on this island with his mother, he’d been witness, on many occasions, to annoyance weighing heavy on her brow. Yet, in her eyes, kindness could still be found. Forgiveness was always just around the corner, especially when he did not expect it to be. There were times when he’d caught her in what she thought was a moment to herself, and he’d seen sadness slowly stream down her cheeks and catch in her throat. But when she caught him observing, she’d wrap him up in a hug and play a game with him. Love was still present in her eyes even then, but in those times, it was mixed with something else.

Not fear, though, surely, he thought. He’d occasionally been a challenging and willful child and caused anger to slip from her tongue. But always, morning, noon, and night, he could find love in her eyes. Now he saw only fear.

“Whatever happens, I will always love you, Perse.” The words gasped out ragged and unsteady, nothing of her usual assuring tone could be heard. Tears were in her eyes.

His mind was spinning wildly like a wheel falling off its spoke, careening into the nearest gully. Each time he felt stuck and unable to find his own solution, he would swallow his pride and come to his mom, and her compassion and love would always lead them through. He did not feel love would lead the way to a solution today.

Her shaking hand reached into the folds of her garment, and Persephonus watched as she produced a knife. He was so scared he was stunned. His body suddenly felt so heavy he thought he might be forever stuck to this spot, fixed in place with an expression of abject horror. They had been seen, and they both knew it was over.