Five Seeds

TW: gore

It happens every twenty-five years, the Ritual of the Five Seeds.

Mother Feverfew has the Five collected in the New Life Bethel. There are three Brothers, two Sisters. They sit evenly spaced along a circular bench, reverent heads bowed over plates carved from acacia wood. Steaming on each plate is a meal of roasted fiddlehead ferns, goat cheese, buttered gold potatoes. Centered between the five plates is a sizzling 20-pound carp, silvery skin blackened.

“Why must we Fatten?” Mother Feverfew asks the Five. 

“So we will be good seeds for the soil,” the Five say.

“And what is soil?” she asks.

“Soil is life,” the Five say.

“And now we say?”

“Give us this day our sustenance so we may sustain You.”

“Your hands, if you please,” says Mother Feverfew.

The Five extend their right hands. Brothers Linden and Woad, seventeen-years-old, have blocky palms, thick veins, long fingers. Brother Yarrow’s hand, only ten-years-old, wouldn’t be able to wrap itself around an apple. Sister Lavender, nearly thirteen, has blunt-nailed fingers that tremble. Sister Damiana, sixteen, has pretty hands with long nails, a soft white palm

Mother Feverfew inspects each hand for impurities, lingers on Sister Damiana’s as if suspicious of it.

“You may eat,” she says.

The children eat with their fingers as Mother Feverfew uses a spoon and knife to cut the dorsal bones from the carp. She separates the top fillet from the head and collar bone, cuts through the dorsal and belly meat with a wet squelching. Brother Yarrow, doe eyes blinking rapidly, recalls fishing with his father — something he may never do again.

Mother Feverfew distributes generous portions of the fish.

It is the most filling meal they have ever been given. They are accustomed to root vegetables, greens, legumes, dry breads, strictly portioned meats.

Sister Lavender, whose hands still shake, drops some fish on the floor with a wet phlop that makes the other Four stiffen. Mother Feverfew sweeps over to her in a grandiose flourish of cotton gown, smacks her across the face, then says,

“Open.”

Sister Lavender opens her mouth, eyes furtive as Mother Feverfew tilts her chin upward with a stern thumb and index finger. 

Mother Feverfew collects the fish from the floor, places it on her tongue, and holds her short crop of brown hair as she chews.

“Not a speck of flesh goes to waste during the Fattening, Sister Lavender,” says Mother Feverfew.

Sister Damiana thinks if Mother Feverfew attempts to strike her like she did Sister Lavender, she may retaliate.

Pious Brother Linden, who notices his lowered eyes are frequently distracted by Sister Damiana, repeats the following mantra to himself: “If I am planted for the Goddess, it is an honor.”

Brother Woad has no mantras, only guilt, as he wonders what part of him is so perverted as to consider what it might be like to hurt Mother Feverfew. 

His eyes try to find Sister Damiana’s, the girl he believes to be resistant like him — and less contrite about it — given her stolid unflinchingness whenever Mother Feverfew addresses her; but Sister Damiana’s eyes are fixed only on Brother Linden. For a fanciful moment, his handsome face is her escape.

Brother Yarrow and Sister Lavender’s eyes find each other, and their expressions both seem to ask of each other, “Are you afraid, too?”

“Your hands again, if you please,” Mother Feverfew says.

They extend their right hands again. 

Mother Feverfew withdraws a wood-hilted dagger sheathed in the tasseled belt at her waist. With her left hand, she reaches into the pocket of her gown to withdraw the first of five glass vials, each a different color. 

“Why do I Collect?” Mother Feverfew asks.

“So the ground may choose who is to be planted and fed to the Goddess,” say the Five.

“And choice is what?”

“Not man’s to make.”

Brother Woad is glad to see that Mother Feverfew looks tired. She is approaching her sixtieth year, and this isn’t her first Ritual of the Five Seeds, not since she was anointed as High Mother and Chieftess in the Ritual of the Four Trees. Brother Woad knows that she has killed to obtain her position in that Ritual, always observed in the New Life Bethel after the death of the previous Chief or Chieftess. 

He thinks he could kill her, defy the “choice of the Goddess,” who is the Soil and Earth. He thinks, why worship the ground and not the sky where the rain falls and the sun shines? Why is only Mother Earth so cherished, when She is nothing without water and light, which come from another place? A place where there are boundless opportunities and broad horizons — potentially bloody ones — to pursue. 

As if sensing his quiet refutes, Mother Feverfew cuts Brother Woad’s palm first. He makes a fist, blanches in spite of himself as the blood trickles into the first vial, sapphire blue in color. Mother Feverfew hands him his blue vial when it is filled.

Brother Linden is next. His upper lip twitches when the blade kisses his skin (and he does his best to imagine it as a kiss, misses those of his mother and father). He accepts his sea-green vial.

Sister Damiana clenches her jaw as her blood is taken, thinks for just a moment, “I could smear my own blood in her stupid, old eyes. I could make her scream!!” She takes her black vial.

Sister Lavender’s hand shakes again when her blood is drawn. Mother Feverfew tells her to be careful with a waspish venom as she hands her the purple vial.

Brother Yarrow closes his eyes when his blood is drawn. Brother Linden pities him, but reminds himself none of them are too be pitied, that they are so blessed to have undergone the Fattening, to have been fed more than any of their Brothers and Sisters have been fed in a lifetime. He accepts his yellow vial.

“The Collecting is done,” Mother Feverfew says. “And now, the Second Choosing.”

The first Choosing had been the Choosing of the Five, when Mother Feverfew had checked the blooms outside each of their family’s doorsteps. She had planted the First Choosing seeds in late winter at the doorsteps of every home with children under eighteen. Come late spring, the doorsteps that boasted red wildflowers offered their first-born child to the New Life Bethel. Their potential sacrifice would mean renewal of the land and its bounty; it is what the people of Sembitria have been told for centuries.

For the Second Choosing, Mother Feverfew walks to a trap door, taps it with her bare foot, as if to gently wake a sleeping beast. With effort, she gets to her knees and unlocks the door with a brass key. For a moment, all the Five consider how temptingly frail she is.

Mother Feverfew stations the Five around the open trap door, where they look down into black soil crawling with earthworms. 

“Offer your blood,” says Mother Feverfew. “Then place your vial in the soil where your blood has been spilt.”

They do so, each in turn, Mother Feverfew nodding at them to indicate it is their time. When it is done, five colored vials stand upright in the soil like odd blooms.

#

The New Life Bethel is built to resemble a five-petaled flower. Its pistil, the center room where the Five (and many other Five seeds before them) ate their Fattening meal, is perfectly circular in structure. Branching off the pistil are the five windowless sleeping quarters, each diamond-shaped, containing only beds, children, and darkness.

Mother Feverfew has locked each door. She sleeps on a cot in the pistil room.

Sister Lavender experiences the shallowest sleep, thinking about being chosen, wishing she wanted it, telling herself she does want it.

Brother Yarrow imagines his mother tucking him in, remembers how she wept when he left for the New Life Bethel.

Brother Woad stares at the door, tries to see Mother Feverfew through it, thinks about how vulnerable and she is in sleep. The only power she has is a key.

Locked doors are no obstacle for Sister Damiana, who has more than once broken the lock to her parents’ herbal wine cellars to sneak tastes. She has never endured a consequence, and if that red wildflower blooming at her doorstep is her karmic retribution, she defies it. She finds her key in the pocket of her gown: a hairpin.

When the Ritual began, Mother Feverfew stripped her hair of all ornament, but Sister Damiana, had kept the hairpin beneath her tongue.

She unlocks her door with some well-practiced finesse.

The door is heavy, but she closes it with such care, it hardly makes a whisper. Mother Feverfew’s sleeping body is a mound in the darkness. 

Having watched her Brothers and Sisters be steered to their rooms before her, Sister Damiana knows precisely where Brother Linden sleeps. She goes there. She unlocks his door, too.

He wakes as she’s sliding into bed with him. He gasps, a sharp intake of breath. She claps a hand to his mouth.

“If one of us may die, don’t you want to try something?” she asks.

Brother Linden throws her hand off. His piety tells him to call out for Mother Feverfew, but there is another voice that responds to the softness of Sister Damiana’s hand, the floral-and-honey smell of her.

“No,” he says. “How did you get in here?”

Sister Damiana presents her escape key, bites down on it with a smile.

“Too bad it’s useless for the front door of the pistil,” she says. “We’re barred in from the outside.”

“Go,” Brother Linden says. 

“You want to be chosen?” says Sister Damiana.

“Yes,” says Brother Linden.

“You’re a fool then,” says Sister Damiana. “More of a fool than Sister Lavender.”

“If we’re not chosen, you know what happens next,” says Brother Linden.

“We grow old? Live?” says Sister Damiana. She moves her hand along his chest and he clasps it, partially to stop her, a more instinctive part of him to feel her.

“We grow old like trees. And then do the Ritual of the Four Trees. Where we fight, kill, and die anyhow.”

“This is assuming we make it to old age at all,” says Sister Damiana. “We are young now. We are alive now.”

“We are destined to be chosen or fight in the Ritual of the Four Trees.”

“Destiny isn’t real,” says Sister Damiana. “Have you ever tried choosing?” Her body washes over him like spring rain.

#

“By will of the Goddess, your vials have been filled with new substance. She has consumed your blood and has made her Final Choice. Gather ’round.”

The trap door is closed beneath Mother Feverfew’s feet. She holds the five vials.

“Sister Lavender,” she says, handing shaky Sister Lavender her purple vial. 

“The roots have chosen,” Sister Lavender says. Her voice is barely a whisper. Her faith steadies her.

“Brother Yarrow,” Mother Feverfew says.

“The roots have chosen,” Brother Yarrow replies, and wonders at his own sadness as he takes his yellow vial. He doesn’t even think on himself; he thinks of what it might be like to see any of his Brothers or Sisters drop to the floor after drinking. And what happens to them next? He hopes he is chosen, not for honor, but so he will not have to know.

Brother Woad and Brother Linden accept their vials with the correct words, both with solemn faces that yield nothing as to what they are thinking.

“Sister Damiana,” Mother Feverfew says, extending the black vial. Sister Damiana extends her hand to take it, says nothing. “Say the words, Sister Damiana.”

“No,” Sister Damiana says.

Mother Feverfew smacks her with bite, much harder than she had Sister Lavender.

“Say it, girl, you ungrateful weed.”

“I am a weed now, then? Am I not a Seed?” Sister Damiana says laughing, a sound like daffodils.

“You will learn you have no choice,” Mother Feverfew says. “When you drink.”

“Because it’s an honor to drink, right?” says Sister Damiana.

“Not for you,” says Mother Feverfew. “Nay, for you, Sister Damiana, it is a condemnation, and I hope that someday another child, perhaps a more worthy Seed—”

“Is it your place to say whether or not we are worthy?” asks Brother Woad. “I believe the Goddess has already decided that.”

Mother Feverfew does not hear him. She has seen the spot of blood on Sister Damiana’s gown. 

“What is that?” she asks.

“What is what?” asks Sister Damiana, knowing.

“I demand you tell me why there is blood on your lower gown, Sister,” says Mother Feverfew.

Brother Linden crumples, faints. His vial spills the nectar it contains, and there is no knowing its composition, whether it is the elixir that determines he will grow to be a tree and potential Chief, or the poison that chooses him as the Honorary Seed and final offering to the Goddess.

Mother Feverfew kneels, grabs fistfuls of Brother Linden’s tunic in a futile attempt at reviving him. 

“IDIOT CHILDREN!” Mother Feverfew screams. “WITH ALL THIS TALK AND DELAY, YOU HAVE DISRUPTED THE RITUAL. DO YOU NOT REALIZE WHAT THIS MEANS?” 

Beneath her bare toes, the trapdoor rattles. Through the planks of the woods and the keyhole, creeping roots begin to grow and snake.

“YOU!” Mother Feverfew cries, pointing a damning finger at Sister Damiana, who has touched the blood from her gown and is now examining its damp redness on her own pale fingers with vague amusement. “YOU POISONED HIM!”

“The plan has always been to poison one of us,” says Sister Damiana. Sister Lavender chews on her blunt fingernails, watching the roots began to reach Mother Feverfew’s ankles, tickle at the blue veins beneath her taut, crepe-like skin. 

“I will drink them all,” says Brother Yarrow, understanding nothing of the blood, nor Sister Damiana’s role in Brother Linden’s fainting. He, too, is fretting over the rapid growth of the roots, which now protrude from every division between every plank, crawling along the pistil room’s floor toward them.

“GYAAAH!” Mother Feverfew hisses as one of the roots ties itself around her knot-veined calf. She raves, nearly frothing from the mouth as she spits at Sister Damiana’s feet. “I will kill you for what you have done, you nameless beast! You have infuriated the Goddess, idiot girl, with your talk of choice! With your whoreish blood! I fattened you beasts! I gave you a taste of luxury! When it was written into the ritual, I knew it ought to be un-written. Feeding you and  your despicable—” 

“What was written?” Sister Lavender yelps. “The Goddess demands the Fattening! She uttered it Herself to the first of the High Mothers!”

“She uttered nothing,” Sister Damiana says. “The Goddess cannot speak. See? She is a monster, a thing! She only grabs! She only takes what she wants!”

She dances to avoid the roots, which are now gripping Sister Lavender by the knees, and have taken Mother Feverfew by the wrists, preventing her from coming any closer to Sister Damiana.

“SEE WHAT YOU HAVE DONE?” Mother Feverfew screams. “SEE WHAT YOU HAVE DONE, WHORE? SEE WHAT YOU HA—”

Her brown eyes pop as Brother Woad lunges forward, grabs her by the taut-skinned neck with his blocky hands. 

“I will drink every vial if it means this will stop,” Brother Yarrow says who feels he has left his body. The roots have found his legs. Sister Damiana’s words about choice do not make sense to him, but he notes there are no roots binding her. Brother Woad’s actions frighten him, but a part of him loves the blue that is creeping its way into Mother Feverfew’s bloody face.

“You will drink nothing,” Brother Woad says. “Every vial will go down this hateful woman’s th—”

His words are lost in a wretch as Mother Feverfew plunges her dagger into his broad chest.

As the first drops of blood hit the floorboards, the trap door flies open.

Roots explode from below. They take myriad shapes. Biped shapes. Quadruped shapes. Yawning mouths. Intertwining, twisting, interlocking, amorphous entities. Erased then made new again like words written, then unwritten.

Hungry, they ensnare Mother Feverfew, drag her into the soil.

Her final word, before it is lost in dirt, is, “I.”

#

Sister Damiana is wrong.

The Goddess speaks.

She makes Herself a mouth with Her many roots. Her eyes are vibrant leaves. Her wending arms and legs, thorned, damp with poisonous and life-giving nectars, wrap around the entirety of the pistil room. The floorboards are in ruin, and the Five — even Brother Linden, who has come to — see the skeletons of offerings past half buried in fertile soil. 

“I hunger,” the Goddess says.

“We don’t want to give our bodies,” says Sister Damiana, who has given hers in the way of her own choosing. “Why must we?” 

She is afraid, certainly, but she says the words anyhow.

“If you will give me none, then I will take,” says the Goddess. “That has always been the way. Choose.” 

“The choice is the soil’s,” Brother Linden croaks from the ground.

“What is soil?” says the Goddess.

“Soil is life,” Sister Lavender says, wishing devoutness and faith could save her and steady her.

“Nay,” says the Goddess. “You are life. Choose.”

#

The families of the Five stand outside the New Life Bethel. 

They hold hands.

Sun fills the pistil room as they open the door of the New Life Bethel.

Standing at its center, in the ruin of the floorboards, is one person.

A puzzle of a child, neither him nor her.

They are naked, ribboned with blood. 

They have one beautiful hand, one blunt-nailed shaky one.

They have muscular arms and legs, a pair of youthful breasts, a long, delicate neck, an enigmatic face with a child’s doe eyes.

Discarded limbs and bits of flesh and garb surround them. 

They step forward, open their mouth to speak.

Out spill roots, leaves, and blood.