Father Ash

For July’s third, free, story, Rachel Hartman returns with a new story from Goredd to add to your collection! ~ Julian and Fran, July 20, 2024

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Father Ash

Adapted from a Goreddi Folktale

by Rachel Hartman

There’s a sharp-faced, dark-haired young woman before the mirror this morning, braiding her hair, and I don’t know her name.

I’m pretty sure I should know it. I’m pretty sure I knew a lot of things about her, once.

It’s funny how you can remember remembering, even if you can’t remember what it is that you forgot. Memories are only tracks in snow anyway; you don’t see the hare or the lynx so much as conclude that they must have been there, and retrace the path they took.

The snow in my mind is melting, maybe. Or half-melting, and then refreezing into ice.

“We can’t keep staying in inns,” the woman says, glaring at me in reflection. “You woke everyone, running around naked, mewling for Alice. The innkeeper wanted to throw us out in the cold.”

“I don’t recall that.”

“Of course you don’t.” Her eyebrows angle angrily.

Don’t grow bitter, like your mother. These words come to me, but they are tracks I can’t follow.

I’m in the mirror too, maybe? I don’t know who else that could be, sprawled on the cot in the corner. When did I grow a beard, though? It’s as ragged as a squirrel’s nest. I try to smile, but my mouth is a cave surrounded by gray mists. It looks haunted.

The wind is shrilling, portending storms, but then I realize it can’t be the wind because it’s full of words. The dark, sharp woman’s words, angry and fast as a torrent down the mountain. I can’t drink it all in. I can only swallow what little word-water I scoop up in my hands. “. . . we could still turn back . . . you know Alice wanted to care for you . . . your own hearth, your own garden—”

“You made a promise,” I say. I don’t remember her promising, but my mouth remembers saying this phrase a lot lately. This seems like the time to say it again.

She sits on the cot and takes my face in her hands. “I didn’t understand how hard this would be.”

“Just get me where I need to go,” I say.

That—where I need to go—I do remember, for now. Even as my mind hardens, I can see it: a golden ridge above a clear, fast-flowing stream, between a larch and a rowan. The heart of the heart of the forest. Where the fox makes her den, and the finches chatter.

“What do I do when your mind has completely gone?” the young woman says. “What if you forget how to walk, Papa, or how to eat?”

Alas, I can’t answer because I am thunderstruck. She called me Papa; she’s my daughter. Of course.

Briefly, the mists seem to dissipate: My name is Ash, and I’m dying. I’ve asked my daughter to take me back to the place where I was born. My wife couldn’t bear to let me go; I’ve broken her heart, sneaking away. Her children are too tenderhearted to take me into the forest and leave me there. This daughter—child of my first marriage, a witch born of a witch—is the only one I trust to see it through.

I really wish I could come up with her name.

#

I can feel my mind hardening. Sometimes I think it’s turning into wood, which is good for many things, but not so good for thinking. Other times, it feels fragile and crusty, like the earth after a heavy frost. Maybe it’s winter in my head, everything going dormant.

Now I’m walking through a forest: twiggy wet-black trees, lichen-headed boulders, groggy moss. It’s sleeting, and there’s a sharp, dark woman beside me, vibrating like a bee. All day—all month?—I’ve been expecting her to turn aside and go her separate way, since she doesn’t seem happy to be here, but she never leaves me. She talks sometimes, speaking heavy clouds into the cold air.

“This way,” she says, tugging my arm. She holds a forked twig, which points toward a rough-looking hill with no path.

“Does that twig tell where we’re going?” I ask her.

“For the twentieth time, yes. And yes, I enchanted it myself.” Droplets dangle at the edge of her hood. “I may be a mere hedge-witch, but I’m not terrible at it.”

I don’t know whose criticism she thinks she’s answering. I reassure her: “Nothing wrong with hedges. Hedge is a useful occupation.”

This makes her laugh, and all the droplets tremble and fall. If I could come up with more ways to make her laugh, I would, but I don’t know what I did. Laughter isn’t her usual reaction, these days. Mostly I make her fret.

She frets over where to pitch the tent. There’s never anyplace dry or level enough. She walks around the campsite every evening, setting wards so Riggia can’t find us (who is Riggia?).

Other times she shouts: “No! Keep your clothes on. You’ll catch your death of cold, and dear gods, I do not need that view.”

I want to explain, as she fastens my belt with a knot she thinks I can’t undo, that I don’t get cold anymore. I never used to get cold when I was a sprout, either. I didn’t feel winter as cold so much as still—a pause in the world, before the great uprush of spring set us all in motion again.

Sap is surging, buds pulsing all around us. “It’s almost spring,” I explain.

“That doesn’t mean it’s warm,” she fusses. “Look how blue your fingers are, old man.”

Ah, see, she doesn’t understand. I’m old, yes, and I’ve been a man for many years. But I’m going backward now, back to the beginning. I am turning to wood. If she understood that, she’d see that I really don’t need this cloak. Or these pants.

I open my mouth to tell her the truth, so long hidden, but no words come out.

Only leaves. A great wad of them protruding from my mouth. I cough, but they’re kind of stuck.

She’s shocked for a moment, even a bit scared, but a change blooms slowly across her face. She’s got a magpie look, bright-eyed curiosity, and it’s such a relief. That’s how she’s supposed to look. Not fretful, not frightened.

“I knew who I inherited my witching talents from,” she says, helping unclog my gullet, “but I never realized the hedge half came from you.”

If only she knew.

#

Alice is calling me. Her voice rings through the budding trees: Ash! Ash, where are you?

Of course she’s come, determined as ever to take care of me. Sometimes, I admit, it was too much. But why couldn’t I just let her coddle me, if it gives her joy? What if I’ve gone too far this time? I know I can be distant, but maybe I’ve been cruel.

I stumble outside into the dewy predawn. I hear her—Ash! Ash!—but where is she? A squirrel skitters over a smudgy stump. A titmouse lands on a slender, bobbing branch. There’s nothing but ferns and bare trees to hide behind, but I can’t see her.

Ash, calls Alice, why did you leaf? You know I wood look after you, willingly, until the end. Did you grow board with me?

I want to take her in my arms and comfort her, but where is she? I walk fast and faster, trying to answer, but my words turn into twigs and clusters of winged seeds. I spit them out as I go.

Something stirs behind me—the sound of chasing feet—and another voice: “Stop! Ye gods, will you slow down?”

It’s Riggia. Cack. I start to run, but she’s chasing me. My words return as a scream: “You have no claim on me, Riggia. You divorced me. I can remarry if I wish!”

“Stop!” shrieks the witch, clutching my arm with her talons. “You’re tearing around after phantoms, Papa. Someday I’m going to wake up and you’ll have wandered off a cliff.”

I look at her, finally, and she’s not . . . who I thought. “Riggia?” I can’t stop myself from saying it.

Her face crumples like an autumn leaf; I’ve hurt her with that name, with its malice and meanness. This is maddening. I know who she is, even if her name is buried where I can’t find it. I can see right through her grown-up face the child she once was, a child I still love, and I don’t have any of the words I need.

I never had the right words, even when I had my whole mind.

My mouth (I know it’s just trying to help) barks out: “Nutmeg.”

Ridiculous. Why am I saying that?

She’s crying harder. I think I’ve hurt her even more until she throws her arms around my trunk and buries her face in my chest. I lay my cheek against her hair and hold her until the tears finally slow.

“Three weeks,” she says, with a shuddering sob-breath, “and that’s the first time you’ve called me that. I knew I was still in there somewhere, Papa. I believed. But hope is thin gruel, after a while.”

I nod, but all I can think is that I must have said her name. I don’t remember what I said. It hadn’t seemed like a name.

#

This sharp, dark woman is talking. I don’t believe she used to talk this much, but maybe that’s because it was winter. Sap rises in the maples, and words rise in her. They have to come out.

“I resented you both so long,” she says. “Ma plainly didn’t want me, but you! You faded into the woodwork, disengaged. Fobbed me off on my stepmother. I know Alice loved me—loves me—like her own kids, but I never belonged. I’m no good for that steady village life, gardening and weaving.”

It’s hard to focus on her words. The birds are also saying a lot of things, some of them urgent.

“But what am I good for? I still feel like I don’t know the half. That’s the frustrating part, that you can be elusive even to yourself.”

That, I understand. I open my mouth to say so, but my words are leaves again. With a wry smile, she helps pull them out.

“I’ve come to terms with my witchiness,” she’s saying, “but I still worry that I’m too like Ma. That I’ll end up wandering the world, seeking something that can’t be found. Throwing away every good thing because my heart is a hole that can’t be filled.”

“No,” I say. That’s all I can get out. She smiles and squeezes my hand.

We’ve reached a craggy hilltop looking over the entire forest. My pulse quickens. There’s my ridge, across this wide valley. I don’t know how I remember, but I do.

I point. She gleans my meaning and raises her magic twig, which quivers hopefully.

“We’ll be there tomorrow,” she says. “Would you believe I’m going to miss this? I found you so hard to talk to when I was a kid. Like talking to a stump. But here I am, yammering on, and it isn’t hard at all. Maybe it’s because I know you won’t retain any of it.”

I won’t, but I want to. I want her to know I want to. With effort, the words form in my mind, slowly but sorely. I put them into what might be a sensible order and open my mouth to say them.

An entire woodpecker comes out.

#

I am in darkness. Somewhere, two women fight about me: Ash, Ash, Ash.

“You made yourself hard to find. Not bad, for a hedge-witch,” says one.

“He’s not here.”

“Bollocks. When did you ever voluntarily go camping?”

“It’s been twenty years. You don’t know me.”

“Enough. Ash, come out!” cries the first woman.

I could never resist her. I stand up too fast and hit my head on something wet, a canvas ceiling that collapses over me. It clings around my eyes and mouth, my shoulders and arms. The more I move, the tighter I’m bound, like a cocoon, or a sheath of bark. I’m wrapped up in it now, barely keeping my footing, can’t see a thing.

“Oh, dear gods,” says the second woman.

The first woman laughs like branches breaking in an ice storm. “Help your feeble-minded progenitor out of the tent, Meg.”

I’m being unwound, wet fabric peeled off my face. I blink at the daylight. Two women. Neither one is Alice; they’re both too pointy. One seems to shine like the sun, and I can’t look right at her. The shorter, darker one looks familiar, though. “Riggia?”

It’s the shining woman who keeps laughing. “See? He always loved me best.”

She steps closer, painfully bright. I close my eyes, so I don’t see her take a swing at my head. I don’t see her drive a crystalline spike between my eyes. But I feel the world burst into colorful pain, and I hear the other woman scream.

Meg.

That’s my daughter Meg screaming. “What was that? What did you do to him?”

“Don’t be such a child,” Riggia snaps. I can look directly at her now that she’s no longer holding the missing piece of my mind in her hand.

“It’s all right, Meg,” I say, probably unconvincingly. I’m doubled over, hands on my knees. My head suddenly weighs a ton, with all these memories and feelings in it.

Meg is at my side, covering me with her shawl, because I seem to be naked again—as well as able to feel cold and embarrassment. I flash Meg a grateful, apologetic look, and she looks thunderstruck. She sees the new lucidity in my gaze.

“What did she do?” Meg whispers.

I’m still putting the pieces together, myself—easier now that I can think. “She had the missing piece of my mind, but I don’t know how she ended up with it. I suspect she tricked Alice into removing it.”

“It hardly took any trickery, Ash,” drawls Riggia. “You married an imbecile. I came to her kitchen door in the guise of a traveling remedy-seller, saw her sadness, and diagnosed a lonely heart. She’d married a strong, silent type, I guessed. After years of his frustrating reticence, who wouldn’t feel lonely? Alas, the silly goose lamented, I wish he would bare his soul and share his innermost feelings. You let her down. You disappoint everyone you love, you glorified plank.”

I can’t speak, as if she’s knocked the wind out of me, which surely proves her point. I’ve never known how to say what I feel.

But Meg, my Nutmeg, stands up to face her mother. “So what remedy did you suggest to Alice, to cure his silence?”

“I claimed he was under an enchantment—an inhibiting spike in his head. If she removed it, she’d find her sullen old Ash as open and demonstrative as she could desire. I sold her a pair of magic pliers; her insecurity did the rest.”

Poor Alice. She’d understood well enough that she’d been deceived, after the deed was done. She hadn’t freed my mind; she’d removed the magic nail that held it all together. And Riggia had clawed it back, somehow.

Meg kneels beside me on the wet ground and scrutinizes my forehead with her witch-sight, scanning for signs she’d never thought to look for before: the marks of my enchantment. Proof that I am not a man, and never was. She’s almost solved it. As much as she disparages herself, she’s no slouch as a witch. Her ability is not one whit below her mother’s, only she’s got a conscience, and that slows her down.

I like to think she got it from me.

The moment Meg understands, her expression turns wooden. “You made his mind,” she says, glaring accusingly at her mother. “You made him, from a . . . a tree?”

“Oh, bravo. Aren’t you the little genius,” says Riggia.

“Why?”

A fleeting expression, like the shadow of a blackbird, softens Riggia’s face. “You should have seen him in autumn, child. Extraordinary colors. I could almost taste them. And I thought, why not have this beauty for my own, as my companion? Well, I’ll tell you why not—save you some heartache, perhaps—he was never companionable in the least. He’s hard-hearted and inflexible, his every silence a rebuke.”

Like talking to a stump, someone near me had once said. I certainly have nothing to say for myself now.

“That’s not what I meant,” says Meg. “Why put him back together? He was senile, decaying. Destroyed. Is that not what you wanted?”

“What I want,” says Riggia, white-lipped with rage, “is for him to understand how disappointing he is. I could never have persuaded Alice to take him apart, if he hadn’t so abysmally let her down. I want him to remember how he hurt us—how he hurt me—and live with it forever.”

“You want him to suffer,” says Meg, standing now to face her mother. “If he’d made it back to the heart of the heart of the forest and just blissfully, mindlessly become a tree again, where’s the fun in that, I suppose.”

“He can’t think about his shortcomings if he can’t think.”

“You are a spiteful old buzzard.”

Riggia turns a dangerous color. I wish Meg wouldn’t provoke her, on the one hand. On the other, I’m in awe. Meg seems suddenly taller. They’re staring each other down, like two bucks in autumn, taking the measure of each other’s antlers, and I think Riggia sees what I now see in this daughter, that she is half-tree. That you could beat your brains out against her but she’d endure.

It’s Riggia who breaks eye contact first. She sniffs disdainfully, as if she has not lost this contest but has rather deemed it beneath her. “Do what you like, daughter. Stick with him, who cares? You’ll soon see what the rest of us have seen. He’ll bore you to death. When the going gets tough, he’ll retreat inside himself where you can’t find him. You’ll leave him too, eventually.”

Riggia whirls in her red cloak, a thunderclap sounds, and she is gone.

Meg digs through the wreckage of our campsite to find me some dry clothes, and then she helps me dress because I’m shivering too fiercely to manage. This fragile skin, I never got used to it.

“This is my fault,” she’s saying, angry with herself. “I got tired of you wandering off, and reversed the wards. But my malevolent mother is wrong, you know. You can still go back to Alice. You have a home there. She’ll be relieved to see you well again.”

“Alice won’t forgive herself,” I say quietly. “She’ll spend the rest of her days trying to atone for pulling me apart, and the more she hovers and coddles me, the more I . . .”

I do withdraw. I do go silent. But silence is what I was born to.

And where I’m meant to return. It’s time.

Meg talks on, determined. “You can stay with me. It’s not a glamorous life, mixing philters and—”

“Nutmeg,” I say, taking her hands.

She’s got tears in her eyes already. She shakes her head no.

“This is why I asked you to accompany me. Because you’re the one I trust to do what’s hard. I need you to remove the mind-spike. I know you see a way to do it. Remove it, and break it in two. And then take me where I need to go.”

“Papa, how can I . . . ?” Her voice breaks.

I understand the question, but I can’t answer it. Instead, I say, “When you were born, I had not been human very long. I wanted to call you Nut, but your mother insisted that was not a proper human name. She took over the naming, and everything else that she decided I was bad at. And I let her. I let her. And if I called you Nutmeg, as a tribute to the name I carried in my heart, no one minded. It was just a silly nickname, after all.”

She’s fully weeping now, and so am I. She lays her hand on my brow, and there is a tremendous bright light in my head, and then there is none.

#

The season of growth comes after the season of stillness. Always.

My roots push into wet soil, deep, deep, questing and drinking and spreading. There are others here. Hello, rowan. Hello, larch. Hello, worms.

My branches spread, like stretching after sleep. Sap rises, swells new buds. Sunshine on my shoulders. In my spacious crown, the finches perch and chatter.

Someone’s here. Not the fox, someone with arms. They can’t quite encircle me, for I am very old.

But I’m still here.

She speaks clouds. I silently, gratefully soak them in.

#

Thank you for joining our journey this week.

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Rachel Hartman is the award-winning author of four YA fantasy novels, including Seraphina and Tess of the Road. Her next book, Among Ghosts, is coming out early next year. She lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, with her family. You can read more about her Goreddi stories here.

“Father Ash,” © Rachel Hartman, 2024.

The Sunday Morning Transport: Selected Stories 2022 is now available at Weightless Books!