“All right. A story about what?”
“You.”
That seemed fair, all things considered. I took a deep breath and began.
Chapter Twenty-Two
The Tale of Melilot
Once upon a time, when the world was younger and the sky was a little bluer, a man and a woman in the Kingdom of Skalla wished more than anything to have a child. But that wish, alas, had never been granted. After many years and much discussion of foster care, adoption, or stealing an infant from its cradle in the dead of night—
“Wait, what?” said Sam.
“Oh, does that not happen in Ecossia?”
“No! Do folk steal bairns in Skalla?”
“Well, not so much anymore. Before the treaty, the fairies used to take babies and replace them with exact duplicates. Then it caught on, and everybody started doing it. It was a big problem.”
After many years and much discussion, the woman at last discovered she was pregnant. By then she was advanced in age, and the pregnancy was not an easy one. In fact, shesuffered greatly from cramping and soreness, reddened skin, and a troubling swelling in her legs. Both the woman and her husband were not unlearned in the ways of medicine, and they feared she was suffering from clots in her veins that might well lead to an untimely death.
Now, as it happened, not far from their cottage, close enough that they could see it through their window, there was a marvelous garden. Beyond the forbidding wrought-iron fence that surrounded it, the garden abounded with every plant imaginable. Flowers bright with all the colors of the rainbow, ripe and luscious fruit hanging off the boughs, herbs—
“No, hold on.” Sam put a hand on my arm to stop me. “I’m still having trouble with the bairn stealing. Why would the fairies do that in the first place?”
“I have no idea. My sister’s wife is a fairy, but she got all embarrassed when I asked her about it and wouldn’t tell me.”
“Your sister-in-law is a fairy? Like a wee fluttery butterfly fairy?”
“More like a six-foot-tall fairy with a massive sword.”
“I’m impressed by your sister, then.”
“She rides a dragon. They’re evenly matched.”
No one was brave or foolish enough to go into this garden, for it was on the grounds of a magnificent palace that belonged to the queen of Skalla. And if that wasn’t enough to discourage trespassers, the queen happened to be a mighty and terrifying sorceress.
As the woman’s pregnancy progressed, her condition worsened, and she became most miserably ill. They tried every remedy they could think of to thin her blood—teas brewed from turmeric, medicines made from an extract of feverfew, and many more. But none had any effect.
One day, she looked out the cottage window and saw that the garden bed nearest the fence had been left free of flowers for the season. It had therefore been planted with a luxurious crop of sweet clover. Sweet clover has a most astonishing ability to renew tired soil since, as everyone knows, it is a hardy, drought-tolerant, nitrogen-fixing plant with a warm-weather biomass production capability that exceeds even that of alfalfa.
Less well known, however, is the fact that sweet clover, properly prepared, can be made into an excellent remedy for blood clots. But the wise woman at the window knew this, and she likewise knew any plant that grew in the queen’s garden must be potent with magic. She came to believe the only cure for her ailment lay across the garden fence.
Her belief strengthened with each passing day and grew into an obsession. “Fetch me some of the sweet clover from the queen’s garden!” she belabored her husband.
“But the queen would surely object to such a theft,” he protested, “and smite us with dark magic!”
“She will not miss a small patch of clover,” the woman rejoined. “It’s only grown to prepare the way for prettier plants. And if you do not bring me some, I am sure I shall die.”
The man loved his wife very much and did not wish for her to die.I’ll fetch her some of the queen’s sweet clover,he decided,no matter the cost.And so that night, he clambered over the garden fence and tore a handful of clover out of the patch as quickly as he could. When he brought it home, they made a tincture of the leaves.
“Already I feel better,” the woman claimed upon drinking it. “If I take this blood thinner daily for a period of three to six months, depending on presentation of symptoms, I am certain I shall be cured.”
The man was not happy about this pronouncement. “Sucha course of treatment would be contraindicated during pregnancy,” he objected, “due to the risk of osteocalcin inhibition causing lower fetal bone growth.”
“The first trimester presents the greatest risk of teratogenicity, and I am already past that,” she countered.
“This story includes a lot more about the side effects of medicinal plants than I would have expected.”
