NETTLEWYFE TEA

 
NETTLEWYFE TEA

By Jennifer J. Clark

 

    In the early spring, Trudy had stumbled upon a just-sprouted patch of wild
heartsbane growing not 200 cubits from her cabin. It was a miracle that the tender shoots
had not been eaten by elk or rabbits, and she had worked quickly to construct a thick and
sturdy willow fence to surround and protect the patch. All summer long she worked the
patch, staking plants up, trimming them back, and trellising the flowers to reach out for the
sun. When the scorching summer days were at their hottest, she carried water by the
bucketful to the patch, and on nights with a full moon, she slept in the patch naked and
peed at the roots of every plant so all the other creatures in the forest and mountains knew
that this patch was hers and to leave it alone.
    But now it was autumn, she had harvested the patch, and every inch of space in her
cabin was filled with freshly-cut heartsbane. There was heartsbane on all of the tables, on
the counters, on the display cases, hanging on the root bins, scattered on every chair, on
the sofa, on the bed, in piles on the floor, on both desks in the library nook, and even
stacked inside of the un-lit fireplace. The entire cabin smelled like a combination of sun-
soaked honeysuckle and sharp pine, and the plant’s delicate flowers sprinkled their golden
pollen everywhere.
    Trudy stood at the table, breaking the plants down with a set of clippers, and tying
together smaller bundles that she then hung up to dry and cure in the rafters of her loft. It
was hot, sticky work, and the pollen stuck to her sweaty skin, turning her arms a bright
yellow. Normally, she loved the smell of heartsbane, but not now. Now she felt
overwhelmed by the job in front of her, and the distinct odor only served to make her feel
more suffocated.
    As if to highlight the endless tedium of the work, a huge blowfly had gotten into the
cabin and was droning about, thwacking into this window and that, flying heavy through the
air without plan, sense, or meaning. When Trudy couldn’t stand the directionless buzzing
any longer, she stopped her work, went to the door, opened it, and said to the fly, “Now’s
your chance at freedom. Don’t be too stupid to take it.”
    Twice the fly approached the open door, and twice the fly circled back into the dim
cabin and away from the sunshine. On the third approach, the fly again circled away from
the door, but this time flew up between the rafters of the cabin towards one of the skylights
in the roof - and straight into a sturdy spider’s web. The big forest spider wasted no time in
pouncing. Out it charged from a nook in the framework of the skylight, immobilizing the fly
from a safe distance with loop after loop of webbing that it cast like a lasso over the wings of
the fly. Once the fly was completely motionless, the spider moved in and began wrapping
the fly in webbing, spinning the fly between its long legs as if it were rolling up a ball of yarn,
occasionally stabbing the fly with its stinger for good measure.
    Trudy watched all of this from the floor below, looking up at the skylight and shielding
her eyes from the glare. The door was still open behind her, and her pipe rested on the
table in front of her, casting wisps of smoke up into the sunbeams radiating down from the
skylight. The spider cast a huge shadow on the floor below as it dispatched its prey, and
Trudy felt like both a creator and a destroyer, one who was aware, yet unaware, of what she
gives and what she takes away. She wondered if by opening the door to free the fly, she
instead set up the conditions to secure its doom - as well as the spider’s victory. Did her
action result in the collision of two creatures who were completely unaware of her existence,
even though she was instrumental in determining their fates?
    As she was contemplating re-filling her pipe and getting back to work, a voice came
from the open door behind her and made her jump. “Morning, Trudy.” She turned to see
Constable Jons standing in her doorway. “Didn’t mean to startle you.” Trudy couldn’t help
but glance around at the heaps and bundles of heartsbane piled across most of her cabin.
“That damnable fly,” she thought. The constable looked around, too. “I see you’ve been
busy.” He walked over to the table where there was a tray of cured heartsbane from the
year before. “May I?” he asked and Trudy nodded. He pulled his pipe out of a pouch
dangling from his belt, took a pinch of dried herb from the tray, and packed it gently into the
bowl of his pipe with his thumb.
    Trudy’s heart raced. She cleared a few bundles of heartsbane off a couple of wicker
chairs, which she then moved into the patch of sunlight cast by the open door. The
constable walked over and took a seat in one of the chairs. Trudy retrieved her pipe from
the table, re-packed it, then went over and took the chair next to him. She pulled a pack of
matches out of her apron pocket and lit her pipe, then handed the matches to the constable,
who lit his. “All of this then,” the constable said, indicating the piles of half-processed
heartsbane surrounding them. “I’m assuming all of your permits are in order, and that you
have a schedule and plan in place to pay the required taxes when this stuff is dry and ready
to sell?”
    Trudy’s heart slowed by a measure or two. “Yes,” she lied. “Of course. In fact,” Trudy
got up and fetched the jar of cured heartsbane that was sitting next to the tray on the table,
and brought it back to the constable. “I’m glad you came by, Jons.” She handed the jar to
the constable, then sat back down in her chair and took a drag on her pipe to calm her
nerves. “That’s for you and Clara. I know you need it for your back, and it helps her with her
cramps. I set it aside to give it to you, but I haven’t seen you. And now here you are.”
    The constable took a pull from his own pipe and tucked the jar under his chair. "Thank you, Trudy. Much appreciated by both of us. And set some of this year’s aside for us when it’s ready, if you don’t mind. I’ll be less of a stranger.”
    “Of course.”
    They sat and smoked for a few more minutes without speaking. When
their combined smoke rested heavy on the beams of sunlight criss-crossing the room, the
constable said, “I didn’t come here to talk to you about the heartsbane.”
    “No?” Her head felt level and calm, which was strange under the circumstances.
    “No.” The constable tapped his pipe on the sole of his boot and sent ashes
scattering across the cabin’s clean floor. Trudy frowned. “Do you know Alistar Higgle? Lives
out on the big ridge? Has a daughter by the name of Molly?”
    “I know Molly.”
    The constable went to the table and refilled his pipe. “Alistar caught Molly drinking
nettlewyfe tea.” Trudy didn’t say anything. The constable took his seat, lit up, and continued.
“Alistar threw her right out of the house. She’s friends with my Nell, so she showed up at our
doorstep with a black eye and nowhere else to go. When I asked her who told her about
nettlewyfe tea, she said you did.”
    Trudy measured her words. “I ran into her out on the ridge when I was out gathering
sorrel. I may have mentioned it to her.”
    The constable let out a breath. “Trudy, you can’t be telling girls about nettlewyfe.”
    “You know as well as I do, Jons, there isn’t a woman alive in these mountains who
doesn’t know about nettlewyfe. Molly would have eventually heard about it from someone
else, it just happened to be me.”
    “That’s not the point. You have got to learn to mind your tongue these days. They
burned a woman alive over in Littleton because she was selling nettlewyfe. Burnt her shop
to the ground with her in it. They say it was an accident, that they didn’t know she was in
there, but still…”
    Trudy felt her face turning redder and redder. “I didn’t sell Molly nettlewyfe; I just told
her about it.” She looked up at the spider crouching over the fly in the skylight. “Besides,
wasn’t that the Deacon Alder leading a bunch of religious loons who burned that shop
down?”
        “It was. I just don’t want it to happen here is all.”
    “We’re country people in these mountains. We still believe in the ancient plan and
that people like Deacon Alder are fools. My neighbors aren’t going to burn my cabin down.”
Trudy took another pull on her pipe.
    “You don’t know that. When Deacon Alder says nettlewyfe is the tool of evil, people
listen to him.”
    “I have lived too long to be frightened by the likes of Deacon Alder. So help me,
Jons, if I am doing anything evil, may the Maker strike me dead on the spot right now.”
    “The Maker has better things to do than strike you dead,” said the constable,
although he looked around as if he might have been afraid there was someone else lurking
to hear this blaspheme. “I don’t agree with any of it, Trudy. Live and let live, I say.” He took
a long drag on his pipe. The smoke floated up to the skylight and bent as it caught in the
web, embracing the spider and the fly in a wispy fog. “But sometimes it’s best to choose
your battles, and to not fight the ones you can’t win. Sometimes, there’s just nothing for it.
Sometimes you’re the spider, and sometimes you’re the fly.”
    Trudy pondered the consequences of flying towards the wrong patch of light and
said, “Every season, whatever spider builds a web over that skylight, catches fly after fly,
gnat after gnat, moth after moth, mosquito after mosquito… Every flying creature who is
dumb enough to charge at that little patch of sunlight in the ceiling gets caught in that
spider’s web.”
    “Where is this going, Trudy?”
    “Last year, the spider who built there ended up catching a wasp in its web. The
spider decided they were up to the task of taking on the wasp, and the two of them fought it
out. The web was shredded in the battle, and the wasp did die - but so did the spider.”
        “Trudy…”
    “The same week I told Molly about nettlewyfe, I sold a full ounce of it to Miss Lara
Alder.”
    “Lara Alder?”
    “Why do you look so surprised? You don’t think she’s going to go out into the forest
with her lace gloves and velvet slippers and collect it herself like Molly does, do you? Who
else is she supposed to buy it from? From the woman her father burned alive in her own
shop?”
    “Now I told you, officially, that’s being called an accident.”
    “Well Miss Alder apparently had a little „accident’ of her own, and needed some
nettlewyfe to get out of it. I have a receipt with her signature on it somewhere, if you’d like
me to find it.”
    “That dimwitted girl would be stupid enough to put her name to a receipt,” the
constable muttered.
    The two of them sat silently for another moment or two, finishing off their respective
pipes. Finally, the constable tapped his pipe on the heel of his boot, scattering more ash
over Trudy’s clean floor. He stood, put his pipe back in his pouch, collected the jar of
heartsbane from under his chair, and headed out the door. As he left he said, “Take my
advice, Trudy, and keep your head low.”
    “Give the Deacon my regards when you see him,” Trudy replied. “Tell him I hardly
recognized his girl, she’s become so grown.” The constable shook his head as he walked
on. “Better still,” she called out to his back, “tell him to keep my name off of his lips entirely if
he knows what’s good for him.”
    “I would suggest you do the same, Trudy,” he called back over his shoulder. “You’re
no wasp.”
    “Thank goodness for that,” she muttered under her breath. Trudy went back into the
cabin, back to her pipe, and back to her piles upon piles of heartsbane. And this time, she
shut the door behind her.