The soil was damp. She could feel it seeping through her dress as she began to pull up the weeds, examining them.
A weed is just a plant out of place, her grandmother had once said to her. Treat them kindly, even if they are a nuisance, for they can make a faithful ally amongst the spirits.
Sidra smiled, cradling one of the weeds. It was beautiful, with small white blooms. She didn’t know its name, and she tucked it away into her pocket to press and examine later.
She moved across the rows, harvesting the fruits that were ready, knocking away insects that were chewing the leaves. The dirt soon crowded her fingernails, and her skirt was muddy, but she was remembering.
She remembered all the times her brother Irving got lost on the hills as a boy. But Sidra never had, not with wildflowers in her hair and trust in her heart. She had always felt safe on the summits and in the vale. She remembered seasons of plenty, how this garden had overflowed with harvest. She had never gone hungry or wanted for food. She remembered the first time Senga had let her dress a wound on her own. How day by day, the injury had closed and healed itself beneath Sidra’s attentive care. As if there were magic at her fingertips.
Her memories drew closer to the present, and she wanted to fight them. But the deeper she put her hands into the soil, the brighter her thoughts flared.
She remembered tasting the Orenna flower, and how her eyes had been open. She had gone to the hillside and beheld the crushed heather. She had seen how the spirits wept when she fell, and how, even when she had lain unconscious, they embraced her. She remembered the treacherous spirit of the loch, and the other, the blazing tendril of gold, urging her to rise. To break the surface.
“All this time when I felt alone,” she whispered to the earth, “you were with me. And yet I couldn’t see you, because my pain clouded my sight. I don’t know what to do with this agony. I don’t know how to carry this.”
Give it to the soil, child. It was a phrase Senga had said countless times in the past.
Sidra rose, unsteady for a moment. The shed was still in the corner of the yard, its door draped in cobwebs. She stepped inside and found it exactly as it had been years ago before she left. Seeds were still hiding in a small sack; she took a handful and carried them back to the garden.
Sidra dug into the soil, angry. It was strong enough to bear her ire, and she raked her fingers through the loam. Digging trenches with her nails, she gave to the ground the words You should have fought harder.
“I fought as hard as I could, and I’m still strong,” she said.
She dropped the seeds into the furrows and added more words: You failed Torin and Maisie. These words were harder to relinquish. She was still waiting on a promise that she didn’t know would be fulfilled or not. She was waiting for Maisie to come home, and it might not happen. She was waiting to discover if Torin loved her in the way she loved him.
Her grief welling, Sidra stared at the seeds she had dropped, waiting for earth and rain and time to transform them.
“There is no failure in love,” she said and covered the furrows. The soil was rich; it swallowed a portion of her grief. “And I have loved without measure.”
In this, I am complete.
Sidra continued to kneel, staring at the spontaneous row she had planted. She was hardly aware that time had passed until she heard the back door of the cottage swing open with a bang. Her brother Irving bounded out, staring agape at the strange dog rounding up his sheep.
“The dog is mine,” Sidra said, and her brother startled, finally noticing her kneeling in the garden.
“Sidra?” Irving asked, squinting at her.
She knew she looked a mess. Drenched from the rain and smudged with dirt, with her hair like unspooled darkness. It had been years since they had seen each other. “I was in the vale and thought I would visit you and Da.”
“Da is kilometers away, in the earie paddock,” Irving said, still scowling at Yirr. “He won’t be back until dusk most likely.”
“I see,” said Sidra, rising. “Then I should probably go.”
“Don’t be silly,” her brother said with an impish smile. “I could use your help snapping beans.”
And that is how Sidra found herself sitting in the same chair at the same kitchen table, working with her hands, when Torin arrived. The same place and same time of day and same season—only the sun and her grandmother were missing. Or else Sidra could have fooled herself for a moment, believing time was a circle and this was the moment when Torin first knocked on the door with a displaced shoulder.