The Lady of Waterleaf and Wire

Punishment

The sun set. Rose was fatigued. She'd been awake nearly 48 hours now, plus her sleepless night before she'd found him. She sat at his bedside still, washing the blood from his hair, replacing his bandages or the cloth around his head, lifting him and making him sip drops of water without letting him choke. She nearly fell asleep sometimes, but always, she woke before she fell from her chair. She fought her exhaustion, miserable and too long awake.

She left the cabin for snow to make water with, as her bottles and barrels had emptied. The night was brightened a little by the dim crescent moon. Rose could see its reflection in the snow. Its beams landed upon the branches of the ancient black willow that had intrigued her so. Beneath the tree stood a pure white doe. Rose did not move. The deer stepped towards her and she saw its limp, its right hind leg forever rendered useless. By the wire fence, Rose knew.

Somewhere, the fawn cried for his mother. He burrowed against her body for the last of her warmth. In her heart, she could feel his pain, as strong as her own despair for John. She stepped towards the tree. A vine wrapped itself around her ankles. She took another step. The vines moved with her. She moved, the vines moved, until they reached the dark trunk of the tree. She placed a hand against its bark. Her fatigue faded, as if she'd slept three days.

"Liar!" An airy voice rang through the forest. "Let me go! Let me go!"

"What is this?" Rose shouted, but her voice drowned in the chorus of pleas around her.

"He lies!" They screamed. A thousand voices, splitting the air like thunder.

Then she knew.

"A thousand wounds shall brand you!" The cabin shook with the force of the earth beneath it. Trees, white trees, whiter than any silver birch or aspen sprung from the ground, from the stumps that had built the cottage. "Suffer the wrath of the ground you stand upon!" New screams hit her and she sank to her knees. John's shrieks bounced from every tree branch and stone and fallen log in the forest and they rang in her ears.

"Fall! Fall to your gunshots and hunger!"

"No! No!" Rose screamed, but she found her feet tied to the ground, the brambles cutting into her ankles as they pulled her down. His leg, his leg, she knew. Just like the doe, he pained. She yanked herself free of the vines and ran to the cabin door. Her fingertips brushed it and she was thrown backwards. Her head spun. She stood. She ran again for the cabin and drew the axe beside the door.

The woods fell silent. For a moment, she fixed her gaze upon the willow. A swing of her blade and it would fall. She stepped towards it. She rested the tip of her axe against its bark and she swung. The clang of metal reverberated and again she swung and swung until the barbed wire that would kill him had fallen. She stood, panting and then she returned to the door. She found her rifle and fired it into the ground. She hurled it into the woods, as far as she could manage. She carried the remaining bullets to the still-standing willow. She set them against its roots and watched them sink into the ground.

She kneeled beside the willow, letting her face touch its bark. "Kill him if you will!" She challenged it, "Kill him but do not make him suffer! I have cut his fences and our gunshots shall ring the woods no more." The doe stepped out from behind the willow. "Spare him with the mercy I showed you!" she implored of the deer.

The moonlight grew so bright it blinded her and before her stood a woman, hair as silver as the stars. Her body was wrapped in flowers, trillium and camas and strawberry. Around her head was a crown of waterleaf and hemlock, both blooming white as snow. The Lady. The Lady who had spared John as a boy, the same who damned him now.

"Spare him. Have mercy! Please!" Rose pleaded.

"For his broken word, he shall suffer. Every wind the earth breathed into his lungs shall be ripped away. The stakes he pounded, he feels, for stones press into his skin, like his wood tore the flesh of the ground. The trees he felled and stripped of their bark, he feels, his hands and feet bleeding with cold, their flesh ripped away. The leg of the doe his wires caught, he knows the pain of her limp. Every trod his boots laid upon the soil, he feels in his chest. Now he dies, like the bucks and rabbits and birds he shot down. The woods provided him all, their lives, their pains. And he took from them more than they sacrificed. Land he promised would never be his falls under his jurisdiction. Johnathan Cooper dies."