Rosewood

Part 7

Later, while Lucia sat inside the humble home, she showed the fife to the crone who went by the name Demeter. Over warm lentil soup and fresh rye bread, she told Demeter of her journey and her loves. Demeter shared with her some secrets behind the candles and figurines that lined the walls of the cottage. They were passed down through thousands of years of women like Rosewood had been. She made a hobby collecting them.

Lucia sat eagerly listening to Demeter's tales of winters in lands Lucia couldn't imagine where women painted their eyes black and wore golden dresses, and other lands where women wore crowns three feet high but didn't cover their bosoms in pride of their heritage. Demeter tied Lucia's hair in knots high upon her head and put holes in her ears so that she could wear the heavy jade baubles Demeter brought back from the East. Demeter tied a necklace made of shells from islands to the south around her neck.

In the small hours of the night, Demeter said it was time to stop reminiscing, for if Lucia was to finish her journey and get home, she must sleep.

"I don't think I will get home, Demeter, unless you can tell me the way."

"Your home is east of this mountain. Tomorrow, leave with the sun and let it fall behind you as the day passes. Do not climb anymore. Find a way to come down. And you shall be home."

Demeter put a blanket on the floor and apologized that there was no bed. Lucia lay down but could not relax. So much to think about. Where she had been, where Demeter had been, and getting home. More than that, she could not relax because she didn't know what she was going home for.

"Oh hush your thoughts, Lucia," Demeter sighed. "Your wish is nearly answered."

"But it's not. The petals, that wicked man, and the soldier, he died..." Lucia almost started crying again.

"Let me tell you something," Demeter said, drawing herself up on the floor next to Lucia. The younger woman could only marvel at the flexibility of this ancient woman. "I was not completely honest about not being given a child. I asked Rosewood for a girl to raise and mother. I placed a figurine of a mother in her ninth term in the box. It was made of bone from a sacrificed horse that died in battle under an amazon's legs three thousand years ago. In the morning I awoke to find by my side a young girl, eight-years-old, as bright and beautiful as the sun. She smiled at me and called me mother. I was already past my childbearing years, so this child was truly a miracle. I set up a shrine to the goddess that created Rosewood on this spot."

Demeter gestured to the corner where three candles glowed around a golden calf and a bowl of dried rose petals. "My daughter I named Persephone. Five years later, before my love for her was truly relished on her, she was taken from me. Countless years have passed, and I have not seen her since that time. I blinded myself so I would not see the sun shine upon the earth without her on it. I wept so terrifically that the clouds filled up with my pain and poured on the earth until the villages were under water.

"I mourn her still, Lucia, but I am old. I have learned to live without her."

"I don't understand why you think of Rosewood with such favor. Why did she grant your wish only to snatch it away so soon? I don't want to find love to have it leave me."

"My wish was to raise and mother a child. Understand that Rosewood gave me what I wanted. Life and fate worked the rest. I could not make another wish. I did not want another child. I could not have Persephone back. Rosewood couldn't help me anymore." Demeter held Lucia's face in her hands and stared deep in her face with her sightless eyes. "You have a wish to find love. Rosewood will help you find it. Then it is up to you to continue loving it, continue holding on to what you love with all of your soul so that it will not leave you. That is your job, not Rosewood's."