Titania in Autumn |
Issue 16
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At the deepest end of our valley, there is a wishing well. And for as long as anyone can remember, instead of throwing in coins, people drip their blood. The stones bracing the outer wall are perfect for slicing. Blood makes wishes, stories say, because our bodies are water and what is life, after all, except one desire after another coursing through the rapids of our body until it is either satisfied or thwarted—and even then it can mutate into another white-water rush of yearning.
From the top of the valley, we watch pilgrimages to the wishing well, through nearly every season, the damp springs, clammy summers, and briskly mellow autumns; the winter road alone is silent. Down they go into the valley, these hopeful faces, and on their way back up, exhaustion is etched into their footprints. The hope has often been replaced by something else. It’s not always easy to tell with what. Nobody knows who built the wishing well or when—years ago, decades—or who built the nearby greenhouse that receives its sustenance. But there have been generations of caretakers for the deep end of the valley and for the well, the greenhouse, the altar inside the greenhouse, and for Titania herself--Titan Arum, Amorphophallus titanum, the corpse flower. Titania blooms in the morning, thick with constant nourishment. When her spathe opens up its royal crimson interior and her pollen song is released, the pilgrims attend with their prayers—for health or wealth or fecundity or revenge or success, or something else they dare not speak of, waiting for a glimmer of something, anything, that rejuvenates their hope, keeps that white water of desire in a froth. Stories about Titania and her supplicants are endless. Everyone knows someone who was blessed and someone who was turned away, and many who fell somewhere in between. We hear of visitors who entered the greenhouse and then ran, unable to bear it—scarred or frightened or angered by the powerful odor of rot, of bitter decay, of loss, whatever greeted them, for everyone is different. We call this group the bled and fled and true—we snicker. But, stories say, if you flee the greenhouse, your chance is lost forever. Titania remembers blood and disrespect. You are not welcome back. If Titania chooses to sing your song, you listen. ***
Stories also say that Titania is at her strongest in the autumn, her last surge before winter hibernation.
So, when the summer wind changes and the valley trees begin to exhale their burnt golden breaths, my cousin Zoya and I, for the first time in our lives, join the steadfast line of callers along the road—all ages, all genders, all infirmities, all desires, none of us extraordinary, all of us unique. The pilgrimage moves steadily down the valley. We see people we already knew and meet people that we now know. Everyone shares their own story, and often someone else’s story. Some from far away have made it a true pilgrimage, traveling and camping for days, sleeping against trees or in each other’s arms. Two sisters walk near us for hours, joyful and chatty about everything except why they’re here. For some, the do not speak your wish superstition holds strong. But everyone impresses upon each other the same advice that has been passed down for generations: that you must have patience and interpret wisely and not everyone gets an answer and you can’t always get what you want. Zoya has one dogged wish and her hand remains protectively pressed on it, the new small swelling at her belly. My wishes are somewhat humbler, given my prognosis. I simply want to live. Hours pass. Footsteps plod. Food and drink is shared. Zoya, mildly sniffly with the changing leaves, carries a bundle of handkerchiefs. We reach the end of the valley in late afternoon. Zoya points out the wishing well—a distant structure toward which our line steadily weaves, in the middle of a green landscape dotted with vegetation, fences, sheep. Chatter grows quieter, more reverent, the closer we get. And the closer we get, the more we smell the earth—loamy, deeply fertile, enriched with centuries of nutrients, as well as by centuries of decomposition and the breaking down of life not into dust and ash but into dirt, leaf, stem, root. What breaks down always builds up again, Zoya murmurs, tickling my nose with a vivid orange leaf. Our well-trodden pathway goes first toward the well, and then beyond the well to bend and disappear under a dark green canopy of trees. A second pathway emerges from another point of the canopy, used by the visitors who have completed their mission. These people are too far away to speak to, but not far enough to ignore their expressions—quiet, beatific, weary, stunned, anguished. Some have clearly succumbed to being among the bled and fled. This close to those faces, nobody snickers. Before we left, and as we walked, Zoya and I promised each other we would not be among them. That was the very least we could do for each other. We make that promise again as our feet step onto dirt, onto grass, into mud, and then as we reach the well. Nobody pushes; people in line wait patiently for their turn. When two people leave the well, we slip into their spots. Several people are holding their reddened wrists or fingers over its mouth. The two sisters who walked with us stand quietly, pricking each fingertip with a needle. One man leans over and slashes his palm with a pen knife, shaking his hand into the depths. We had considered bringing a knife or needle, but the stories also say that using the well’s stones itself gives strength. I graze my palm across a sharp edge. When the line on my hand merely appears red, I grit my teeth and do it again, slower and deeper, stinging, until there is a flow. Zoya finds a similar stone; it takes her only once. We retake our place in line, others slipping into our spots at the well. The sun is full and west. Murmurs travel up the spine of walkers that Titania is getting sleepy. What happens if the caretakers close the greenhouse before we get there? People worry. We sleep against the trees, others say. We don’t leave. We wait. Titania will be there. The bend into the canopy appears. Someone passes us going in the opposite direction, quietly counting—counting the number of people left for today, one of the sisters whispers. There’s a commotion, a wail behind us, where the line gets cut off for the day. We breathe shakily in relief. We round the bend and descend into a suddenly humid dimness. Ahead of us, by perhaps fewer than twenty people, is the deep viridescent glow of the greenhouse. As if by command, we fall quiet. There is no sound here except for birdsong and our shuffling feet. Even Zoya’s sniffling has calmed. The sisters in front of us go together into the greenhouse together, arm in arm. I smell nothing but soil and forest and my cousin’s sweat. Finally, the caretakers motion us forward. Zoya and I inhale deeply, clasp hands, and step inside the greenhouse. My cousin lowers her handkerchief to her belly, determined not to flinch and show disrespect. I raise my chin. The door closes us in. Our holy minute has arrived. And there she is, Titania, looming violet and husky ivory, seven feet tall of swaying majesty, glowing and serene under a strange greenhouse sunlight. The stink of organic decomposition, of old blood and fungus and pollen and other unknowable elements, is overwhelming, primal, and real. It enfolds us. Our eyes sting and water. Through our intertwined fingers, I feel Zoya’s instinctive need to run. As well as my own—but I clench her hand as a reminder of her promise, and she does the same for me. We made it in time for Titania’s autumn song. Neither of us will have the time to come back. So we hold hands, determined to endure. Zoya’s nails accidentally draw more blood from my hand. One fetid lungful after another, we breathe through the burn. My panic grows tighter. My cousin feverishly whispers her prayer-wish over and over, the one she has practiced for months now, watering red eyes fixed on Titania. I’d created no specific prayer, just an abstract appeal--Please. Surely Titania will understand what my please means. When she receives my blood and sees what is hiding. What else could I possibly be here for? But now I wonder if it will be enough. As the stench grows deeper, breathable air growing thin, I wonder if any of this is enough. I can’t be the first to have offered sickened blood to this formidable creature, but now I’m appalled at myself. How can Titania survive on what she is being fed? Why would she accept such poor tributes and grant such beneficence in return? What kind of covenant is that? Shadows in the corner shift and the motion snaps my attention in half. It’s the caretakers at the exit door, moving toward us. Our time is up. I realize, heartsick: This is not bled and fled. This is not terror, anger, or horror. This is, perhaps, worse—my last inadvertent thought is one of doubt. That is acceptable to no covenant. Swallowing, I look at Zoya, who doesn’t yet notice the caretakers. But because I am looking at her, I catch it: the moment that my cousin’s fear, anxiety, the bleak weariness, all of it, falls away with the knowing, the knowing, that she will finally, after three losses, get her wish. She takes a deep, unhindered breath, exhaling with gasps of laughter, of relief, of joy—breathing a different air. Her eyes are still watering, but clear now. Her handhold is lighter, too, when she squeezes my hand. I can’t break my sweet cousin’s spell, or her heart, so I squeeze back as though I agree—as though Titania had also sung to me, as though I hadn’t alone ruined my one chance. Zoya’s joy will be enough for us both. I accept the silence of the song that wasn’t. The caretakers are murmuring at our shoulders. Zoya lets go of my hand. Before we leave, though, Zoya pauses to put two fingertips to her lips, then to her belly, then into the richly striated, hickory-mahogany soil at Titania’s base. Quietly, for my cousin’s sake, I do the same, touching my lips and the soil and then-- —and then the lungful of decay simmers away, leaving me awash in something else, something altogether new and old and timeless--a symphony of laughter, campfire smell, the flat-slap cold of lake water, wobbly bicycle chains and vertigo of swings, the purring warmth of pets under the night-blooming jasmine, the lemon verbena of our grandmothers, the cigars of our grandfathers, lavender and juniper and chalk and classrooms and asphalt and leather and sideways rain and scorching beach sand and stinky feet and icy snowballs and old bookstores and new cars and minty kissable breath and new babies and first loves and last loves—memories loosen and swirl through me like a kaleidoscope, then are released into the pollen song, wisping into the air like a spiraling galaxy. As soon as we understand each other, Titania gently releases my soil-stained fingers. I bring them to my lips. And I too breathe freely, my eyes clear. Zoya waits for me at the exit. Still basking in her own song, she can’t see how my song, my wish, is now gathering around and showering her like fairy dust, like a soft sunbeam, and will only come alive through her once I am gone and her daughter is here. But she will. |
A. K. Cotham lives in Northern California. One flash piece won first place in CommuterLit’s Flash Fiction Week 2025 and another won third place in Brilliant Flash Fiction’s 2022 writing contest. Other works have appeared in MicroLit Almanac, 50-Word Stories, and Microfiction Mondays, among other places. Her website is akcotham.wordpress.com/.
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