River Currents

fiction by Eve Nightingale

ONCE, A VERY LONG TIME AGO, there was a young girl. She was beautiful, with hair as yellow and pure as the daisies. Her brown eyes were often compared to the rich soil of the land around her North American home. Her skin was fair and unblemished but even with this beauty, she wore only the simplest of dresses and often played outside where twigs would scratch her arms and tangle her hair, and the rich soil that matched her eyes would smear on her face.

Her name was Monarda.

Monarda loved the outdoors. Her days were spent exploring the wildness outside her small village, and her nights were spent looking at the stars until sleep overtook her. She would often return home to her mother and father and recount how the flowers told her they had been there since their Lord created the Earth, the deer told how they became fearful whenever they saw a man with a hunting rifle, and the hummingbirds and the bumblebees talked of sweet nectar from the flowers.

Her parents and the people in the village found the young girl’s stories amusing, but as the girl grew older and the stories did not fade as the people in the village thought should happen, they began to whisper about her. Why was this young woman telling tales about animals, plants, and insects speaking to her? Had she made a deal with the Devil? Was she his spawn? A witch?
Monarda’s parents tried to put some sort of sense into the young woman’s mind, hoping that Monarda would stop this nonsense before the villagers believed she was a witch, but Monarda knew the plants, animals, and insects could speak to her and believed everything nature told her.

Monarda began to spend more and more time in the woods and grassy plains around the village as she grew older. Nature accepted her for who she was, and the plants were sweet to her; the animals were wise, and the insects were kind. Monarda spent days from her home and nights from the village, only to come home when her clothes were torn beyond use.

One day, when Monarda was in the woods walking and brushing her hand along the rough barks of the trees, she found a fallen tree. It was a big Oak with burn marks along its side. Monarda ran her fingers lightly along these burns and looked to the sky. She knew these were not fire burns but perhaps something from above had struck this tree down. Did you make our Lord angry? Monarda thought. She put her hands on a ridge in the bark and pulled herself up to climb over the trunk. She stood up on the trunk, looked across the field it hid, and gasped.

A flower field. Flowers of all kinds: lilies, roses, daffodils, daisies, and so many more. They were all brightly colored and they all were standing proud in the swaths of sunlight that broke through the treetops.

Monarda carefully slipped down and landed on a patch of bare dirt. She looked around at the blues, greens, purples, pinks, and whites before walking among the flowers slowly. Dirt sank slightly under her bare feet as she continued on. The air was filled with wonderful scents of the flowers’ perfumes and the air buzzed slightly of the bees pollinating the flowers and the hummingbirds taking their food from the nectars. As Monarda walked, unafraid of the bees, she did not pause until she found one sickly lily among green leafy plants.
The poor white lily had its bud drooping and its stem and leaves were a very pale green. Monarda carefully knelt by it and felt a pang of sadness in her heart. “Whatever is wrong, little lily?”

Monarda heard the lily cough, and it lifted its head ever so slightly to look at her. “I am choking. I can not feel the sun’s warmth anymore,” it said sadly.
“Why? Why can’t–” Monarda began before she realized the green leafy plants were taller than the lily. “Are these killing you?”

The lily barely nodded.

The green leafy plants were blocking the lily from getting sunlight. One of the green leafy plants laughed coldly. “Hello, little girl. What is your name?” Its voice was not like the other flowers but cold and cruel and rather annoyed Monarda.

“My name is Monarda. Why are you killing this lily?” Monarda asked coldly. She did not like this plant in the slightest.

“It is what I do. I grow to thrive off other plants’ deaths, and I take their places just as I took their sunlight and their water,” the plant told her. “It’s what we weeds do.”

“Well, I don’t like it. You are being very cruel to this lily,” Monarda scolded the weed, putting her hands on her hips

“I do not care if you like it or not. It’s what we do,” the weed told Monarda.

“Not if I pull you up, you won’t.”

“You wouldn’t dare.”

“I would.”

“You’re too weak to pull us all—”

The weed could not finish its sentence as Monarda reached out and pulled it up. She stood and threw it far into the woods. “These flowers will not be treated like this if I can help it! I’ll pull up every weed in this garden if I must!” Monarda shouted to all of the weeds in the field.

Monarda knelt back down and picked every weed from around the lily before she began the arduous and tedious task of removing every single weed in the garden. Monarda found several other plants sickly like the lily and found a few dead, which she carefully and respectfully buried. It took several days before the field was rid of weeds, and only then did she bring water from the streams and watered the sickly, dehydrated plants and brought them fresh soil.

Weeks passed until she was finally finished, and she visited the lily. “Are you feeling better?”

The lily stood a little prouder with more color. It nodded. “Very. Thank you, Miss Monarda.”

Monarda smiled at the lily. “It is the least I can do.”

She spent a majority of her time there in the warmer months, and she visited the plants in the winter. She loved those flowers, and the flowers loved her.

“Do you like the bees?” a rose asked Monarda one warm spring day.

“Of course I do. I like all life in these woods. Except for those pesky weeds,” she said before sticking her tongue out and squeezing her eyes shut. In April, she was laying down in the flower field as she watched clouds pass through a gap in the forest’s roof.

“Do you like the hummingbirds?” the rose then asked.

“Of course I do.”

“Do you trust them?”

Monarda pushed herself up on her elbows and looked at the rose. “Yes I do. Why are you asking me all these questions?”

The rose shook its budded head. “I am just curious like my brothers and sisters.”

There was one reason why the rose had asked Monarda if she liked and trusted the bees and hummingbirds. The bees and hummingbirds were not good creatures, creatures even the snakes in the woods feared and they seemed to fear nothing.

Monarda did not notice the hummingbirds and the bees speaking about her behind her back. She didn’t want to notice. They found Monarda foolish and naïve, a girl who was annoying them with her tales of the village and how they wished she would leave the woods and never return. Bees and hummingbirds were proud creatures and believed they were the best out of all the living beings in the woods. The bees honored their system of following their queen and were hard workers; the hummingbirds could fly in all sorts of directions and were even able to fly in place. They believed these traits made them the best out of all the creatures and plants in the woods. Perhaps even better than the humans.

The other creatures in the woods pretended not to notice. They had seen what the bees and the hummingbirds were capable of and did not want to anger them. The flowers did not openly warn Monarda though they tried to secretly, since if they angered the bees and the hummingbirds, the leaders of the insects and the birds, they would not pollinate the flowers. But their attempts, like the rose speaking with Monarda, failed miserably, and as time passed, the hatred among the bees and hummingbirds towards Monarda only grew as she took more and more attention away from the birds and the bees to her stories about her home, her family, and her adventures.

Months passed until one harsh winter brought something unknown and dangerous to the small village. Two travelers from a distant home had arrived in great need.

The two travelers came from the settlement to the west of this British settlement. The travelers were two young men. They were but a handful of years older than Monarda herself, and they had arrived at the the village all but dead. It was only humane for the doctor of the village to care for them, but everyone else was wary of those two. Everyone except Monarda.

Monarda was fascinated with the two travelers. When night had fallen and everyone was asleep, she would sneak through the village and enter the doctor’s log cabin at the center of the village to see the travelers. For the first few nights, she simply watched them. But then, she approached them.

The travelers treated Monarda with kindness and care, and they would spend nights speaking until morning came. They told her about their adventures traveling, and Monarda told them of her adventures in the forest and how she could speak to nature’s creatures. She soon noticed how they looked very concerned.

It was not until they had been there for two weeks did they tell her the reason they had left their own village. The oldest traveler was the one who told the story. “We must have angered our Lord with our ways. Locusts and cockroaches came and destroyed our crops, and soon flies, crows, and hawks took what food we had stored away. The insects and birds had brought a new disease, which wiped out the majority of our village and then starvation took out most of who was left.” The traveler paused, looking sad, but continued his recount after a few moments. “Soon, there was nowhere to go without finding a creature of some kind that had invaded our village, and my friend and I made the decision to take what we had and leave. We do not know what is left of our village now, but it would not surprise me to hear nature has reclaimed it.”

No one understood these animals and insects but they knew that if Monarda was speaking with them, that perhaps her village was in danger as well.
Monarda was horrified with what had happened to their village. So many children and adults dead from starvation and the illnesses the creatures had brought. The traveler did not spare any detail as he told his story, and Monarda believed them. But the final line in their story angered her: “You must stop speaking with these creatures in the woods, or they will attack and kill your village as they did with ours,” he warned her urgently.

Monarda shook her head slowly and then quickly before shouting. “Liars!” she shouted, and the travelers jerked back in shock as she started to cry. “They are my friends! They would never hurt my village! How dare you!” She shouted before lunging at the travelers to pummel them with her fists. Anyone who threatened her friends were the enemies of her friends, and, hence, her enemies.

It did not take long for the doctor to wake up and come rushing in.

“Monarda! What are you doing here?” The doctor demanded as he rushed forward and pulled her off the men, but Monarda didn’t reply.

Monarda was kicking and shrieking to be let go before she calmed enough from the doctor restraining her. Monarda looked at the travelers with a new found fury in her brown eyes. “I pray that the Lord above calls the creatures of this to Earth to hunt you down and eat you both alive!” Monarda cursed before she wriggled out of the doctor’s grasp and ran out the front door of the cabin into the woods, tears running down her face.

The travelers were gone by the morning, but they left a deadly gift behind: the disease.

First, it was the youngest children. They would vomit, sweat, and cry late into the night with skin burning to the touch. Slowly, the children would fall asleep and not wake up in the morning. The doctor did all he could, but they died regardless.

Next, the disease took their elders. Every old woman and man became sick, just like the children, and most of them fell asleep never to awaken.

The adults were next to fall ill. They vomited, sweat, cried, and never walked, but they were the healthiest out of everyone in the village. Some died, yes, but most survived.

Monarda did not fall ill. She helped the sick, running out into the fields and woods to gather herbs and fresh water. No one noticed how every time Monarda returned, she was more and more agitated.

Months passed before everyone who had perished was buried, and everyone who had fallen ill was well. Monarda stopped leaving her family’s little cabin. She would stay in her bed and mutter to herself. At first, her parents did not seem to worry. She’s just mourning the lost, they thought, she’ll be back to running outside and rarely coming home soon enough.

But Monarda never left her room. Months passed and her parents tried to speak with her, but they would only receive the panicked words of a child. “I’m not going outside. I’m not going outside. They’ll kill me. They’ll kill me.”

“Who?” her parents would ask.

“The birds and insects. The birds and insects. They’ll kill me. They’ll kill us all.”

Her parents did not know what to do, but they did not dare ask the other villagers. If they had, the villagers would take their child and burn her at the stake.

Then, in early August, the flies came. They invaded the village and buzzed around everyone’s heads; buzzed around Monarda’s head. She pulled the blankets over her head. When September arrived and the flies hadn’t left, the cockroaches joined, ruining every piece of stored food. October came and crows flew over the fields and invaded homes, eating every piece of freshly harvested food. In November, the hawks came, and they pecked at the villagers’ heads and tortured the villagers’ pets and livestock, killing and devouring many of the animals. Monarda had never left her home. She stayed in her bed and rocked back and forth as the flies buzzed around her head and the cockroaches crawled along her skin. The crows pecked at her feet and the hawks pulled on her blankets with their talons and beaks.

The villagers did not know why they were being attacked by the insects and birds, so in their fear, they blamed the one person who was not like them: Monarda.

Everyone came to a quiet agreement that if Monarda was banished then the flies and the cockroaches, the crows and the hawks, would leave them in peace.

They did not waste time for there was no time to waste. They knocked down the cabin’s front door and went to Monarda’s bedroom. Men held back her mother as she struggled to stop them. She looked to her husband. “Do something!” she demanded but her husband remained still, unable to meet his wife’s eyes.

The other men continued to Monarda’s bedroom and knocked down the door before hurrying to the girl’s bedside. They brushed the flies off from her head and brushed off the cockroaches from her skin before they picked her up. Monarda was too weak to fight back and was so dazed from the lack of sleep and food that she didn’t realize what was happening.

One of the men carried her on his shoulders out of the cabin and down to the edge of the village before she started screaming. “No! No! Let me down! Don’t leave me in the forest!” Monarda screamed and kicked but the men restrained her.

Her mother was sobbing as she was let go and ran out of their cabin to where her daughter was. There were flies in her mother’s hair, which had been a tangled mess for the past months. She sobbed and called out her daughter’s name. Her husband was soon by her side and held his wife back, looking at their daughter with resignation. Every villager was covered in bird droppings and had dead insects stuck in their clothing and hair.

The man carried Monarda to the edge of the woods and threw her across the forest boundary. Monarda rolled to a painful stop before she shook and struggled to her feet.

Her feet were red and bloody from the crows pecking. Her arms and neck were red from being walked up and snipped at by the cockroaches. Her hair buzzed from the flies that were caught, and her eyes were alight with the light of desperation. Her eyes were sunken, and she had bags under her eyes as she limped back to the boundary but found she was on the business end of a spear and a rifle. The men had armed themselves and two more came to push her back to the forest with spears and rifles.

Monarda shook her head slowly and then quickly as the men pushed her back into the woods. Soon, the flies and the cockroaches, the crows and the hawks that had invaded and infested the village started flying back to the woods at Monarda, and the cockroaches scurried along the ground to her.
Monarda’s parents ducked and the men armed with spears and rifles covered their heads. The creatures all went to Monarda who let out a hoarse scream as she turned and ran into the forest.

Monarda was pursued by the cockroaches, crows, hawks, and flies through the forest as she batted them away desperately. Monarda was sobbing from pain and fear. Deep in the forest she tripped from her running and fell face down into the dirt.

A buzzing and a humming soon filled the air and two deer bounded beside her; they nudged her with their noses. “Run,” they whispered urgently. “Run! You must leave the forest!”

The two deer did not stop long and soon bounded off as Monarda got to her feet and looked behind her. Her eyes widened. Bumblebees, hummingbirds, and hummingbird moths all were flying towards her. Monarda took a step back and then another, and soon she was running again. Monarda turned and ran as hard as she could. The deer ran alongside, encouraging her.

“You’re nearly there, Monarda,” they told her. “You’re nearly there. Just a little farther.”

The bumblebees, hummingbirds, and the hummingbird moths were closing in on her. Whenever they got too close, a deer from the group of three would throw itself against the flying, horrible creatures. Monarda did not look back, but she always felt and heard the dull thud as the insects and birds killed them one by one.

Monarda climbed onto the trunk that protected the flower garden and tried to jump from it but stumbled on her landing and fell next to where her flower friends grew. “Help me…,” Monarda whispered before the ones chasing her fell upon her.

The flowers wished they could look away; wished they couldn’t hear her screams. The hummingbirds and bumblebees picked at her skin ruthlessly, without care, ripping her apart in small shreds; the hummingbird moths joined. They picked apart her skin and sucked her blood until there was none left.
They left a carcass. The once beautiful girl with lush locks of blond hair and skin like freshly fallen snow was now just an ugly, bloodless carcass.
The little girl, Monarda, with little strings of skin flapping in the soft wind as they clung desperately to the bones and muscles. Shreds of her pale, snow white skin scattered the field of flowers. The flowers all turned away the best they could with their roots in the ground, except for one flower, the lily that had loved Monarda dearly. This lily had not been the strongest of the flowers, and it would have perished had not Monarda saved it. The lily bent down and picked up, with its leaf, a piece of skin that was beside it. The lily could not feel it as humans do, so it could not feel that coldness that comes without the warmth of pumping blood.

The lily started to use its other leaf to dig into the dirt. It could only dig a few centimeters, but the lily believed that to be enough. It placed the shred of skin into the small hole before it covered it with the soft dirt and patted it level gently.

The flower beside this little lily noticed and did the same with a shred of skin. The next flower did the same, and the next, and the next so that every flower buried a piece of skin.

As the flowers buried skin, four deer that knew Monarda well and owed her their lives for protecting them from hunters watched. They hesitated only a moment before walking to the pile of bones and hair that was Monarda. The deer carefully dug the dirt with their hooves and noses. The flowers had finished before the deer, but the animals soon dug a hole deep enough. Two of the them carefully nudged the hair and bones into the hole. They filled it in and carefully patted it smooth.

None of the flowers spoke and neither did the deer. The deer lowered their heads as the flowers bowed their buds. After a moment, the deer walked back to the trees and bounded away.

*

COME THE SPRING, the December and January snow melted and soon the flowers saw small buds begin to grow from where Monarda had been buried. As the flowers grew from these spots, the other flowers made sure no harm befell these small, growing buds.

The deer visited the flower field and saw these new, small white flowers. They bowed their heads and sniffed, murmuring two words before they left: “Good-bye, Monarda.”

The village never forgot that little girl, though no one ever spoke about her. No one ventured into the woods to find her. The crows, flies, hawks, and cockroaches left the village alone just as the people had hoped.

Monarda’s parents had a son two years after their daughter’s death. Years passed as the son grew older, and when the father had died and the mother was dying, she told her son the story of their daughter Monarda. She told him how sweet she had been, how lovely and pretty, and how she was casted out of the village.

The son would grow older and marry a woman and have two children, and when he lay on his deathbed, he would tell them how their aunt was once a wonderful girl with a terrible fate. His children would grow old and tell their children and the story of Monarda was passed from generation to generation until one day, it was just a story to tell. No one told it on their deathbed and no one believed it anymore. It was simply a story to tell around the campfire.
That was what little Brad thought. His family never left the southern tip of Illinois, not so far from the Mississippi River. Brad, barely twelve years old, ventured into the woods where Monarda had spent so much of her time on a warm summer’s day. He whistled, swinging a stick back and forth as he unknowingly walked along the path Monarda had run from the bumblebees, hummingbirds, and hummingbird moths. Brad yawned before he found a fallen tree trunk with lightning strike burns. The storm must have blown it down, he thought as he climbed over it. With some effort, and some grunting, Brad made it over the trunk and landed on his feet. He brushed himself off before looking forward. He gasped.

A flower field like he had never seen. A whole field of flowers that he could not believe he was seeing. Bumblebees and hummingbirds buzzed around the flowers, sucking nectar and transferring pollen from flower to flower.
One kind of flower went up Brad’s waist and grew beside each other. The flower itself had some pink leaves branching out from the top of the stem, and the stem had a dark green bulb on top of it. It reminded Brad of a rather spiky pine cone. But the petals that grew from the green bulb—it was nothing like what Brad had ever seen. The petals were white with purple splotches at the end of each one. They all branched from the center of the flower making a slightly droopy crown for the green bulb under it.

Brad slowly walked up to the flowers and brushed his hand gently against the petals. They were soft and smooth to the touch like soft baby skin.

A branch snapped in the woods, and he looked up to see a deer standing on the other end of the field, bending down and sniffing the white petal flowers. Deer eat flowers! Brad started to wave his arms wildly and walked closer to the deer, hoping to scare it away. The deer simply looked at Brad before it looked across the field. It paused a moment then bounded off.

Brad lowered his arms with a frown. “What?”

The deer spoke three words. Brad could have sworn it did. He could have sworn it said “Hello, Monarda’s nephew” before it bounded off.

Brad knew that name. He knew he knew that name. Someone had told him that name a bit ago, on a trip to his mom’s house. His mom had told him, yes, his mom told him a story about a girl named Monarda who lived—who lived centuries ago in the place where his dad had lived. A girl named Monarda, thought to be a witch, banished into the woods and never seen again. Brad blinked, surprised that he managed to remember the name.

He looked down at the flowers and knew deeply that this was what was left of the girl from the story.

“Monarda?” he whispered. Brad’s head snapped up when he heard a loud buzzing and saw the bumblebees and the hummingbirds all turn to him. He paused a moment before he realized that the birds and bees were angrily flying straight at him.

Brad took a step back, then another, and another before he started running back to the trunk as the bumblebees and the hummingbirds flew at him. He climbed over the fallen tree and started racing home. He remembered the path and ran across it as fast as he could. Brad jumped over branches as the twigs and the leaves cracked and crackled under his feet. He glanced over his shoulder, eyes widening as the creatures seemed to fly at unnatural speeds. Brad stumbled over a branch but kept running.

His breathing became labored, and he kept glancing back at the bees and the birds, certain they would catch up to him. He did not understand why they were so angry with him; he had not bothered a single one of them, nor did he hurt any of the flowers. All he had said was the girl’s name. A name belonging to a girl who disappeared long ago.

Brad was grateful to discover he had been wrong. He broke through the tree line in a run without having been caught by the birds and the bees. But even though they had not caught up with him, Brad did not stop running. He didn’t stop running until he got back to his dad’s house.

Looking behind him, he saw no bumblebees or hummingbirds. Brad closed his eyes and bent down, hands on his knees, as he breathed heavily and coughed. I must have lost them in the forest. Or they stopped when I left the forest. I’m never going back there again.

“What’s got you so out of breath?”

Brad jumped and looked up to see his dad on the front steps. Brad must not have heard the door open over his labored breathing and racing heart. He tried to speak before managing it on the third try. “Bees…hummingbirds…chasing…me.”

His dad raised an eyebrow but nodded. “What did you do to them?”

“Found…Monarda…in the woods…”

His dad shook his head. “I told you not to listen to your mom’s stories. Come on, get yourself in the shower and wash off that sweat and dirt.” Brad nodded slowly before walking through the front doorway with lead feet. What a crazy morning.