October 30th – Suzan Palumbo – ‘Bleeding Hearts’ (2024) – Read it here. Catch up with the Challenge list here.
I loved this one. This is witchy and not scary, but very appropriate for the spooky season nonetheless. I love Palumbo’s stories, the way she mixes in so many layers to her short fiction, and weaves very human dramas in so few words. I really love the idea of grief diffusing into something that grows, and a garden of other people’s pain.
I also really liked the ex-girlfriend’s misery (screw you, Rebecca) and how things develop between Ashley and Claire.
I really loved the garden imagery, and the idea of plants growing from seeds of blood and tears, and diffusing heartbreak and grief, rather than ‘curing’ it. I also love that you can then do anything you like to the plant – let it grow, take it home, or destroy it, up to you. It’s your pain.
I did an interview with Suzan Palumbo when her short story collection Skin Thief came out, and you can listen to that, or read the transcript, and grab her books now:
This reminded me of the folklore around plants springing from people’s graves, and the tales where these trees then become home to the spirits of the dead in the form of birds, who sing about their murder and the abuse they suffered in life. The Germanic folktale, The Juniper Tree, comes to mind here.
I thought about this as an ending to my necromancy story which has 3 parts so far, written for #AScareADay.
The Yew Tree
Faubert and Gaudin stood in deep, mutual sorrow, without words. What could they say? The dead numbered in the hundreds. The destruction was unimaginable, something that could only be seen and even then, could not be fully understood. Each person is a cosmos. A world. A thousand ripples in a lake of dark stillness. How can their loss be calculated, how can their absence be weighed? And hundreds at once – the collective horror upon the individual horror, the cumulative as well as the singular grief, the tragedy building like an unfathomable monster appearing from the primordial abyss. What could they say?
Isabeau lay down in the grave they had dug for her. She had told them where to dig, of course, and all was done to her specifications. Even now, neither of the two friends could have possibly done this themselves. There was no question of breaking their bond with Isabeau: she was their flesh, their very lives, their greatest love.
Isabeau had made the choice herself, and they had no choice, as ever, but to fall into line. Now she lay down in her chosen resting place, hands folded over her bosom, and lay looking upwards.
“Start with the topsoil,” she said.
They sprinkled the layers of soil in reverse, each layer with the life bled from it, spoiled and sewn through with salt, so that from it, nothing could grow. Isabeau did not cry out as it covered her beautiful face, but Faubert thought he saw it begin to crumble away into the soil it had once been, the soil used to resurrect her bones.
As the grave filled, and Isabeau’s remains fell back through time, buried once more under the weight of it, a sapling began to sprout from the place the headstone would have been laid.
Faubert felt Isabeau’s hold on him lift with the rising of that impossible tree. Gaudin must have felt it too, for he began to work with renewed vigour, backfilling the grave with all the power he could muster after the last layer of soil was sprinkled down, covering her gradual disintegration.
The sapling kept pace with the backfill, pushing upwards as the hollow in the earth levelled out once more.
When they stood back, it was a fully grown yew tree, spreading a sombre canopy of darkness above them.
Gaudin looked at Faubert, but he said nothing.
Faubert could not muster anything other than a long, slow blink of exhaustion. He had buried his words, his thoughts, his very self, with Isabeau. It would take a long time for them to come back to him, with the red berries of autumn, with the slow ripening of harvest. When the seasons rolled on, his Self would return again. All things healed, changed, found their way, given time.
For now, there was no Faubert, no Gaudin, without the woman lost to the soil: nothing, except the yew tree growing from the salted earth.
/ Fin.
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