#106 The Herbalist's Diary 7

Lyssa stumbled through the door of her own home near sundown, the wooden box from Brother Amos’ hut clutched tight to her chest.

“Lyssa!” Addie ran to her. Lyssa could tell she’d been crying.

Gradually, Lyssa unwrapped a frozen arm from around the wooden box and put it around Addie instead. She let Addie tow her into the tiny bedroom where mother slept. From Addie’s tears, Lyssa was afraid that she was too late, that it had taken her too long to cross the snow-covered hills, fighting the wind all the way, and Mother had lost her own battle while she was gone.

Lyssa watched the still form on the bed until the covers rose and fell, just once. A breath. Mother was still alive, though the day seemed to have aged her twenty years.

“You brought medicine!” Addy seemed to notice the box for the first time.

Maybe, Lyssa thought. Without a word, she set the box down on the shelf by Mother’s bed, then opened the diary.

“Dona eis domine. Dona Eis requiem. Requiem aeternam,” Brother Amos chanted in a low, pained voice. Lyssa didn’t know the words, but they frightened her. “Requiem!” it became a plea, “Requiem!”

Lyssa wanted to slam the book shut to silence it. A wild thought of throwing it into the fire, putting an end to the ghost voice forever, came into her mind. No, she needed him. She needed Brother Amos to tell her one more thing.

Holding the diary open in one hand, she lifted the lid of the box with the other. The clean smell of fresh herbs filled the air, cleared her head.

“Ah,” Brother Amos said,“There it is. It was here all along.”

“Which one should I use?” Lyssa asked, deciding not to try and explain to Brother Amos that she’d spent all day trudging through a snowstorm to get it. If he had already forgotten the journey, then there was probably no way to make him understand. She opened the packets one by one, laying them out carefully on the shelf beside the box.

“That’s the one,” Brother Amos said when she opened one that contained a gnarled white ball of woody roots. “Make a strong infusion, and give her a spoonful every hour.”

“Thank you,” Lyssa said.

“I must be returning home, I’m afraid it’s getting dark out,” Brother Amos said, his voice fading until it was no louder than the wind.

“Will you be coming back?” Lyssa asked.

“I’ll come and check on you in the morning.”

Lyssa closed the book.

#105 The Herbalist's Diary 6

Lyssa searched the hut, her numb fingers clawing through the shelves. Last spring when she had first seen the hut with its herb garden grown wild she had been afraid it might be haunted. She hadn’t gone in until she’d spied the little leather-bound book on the table, then she’d darted in and snatched it and brought it back out into the sunshine.

The drawings inside were the most beautiful she’d ever seen. Perfect leaves and blossoms, just as if she were holding a garden in her hands and not a book. She’d laid a sprig of sage she had plucked from the wild herb patch between the pages, and discovered that it was not the hut that was haunted, but the book itself.

Now a mad ghost babbled behind her as she searched.

“They burned the abbey,” Brother Amos sobbed like a child. “All the books gone, gone to ashes! All our work, all that knowledge, oh, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do!”’

“Brother Amos?” Lyssa pleaded, “You said there was a root that could cure my mother, Do you know where it is?”

Brother Amos wasn’t listening anymore. Perhaps he couldn’t hear her. “Do you like my garden?” he asked. “You really shouldn’t be here, though.”

That was true enough. Lyssa hadn’t known Brother Amos was going mad when she’d left home this morning. She’d trusted him, but now she wasn’t sure of anything. Even if she found something, even if he told her it was what she had come for, would she dare use it?

Under the broken frame and tattered matting that had once been a cot in the corner, Lyssa found a sturdy wooden box. Anxious, she pried the lid up and found it full of paper packets. One by one she unfolded them to find carefully dried leaves, strips of bark, and at last a tangle of reddish-black roots.

“Is this it?” Lyssa asked, “Is this what we’ve come to find?”

#104 The Herbalist's Diary 5

Lyssa didn’t know why she thought there would be anything here in the old, abandoned hut. It had seemed desolate and empty when she’d found it last spring. Now snow had crept in over the floor, coming in through the broken door and the open window. Deer prints marked the floor, and there were smashed jars and open cupboards.

“It’s rather untidy,” Brother Amos’ voice said, unsteady. “Let me see if I can’t tidy up… oh… well, no I can’t.” He sounded surprised, as if he’d forgotten he wasn’t really there,  at least not in body.

“You said there was some medicine here for my mother,” Lyssa tried to keep her voice from shaking. The cold, the disappointment, were both making her tremble.

“Your mother,” Brother Amos echoed. He’d forgotten again, Lyssa could tell by the way he said the words.

Outside, the wind blew a fresh flurry of snow against the hut with a sound like so many needles being flung against the stones.

“Brother Amos, what’s wrong?” Lyssa asked. “You’ve never been like this before.”

“Well, I can’t help but think,” he said. “It seems there was something off about the sage. If you don’t mind I’ll just sit down and rest my eyes for a moment.”

Sage? Lyssa opened the back page of the diary. There hadn’t been any sage. The only fresh growing thing she could find here in the dead of winter had been a sprig of potato from the cellar. The juice of its thick stem was now staining the inside of the back cover.

Potato greens. Poison.

Shaking harder, Lyssa closed the cover of the book. “Can you tell me where to find the medicine? If it were still here, where would it be? What would it look like? You said it was a root.”

There was no answer.

#103 The Herbalist's Diary 4

“Where are we going?” Brother Amos asked apologetically, as if he knew he ought to know, and felt badly that he didn’t.

“To your hut,” Lyssa said, out of breath from walking as fast as she could in the bitter cold. Brother Amos had always been a little forgetful, but this frightened her. “You said you had a root there that could cure my mother.”

“Yes, yes, I remember now,” he said. “Roots and herbs can help us, but healing is a gift from God.”

A light snow began to fall, making the empty white world seem even whiter.

“Strange,” Brother Amos said with a baffled laugh, “I don’t feel the cold.”
It’s because you’re just a book, Lyssa thought, though she didn’t say anything.

Lyssa reached the top of the hill where she expected to see the old abandoned hut hidden in the dell below, but there was nothing there.

“Are we going the right way?” She asked, half to herself.

“A little farther, and we’ll be there,” Brother Amos said, strangely cheerful.

Lyssa couldn’t see where the sun was for the thick snow clouds, but she felt that the morning must be gone already. She hadn’t remembered the hut being so far, but that had been in the spring when walking over these grassy hills was an easy thing.

“Do you like my garden?” Brother Amos asked, though there was no garden in sight.

“Your garden?” Lyssa asked.

“It’s so nice of you to come. I must go out and tend to the goats now.”

“Brother Amos, are you all right?” Lyssa asked. He seemed to be wandering in mind, like Grandfather in the months before he died.

Brother Amos didn’t answer for a moment, but then his voice came breathless and frightened. “What are you doing here? The fire! You have to get out! The abby is burning! It’s burning,” he finished with a sob.

“Brother Amos?” Lyssa said gently.

“It’s a lovely garden, isn’t it?” he said, and this time he sounded young, not much older than Lyssa herself. “Brother James is teaching me about all the plants here. I’ve started a diary, see?”

Over the next hill, Lyssa finally caught a glimpse of stone wall tucked away in a small stand of trees. “Is that your hut?” she asked.

“Yes,” and now he sounded old, weary, and sad. “Come, let’s find that cure for your mother.”

#102 The Herbalist's Diary 3

I pushed aside the curtain and ducked into Mother’s tiny room. The scent of herbs had faded, and the room was growing chill.

“Addy,” I ordered my little sister, who was huddled next to Mother, holding her pale, thin hand. “Take that pot and heat it over the fire until it's boiling again.”

Addy gave me a frightened, pleading look, “Is Mother going to get well again?”

“Yes, but she needs that water boiling. Quick!”

Addy heaved on the pot handles and with a grunt lifted the black iron pot. The water sloshed on her a little as she carried it out of the room.

I knelt close to mother, keeping Brother Amos’ diary cracked open in my fingers.

“Poor woman,” said his voice in my mind. “She’s very ill. It’s so good of you to care for her.”

“This is my mother,” I said. Brother Amos should know that. What was wrong with him?

“Ah, I see,” he said slowly, as if confused.

I touched Mother’s forehead, watched her struggle to breathe. Brother Amos had to know something that would help her. “Do you know how to cure her?” I asked in a whisper.

“There is a root,” the voice came haltingly.

“A root? Yarrow? Snapdragon?” My mind combed through the ones he had taught me last summer.

“No, none of those. I can’t recall its name.”

“Try,” I said. “Please!”

There was a long silence.

“I am trying,” Mother whispered, opening her eyes and giving me a weary smile.

She thought I was talking to her.

“I know,” I smiled back, with all my love and strength, wishing I could make her well just by loving her enough.

“It’s rare,” Brother Amos said, “We did not see it all last summer. But I have some stored in my hut.”

I ran past Addy, tying my shawl over my head and tucking Brother Amos' diary in my apron pocket. “I’m going out to get mother some medicine,” I told her. “Keep that water steaming, put the pot near her where she can get some good from it. Watch over her until I get back.”

“Lyssa?” Addy protested. Her eyes begged me not to leave her here alone.

I hugged her tight, “I have to go.”

Outside the world was white, the sky as white as the snow-covered ground. Only a few dark smudges marked the landscape. The low stone wall at the end of the sheepcote, the trees by the river down in the valley, the distant smear of gray and smoke that was the village. I turned my face up into the hills, into the icy wind that scraped at my cheeks. Up there, in the hills somewhere, was the abandoned hut where I had found Brother Amos’ diary last spring. I hoped we could, somehow, between the two of us, remember where that hut was.

#101 The Herbalist's Diary 2

Lyssa opened the back cover of the diary and carefully peeled free the sprig of sage she had placed there last spring. The leaves were black-spotted and yellowed, they crumbled and stuck to the paper in places. She took the corner of her apron and cleaned away the stains as well as she could.

From the kitchen rafters, away from the fire and from drafts, hung her rows and rows of plants and herbs, the ones the diary had taught her to pick. There was sage there, dry but still a healthy gray-green color. She reached up and snapped off a brittle sprig. This would work. This would bring him back.

Pressed in the back page of the diary, the sage cracked and crumbled into tiny dry flakes that fell out onto the floor. Lyssa snapped off another sprig, and this time shut the book on it very gently, handling the leather cover with only the tips of her fingers. Please, she whispered, please tell me how to help Mother.

Silence.

If only she hadn’t neglected her studies, as he’d called them. She could have easily put fresh sage in the back of the book last fall, before the frost, when she’d cut it from the garden. That would have lasted until now. But she’d been so busy with the harvest, and then after the snows came she had forgotten.

Did it have to be sage? Maybe she could find something else. Something still green and alive. She thought of the onions in the cellar, the pumpkins and apples, maybe there would be green leaves on them still. She threw up the wooden hatch and hurried down the ladder.

In the potato barrel, one small potato had sprouted and begun to grow. A green stem, a pair of tiny leaves, that was all. Lyssa snapped it off and pressed it in the back cover of the diary.

“Did you have a question?” the old monk’s voice sounded distant, and a little confused, but he was there again.

“Oh, yes,” Lyssa almost sobbed. “My mother has a fever and a terrible cough. None of the things you taught me have worked. Is there anything else I can try? Please?”

“Let’s go and see her,” he said. “I’m sure we can… there must be something. Oh, my head! Sorry, but I’m a bit dizzy. It will pass, I’m sure.”

Lyssa climbed the ladder, cradling the diary carefully in her hands.

#100 The Herbalist's Diary

In the morning, Mother was worse.

Lyssa hadn’t opened the diary for months now, not since the snows began. There were no herbs to collect now, and the ones she had collected she knew how to use. But this fever of Mother’s wouldn’t respond to any concoction she had tried. Maybe there was something else, there had to be something else, she could do.

The soft leather cover brought back memories of walking over the hills in the sunshine, listening to Brother Amos' gentle voice name every plant and flower. Lyssa hadn’t realized how much she’d missed him. She opened the book and turned the page to the pale winter sunshine coming in through the chinks in the window covers.

Silent. He wasn’t there.

A sick panic grew in Lyssa’s stomach. Had he gone? She flipped the pages, one by one. The drawings of the plants she recognized, but the words there she could never read. She needed him to tell her what he’d written.

"When the snows come, perhaps I can teach you to read," he had said. At the time, Lyssa couldn't think of any reason she would want to learn such an impossible thing. But now...

“Where are you?” Lyssa asked. From the other room, she heard her mother coughing. A desperate, deep cough that made Lyssa tremble. She rushed to get a cup of hot broth, and in her hurry she splashed a few warm drops on the open page.

After her mother had swallowed a few spoonfuls and fallen back asleep, Lyssa returned to the book and picked it up.

“Lyssa?” The voice was so soft, she thought she might be imagining it.

“Are you there?” Lyssa said. “Can you hear me?”

“It’s been so long. I thought you’d lost me,” the faint voice had a hint of gentle laughter in it.

“I can barely hear you! I need you! Mother’s sick. Please!” Lyssa felt the tears start in her eyes.

“Fresh sage? Can you get some?”

Sage? That wouldn’t help mother, Lyssa thought. Then she remembered the day she’d found the diary in the abandoned hut, and the leaf of fresh sage she had put between the pages. That was when he’d first begun to speak.

Where to get fresh sage in the middle of winter?

“Will dried do?” Lyssa asked.

There was no answer.

On a wild hope, Lyssa ran out into the garden. Maybe in some corner, by a wall, sheltered from the snow, there would be a tiny new leaf growing. Perhaps in the barn, where the animals kept warm, or by the dung heap where the steam would rise on frosty mornings.

There was nothing. Nothing but bare stems. Dead and bowed down under the snow.

#99 Where's My Bike?

“Bye. Mom!” I’m going to school!”

“Bye,” Mom waved without looking up from watching my little brother spread jam on a piece of bread for his lunch. I hitched my backpack a little higher on my shoulders and headed for the garage to get my bike.

It wasn’t there.

“Mom, where’s my bike?” I asked.

“What do you mean, where’s your bike?” Mom came and stood next to me by the side door of the garage. I just stared. My older brother’s big red bike, my little brother’s black one, and the spare blue junkyard bike leaned against each other by the wall, but my bike just wasn’t there.

“Where would it be?” Mom asked.

I gasped. “Did you pick me up at Kyle’s house after school last Friday?”

“Yes,” Mom said, trying to remember.

“Did we get my bike!”

“No,” Mom moaned.

“It’s still at the school!”

“All right, you’ve got two options,” Mom said. “You can take the blue bike, or we can drive.”

I glanced at the blue bike, with its rusty frame and peeling paint. “Drive,” I said.

Mom told my older brother to lock up the house when he left, and herded my younger brother into the car. “I hope your bike is still there,” Mom said.

So did I. My old bike had been stolen just before Christmas break. Had I lost my new one too?

“Did he lock it up?” My younger brother asked.

“I locked it,” I said.

“Your bike’s been sitting at the school for three nights. Someone could have come along with a bolt cutter and cut the lock.” Mom said. “If it's gone we’re not going to replace it. You’ll have to ride the blue bike the rest of the year.”

Imagining myself creaking to school every morning on the rusty junkyard bike, I rode silent the rest of the way until we got close to the school. Then I leaned forward in my seat and stared past Mom to the chain link fence.

My orange bike leaned against the fence, misted over a little by the dew.

“It’s still there!” I cheered.

“Hooray!” My little brother shouted.

“You’re a lucky boy,” Mom said.

#98 The Brine Shrimp

Once upon a time a tiny brine shrimp drifted out in the middle of the vast, blue ocean, somewhere between the sunny surface and the dark, cool depths. He drifted and swam, lazily moving with the current, until all of a sudden, he saw a huge octopus coming straight for him.

The brine shrimp was scared. He was sure the octopus was going to eat him! It wasn’t any use trying to swim away, so he puffed himself up as big as he could and yelled, “You better get out of here, octopus! You don’t want to mess with me!”

And would you believe the octopus didn’t eat him? No, the octopus just swam right on by.

Now the brine shrimp was feeling pretty good about himself, and he kind of swished when he swam in a tough-guy sort of way. He’d scared off a big, hungry octopus! But it wasn’t very long before the brine shrimp caught sight of a gigantic shark coming straight toward him!

The brine shrimp was terrified! That shark was going to eat him for sure. With his teeny heart pounding, he shouted out, “Better steer clear, Mr. Shark! I scared off an octopus not ten minutes ago, and I could whup you too!”

And would you believe it, the shark didn’t eat him. No, that shark just swam right on by.

Now the brine shrimp was feeling mighty fine. He had scared off a hungry octopus and a hungry shark all in one day. He sure was one fierce creature of the sea!

But then off in the distance the brine shrimp saw a great dark shadow, slowly getting closer, and closer. It was a monstrous whale! This time the brine shrimp wasn’t even worried, not one little bit. “You wanna eat me, whale? Well, tough luck! I already scared off an octopus and a shark today, so I’m not afraid of you either! Come on and try!”

And would you believe, that whale swam right up to the brine shrimp and ate him. Because that’s what whales do.

The End.

#97 Spy Copter 2

We ran for it.

The gate was a seriously long way from Anjeli’s house. We had to keep stopping to catch our breath. Then Curtis would make a kind of agonized wail and start running again.

“We’re going to visit the Wights!” Curtis panted as we hurried past the guard in his blue-gray uniform and cap. The guard stared at us, clipboard in hand, as if wondering whether he should stop us or not. In the end, he just shook his head and turned his attention to the car that was driving up to his window.

I’d never been inside Anjeli’s neighborhood before. The houses were unreal. Some of them didn’t even look like houses. Grassy hills rolled. Trees teased into strange, artificial shapes grew in the yards of miniature castles. One house looked like a fancy, oversized log-cabin, another one had a front with white pillars three stories high.

Anjeli’s house had a big round window a story above the double front doors. Instead of just a doorbell, there was an intercom box with several buttons and a speaker. From inside,  we could hear Anjeli and her friends making disgusted sounds, and then all together they suddenly burst out into uproarious laughter.

Curtis didn’t know which button to push, so he slammed his hand against all seven of them.

The laughter just kept on going. Curtis raised his fist to bang on the door, but before he could reach it, it swung open.

When Anjeli saw Curtis she had to try really hard to hold back a laugh.

“I’m sorry, I was flying my quad copter around by the woods back there and it accidentally flew into your tree. Can I get it back?”

“Some accident,” Anjeli said. “Stay right here, I’ll get it for you.”

Curtis and I stood on the porch. I peeked in, dazzled by all the polished wood inside. Every time the girls set up another round of howls of laughter, Curtis’ face changed color.

At last, when Curtis had gone from red to blue to green, Anjeli came back with the copter in her hand.

“I need the… oh, the card is still in the camera,” Curtis said, nearly falling over with relief. “I was afraid you might be…”

“oh, we watched the whole thing,” Anjeli said with a big, nasty smile. “I made a copy. We need it for evidence.”

She shut the door in our faces.