Green and Growing Things
Carys Crossen
He demanded her heart, as if she could tear it from her chest and hand it over, as if she were a butcher selling cuts of meat. He wanted her heart, and grew sullen and resentful when she denied him. As though her love would satisfy a debt unpaid.
He offered her the riches of his kingdom, power over the dead souls huddled down there, the title of Queen. She refused it all. What value did it hold if you reigned in Hell?
His so-called love turned furious and spiteful. Still she would not yield. He lost all reason and flung her into the darkest and deepest of his realm’ s dungeons, to remain there with what trinkets she had purloined. To rot there, until she surrendered.
She planted the pomegranate seed she had taken from Hell’ s gardens and watered it with tears and her magic. It took root and grew. It was a sickly thing, stunted and pallid, but its roots and branches held the indomitable strength of green and growing things. They split the ancient rock, burdened by millennia of pressure, and let her escape her cell.
Up, up, up she climbed. It was murky and silent. Rocks jarred her feet, stone walls crumbled at her touch, she bashed her head on stalactites.
Yet she kept going. Past the skeletons of monstrous beasts, past vast subterranean seas, past slumbering giants and the ruins of ancient cities.
The first spindly roots of trees reached out to her. She grabbed them and hauled herself, hand over hand, out of the underworld. Out of Hell.
It was bitter cold, the rain lashing down. Yet the trees were there to greet her, bare boughs proud under the onslaught. She threw her arms about one, kissed the rough bark, told her tale.
When the Lord of Hell discovered her escape, and went to fetch her back, he found his way barred by roots so strong and tough that not even Hell could find a way through.
She listened to his ravings with vengeful satisfaction, until she grew bored and turned back to the world above, dancing through the woodlands in the gold light of springtime.
16 Cauldron Anthology