WINTER

I wake, slow and lethargic, dredging my awareness. First, I notice my nakedness. I extend bare into grey air and cold wind. The sky is overcast, like a lid. The grey cloud cover has brought quiet with it, as if hushing silence was a factor of the weather. I suppose I should be glad of it, a gentle welcome from my ebbing slumber. The garden is carpeted in snow and empty of anything but evergreens and occasional camouflaged creatures. A white rabbit. A grey pigeon.

There is a mirror on the floor not far away. A mirror? Or ice? I can see grey clouds on it.

Around me at ground level, the space feels empty and broad. Exposed.

I stretch and search, reaching with my roots and branches. I don’t know whether I seek company or warmth. Or both. An expanse of blank soil, with dreaming pinpricks. My sistren and brethren sleep, roots quiet; dozing bulbs make cloudy sounds as they bide their time; and hibernating grass and seeds murmur. A hedgehog snores in my roots. A robin taps a staccato on a limb on my left. Sleeping insects murmur in my trunk’s holey knots.

Oblivion beckons. Staying awake takes too much concentration. Time skips. The sun rises and sets in quick succession, its light horizontal and insipid. I wake in darkness. Night. The stars are a cold velvet smear. There’s a colourful shimmering light like a thrown bolt of fabric.

I try to hold onto wakefulness, focusing on my surroundings to sharpen my consciousness. 

I am draped in snow. We wear sparkling white gowns and capes. I am jewelled with frost. My lichens bear glittering diamonds.

I smell a winter sea, its salty wind licks my branch tips from all directions. The saline scent eddies as I drift in and out of sleep, my waking coming and going like waves on a beach. We must be on an island, I think.

I see people. They rush past, indecipherable in their coverings, indistinguishable from each other. They leave footprints and disappearing, misty ringlets of breath. One carries a steaming cup. The smell of mulled spices snags on the wind and conjures wistful questions.

I wish to wake my family for answers. I want them with me as we realise our existence and our age. I want to understand how time passes. I want to know what is to come.

Names float through me as I wind my way through recollection. Time stretches like the sky above a flat land. A purpose rumbles deep deep within me, like a spark. One name means more.

The cold wind blows, empty of warmth and pollen, smelling of other breaths. A last exhale of the Holly King, Boreas’ frosty sigh, and a muttering promise from Itztlacoliuhqui. I wish to answer, to tell them this garden only sleeps. But my own sleep drags me down, an irresistible call.

I drift, dreaming of a name like a stride.

SPRING

Morning breaks, the same pale sun cracking above the horizon’s shell. I add my sigh to the cold breeze. I wish for company, for chatter, for this imprisoning cold to finish and burn off. For the sun to become yolk rather than tinted water. I am resigned to being summoned again to sleep, but ready to complain to whoever will listen that it is still cold and still bare and I tire of this now.

But, there, a tiny movement beside my roots. I peer to the snow-covered ground, fighting against sleep, and there. Slim green finger leaves, with pendants of tinkling, white bells. Snowdrops.

Time flits, night peeling away from both dawn and dusk in minute shavings. Purple, white, and yellow crocuses surround the snowdrops, colourful sentries among the waning snow.

I rouse fully, time swaying to an even pace. Sleep leaves like melting frost. The question comes unbidden, but worrying and fretting.

Where is she?

Another woman stands before me, full of laughing caresses and chthonic songs. She skips between the bushes and trees, her bare feet extending ribbons of warmth through the cold earth. Her hands and smile spread change as if it were paint. I’m not fast enough to touch her in return. I smell Stygian salt in her wake. I want to call her, but can’t remember whether she prefers Kore, Proserpina or Persephone. By the time I choose, she’s gone, off to re-explore another part of the garden.

In her absence, her presence is apparent.

Daffodils shout in yellow, and the grass restarts its growth. The flowerbeds bubble with shoots. Insects hum in waking. The hedgehog snorts. The garden fills with whispering.

The mirror ripples, melting into a pond. The fountain burbles into life. A light splash, splish, splosh. A few brave birds bathe in the still cold shallows.

The magnolia bursts forth. My jealousy is as vibrant as its gigantic blooms.

Kore returns, bringing her mother. They laugh beneath the magnolia tree as they select choice petals, tepals and buds, placing them in a harvest basket. They chat about pickling, spices, and salad bowls.

They move about the garden, tending and harvesting the first choice brassicas and hardy green vegetables. Their baskets fill, a bright sun shines, and a warm breeze blows.

Cherry blossoms burst and then fall just as quickly. Proserpina tries to catch the cascading snowy petals with her tongue. Demeter smiles, her face warm with memory.

The nights are less forbidding. Just as dark, but no longer as stark. Warmer now, a chill bracing and enlivening rather than a haunting and chasing cold. My hedgehog leaves, swaying and bumbling along to find its first spring meal. The nights rustle with life and growth.

In the day, I watch Demeter and her daughter with a feeling I cannot name, but aches. Perhaps nostalgia. Perhaps envy. They look at me and my siblings, playful smiles about their lips as they approach us each in turn and touch tender points on our branches.

I quiver. My innards churn and boil. If I wasn’t awake before, I definitely am now. Their touches mix with sunlight and silver rain, and a tickle burns along my bark. I shiver as a cascade of gentle pleasure travels through me, and eruptions froth over my branches.

I burst into colourful resplendence. Flowers in pink and white are framed by leaves of a young green, tensing in the warming breeze.

I preen, displaying and priding myself before my friends. We would strut if we were able.

I receive another visitor, her voice low and her hum tuneless. It isn’t she who I wish for, but I relish Pomona’s attention all the same. She checks me over, whispering greetings to every flower and gently touching my trunk and bole just so. She lays mulch around my roots, humming and singing a song of future, plenty, and growth. I munch on the soil nutrients, and am emboldened to thicken and shoot out even further.

Rain drenches us, no longer needles of ice, but warming, thick and sweet. I drink so much I have rivers within me.

A family of parakeets and another of finches settle in my branches, gossiping and singing. I am surrounded by the rhythmic sounds of life and industry. Every warming dawn brings a wider cast, a new chorus, a closer horizon.

I focus outwards. Only my topmost branches can see the sea beyond our garden, the ground now crowded with lushness. There are gigantic clouds at the horizon, vast creatures with gaping jaws and long scaled, jewelled bodies parading the perimeter like thunderstorms, and the waves like a wall. 

SUMMER

On the solstice, the kings of oak and holly fight before me, shadows of stag, human, season and eternity in their knife blade, fist and talon. I will for one to win over the other. Though I am drunk on blossom, bees, warm caressing breezes and couples laughing beneath my dappled shade,  I wish for more. I long for more joy, more pleasure, a catharsis and a release.

The bees buzz a hymn to Melissa as they tend to my blossoms. I know that if I looked in their little, furry faces I would see her reflection shining in their eyes, luminous as beeswax in honey.

The sun is hot now. My siblings and I compete for having the nicest, most carefully tesselated shade. Which of us has most tastefully ornamented our ground with sequins of sunlight.

People gather, picnics and parties commence, and pride outlines me in bold for I have the largest crowd in my mossy shade.

The scents of rich summer wine, of perfectly ripe soft fruits, of baked goods and dressed salads reach me, drifts in the warm breeze. The crowd chatters and laughs, sings and shares, and there is celebration and camaraderie.

Demeter is tall with pride; the spread is bountiful even for the goddess of the harvest. Occasionally, someone spills a few drops of their wine on the ground and I slurp it up so as to join the revelry. The gasps of wonder and satiation make me almost wish to eat the food as well. I content myself with watching their hands and mouths.

I notice Persephone. She is freckled and sun-tanned from late spring and early summer sun, and all chthonic wisps have long since dissipated in the flowered breeze. But quiet moments hover like moths about her, and she looks towards the horizon and the ground, to beyond them, to somewhere else. She touches cracks in the earth with longing, yearning fingers. I long to comfort her, and try dusting her with sunlight gems, but she is far away. I leave her to her privacy and her countdown.

Her silence is absorbed by others’ loud enjoyment. A man, a god, sits amongst adoring youths, telling bawdy jokes and singing flirtatious songs, his legs hairy, his feet hooved, robe permanently tented. He pours cup after cup of sweet, heady wine on my roots, and I am grateful I cannot get drunk. During a lull in attention, his companions distracted by other treasures and pleasures, he approaches me. He gazes up into my magnificent canopy, at my plentiful leaves and my tiny fruitlets. He pats my trunk, whispering “You’re doing well, pet, she’ll be pleased.” He reaches for a branch and, caressing the nubby buds where my flowers used to be, says, “Yes, yes, very well indeed.”

“Priapos!” A woman with a smile as mischievous as his calls to him, and he turns to her. She shimmers with floral shapes, her blonde hair echoing broom blooms, her skin as soft as oak flowers, and her nails as dainty as meadowsweet. He returns to her, and whispers her name into her neck just beneath her ear, “Blodeuwedd.”

His words reverberate. She’ll be pleased.

As the days stay warm but evenings minutely draw in, the honey-golden sunset strobes just so when the sun kisses the horizon. In the angled rays, three gossamer women dance through the garden, protective, joyful, hopeful. The laugh of the Hesperides cascades between myself and my siblings.

And when the warm breeze starts to contain cool threads, autumn whispering from the wings, Pomona visits again. She brings a small knife, and deftly trims back my summer-fed shoots, “Let’s leave more space for fruit,” she smiles as she slices. Each sharp cut is sweet.

My siblings rustle their branches. Me next, me next.

As she trims, a gentleman approaches. He wears a poor disguise, even us trees can tell he is no old woman. My siblings and I giggle at the sight of him, making Pomona stop and turn.

Under her gaze, the disguise gives up, wisping into mist, and she grins with delight. She drops her knife and runs to him,  “Vertumnus!” she laughs. He embraces her, and the sounds of their kisses shine the skins of my budding apples.

AUTUMN

Summer’s party tapers, and the garden cools and quietens. Some bushes and trees drop leafy tears in over-eagerness. But it isn’t time just yet. A little more first. Just a little more.

One day, when sleeves have lengthened and the cool threads in the breeze have become ropes, Demeter sits beneath my heavying canopy. She puts her face on her bent knees and weeps with loss, her hair dusted with chaff. It is Hades’ turn for Persephone, Proserpina’s turn for Pluto.

My branches are becoming heavy. I switch between exhaustion and pride, as I watch my energy become external, visible, solid, shining and plump, hanging from my limbs rather than deep within me. My brothers and sisters whisper with their own treasured burdens.

A pang of concern ripples. Where is she? Has she forgotten us? Me?

The squirrels panic about, digging and searching. The birds talk of leaving in loud voices. The bright days cloud, and the horizon furs with storms. It becomes difficult to shake my branches in the wind, weighted as they are by fruit.

And then, when we can stand it no longer, and wish to drop all our fruit, donating them to the last wasps for a final hurrah, she comes.

I almost cry with relief.

Idunn’s skin is the colour of lightly toasted almonds, and hair of hazelnut shells. She smells of sky and smoke, and calluses cover her delicate hands from her heavy basket and the ornamented handle of her knife. She sings a song that penetrates my core. If I had a chest it would soar.

“My darling, Aurus, you’re doing well,” she mutters. I stand a little straighter, though my branches are so heavy.

She notices. “Let’s take care of these, shall we?”

She takes her knife and cuts each golden apple free. The aureate fruits nestle in her basket, making water-like reflections on her arms.

When she is done, she kisses my trunk and lifts her gilded cargo. She is so beautiful, both lit from the apples’ glow, and also luminous herself. I wish to go with her, to be with her, to follow in her light. I am so much lighter, I could almost run alongside.

She notices my yearning, how I creak in the cool breeze. She wraps her woollen shawl tighter, her hair is tousled by cooling fingers, and she rests her hand against me.

“You must be so tired,” she says, “You’ve done so well. Thank you. You can sleep now.”

She departs, and my awareness flutters as drowsiness fills my limbs. My leaves fall, adding to the carpet of browns and yellows that now coats the garden floor.

Awareness flutters once more.

The days get colder, and the nights draw in. The birds leave one by one. The grass halts its growth. Walking figures wear more and more clothing. Grey rain becomes icy needles, and morning dew becomes frost. My neighbours’ voices quieten and the pauses in our exchanges fill with dozes. The fountain comes to a stop, and the pond surface thickens to mirror.

My hedgehogs and my insects come to rest and sleep, their internal rhythms calming my own. Time jumps, my awareness blinking from noon to night, from dusk to mid-morning. A hibernating sleep calls me. Time extends before me like a river. Beneath the snows, I dream of spring and bud and fruit.

[JM Cyrus lives in London, writing whenever there is a chance, and reading even when there isn’t one. With a bachelor’s in Classical Studies, and a master’s in Reception Theory, she enjoys finding new worlds and looking at how she found them. She has had work published all over the place, including Luna Station Quarterly, All Worlds Wayfarer and Inner Worlds. See the full list at her website https://jmcyrus.carrd.co/#works]