The right way’s complicated, but it ensures that the spirits understand your respect for them and the patch’ll keep growing. You’ve got to come with humility in your heart and offer up prayers before you even start in considering to dig.
I remember thinking it was funny the first time I saw Aunt Lillian doing it, this old woman making her offerings of words and smoke and tobacco to invisible presences that I wasn’t entirely convinced were even there. But then she had me do it with her, the two of us saying the words, waving our smudgesticks, laying our tobacco offerings on the ground as we went through it all, once for each of the four directions, and I’ll be damned if I didn’t feel something.
I can’t explain exactly what. A stir in the air. A warm feeling in my chest. The sure knowing that we weren’t alone in that old patch, that there were invisible presences all around us who accepted our offerings and in return, would allow us to take some of the bounty of this place.
I looked at Aunt Lillian with big wide eyes and she just grinned.
“Start in a-digging, girl,” she said. “We’ve got our permission. Only mind you don’t take a plant until it’s at least six years old.”
“How can you tell?”
You ever see ‘sang, growing in the wild? Ginseng, I guess some folks calls it. It doesn’t grow much above a foot, a foot and a half in these hills, and has a stiff stalk holding up a pair of leaves, each leaf divided in five like the fingers on your hand and looking a bit like those you’d find on a chestnut. The little cluster of yellow-green flowers turns to red berries that drop off around the end of August. It takes a couple of years to come up from seed, slow-growing and long-lived if left alone. The roots are what gets used for medicine, but there’s some that use the leaves for tea.
“See these prongs?” Aunt Lillian asked me. “Where the leaves are growing?”
I nodded.
“You only want to dig these here, with four or five prongs. They stay at a two-prong for at least two or three years, then grow into a three-prong and finally a four, if they stand long enough. We don’t want to take them too young. The roots won’t be that big, you see? But if we leave them stand, we can harvest them in a year or two.This is an old patch that the poachers haven’t found, so the ones we’re going to take could be anywhere from six or seven years old to twenty-five.”
“Where did you learn all of this?” I asked.
“Some I got from Aunt Em,” she told me. “But most of this I learned from John Creek. That’s his grandson Oliver I told you about before, camps up in the woods behind my place in the summer and comes down from time to time to lend me a hand with the heavy work when it’s needed.” She shook her head and smiled. “He was a busy man, John was. Had him sixteen daughters, plus another from his wife’s first marriage.”
I remember thinking then that I couldn’t imagine sharing a bathroom with that many sisters, and nothing’s changed since.
After harvesting, Aunt Lillian carefully washed those “green” roots and air-dried them under a shaded lean-to by the barn that she kept just for that purpose. It took maybe a month for them to dry. If you tried to heat them or dry them in the sun, they lost their potency. Once the roots were dried, Aunt Lillian boxed them up and took them into town to sell, though she always kept a few for her own tinctures and medicines.
When I got to the patch, I set down my walking stick and took off my knapsack. First thing I did was have me a long swallow of water, then I pulled out the things I’d need before I could start digging. It wasn’t much. Smudgestick and matches. Dried tobacco leaves, rolled up and tied with red thread.
I was a little nervous, this being the first time I’d done this on my own, but by the time I was facing the last compass point, I was feeling, not so much confidence, but at peace. Everything seemed real quiet in the woods around me and I could sense a pressure in the air, pushing at me. Not like a wind, more like the air was leaning against me on all sides.
I laid down the last of the tobacco and picked up the smudgestick. Waving it slowly back and forth in front of me, I spoke through the smoke, talking to the spirits, honoring them the way Aunt Lillian taught me.
When I was done, I stuck the end of the smudgestick back into the ground and sat on my heels, drinking in the sensation that the prayers had left with me, this comforting feeling of being a part of something bigger than myself. I was still me, but whatever haunted this ‘sang patch was letting me feel part of it as well.
Finally I reached over to my knapsack to get out the little wooden trowel I’d brought.
And froze.
I hadn’t given much consideration to the little pile of sticks and moss and leaves that I’d set my knapsack down beside. But it was gone now and in its place was the strangest little creature I’d ever seen. It was a little man, I guess, if you can imagine a man that small, with roots for arms and legs, and mossy hair, skin brown as the dirt and wrinkled like cedar bark. He was maybe a foot long, dressed in some kind of mottled green and brown shirt that looked like it was made of leaves and belted at the waist. His head was heart-shaped, his features all sharp edges and angles.
He made a little moan and I started, suddenly aware that I hadn’t been breathing. His eyes fluttered open, then closed again, huge saucer-shaped eyes as dark as blackberries.
It was obvious that there was something wrong with him and it wasn’t hard to see what. He looked like he’d lost an argument with a porcupine as there were hundreds of little quills sticking out of his skin. I leaned closer to look at them and realized they were arrows. Tiny arrows.
I looked quickly around, expecting at any minute to be ambushed myself by a horde of little creatures with bows and arrows, but the ‘sang patch was still. The little rootman and I had it to ourselves.
His eyes fluttered open again. This time they stayed open and I didn’t flinch back.
“Are … are you okay?” I asked. Stupid question. Of course he wasn’t okay. “Is there anything I can do to help you?”
“Arrows,” he said.
His voice was husky and lower in timbre than I was expecting from a man the size of a small raccoon.
“Lots of them,” I agreed.
“Need … out…”
I gave a slow nod. I could do that.
“Is it going to hurt you?” I asked.
“Not… as much as dying … from their venom …”
Great. Tiny poisoned arrows.
I pulled my knapsack over to me and took out the little pair of pliers I kept in it for when Root got himself a mouthful of porcupine quills. I hesitated for a moment, my hand hovering over a nearby twig, waiting for it to turn into a snake or who knows what. But it didn’t, so I picked it up and held it near his mouth.
“Bite on this,” I told him. “It’ll help with the pain.”
He made no response except to open his mouth. I swallowed quickly as I caught a glimpse of wicked looking teeth. When I put the stick in his mouth, I heard the wood crunch as he bit down on it.
I moved closer and put two fingers on either side of one of the tiny arrows, grasped its shaft with the pliers and pulled. He grunted and I heard the wood crunch again. I held the arrow up for a closer look. At least it wasn’t barbed, but the tiny heads were still going to hurt as I pulled them out.
He passed out again by the time I’d gotten a dozen or so out. I felt horrible for him, but at least it let me work more quickly. I didn’t have to wince in sympathy every time I pulled one out and saw the pain it caused him.
I counted the arrows as I got each one out and dropped them in a little pile on the ground by my knee. There were a hundred and thirty-seven in total.
Sitting back on my ankles, I reached forward and brushed some of the mossy hair from the little man’s brow.
“What can I do now?” I asked him. “Is there someplace I can take you?”
There was no response. He was still alive—I could tell that much by the faint rise and fall of his chest—but that was it.
I di
dn’t know what to do.
I assumed he had friends or family nearby, but though I called out for a while, no one answered. I soaked a bit of my sleeve with water from my drinking bottle and washed his brow.
I knew I couldn’t just leave him here.
“Hello! Hello!” I tried one last time.
Finally I made an envelope from a folded-up piece of paper torn from the journal Elsie was trying to get me to keep and carefully scooped the arrows into it, using a twig and the little wooden trowel I’d brought along to dig up the ‘sang roots. I put it and everything else in my knapsack and slipped my arms into the straps. Then, leaning my walking stick up against a beech where I’d be able to easily find it when I came back to actually harvest some ‘sang, I carefully picked up the little man and started back to Aunt Lillian’s.
It was a good two-hour’s hike from the ‘sang patch to Aunt Lillian’s. The return journey should have been quicker because more of it was downhill, but because of the little man, it ended up taking me a lot longer. I felt I had to be careful not to jostle him too much so I went slower than I normally would. Root would have gone mad at my pace. Every once in a while I stopped to make sure he was still breathing, then off I’d go again, wishing I was a crow and could fly straight back instead of tramping up one steep hill and down the other.
All in all, it was a disconcerting trip. I kept expecting an attack by whatever it was that had turned the little rootman into a pincushion. No matter how much I argued against it with myself, it made too much sense that his enemies would still be out here in the woods with us somewhere.
That was nerve-wracking all on its own, as you can imagine, but then from time to time, the little man would suddenly become nothing more than a heap of sticks and roots and whatnot in my arms. The first time it happened I pretty near dropped him. The bundle of twigs and leaves cried out—more at my tightening grip than the sudden movement, I guess—and then he returned, the bird’s nest of debris in my arms changing back into a little rootman.
“I’m sorry,” I said, but he’d already drifted off on me again.
It was kind of funny, if you think about it. For three years I’d been desperate to see one of the fairy people from those stories Aunt Lillian was always telling me. But now that I had, I couldn’t wait to get back to her house and be done with it. I just hoped she could figure a way out of this mess I’d found myself in, because I sensed that my troubles had just begun.
2
It was closer to supper than lunch by the time I finally crossed the stream and started up the hill to Aunt Lillian’s house.
“Oh, girl,” Aunt Lillian said as I pushed the kitchen door open with my hip and came in. “What have you got us mixed up in now?”
Root lunged up from the floor but I blocked him with my leg and laid the little man down on the kitchen table.
“It’s not like I did it on purpose,” I said.
Aunt Lillian took charge like I’d been hoping she would. She got a swallow or two of her tonic in between his lips and rubbed his throat to make sure it went down, then wrapped the little man in a blanket and put him in a basket near the stove. Root was exiled outside the second time he came sniffing up to the basket, hoping to get him a decent look at the rootman.
“Tell me what happened,” Aunt Lillian said.
We sat on either side of the basket while I explained how I’d come to be bringing the little man to her house in the first place.
“I didn’t know what else to do,” I said, finishing up. “I couldn’t just leave him there.”
Aunt Lillian had been studying the little man while I spoke. She looked up now.
“You did the right thing,” she said. Her lips twitched with a smile. “Do you know what you’ve got here, girl?”
I shook my head.
“A ‘sangman.”
“You mean he’s made of ‘sang?”
“No. I mean he’s one of the spirits we’ve been paying our respects to whenever we go harvesting. Looks like you finally got your wish and stepped into your own fairy story.”
“I never wanted anybody to get hurt,” I said.
Aunt Lillian nodded. “Guess there’s always got to be some hurt to get the story started. In my own case, I got snakebit.”
I knew that one by heart, how the snake bite led to her finally meeting the Apple Tree Man and all.
“Let’s have a look at those arrows,” Aunt Lillian said.
I fetched the makeshift envelope from my knapsack and carefully spilled the arrows onto the top of the kitchen table. Aunt Lillian lit a lantern and brought it over. It wasn’t dusk yet, but the sun was on the other side of the house, so it was dark enough to need it here. With a pair of tweezers, she picked up one of the arrows and studied it in the light.
“Lord knows I’m no expert,” she said, “but I’m guessing these are bee stings.”
I gave her a blank look.
“They’re also called fairy shots,” she explained. “These ones here are what the bee fairies use on their enemies. They don’t have stingers, so they can’t exactly sting the way their bees do.”
“He … the ‘sangman said they were poison.”
Aunt Lillian nodded. “I’m sure they are. And a lot more dangerous for the likes of me or you than to another fairy.”
“Do you think he’s going to die?”
“I don’t ‘spect so. If he’s still breathing after—how many of those arrows did you take out of him?”
“A hundred and thirty-seven.”
“I think he’ll pull through. I’m more worried about you.”
I gave her a startled look. “Why me?”
“Because you’ve done the one thing we’re never supposed to do with the fairies, girl. You’ve gone and stepped smack into the middle of one of their differences of opinion.”
“Was I supposed to leave him to die?”
“Not according to the ‘sangmen, I’d say. But the bee fairies’ll have a whole other take on the situation. They’re the ones we’ve got to worry about now.”
I didn’t want to think about that. I stood up.
“I’ve got to go,” I said. “Can I leave the ‘sangman with you?”
“You can’t go now,” Aunt Lillian said.
“But I never told Mama I was staying overnight and she’ll be worried.”
“Which do you ‘spect would trouble her more? To have you stay here tonight—which I’m guessing she’ll figure out pretty quick, even if she does feel like giving you a licking when you do get back home—or to have you dead?”
“De … dead … ?”
“Think about it, girl.”
“But bees don’t come out at night.”
“No, I don’t suppose they do. But we don’t know that bee fairies don’t. ‘Sides, I need you here for when we talk to the Apple Tree Man. We need advice from someone who’s got himself an inside track on such things.”
My eyes went big.
“We’re going to talk to the Apple Tree Man?”
Aunt Lillian smiled. “Well, we’re going to try.”
3
The sun had set by the time we left the house and went out into the orchard.
“No point us going out until after dark,” Aunt Lillian had said earlier. “Folks like the Apple Tree Man aren’t particularly partial to us seeing them in the daylight, don’t ask me why. So we might as well have us a bite to eat.”
There was a half moon coming up over the hill behind the house as we walked through the apple trees to the oldest one in the orchard. According to Aunt Lillian, this was the Apple Tree Man’s home. Unlike the other trees, she never trimmed this one. It grew in a rough tangle of gnarly limbs, surrounded by a thorn bush that was half the height of the tree. I’d wondered about it choking the Apple Man’s Tree but Aunt Lillian assured me that while we might not be able to tell the difference, he kept its growth in check.
I always like being out at night. There’s a quality to moon- and starlight that makes the commonplace
bigger than life, like you’re seeing everything for the first time, never mind how often you’ve seen it before. It was no different tonight, except for the added excitement of finally having me a look at this mysterious Apple Tree Man.
We’d brought a blanket with us and I spread it on the ground while Aunt Lillian had a one-sided conversation with the tree. Anybody watching us would have thought she was just as crazy as some folks already figured she was. I guess I might have had my own questions concerning the matter if I hadn’t found that little man in the ‘sang patch earlier in the day.
After a while Aunt Lillian sat down on the blanket beside me, slowly easing herself down.
“I guess he’s not coming,” I said when we’d been sitting there a time.
I didn’t know if I was disappointed or relieved.
“Maybe, maybe not,” Aunt Lillian said. “It’s been a while since we spoke. Could be he’s just mulling over what I told him.”
I wanted to ask if he really lived in the tree, if she’d really ever talked to him, but I’d always taken her stories the way she told them to me—matter-of-fact and true—and didn’t want to start in on questioning her now. ‘Sides, it wasn’t like I could pretend this kind of thing might not be real. Not after my own adventure.
“What are you going to do when you can’t stay here by yourself anymore?” I asked when we’d been sitting there awhile longer. “Where will you go?”
I was thinking of the coming winter. Looking back, I realized I’d been doing more and more work around the homestead this past summer. Not just the heavy work, but easy tasks as well. What was Aunt Lillian going to do now that I had to go back to school during the week and couldn’t come out here as often?
“I ‘spect I’ll go live with the Apple Tree Man—unless he’s moved away. Is that what’s happened?” she asked in a louder voice, directed at the tree. “Did you move away? Or do you just not have the time for an old friend anymore?”