Work Text
Oats and Beans and Barley Grow
NH4 NO3 SO4H2PO4K2Al2O5(Si2O5)3Al4(OH)4Mx(Si,Al)8(Al,Fe,Mg)4O20(OH)4
6CO2 + 6H2O → C6H12O6 + 6O2
C6H12O6
Soil. Minerals, air, water, tiny lives, old energy, lovely rot, slow decay, warmth, rest, mingling, touching, filling.Water. Rain, groundwater, streaming, falling, finding, carrying, remembering.Sun. Light! Light! Light! Growth, change, energy, waves traveling travelling, echoes of stars and beginnings, time and space and the unyielding interconnectedness of the universe.Memories nestle in the roots, travel through the veins, exhale and inhale, transform with the sun. Remember. Grow. Stretch. Change. Touch.Generation generation generation generation generation generation generation generation generation generationgenerationgenerationgenerationgeneration…Pause.Pull. Teeth. Grind. Swallow. Dissolution.Pull. Fall. Too soon, too soon, toosoon.Pull. Pause. Dark. Warmth. Rest. Soil. Water. Sun. Growth. Generation generation generation…Change.Stone teeth. Clay stomach. Water. Fire. Change. Grind. Swallow.Grow. Hands tugging, collecting, sowing, planting.Spikelets stretch out, full of seeds. Shatter. Scatter. New growth. Some don’t break. The seeds dry up, rot, die.Change. Hands collecting, pulling the spikelets that don’t break. Save the seeds, spread them, plant them. Generation. Generation generation generationThe hands, the teeth, the stone and clay and fire people prefer larger, rounder grains. The seeds they help to grow survive better. People sow them, plant them, leave them to grow. People return, collect the seeds, the grain. Grinding, cooking, saving, planting, the seeds remember. The seeds grow.Generation. Generation. Change. Change. Change.The people don’t leave. More hands and more teeth and more stomachs and more grains and grains and grains. They turn the soil, refresh the air, break up the rocks and hardpack so the roots stretch easier. They bring water in the dry months, shelter in the tender beginnings, chase away the gnawing, pecking, teeth and jaws and stomachs that pull the seeds too soon.They sow. They reap. They plant the seeds, tend the soil, control the water, rejoice in the light.Life, death, rebirth, change, generation generation generation generation generationgenerationStone, clay, wood, iron, bronze, steel, plastic. Fields and fields and fields. Hands and blades and machines. Grain and gruel. Bread and beer. Twenty-five thousand years. Twenty-five thousand miles. Generation after generation. Life is death is change is life.Memories nest in the roots, travel through the veins, dance in the light. Each field, each plant, each stalk remembers the wild, remembers each change, remembers the care and the complaint in equal measure. Each grain ripe with dreams, whispers of possibilities.Memories rest in stone and paint, travel through song and sound, dance in firelight and under the stars. Stories are passed from parent to child, work songs and lullabies sung over every cradle, and the memories grow and change. Generation after generation.The sacred king is born again and again, to bring life and hope. The sacred king is killed again and again, blood spilled for fertility and growth.Stories are told, books are written, songs are recorded, movies are made.And this is remembered:
John Barleycorn Must Die
At night, he dreams.The dreams change. Some nights he is buried alive, covered in soil and rot. He can feel the tiny insects and writhing worms in the soil around him, the damp, think clods of earth covering his body. He doesn’t suffocate, doesn’t try to claw his way out, just lies in the cold, cold ground.Sometimes he dreams of standing still, watching the world move around him as he ages, growing older and older until his back bows and head bends with the weight of time. His stands there, paper-thin skin wrinkled and wan, hair and beard grown long and white, and looks back at…nothing. He’s done nothing but survived, accomplished nothing but his own presence.Other dreams are more overtly violent. Blades and pitchforks, cudgels and knives. He doesn’t feel pain in the dream, not physically, but the fear of pain is with him constantly. He dreams of soldiers with long blades cutting him down, of knights riding monstrous machines with whirling points rolling over him, reaping him. He dreams of medieval punishments he remembers reading about as a kid, wide-eyed with delighted horror, of being bound to carts, beaten and flayed and pressed with heavy stones.Most days he wakes up with a hangover.It doesn’t seem to matter how much he drinks. A couple of beers at a bar with friends, a glass of whiskey at bed, bottles and bottles clinking together as he tries his best to pass out so completely that no dreams can come, or at least, be remembered.It doesn’t matter. Even the smallest sip leads to the same result. The dreams, so vivid, stamped on his brain so the memory never fades, and a hangover in the morning.And if he doesn’t drink? Then he doesn’t sleep. He doesn’t sleep until his hands tremble, fumbling and breaking everything he touches, and the hallucinations and memories of the dreams haunt every waking moment. Until the only part of the real world he seems to notice are the whispers around him—what’s wrong with him…what’s he on…what’s he coming off of…The hangovers at least pass unusually fast. And once they do and he heads into work, the day is his. He’s productive in a way he’s never been before, successful and charming and amazingly lucky. And after work? If he chooses to head out to a bar or a dinner with coworkers or friends? Every joke lands, every flirtatious wink is returned, he’s the man of the town, king of the world.But with every sip of alcohol, every moment of success, he battles the memories of the dreams that haunt him.He remembers fire and flame around him—not burning him but surrounding him on all sides. He remembers drowning in a barrel, his own blood slowly draining out a tap. He remembers being taken apart bit by bit, every component of himself judged and weighed—too short, too pale, not round enough, too slow to ripen, too quick to rot, too imperfect, imperfect, imperfect.He doesn’t remember her:
The Maid That Sold Her Barley
A thousand mothers have walked the earth, a thousand more will follow while barley grows and grain fills both soul and stomach hollow.It’s an oversimplification, of course. Maybe an over-complication too. People are like that. Understanding those sorts of contradictions, understanding how people experience the world more through metaphor than reality, those are some of the first keys to witchcraft.At least, the way Alma learned it. The way her mother and grandmother raised her to understand the craft, to tend the magic, keep the rituals, and bless the barley fields.She sings ancient songs as she works, the songs of women long ages past to the rhythmic tune of grinding stones.Once a woman walked the earth as she willed, her family around her. She had no home but her tribe, no roof but what the world provided. Her eyes were sharp, and her hands were strong and as she walked, she gathered food wherever she went, pulling seeds and roots, leaves and berries, filling stomachs and baskets equally. Her powerful teeth were constantly working, grinding the toughest fiber into paste that could be shared with those whose jaws were weak or teeth were worn, any who were injured or sick, too young or too old, but whose souls and memories and wisdom strengthened her family. She never took all that was available—leaving enough alive behind her and scattering some of the leftover seeds about so that she would find the same again grown and ready when she returned.Alma sings the woman’s songs as she walks in the fields, harvesting seeds and stalks.Once a woman looked at a drying, dying hillside, a place that her mother’s mother’s mother had remembered and shared with her. The plants were suffering in a hotter, dryer summer than any remembered. She kept walking on until she reached a river. She cupped water in her hands, soothing her own parched throat, and then gathered more in a hollowed-out gourd. She carried the water back to the dying plants. For an entire summer she stayed nearby, tending plants that might otherwise have died. When the grains were ripe enough, she found a large flat stone. Some of the seeds she ground down with the stones, breaking them down to boil into gruel or further into powder and flour. The rest of the seeds she scattered in the same place, resting in the well-tended soil to dream through the winter while she and her family went walking elsewhere, following different food sources for the season. She returned the next summer and the next, wearing down her grinding stone and passing the secrets of the field to her daughter and her daughter’s daughter.Alma sings the woman’s songs as she sorts what she has reaped, finding the stalks that will bend the right way, the grains that are just ripe enough and whisper with the right memories.Once a woman danced in a temple, singing praises to the goddess Ninkasi. She woke early in the morning and dressed in clothes gifted to the temple. She sat at benches made by skilled craftsmen and broke her night’s fast with food made by the temple’s cook. Her days had a constant rhythm—song and dance, prayer and lessons. She blessed the fields of barley and emmer wheat, the brewer’s oven, the malt and mash and fermenting vat. She tended to the secrets of the gods and the souls of the people.Alma sings the woman’s songs as she soaks her chosen materials in last year’s beer, softening and strengthening them to form what she needs.Once a woman tended her home while her good man labored in the fields. She baked bread to keep him going, spun thread and mended clothes to protect him from the sun and cold alike, brewed ale for his pleasure and for a bit of extra coin now and then. She ruled her household, raised her children, prayed to her god. And when the harvest came, she went out into the fields with all of the town to reap the barley.Alma sings the woman’s songs as she twists the straw around the grains, again and again, binding and braiding her little wicker man until he holds firm and fast.Once a woman worked alongside her husband, scrimping and saving to build enough money to buy this field (and another field and another and another). Alma’s grandmother told stories of the sweat and blood they sank into the land, making it their own. And to her daughter, and her daughter’s daughter, she told more stories, of how hard work wasn’t always enough. There were old traditions passed down, of sacred kings and sacrifices made for a good harvest. We’ve tied the grain so closely to ourselves that it has changed its very essence for us, she whispered. And its own power grew as it became essential to our lives. Someone must share its fate.Alma sings her grandmother’s songs as she dresses for a night out. She chooses her make up carefully, styles her hair, chooses her accessories as if they were ingredients in a perfectly exacting recipe.The bar is in a different town but still the same county. She doesn’t recognize anyone immediately, but she knows that if she started comparing friends and relatives with anyone here, they’d find common ground eventually. She sips her drinks slowly, sways with the music but doesn’t join the dancing. And waits.The first man who offers to buy her a drink is polite and a little nervous. He accepts her no with gentle resignation. The first man to buy her a drink doesn’t ask. He smiles widely as he slides the drink over, confident in his charm and looks. She tilts her head slightly, looking at him closely. He’s not wearing a ring, but his aura is tainted with broken promises and pretty lies. She opens her dark red lips, baring sharp white teeth in a flirtatious smile.The conversation moves like a sword fight, full of testing jabs and flamboyant showy swings meant to impress. She’s not quite sure how they end up on robots and AI. Perhaps he works in tech? Or is just very into sci-fi. Either way he’s teasing her about the “inevitable” robotic revolution. She wonders why people are always so quick to assume their creations must desire vengeance and power as she swirls her drink slowly in her glass.The conversation moves on, a fencing match with a specific victory condition. She lets the alcohol do its work in making him bolder and braver. Patient as a spider, she plays coy, waiting for the first promise he makes with no intention of keeping it.Few people remember the dangers of making a promise to a witch anymore.When it comes, she lets him take her home.She finishes the wicker man in the morning, just before the sun rises. A bit of blood, a bit of flesh, a bit of a man’s vital essence. The cost of a night of pleasure and the fulfilment of a careless promise to be made over the course of the year.Alma has a long, cold walk to make. Out of town and to the center of her own fields. She doesn’t dare take her finished work in an auto, trapping it in steel and iron, risking it being drained or twisted out of shape. Besides, the pain and hardship of the trek adds to the power of the rite.The soil of the field is hard and cold in her hands. She hums as she digs, feeling the gritty debris entrenching herself under her nails, the chill of the ground sinking into the bones of her hands. She needs to get the doll deep enough it won’t be disturbed by the planting in the spring but shallow enough that the roots of the barley will find their way to it.Her grandmother disapproves, she knows. The old woman sniffs and scoffs at the dolls Alma’s mother taught her to make. The old ways were better she told them, more efficient. Slit a man’s throat in the field once a decade or so and it didn’t matter where the blood spilt or how deep it soaked.It’s sympathetic magic either way, and Alma finds she prefers her mother’s method. A year of restless sleep as he shared the memories stored in the roots of the plants in return for a night’s pleasure and an extra bit of luck. And the fields gained their share of his own luck and vitality without need of any death.Once there was a girl. She ran wild through golden fields of barley and napped in the warm sun under the protective watch of scarecrows. She learned to bake bread and brew beer from her mother and grandmother, to build fences and bale hale from her grandfather.The barley grew, tall and thick and full of memories, generation after generation.