Lilith's Garden: Chapter 9 - The Pigtail Monster

     

               Lilith's Garden: Chapter 9 - The Pigtail Monster              by Eva Marie Woywod and friends - Dedicated to Mom

Lilith’s Garden lies a little deeper in the forest than most living feet have ever walked.

The warriors thundered away hours ago (scarlet cloaks, blue cloaks, quilt-banners snapping like war flags), and the echo of their hooves has finally settled into the earth.

All that remains is the hush of frost and the low breathing of trees preparing to dream.

Therese and Rita come at twilight, carrying nothing but a basket of dried petals and a quiet that feels like prayer.

This patch of ground once belonged to Lilith (first wife, first exile, first woman who refused to lie beneath).

The Church called it cursed.

The grandmothers called it waiting.

In spring, Therese had knelt here alone and scattered the last of her Carmelite roses.

They should have died with the first hard frost.

They did not.

Now, in the silver half-light, the two saints step through the broken iron gate and stop.

Roses.

Not the polite, tame kind.  These are riotous, defiant, blooming straight out of frozen soil as though winter is an insult they refuse to acknowledge.

Some petals are the color of fresh blood, others the deep indigo of Mary’s mantle at the hour of crucifixion. A few are pure white edged in fire.

Their scent is so thick it has weight (heady, impossible, alive).

Therese laughs once, soft, delighted, the laugh of a girl who spent nine years in a convent and still never lost her wonder.

Rita (who has carried a bleeding wound in her forehead for five centuries) inhales and feels the thorn throb once, then ease.They set to work anyway (old habit).

Rita gathers the fallen leaves and broken stems, clearing space for whatever winter wants to teach.

Therese hums, tucking the weakest canes under a blanket of mulch like children being put to bed.

That is when the gnomes arrive. They come out from beneath the roots and behind the stones (small, earth-dark, bearded in moss and starlight).

Once they were the scary kind: bridge-trolls, child-stealers, the reason mothers warned little ones to come home before dark. Tonight they are something else entirely.

One carries a tiny lantern made from an acorn cap and a firefly that volunteered.

Another has a wheelbarrow no bigger than a teacup, filled with rose-hips glowing like coals.

A third (the eldest, beard white as frost) bows so low his nose brushes the dirt.

“We were told,” he rumbles, voice like stones learning to be gentle, “that the war is on, and the roses refuse to sleep. We have come to stand guard.”

Therese’s eyes shine. Rita’s scarred hand rests on the gate, and for the first time in centuries the wound does not hurt. The gnomes set to work beside them (quiet, thorough, reverent).

They prune with knives carved from moonlight. They sing (low, rolling songs in a language older than exile) while they heap compost rich with grandmother magic around each root.

By the time the moon climbs high enough to look over the treetops, the garden is ready for whatever winter thinks it can do. The roses only bloom brighter. Therese scatters the last handful of dried petals across the soil. Where they fall, new buds swell instantly (scarlet, indigo, white edged in fire).

Rita closes the gate, but she does not latch it. “Let them come,” she says (voice steady, terrible with mercy). “Let every lost thing that still believes itself monstrous find its way here.

The roses are awake.

The gnomes are no longer afraid of their own shadows. And Lilith (wherever she walks tonight) can smell her garden laughing at the frost.” A gnome tugs gently at Therese’s hem, offers her a single perfect rose the color of dawn on snow. She takes it. She tucks it behind the gnome’s ear instead.

Then the two saints (Little Flower and Impossible Hope) stand shoulder to shoulder with a dozen earth-scented gnomes and watch the roses burn winter to the ground, one defiant petal at a time.

Somewhere beyond the trees, the warriors ride on.

Here, in Lilith’s Garden, the real revolution has already begun:

Even the monsters have come home

and learned how to tend roses and for just one purpose -

The Children. 

Our Children. 

They are not for sale. 

Their hearts beat the great I Am. 

Sleep Child. 

You are protected.

The Roses Bloomed. 

________

This Chapter Dedicated to -

The Roses -

It was just a handful of years after my Grandmother Bertha died that on cold winter nights, in the wee hours of the morning, my friends and I would come home after a night out and even though the snow was thick and covered in ice, you could still get a whiff of Grandma's roses before entering the warmth of home. True story- that lingering scent stopped us in our tracks more than one night. 

I always felt it was Grandma letting me know she was keeping guard, still.