The Scattering: Chapter 10 - The Pigtail Monster

The Scattering: Chapter 10 - The Pigtail Monster. by Eva Marie Woywod and friends -Dedicated to Mom

The roses have done their work in Lilith’s Garden.

The frost is gone, burned away by scent and defiance.

Now the hour turns.

Above the broken iron gate, the sky itself leans in to listen.

Therese lifts her face (small, fierce, luminous) and speaks the single word that sets the world spinning again:

“Go.”

And everything moves at once.

The battalion of birds rises like a second dawn.

Snow owls first, wings wide as cathedral doors, eyes molten gold.

Doves follow, soft thunder of olive and grey.

Pigeons bring up the rear, iridescent and fearless, the ones who have already survived every city that tried to kill hope.

They do not scatter blindly.

Every wingbeat has a destination.

Lior stands at the northern edge of the garden, silver braid now threaded with owl feathers and a single scarlet petal.

He presses two fingers to his lips, kisses them, touches the nearest rose.

Then he is running (barefoot, laughing, older than his years and younger than sunrise) toward the lake road that leads to every forgotten reservation, every northern town where children still vanish into systems that do not love them.

Asha is already gone south, boots stitched from Magdalene’s cloak flashing crimson and indigo as she leaps onto the back of a horse made of warm wind.

Her path is the long highway of shelters and border walls, every place where brown and black and refugee children are told they do not belong.

Berta remains in the center, flour still on her apron, eyes sharp as the spoon she once sharpened into a blade.

She lifts one hand and the fae come (thousands of them, no longer tiny lanterns but arrows of living starlight).

They swirl around her like a storm of laughter and teeth.

Berta points east, west, every direction at once.

“Every kitchen window,” she says, voice rolling like thunder over bread dough.

“Every cracked sidewalk.

Every bedroom where a child is learning to flinch.

Go.”

The fae vanish in streaks of gold and violet, carrying rose-petal messages small enough to slip through keyholes.

The gnomes do not fly.

They sink.

One moment they are standing among the roses, mossy beards glowing, moonlight knives sheathed.

The next, the earth opens like a grandmother’s arms and they are gone (tunnels older than exile, older than shame, older than every law that said some children are disposable).

They travel beneath (shortcuts carved by root and memory), popping up in city parks, under bridges, inside the walls of institutions where the lights never quite reach the corners.

Every gnome carries a single glowing rose-hip in his beard.

Every rose-hip is a promise:

We see you.

We are coming.

You are not for sale.

Above, the birds divide the sky into rivers of mercy.

Owls over the rural dark.

Doves over the suburbs that look away.

Pigeons over the cities that never sleep and never weep.

Petals fall like slow, deliberate snow (scarlet, indigo, white edged in fire).

Wherever they land, a child wakes without knowing why and feels, for the first time in years, that the night is not stronger.

Back in the garden, Therese and Rita stand alone among the roses that refuse to sleep.

Therese brushes dirt from her hands and smiles at the empty sky.

“They used to say the revolution would not be gentle,” she whispers.

Rita’s scarred forehead catches the first real light of morning.

The wound no longer bleeds.

“It isn’t,” she answers.

“But it smells like roses.”

Far away, hooves thunder.

Wings beat.

Tunnels sing.

The scattering has begun.

They do not come empty-handed.

The battalion does not only carry petals and the word ENOUGH. They carry what every child has been starving for without knowing the name.

Lior runs the northern roads, silver braid now thick with owl feathers (soft, silent, warm as breath). Wherever he stops (a trailer with broken windows, a group home that smells of bleach and despair), he reaches into the pouch at his hip and pulls out a doll no bigger than a child’s hand.

Each doll is stitched from quilt scraps and owl down, button eyes made from rose-hips that still glow faintly. Every doll is different: some have yarn braids, some tiny wings, some scars sewn in scarlet thread so no child ever again believes they must hide their hurt. Lior places one in every trembling palm and whispers, “This one was afraid once. Now she guards you.”

The fear leaves like frost under sudden sun.

Asha rides south on wind that smells of cedar and kitchen smoke. At every shelter, every tent city, every roadside where small bodies curl against cold, she kneels and opens a cast-iron skillet that never cools. Potato pancakes sizzle (golden, crisp, smelling of Berta’s kitchen on the best day of the world). Wurst appears beside them, fat and spiced, the kind that says you are worth feeding. She serves on paper plates that turn into doves the moment they are empty and fly away to find the next hungry child.

No stomach grumbles unanswered tonight.

Above them all, the owls drift lower, lower, until great wings brush rooftops. From every primary feather falls a single silver strand (soft as care itself). The strands settle on pillows, on bare mattresses, on the inside of closets where children still hide. Wherever a strand lands, the dark loses its teeth. Nightmares forget their lines. A child turns over, sighs once, and sleeps the sleep of the completely, utterly safe.

And over every doorway, every cracked window, every chain-link fence topped with razor wire, Mother Mary appears (not once, but twice, and somehow one).

First as the Immaculate, blue mantle soft as forgiveness, pressing her lips to a fevered forehead. Then as the Magdalene, scarlet cloak warm as blood that refuses to stay spilt, gathering the ones who were told they were broken beyond repair.

Both Marys. One heart.

They leave no child untouched.

Some feel cool fingers smoothing hair and hear, “You are mine, and I have never stopped looking for you.” Others feel warm arms that smell of myrrh and city dust saying, “I know every name they called you. None of them stuck.”

By the time the moon begins to pale, the gifts are delivered.

Dolls clutched to every chest. Bellies full of potato pancakes and wurst that tasted like home before home was taken. Silver strands woven into dreams. Two Marys (one Mary) standing watch until dawn.

The battalion circles once more, lighter now, quieter.

They have done their work.

Somewhere a child wakes holding a doll that looks exactly like the fear she finally laid down. Somewhere a little boy licks potato grease from his fingers and realizes hunger no longer owns him. Somewhere a girl touches the silver strand tangled in her hair and understands, for the first time, that care can be soft and still unbreakable.

And everywhere (everywhere) the scent of roses lingers, mixed now with cedar smoke, warm bread, and the unmistakable perfume of a mother who has come back for her own.

The owls bank north to find Lior. The doves drift south to Asha. The pigeons head for Berta’s kitchen where the skillet still waits.

They leave behind a country full of sleeping children who no longer need to be brave tonight.

Because bravery has come to them instead, wearing owl feathers, carrying dolls, smelling of potato pancakes and unbreakable love.

Sleep deep, little ones.

Mother Mary (Sacred and Scarlet) is on duty. The warriors are fed. The dolls are keeping watch.

And every fear you ever had has been tucked into bed with a kiss on the forehead and a silver strand of care.

_____