Roots Turn Black
1406 Words
✦Dolly✦
By the next morning, I had convinced myself the seedling had been a mistake. A strange mistake. A terrifying mistake. But still a mistake. That was what I told myself while I brushed my teeth, tied my hair back, and ignored the way my hands still felt too cold. It was what I told myself when Elias asked why I was quiet over breakfast. It was what I told myself when my father watched me leave for Project Future, like he wanted to follow me. My mother had told him not to. I knew because they had argued in whispers near the kitchen. Whispers were pointless in our house. Everyone had excellent hearing, old magic, or anxiety.
Sometimes all three.
When I reached Project Future, Mila was already waiting near the greenhouse with two coffees and a face that said she hadn’t forgotten anything. She handed me one.
“For emotional support,” she said, and I smiled.
“Thank you,”
“It has extra sugar,”
“I’m not dying,” I remarked with a laugh. But Mila didn’t smile.
“No. But you did murder basil yesterday,”
“Mila,” I warned as I glanced around.
“What? The basil knows what happened,” I knew she was teasing me despite the lack of a smile or laugh. But still, it was unsettling. “What? Too soon?” and then she finally smiled.
“Yes, too soon,”
“Fine. I will wait until lunch,” she said, and despite myself, I laughed. For a few minutes, everything felt lighter. We checked the seedlings. We avoided the basil tray. We helped my mother count bags of seed stock and marked which compost pallets needed to be moved closer to the western greenhouse. Then my mother found the herbs. I heard her before I saw her.
“Dolly. Mila,” she called out. Her voice wasn’t loud. It didn’t need to be. Mila and I exchanged a look, then followed the sound to the smaller greenhouse near the herb rows. My mother stood beside the mint and rosemary beds with her arms folded. Three plants were dying. They weren’t dead, not yet. But their leaves had curled inward, and the stems had darkened at the base. It was black. My mouth went dry, and Mila moved closer to me until our shoulders touched. My mother crouched and touched the soil around the roots. “This wasn’t like this yesterday,” I said nothing. Mila said nothing. Which, for Mila, was basically a confession. My mother looked up slowly. “Do either of you know something?” I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. My mother then looked at Mila.
“One basil seedling died yesterday,” she blurted. My mother’s eyes snapped to mine. I hated the look in her eyes. It wasn’t anger. It wasn’t disappointment. It was worry. Why she was worried, I wasn’t sure. Why was she looking at me like that? I also wasn’t sure. “It turned black,” Mila added softly. “Dolly touched it, and it just…died,”
“Mila,” I whispered. She didn’t have to tell my mother that part.
“She needs to know,” Mila hissed. My mother stood.
“You should have told me,” she said. I didn’t say anything, and then I sighed softly.
“Yeah, I know,”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Because I didn’t want you to look at me like that,” I said, and her face softened, but I looked away before it could hurt more. She came closer.
“Like what?”
“Like I’m dangerous,” I admitted.
“Dolly—”
“Don’t say I’m not. We don’t know that anymore,” no one said a word, and the silence that followed hung heavily over the three of us. The sound of a truck door being slammed outside saved us from the weirdness of this conversation. Riven had arrived. I shouldn’t have felt relieved, but I did. My mother looked toward the yard, then back to me.
“We will test the soil. Water too. It could be contamination, fungus, bad fertilizer, anything,” she said.
“Right,” I whispered. But I didn’t believe that. Not really. The rest of the morning became a blur of careful movements and forced normality. My mother took soil samples. Mila hovered. I tried to help without touching anything alive. That was harder than it should have been. Eventually, my mother sent me to the second storage shed to check the irrigation connectors Gavin had ordered. Riven was already there, sorting through pipe fittings. I stopped at the entrance. I hadn’t expected him to still be here. He looked up when he heard me.
“Dolly,” again, there was something in his tone whenever he said my name.
“Ah…I’m just here for the inventory sheet,” I said. Riven glanced at the clipboard that had been left on the crate. He grabbed it and held it out to me. I walked closer, even though I didn’t want to get too close to him. His gaze dropped to my hands as I took the clipboard from him. “What?”
“Nothing,”
“That didn’t look like nothing,” I argued.
“You don’t like being watched,”
“That’s an interesting thing for you to say,” I snorted, and his gaze met mine.
“Why? Because of the festival?”
“The staring,” I corrected.
“You noticed,”
“Well, it was hard not to,” I shot back. He leaned back against the crate, too relaxed for someone who had made my entire family suspicious.
“You looked scared,” he said, and what a strange thing to say. He didn’t know me. And yet, he had been able to pick up on my fear within a crowd at the festival. Was he human?
“I wasn’t,” I lied.
“That’s a lie,” I wasn’t even surprised that he called me out on it.
“You don’t know me,”
“No,” he agreed. “But everyone around here seems to watch you like you might break,”
“No, they don’t,”
“Yeah, they do,”
“They love me,” I stated, and he nodded.
“Well, I never said they don’t,” his words made me pause as I continued to stare at him. For a moment, neither of us moved. I could hear Mila talking to one of the workers outside. I could hear the others moving around, doing their work. But Riven and I were suddenly too close, and I had this strange urge to reach out and touch him.
What the hell?
“Have you always lived here?” he asked.
“Yes,”
“Born here?”
“Yes,”
“Really?”
“Yes, really. Not that it is any of your business,” Riven was starting to get on my nerves, and that urge to touch him disappeared. “Why are you here?” I asked.
“I’m just passing through,”
“Through Skaydal?”
“Yes,” he answered, and I spotted how his thumb brushed over the black ring on his finger. It was such a small movement, but I noticed it immediately. “I go where I need to,” I stared at him as I took a step back. Suddenly, the need to put distance between us was strong.
“That sounds rehearsed,”
“Does it?” he shot back. I didn’t answer. The darkness inside me shifted again. Quiet but awake. It was almost as if it was watching him with me. I hated it. I stepped around him and headed for the door.
“Stay away from me,” I warned.
“If that’s what you want,”
“It is,” but my voice didn’t sound as strong as I needed it to. I walked out of the shed before he could say anything more. My skin felt too tight, and my hands were cold again. I crossed toward the tomato greenhouse, desperate for air, space, anything that didn’t feel like Riven Crowe. Then I stopped. The soil beneath the tomato rows was no longer brown.
It was black.
And every plant rooted inside it had died.
✦✦✦
- Writer
