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As the plain abruptly shifted into the forest and the stream he had been following disappeared into the dark undergrowth, Finn decided this would be a good place to stop. He unhitched the mule, Bartram, and let it graze while he looked over the place, peering out over the virgin landscape and grinning. The grass was tall, coming up to his knees in places, dotted with white and blue wildflowers, swaying gently in the cool wind below the sparsely clouded blue pane of the sky. It seemed to stretch on forever, flat and lovely and untouched. Rustling around in the back of his wagon, Finn pushed aside the half-emptied barrel of salt pork and found the shovel tied in a bundle with the other tools. Carefully, he cut back the turf and examined the soil. It was dark and crumbly, and as he reached down he found it just slightly moist, even though it had not rained in days. He glanced at the forest now, which so oddly began, dense and dark, right where the prairie stopped. The trees were tall and solid, red oaks almost twisted among each other, fighting for the light, cedar and fir, all good for logging or fuel.
Yes, this would do.
First he bent down at the stream and drank deeply. It was good – better by far than the stale slightly alcoholic water he had been lugging around. Then he took out his tools. He felled the first tree quickly. Then he cut down another, just for good measure. He had not used the axe much since he had begun his journey, so it was still sharp enough to cut soft wood like water. The second, smaller oak tree fell in just a few swings, laying down onto the prairies grass, defeated. Then he cut some of it up into pieces, split the pieces and stacked the logs into a pile for fire wood. Then, from the other, larger tree, he cut the rails for a split rail fence, laying them out as best he could in a rough circle around his wagon, enclosing Bartram the mule inside to protect him at least a little from whatever kinds of animals might roam the plains at night. It felt good to lay a barrier, a boundary, to cut a line into the virgin earth, to mark it, even if it wasn’t the most effective fencing. He got down his rifle too, just in case, leaving it leaning, easily accessible against the wheel of his wagon with a bullet in the chamber, ready to fire. Then, as the sun finally began to set, he made a little stack of logs, set up the iron contraption he used to hang his pans and pots over the heat and got out his tinderbox to light a fire. When it was finally burning, he made his dinner, cooking a slab of salt pork to a beautiful browned state and then following it with a generous dribble of cornmeal muddled in water to cook his johnny cakes in the rendered fat. He ate and for the first time in many days, he was happy with his lot. Keeping one eye open to watch Bartram, who had himself settled down to sleep, Finn finally let the stars in the inky, cloudless sky, lull him to sleep with the sound of the unseen crickets that may as well have been coming from them.
His rest did not last long. He awoke staring right into what he did not initially realize was a face. Then he sat up with a jolt and let out a scream too high pitched to be called masculine. The figure that had been leaning over him, almost pressing its face against his own, jumped back in just as much shock, some sort of amorphous straw cloak fanning out in the air, rustling loudly in the darkness.
They stared at each other for one silent moment.
“Leave.” said the figure. Its voice was deep but delicate. Finn’s hand stopped. He had reached for his rifle, but hesitated.
“Who are you?” Finn said. The figure shifted from foot to foot, steadying itself. It was wearing dry grass and leaves bound by vines around the waist, among other places, making it look more like a pile of dry vegetation than a human being, it facial features hidden completely under a heap of hay. But, no, it had spoken hadn’t it? It must be a human being, or else… a spirit.
“I am the spirit of this land. You have cut down the trees, you have brought your beast to eat at the grass. You will leave now. Or you will die.” said the figure, and as it said that, it raised a hand and somehow drew a flint-tipped arrow from the air, balancing it on its finger almost as it was hovering in the air. Magic. Finn had heard the rumor of it, but it had died out in civilized lands long, long ago.
“Do you own this land?” Finn said. He barely managed to speak the words, frozen in terror and awe.
“Leave!” said the figure, louder this time.
“I didn’t mean…” he said, his voice wavering.
“STOP TALKING! LEAVE!” said the figure. With a flick of its wrist, the arrow raced forward, propelled by nothing at all, whistling through the cool night air in a perfect line like a beam of light, to come to a stop, harmlessly, right in front of Finn’s face. In that same second, reacting to the sudden motion, Finn grabbed his rifle from where he had left it and without properly aiming, took a shot.
The crack of the shot rang out across the plains. Bartram awoke with a start and tried to push over the fence in his panic, without success. The figure did not move for a long moment, as if the shot had simply passed through, and a pang of terror struck Finn. What had he done? Did he really think he could shoot this thing, this spirit? Then the arrow fell from the air where it had been pinned and all the sudden, like a breath held, finally exhaled, the blood gushed from what must have been the thigh of the figure, staining its straw crimson and slowly, like a tree cut down, the figure fell to the grass. Finn dropped the rifle and rushed over to the figure, panicking.
He soon found that the spirit was a flesh and blood, a witch, or at least a woman. Her face, under the shaggy foliage, was covered in mud or charcoal, as was much of her skin, making her look like she had been shaped from the dirt itself. He hardly registered that as he parted the straw garments to expose the gunshot wound. With trembling hands he found it – a puncture in the flesh, exposing the muscle and the white fat. He saw the shot had gone clean through and the bone in the leg had somehow broken within, though it had not shattered, thank God. Finn panted heavily and ran back to the wagon. He found a candle and lit it. Then he tore a piece of the fabric covering from the wagon, doused it in moonshine, wrung it out with shaking hands to sterilize it and ran back to dress the wound, and try to stem the bleeding. The women groaned in pain as he examined the wound. Trying not to panic he steadied his hands and reached in with his finger, plucking a tiny, almost sand-grain sized shard of bone from the wound. He let the liquor pour into the wound for a moment, cleaning it and eliciting a moan of pain from the spirit. Then as he stuffed the fabric into the wound until the bleeding slowed, she grit her teeth and her breath came out harsh and haggard as he wound the rest of the fabric around her leg, trying his best to apply pressure to the wound.
“Stop.” she said.
“What?” he said. Her eyes opened, little pinpricks of perfect green in the dark haze of the straw and charcoal that darkened her features.
“GET YOUR HANDS OFF ME!” she screamed suddenly.
“Just let me finish…” Finn began.
“DON’T TOUCH ME!” she shrieked, her voice tearing at her throat, she thrashed around, trying to scratch at him with her fingernails, grasping to gouge eyes, tear hair, do anything to break his grasp and repel him. Finn tied the makeshift bandage.
“There!” he said.
“GET OFF!” she shouted and finally he did, backing away to allow her to try and get her bearings, panting, fighting off the pain. She began to try and stand.
“I wouldn’t, the bone is…” Finn began.
“Another word and I’m going to gut you.” she snarled. Finn almost apologized, but thankfully thought better of it.
She tried to get to her feet, but soon heeded the wisdom of his words and dropped to the ground, tears blooming in her green eyes from the pain.
“You...” she growled. Finn hung his head, trying to display his sorrow without saying a word. “Bring me a piece of that wood. The bone is…”
Finn pointed to his mouth.
“What?” the spirit said.
Finn made a hand gesture like talking.
“SPIT IT OUT!” the spirit shouted.
“The bullet just grazed the bone, it's not really broken, but you won’t be able to walk for a while.” he said.
“Maybe YOU wouldn’t be able to.” she said, and with strength that seemed impossible she wrenched herself from the ground, struggling and gasping and swearing quietly as she did so, standing up. She swayed slightly, woozy from the pain. Then she raised her hand and somehow conjured up another arrow. Before Finn could move, it shot out and impaled… his rifle. Somehow the arrow had gone through the metal and pinned it to the turf. “Now.” she said. She didn’t look as intimidating in the candlelight – he saw that she was much smaller than she looked in the straw drapery, just a little lady made big by bundles of dry grass. “Now, I’m going to kill you.”
“...You’re gonna need me?” Finn said vaguely.
“I doubt it.” She said, and she raised both her hands. A swarm of arrows encircled her, as if orbiting her in little rings, boiling and writhing like flies or snakes, darting in and out of the crowd, feathers and flint bristling like hairs on the back of a cat. Now, she looked awe inspiring. Now, she looked bigger than she really was.
“Well as far as I read in the old medical books you got lucky, you just might-”
“Lucky?” she said, her voice dripping with hemlock and nightshade.
“N-not lucky, but you’re probably going to survive, and you probably will be able to walk with a little limp, but only if you have someone to dress that wound, sterilize it and pick the little bone splinters out and all that…” he said. “And I’m betting you aren’t so sure about doing that yourself?”
“Maybe I have magic to heal me up.” the spirit said.
“Maybe you do.” Finn said awkwardly.
“Maybe I don’t care if I die right here. Maybe I’ll kill you and then lay down next to you.”
“Maybe you don’t.” Finn said. The arrows fell in a heap with a clatter, like birds shot down from the sky.
“You got lucky.” she echoed. Then her legs failed her and she collapsed back to the ground. Finn backed away. She panted raggedly and clutched at her leg. She grit her teeth and let out a strangled sob. Finally, she choked it down. Then, slowly, she crawled over to the woodpile. She took the longest bit of wood she could find and managed to haul herself up again, using it like a cane. Then she hobbled off on one leg.
“Where are you going?” Finn said.
“Home.” she said, slowly making her way towards the forest.
“But…” Finn said.
“I’ll be back. I’m not going to sleep with you nearby.” she said gruffly.
“Uh…”
“What?”
“Don’t get any mud in the wound, ok?” Finn said. The spirit said nothing. “Wait!”
“What?” She said,
“I’m Finn. And I’m really sorry. What's your name?”
“Really?” she said.
“I didn’t mean to… look, you just startled me is all and…”
“It's Huntress.” she said curtly. And then she disappeared into the woods.
Finn found Bartram huddled up against the back fence and comforted him.
- - -
The next day, Finn woke up early. He ate breakfast and tried to think of something to do. Unable to occupy himself with leisure, he attached the plow to Bartram and broke ground, cutting into the turf and watching it part under the blade like cut skin, turning over onto itself as it got out of the way, exposing the dark black earth within. He kept plowing, waiting to hit rocky or barren ground, but he never did. The fertile ground seemed to continue on forever. He shaped the land into neat rows with valleys between them. He made his way through nearly two acres before he was finally exhausted.
He checked the date. Fall was well in progress now – he was just in time to plant the wheat. Finn opened the barrel he had lugged so far along with the salt pork and the corn and took out a handful of wheat berries. He bent down and pressed it into the mounded rows he had made. It seemed to disappear into the earth, welcomed in. He sowed the whole field. Then he returned to his wagon and the fenced-in area where Bartram was grazing. He took a drink from the stream again and then had a thought. With his shovel, he cut a shallow canal from the stream to his field. He let the water trickle into the valleys between the mounded rows and let the water soak into the root zone without turning the seedpan to mud. Then he closed off the canal with a few shovelfuls of dirt, satisfied with his hard work. He had showed the stream how to do something it could not do on its own, how it could expend itself and spill across the furrows of the field and nourish the wheat, when it would have spilled on its own way forever without him. What was possible all along became manifest under his hands, like a sculptor finding a figure in a block of marble.
“What have you done?” someone said. He turned around to see Huntress. She had ditched the straw – now she was wrapped in a cape of leaves seemingly sewed together with some sort of vine fiber. Her face was visible now, he could see her lovely green eyes framed by the mud and charcoal she had surrounded them by and the strands of dirty red hair she let hang on either side. She narrowed her eyes, shifting her weight to the stick she was carrying.
“I’m planting my wheat,” he said. “Listen, I think we got off to a bad start, I really didn’t mean t-”
“Shut up.” she said. She looked down at the dark earth of the wheat field. “You know it took thousands of years for this soil to form, for the grass to grow and then die and grow and then die, slowly building out of the sand that once covered this land, this deep and fertile earth. And now you’ve gone and cut it up and ruined it. You make me sick.” she said.
“I’m just puttin’ it to use…” Finn said. “I mean, we’ve all got to eat? Its something the land can do, I just pushed it do so, plus, there’s plenty of land to go around here…”
“I said shut up.” She said. She walked over to the wagon and tore off a piece of cloth. “Now, you’re going to fix me up.”
“Well, I can’t ‘fix you up’ but I reckon I could change your bandages?” he said.
“...what do you want me to do?” Huntress said, avoiding meeting his eyes.
“Just, uh, sit down on that wood pile, will you?” Finn said. Huntress did. Then Finn tore off another bit of the covering from the wagon and again soaked it in moonshine, wrung it out and went to change the bandages. She grimaced but this time did not make a noise as he extracted the sodden cloth and replaced it with fresh cloth. The wound was blooming with pus and it smelled off. He decided not to comment on it, only giving it another cleaning with alcohol.
“I-it burns.” she muttered. “What is that stuff?”
“Alcohol? Like, fermented fruit or something, then distilled…”
“It's awful.” she said.
“Well, I mostly keep it for drinking sometimes, but it kills the little invisible things and that’s good for the wound… oh, you’re gonna want to bite onto something…” Finn said.
“Why?”
“There’s a little bit of bone I missed, won’t take but a second but it might hurt a bit…” he muttered. She frowned and closed her eyes.
“Just do it.” she said. He washed his hands with alcohol and then reached in and grabbed the little white shard with the tip of his nails. She carefully kept her face as straight as she could. Somehow, against himself, he found her fruitless determination not to let the pain show, her affectedness, a little cute. It was something she would never have done, something he’d made her do. Where did that thought come from? He extracted the little shard of bone and held it up to the light.
“There we are.” he said. She reached out and took the bit of bone from him and frowned. “You really ought to rest… are there any willow trees nearby?”
“What is a willow tree?” she said.
“It has branches that hang down in strands like…”
“Yes.” she said.
“Can you show me?” he said.
“Why?” she said.
“Willow bark, it can make tea, it’ll make it hurt a lot less if you…”
“You’re not going to chop it down.”
“Not chop it down, I mean just, peel some bark off of it…”
“I said no.” Huntress said.
“Oh. Ok.” Finn said. He wound the makeshift bandage around Huntress’s leg again. She pulled her garments over her leg in a hurry. “Do you want something to eat?” Finn said. “I got pork and corn and wheat and a few other things…”
“Why did you come here?” Huntress interrupted.
“No reason….?” Finn hazarded. Huntress glared at him. “Well, things were a little bit crowded back in the kingdom so I figured I’d wander a bit… find a place where the land wasn’t so cut up already, where the air wasn’t so full of smog, where the soil was still good and the water was still pure and nobody’d tilled it up yet…”
“So you came here to ruin it like your homeland?” Huntress said.
“No, no, I’m just trying to take a little piece for myself. Is that so bad? Everybody needs somewhere to live…” he said.
She didn’t reply for a long moment.
“Goodbye.” she spat and she grabbed her stick, hobbling off without another word.
- - -
The next day, Finn cut the wheat plot even bigger. He sowed and irrigated it, and watched closely to see if he could catch it sprouting. Finally he was satisfied – it would be enough to feed him for 3 years, even given a poor harvest, ensuring against the potential of crop failure. He still didn’t know exactly how much rain the plains got in the winter – he supposed he would have to see.
He decided to begin work on a cabin, right where he had set the wagon down. He began by cutting down more trees – big, tall, straight ones that reached into the sky – beautiful ones that seemed to yield so easily to the cutting, their wood hard but supple. He trimmed the branches off and then cut them into shorter pieces and began cutting saddle notches into them. Still, he struggled to move them, having to work alongside Bartram to pull them into place and lay them atop each other. It was harder still to lift them up, to roll them up the side of the wall he was constructing, pulling them with ropes and spikes until he had erected from the logs the base of a small, square box. He admired his work and decided to work on the daubing in advance, scything up some of the tall grass he mixed it with shovelfuls of river sediment and found it a basically suitable mortar, allowing him to plug up the gaps between the logs. He felt optimistic he could finish the house before winter.
“You cut down the trees.” Huntress said. He spun around to see her, now clad in mud and some sort of animal pelt, still leaning on her stick. She grimaced.
“Yeah. I don’t see how else I’m going to survive the winter.” he said.
“There is always warmth in the earth if you look.” she said.
“What?”
“Dig a pit. Lay down in it.” she said simply.
“No thanks.” he said.
“You’re a sickness.” she said.
“I don’t think so.” he said.
“It hurts more than before.” she said abruptly. “You’re killing me, aren’t you?”
“What? No! I’m trying to save you! Look, your body needs time to heal…” he said. She sat down on the wood pile and parted the pelt garment to show him the wound – now red and angry, swollen. Finn too grimaced.
“It's worse.” she said.
“It's getting infected. You… you need to keep it clean. You need to get clean.” he said. With less clothes on, he could see more of her skin, caked in dirt.
“I am clean.” she said.
“You’re covered in mud and grime. When’s the last time you’ve had a bath?” She glared. He realized she probably just waited for it to rain. “Well, you need one,” he said.
“If I do it, will I get better?” she said.
“I don’t know. Maybe. But if you don’t, you certainly won’t.”
She looked down.
- - -
“If you look at me, I’m going to tear your eyes out of your head.” Huntress said, sitting awkwardly in the stream. Finn had tied a bit of cloth over his eyes to appease her.
“Don’t worry. I can’t see a thing. Now, take this.” he said, offering her a bar of soap. It was tallow and lye, with a stamp on it – a wolf, the symbols of the kingdom. He waited for a minute for her response. There was none, just a little splishing and splashing. “You ok?” he said.
“Tastes awful.” she said.
“Don’t eat it!” he shouted.
“What?” she said.
“Its soap, not food! Rub it on your body, it’ll help you get clean.” he said. She took the bar out of her mouth and tried what he suggested. Next, he handed her a washcloth. “Now, scrub with this.” he said. She tried it.
“I don’t like how it feels.” she said.
“What?”
“My skin. It's raw.” she said.
“You’ll get used to it.” he said.
“Leave.” she said.
“What?”
“Leave me alone. I can do this myself.” she said.
“You just tried to eat the soap.”
“Leave.” she repeated, frowning as she scrubbed the mud, which had accumulated enough to form cracked earth like a dry river bed, from her arms.
“Fine! Just, remember to clean the wound too… and I left you some clothes on the bank.” he said.
“I have my own clothes.”
“I can’t have you wearing grass and animal pelts like a savage, alright? It's dirty.” Finn said. He left before she could object.
- -
He was appraising the sprouts of wheat when she finally arrived back to the area where he was building his cabin. They were rising up, apparently unaware of the coming winter, green and new, unlike the apparently perennial grasses of the plain which were slowly losing their lushness and fading to the yellow of straw. The field, the black earth, was giving its life into these sprouts, which dotted it in imperfect rows, stretching off in parallel lines to where the field ended. At first he didn’t hear her - like always, she seemed to be light on her feet even hobbled as she was.
She had donned his clothing and almost for the first time, she looked like a woman rather than a spirit. His shirt was too large on her, his trousers held on only by a thorough tightening of the belt, the legs dripping down over her bare feet. She glared at him, but the effect was lessened greatly by the first proper look at her face. She was ruddy and raw under the dirt, like a baby, her features scarred in places but fragile and girlish. The look she was giving him somehow inflamed him, the look of seething but resigned resentment, the expression of a wild horse that had been broken.
He blushed.
“You look nice,” he said. She threw the bar of soap at him. He managed to catch it.
“How will I hunt? There are no mushrooms, no berries, no nuts, in the winter.” she said. “The animals will see me.”
“Is that how you eat?”
“It is how all the beasts eat.”
“I don’t know. How will you hunt with your leg as it is?”
“I…” she said. “I thought it would get better before the winter came.”
“Not at this rate. I don’t know if it will ever be completely back to the way it was.” he said.
“I shall starve.” she said. She looked so small now, and her utterances seemed childish instead of enigmatic. Whatever mystery she had contained had been stripped away.
“Well,” he said. “Perhaps, I shall feed you?” he said.
“You will not.” she said, and he could almost feel the burning heat of her hatred at the suggestion.
“Then you shall starve.” he said.
“I will have my pride to eat.” she said, and she turned away from him, back towards the woods.
- - -
She came back only to have him care for the wound. It grew red and angry, spat out tiny bits of bone, giving the shards trapped within an exit. She did not speak to him much, just grit her teeth. One day, when her wound was no longer so grievous and seemed to be almost healed, she grabbed his liquor and tore a chunk of fabric from the wagon and finally stopped showing up. As suddenly as she arrived, she was gone from the scenery of his life.
The wheat had become a deep green and reached halfway to his knees. It was the only green left in the world, as the cold began to swallow up the grass. He hurried to finish his cabin - cutting down more and more trees until he finished it, dark and small though it may be, with the roof barely sloping for want of the equipment and the muscle to lift the logs, he needed it to survive. He had collected enough hay by scything down the prairie to get Bartram through the winter, though for the first few stages of the winter wheat he figured it was fine to let the Mule graze on it. He built Bartram a stable and insulated it as best he could. He had plenty of roughage. He need Bartram to survive the winter as well. Via a close accounting of his food stores discovered he had just enough for two winters himself. The next harvest would determine his fate. He watched the leaves fall day by day until one day, and the forest stood barren, allowing him to see the sky through what was usually its canopy.
Finally one day, it began to snow. He watched it drift down through the grayish sky. That was the day she finally returned.
She was still dressed in his clothing, though now far more worn and tattered than he could have imagined. She had accumulated new dirt, but not near as much as she once wore. She stood more steadily on her leg. It had finally healed, though as he predicted, it would never be quite the same. She limped. She had lost much of the dimension and color of her flesh - shrunken even further to a thin, starving figure.
“You came back.” he said, looking up from his field.
“Your grass. It is still green. How?” she said.
“It's wheat. You grow it in the autumn and it goes stagnant through the winter, living in a stasis. Then in the spring it gives it seeds and dies.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. I suppose it comes from some place which is so hot in the summer that it must avoid that season to survive.” he said. She scowled.
“You’ve brought here this plant which was never meant to be here, which hails from a different land.” she said.
“I suppose so. But don’t you think it is interesting, to make the land do something amazing, something it could never do on its own? To make it be something it always had the potential to be, but never had been?” he said.
“Maybe.” she said.
“Do you want something to eat?” he said. She looked at him for a long time but finally nodded.
He brought her inside his little cabin and started the fire. The chimney wasn’t the best, but it did vent most of the smoke. He cooked her corn mush and some salt pork and he did the same for himself. She watched him eat. Then, with her hands, she finally took a bite from what had been prepared for her. She ate quickly after that - the first bite had been the hardest.
“Stay with me.” Finn said. “You’ll freeze.”
“I suppose.” she said, finally yielding.
- - -
The winter grew darker and deeper. It seemed that it would never end. Though the wound on her leg had healed, leaving a deep cratered scar, she was weak. They burnt through his firewood. The snow was thin, not much of it fell, as if it was too cold to truly snow, depriving them of even the gift of moisture. What did fall became ice, thin and transparent and deathly. It became so cold that some of the trees burst in the night and the wolves could be seen stalking through the barren woods, searching for something to eat. Finn and Huntress ate through the corn, the pork, the wheat… he hoped desperately for spring. He built little campfires just to keep the chill off of Bartram, who had grown a long coat and grown lethargic. Finally, the ice melted in a brief thaw, but still the land was cold and now it was even drier, the soil drinking up the melt and then drying out - it was cold and it was dry, the stream reduced to a frigid trickle until it froze. The wheat went without the insulation of the snow, shriveling, ready to begin its growth but lacking the life-giving water and choked by the cold. He fed Huntress. He skipped meals himself. He gave her a spoonful of brandy in the still cold nights to warm her up. She slept at first on the floor, then with her head tucked into the crook of his neck for warmth, hogging his woolen blanket. When he came in with more firewood, having felled another tree of her forest, she at first protested but eventually she had become so weak and suffered such from the cold that he noticed in her eyes a guilty, shameful joy in seeing the trees cut, in anticipation of the warmth. He became desperate. He plotted out a route back to the city, but realized he did not have the supplies. Finally, Finn dug the holy book out of the back of his wagon.
He opened it to the page with Bonnibel on it, the lady of the spring, of sweetness, the Goddess of the morning and of fruit. The page was illuminated with illustrations of dripping syrup, berries, tarts, pies, apples. He had never really believed in gods or goddesses - he had never seen anything done except by the hand of man, but now he was ready to ask anyone who might be listening.
Huntress watched him light a candle and wave it in the way he had seen the priests do. She glanced at the open page of the book, the woman on it in her garish pink.
“Who is she?” she said.
“Bonnibel, the goddess. I am asking her to bring the rains.” Finn said. She stared at him. For the first time in a long time, he saw the anger in her eyes that used to be there always.
“You don’t need her. You have me.” she said, and she put her arms around him. He said nothing, but slowly he closed the book.
The next day, the sun came up and the rains arrived.
- - -
The wheat exploded into growth like a chorus, tillering outward, growing upward, putting on the biggest seedheads Finn had ever seen, its awns stretching up and out in every direction, wiry little bristles. Looking out over the bounty of the fertile land, the profit of the conquest, he could almost cry. The river grew fat with fresh, sparkling water. The trees went green and dark again and he cut down more of them, to build a bridge over the stream, to expand his cabin, to build a bigger stable for his mule. He made an oven out of clay bricks, ground the grain and cooked his first loaf of bread. It was good. He was so tired of johnny cakes. He took one bite and gave the rest to Huntress, he wanted her to taste the fruit of civilization, to understand the need for it. She scarfed it down.
He cut the land deeper, plowing the wheat straw into the earth, and he expanded his plot even more, turning up more turf, eating up more of the plain. Though her strength was still waning, Huntress went to pick the berries of the forest and brought them to him. He baked them into pies and her eyes went wide, her mouth dripping with the syrup of the blackberry, as she bit into it - the flavor she knew so well made into something nearly unrecognizable.
He decided to grow beans in the summer, cowpeas. They did well in the heat and drank up the rains eagerly. Huntress enjoyed them too.
One day when Finn was fetching water from the stream, he found a gold nugget buried in the sediment where the stream curved sharply. He took it out and carefully, with as much fine delicacy as he could manage, hammered it into a dull but still golden ring.
“Will you be my wife?” he said to Huntress and he gave her the ring. She took it from him and put it in her mouth, making a face. “It's for wearing on your finger,” he said. She put it on. Somehow it seemed a crime to obscure even a patch of her skin with metal.
“I suppose.” she said.
He braided her hair for her, made it look so beautiful and civilized he could hardly tell her savage origin. He cut the white fabric of his wagon into a white dress and he had her wear it. He made another, and another and dyed them colors, the blue of the sky plucked from the little pink flowered ferns that sprouted eagerly along the denuded edge of the forest, ruddy red wrestled from the rusty debris of the stream, night black coaxed from soot. He cut her a chair out of the wood of her forest to give her a place to sit and watch as he worked, turning the earth into food and the forest into timber. He taught her to read - though she did not seem to want to learn. He brought her all the good things he could imagine, but still, she declined. She slept more and more, though she ate, she lost weight and became pale. She was fallow, like a field without fertility, exhausted by cultivation.
He loved her. He gave her bundles of wild flowers. He ran his hands along the supple pale lengths of her arms, unspoiled by labor now, feeling the grooves of her scars. He loved her. He really did.
One day she called him into the cabin, laying still and quiet in his bed.
“Huntress?” he said.
“I think I’m dying.” she said.
“But why? I’ve healed you, I’ve fed you, I’ve bathed you and dressed you…” he said.
“Did you forget what I am?” she said. “I’m the spirit of this land. You can hardly nourish me on pieces of myself.” she said.
“What?” he said.
“I... love you, Finn. In a certain way. And I know you love me, in your odd, civilized manner. You love to see what I can become, to make me into something I would never be without you, to reveal in me the potentials that would have laid unexploited without your hand. But me, this land… you have used it up.” she said.
“It is still fertile!” he protested.
“The layer of black earth, that thousands of years laid upon the bedrock, will only last a few more harvests. Then you will have to cut deeper, cut wider, expand, move on, grow. That is the nature of you and your kind, you eaters of earth. I have come to see the charm in it, like I once saw the charm even of wolves and vultures, but do not pretend not to be what you are.” she said.
“You’re no spirit, you’re flesh and blood!” he said, kneeling down to her level.
“Can’t I be both?” she said. “Perhaps long ago all men were spirits, attached as they were to some little grove or prairie, only now with your city do you roam free like an rootless ghost, haunting nowhere and everywhere. But, this is my land. I will not outlive it.” she said.
“I’ll leave. I’ll go elsewhere.”
“It's too late for that now.”
"You could have told me. I would have left.” he said, jaw clenched.
“I wouldn’t be able to come with you.” she said simply.
“Oh.” he said.
When she died, she did not dissolve into mist or into wildflowers or anything so fancy. Whatever had been trickling out of her was drained down to the last drop, and she moved no more. He buried her by the wheat field, a few paces beyond its far edge where the wild grasses still grew tall. He wanted to build her a tomb, a temple, a pyramid, to destroy something precious and beautiful and grand for her - to slaughter a lamb, a bull in her name, to throw slaves down the grave after her, to burn the whole forest down. Instead, he merely cut the grass as delicately as he could in a rectangular sheet and lifted the turf in one unbroken piece. He laid her in her black earth, amid the hummus, wrapped in her straw, her hair a mess, and put the grass back on top of her, letting the wound in the prairie floor heal over, as if it had never been cut at all.