Nobody Can Say It's You

58

Estill was looking out the window at her garden, not her vegetable garden, but her special one. She could hardly wait until spring came. She was already planning what to add next. 

The belladonna she'd grown from seeds last year had done wonderfully well. She'd sewn the seed early in flats and nurtured them. They'd grown over a foot and a half and had the loveliest blooms she'd ever seen by last September. She looked at jars of dried belladonna on her shelf and smiled.

She wanted as much variety as possible. She'd planted poppies, coleus, daturas, fennel, henbane, oleanders, hydrangeas, and night-blooming jessamine. This year she'd add Madagascar periwinkle.

She'd saved some morning glory seeds, although her special garden was always full of wonderful blooms. She'd made the mistake buying some morning glory seeds that had been treated with insecticide. 

Of course, she'd failed to read the package. She'd started vomiting and had diarrhea when she'd eaten some of the seeds. Too late, Estill had learned some companies treated their seeds with fungicides and other toxins to discourage their use as hallucinogens.

She hoped Dougal heeded her warnings. These seeds could be deadly or permanently damage his mind. But Dougal was so strong-willed. It was a constant worry for Estill. Dougal was a young man, and if he did not heed her warnings, it was his own fault.

She'd had much success growing passionflower in her garden. Before the frost last fall, she'd been able to cut down whole vines and dried lots of the herb. But it was a perennial, and Estill looked forward to seeing the vine with its white flowers gracing her hallucinogenic garden again.

Estill would have loved to have been able to grow a few acres of tobacco. Uncured tobacco, Estill knew, was powerful. You could pass out after smoking only one cigarette. She'd warned Dougal over and over again because he'd be more likely to die smoking this type of tobacco than become addicted to it, but he liked to use it to talk to the deities.

She had always had a large vegetable garden, but when she'd decided to start her special garden over two decades ago, she'd picked a place on her land that afforded her many different kinds of growing areas. There was a stream and full sun and shade. 

If a certain plant preferred a certain kind of soil, Estill added whatever was needed to accommodate her plants. And she encouraged the "good"' weeds like pokeweed, rhododendron, skunk cabbage, Virginia creeper, lily of the valley, poison ivy, bloodroot, daffodils, trailing wolfsbane, and stinging nettles to grow with abandon.

All of these plants were poisonous and were welcomed to thrive in her dark, special garden. She could use their bulbs, roots, leaves, stems, and flowers in various potions and hexes for the knowledge in her sacred book gave her the ability to cook up or dry a cornucopia of evil.

She'd built a large outbuilding to store her herbs and, using her sacred book, now had a large store of dried herbs, ointments, and salves for a multitude of uses. Utilizing belladonna and the products harvested from her poppies, Estill could induce twilight sleep. How many nights had she used it to treat her insomnia?

***

She remembered when Dougal first became interested in her life's work. She'd wanted to beat that little stinker's tail for stealing her sacred book. She smiled. It was just after puberty had turned her little boy into a man. He'd become obsessed with the Elanor twin. That Chandra was nothing but trouble. With a capital 'T.'

She was smart, Estill knew from talking to her, but it seemed she only had one thing on her mind and that was s-e-x. Estill had worked like the devil to keep that girl from getting pregnant by her son. How much of her energy had she wasted on that project? Hexes, charms, and all kinds of curses and spells.

And all her hard work had been successful. No babies in all the time Dougal had been going with Chandra. Estill was good at her kind of magic. 

It would have been nice if she'd been gifted with second sight, though. Being able to see the future would have been something she could have put to her own good use. But you didn't get a whole cup of anything in life.

***

The book had been gone for more than six months. Dougal denied taking it, but Estill could guess what he'd wanted it for. Love charms and potions to make that twin be his forever.

He'd taken it a few times over the years, but only for much shorter periods. She knew about those times. He'd either admitted to "borrowing" it or she'd caught him with it. Oh, well, Estill thought. It was good he showed an interest even if she'd had to go without her sacred instructions for a while.

It looked like Dougal had been busy again. The door to her work shed had been tampered with and some of the herbs had been moved around on her shelves. She was certain some of them were missing. At least, the sacred book was over in the corner on its little stand.

She wandered over to the book and flipped a page.

"Oh," she muttered, "exactly what I need!"