Sorrel

by: Lena Embry

Her parents tried for years to get pregnant. None of the few children they conceived ever made it beyond the hostile womb, so after a time they decided to try something else. They begged their widowed neighbor, Gothel, who was well-known for her potent herbal remedies that often fixed what a doctor couldn’t, to be their surrogate. Gothel agreed, happy to have a chance with another baby after losing her own. Her husband and young child had died of a feverish sickness her herbs couldn’t cure, and it left Gothel with an empty heart. But she never stopped dreaming of having a family, often treating the children of the village like her own. Her singular wish to the hopeless couple was that she be a major part of their child’s life. The desperate pair agreed, if only to appease her. As Gothel carried the fetus, she continued tending to her lush garden, mixing herself various meals from her fresh produce. Often she found herself craving an old variant of lettuce, rapunzel, with a hearty tea of sorrel and ginger. Gothel decided she would name the child after one of these plants, since they sustained her throughout her difficult pregnancy. 

Sorrel was born late in the summer, so close to the Autumnal cleansing that the older, more superstitious residents claimed her birth brought terrible things to the community. Gothel paid heed to their worries, and ensured she fed the girl herbs that would bring her a healthy life, even giving her teas of rare and mystical plants that Gothel hoped would protect her from sicknesses. 

The biological parents were far less worried about the old folks’ claims, and far more worried about Gothel’s growing closeness to what was supposed to be theirs. Sorrel would be happily playing in Gothel’s garden when her parents would snatch their daughter away and lock her inside their weathered cottage surrounded by dying grass. Frequently the couple attempted to gain her interest in their area of expertise as butchers. But the little girl hated seeing her precious animals slaughtered, and never took her eyes away from the outdoors. This earned her many lashes as her parents tried to force her attention on them. 

Most days Sorrel had an allotted amount of time with Gothel, since the couple feared the older woman, but gradually the time Sorrel was meant to spend with Gothel became shorter and shorter. Sometimes Sorrel would be locked up in her room all day. Or at least, until she paid her parents some attention, which she staunchly refused. Days like those Sorrel would wave to Gothel from her window, the young girl’s hair glittering like wild buttercups in the sun. Whenever Sorrel was separated from Gothel, she tried her best to remember the old woman’s scent. Lemon-sage, wisteria, peppermint. The first plants Sorrel learned to recognize by smell and leaf. 

Sorrel kept her lashings a secret from Gothel as long as possible, scared her parents might do something drastic if their violence was discovered. But when she reached seven years of age, a particularly long lashing made her terribly late for her weekly tea-time with Gothel. Worried, Gothel came to find her. When the older woman came upon the scene, she fell into a furious fight with Sorrel’s parents. Even though Gothel was outnumbered and quickly overpowered, she threw a handful of carefully powdered herbs that half-blinded all three of the adults, barely missing Sorrel. 

In the seconds of peace that followed, Gothel took a crying Sorrel in her arms and they escaped through her garden into the woods. Gothel pulled a glowing lily from a small bush and gave it to Sorrel to calm her tears. The delicate plant soothed the ache of Sorrel’s wounds as the pair delved deep into the green woods. But their freedom only lasted a few minutes. Soon the parents caught up to them. With Gothel as half-blind as they were, she hadn’t made it very far, and the couple had only to follow the bright light of the glowing plant to find them. 

They beat Gothel to the ground and took their daughter from her arms, the delicate lily crumbling onto the forest floor. Sorrel screamed at them to let her stay with Gothel, but they ignored her, taking her straight to the village elders to appeal for justice. The couple claimed Gothel had bewitched their child and cursed them with blindness when they wouldn’t give her Sorrel. The elders, much to the couple’s dismay, sided with Gothel, whom they had far more respect for. The raging couple was ordered to leave at once. But Sorrel, the elders said, was to be left in Gothel’s care. 

The parents begged for one more night with their daughter, and it was resentfully granted. A new black moon barely lit the world as Gothel slept in Sorrel’s room to watch her. The girl’s parents did not sleep that night, but instead slowly and carefully uprooted every plant in Gothel’s garden. The sky reached its darkest when they were done, and the garden had been reduced to mud and trampled leaves. Now that they believed Gothel to be sufficiently weakened, the couple quietly gagged and bound Gothel as well as their daughter before fleeing with Sorrel through the woods, trailing dead leaves behind them. 

They settled into a grim grey stone hut surrounded by dead twisting woods and brown grass. It was the only place they could find on such short notice, and Sorrel was kept locked away as much as they could manage. She often tried escaping through her window, though she never made it far, and eventually her room was moved to the dirt-carved basement. Sorrel could tell the earth around her was dead, and she cried herself to sleep as she dreamed about the green of Gothel’s beautiful garden. 

Slowly, over many months within the basement, her memories of Gothel began to fade as she was distanced from any green earth. Many times, she lay sick with an unknown illness, tossing and turning with an unbreakable fever. Tried as her parents might by sending for doctors, avoiding herbal remedies completely, the sickness never went away for long. 

Between long periods of sickness that weakened Sorrel’s constitution, her parents continued their efforts to engage her with their butcher work. They even put their work in the basement with her, so she had nothing else to do but watch them. Over the years Sorrel gradually learned how to appease them and was soon allowed to roam around the property. Always within sight of the house. Finally, her illness lifted enough to let her walk for long periods of time. As happy as she was to be outside, she found little comfort in the tough wild plants. Bracken, clover, butterfly weed. But she found they were extremely helpful in starting her own little garden. She found a tiny plot hidden from the house by trees, where she began her personal study of plants. 

Several years passed, and Sorrel gradually regained more health the more she tended to her garden. When her fever had been gone for longer than a year, Sorrel’s parents decided she needed some proper schooling, and taught her how to read and write. Sorrel took to it with a vigor and begged for books so she could learn more about the world. Her parents grudgingly obliged, buying her as many dull books as they could find to try and control what she learned. But Sorrel was undeterred and fell into learning everything she could from what she had. Days passed where she hardly left her garden, making notes on whatever paper she could find while she tested planting and foraging methods. Often she would compose long letters using the pages of books to a friend she couldn’t remember, usually with drawings of different plants she missed or dreamed about. 

She never showed the letters to her parents but would often find the papers disturbed in their box, and knew they had been read. One night, after a long day of study in her garden, Sorrel came into the house and witnessed her parents burning the letters in the small hearth. Smoke billowed around the room. The old chimney was mostly clogged. She was devastated at the sight of her dreams being burned to ash, and with her most recent letter in hand, she ran into the black of night through the woods, desperate for comfort from the sparse wildflowers. 

The light of the full moon guided her further into the trees, and at length Sorrel stumbled upon a beautiful glowing flower bush. It was something she knew she hadn’t seen before, but its glow felt oddly familiar. The pale blue flowers were giant lilies made of a glowing gossamer, and the leaves were a silvery white that sounded like sweet pieces of glass in the night breeze. 

  She bent down close and caressed one of the flowers. As her fingers met the soft petals, the entire flower fell off the stem. At first Sorrel panicked, thinking she had ruined the beauty of the bush, but another immediately sprang up from the empty stem. In awe, she picked up the fallen flower to admire it, idly comparing its large size to that of the letter she had carried with her. As soon as the letter’s weight touched the delicate flower, the paper was swallowed. Glowing petals wrapped around rough paper as the flower shimmered even brighter. In a flash of blue light, the flower and the letter vanished.  

Sorrel returned home that night in a daze, following a whispering trail of blue light. She woke the next morning feeling the best she had since childhood, with more energy and focus to dedicate to her plants. Her parents noticed the change, and renewed their efforts to gain her attention, which resulted in Sorrel being forced to sit and watch them work for hours at a time, smiling and nodding when needed. Eventually they would let her go tend to her plants, and they watched her run into the woods with grimaces on their faces. 

Every night for several weeks, after sitting through her parents’ butchering lecture, Sorrel left a note in one of the glowing bush’s flowers, which she had come to call the lunar-bush. The morning after each adventure she would wake feeling refreshed and invigorated, and so happily continued the exercise. 

A month later she found a note in someone else’s handwriting, patiently nestled in a glimmering blue bud. It was a simple message, reading Hello? Sorrel, being the polite young teen she was, sent back a reply, introducing herself as a plant-lover but omitting her name. She could feel the magic of the bush was good, but Sorrel had well-learned to be cautious with her life details. Her mysterious pen-pal introduced herself as God-Mother, and the two began conversing about plants. God-Mother had little information about the lunar-bush, but she agreed with Sorrel that it was an apt name. 

During a day of experimentation, Sorrel discovered that the lunar-bush turned dull and lifeless during the day, its flowers shriveling to dust in her fingers. From then on, she visited the bush only during the night, sometimes collecting clippings of new plants that had begun to spring up in the once-lifeless forest. Lavender, lily of the valley, mint. The world around her was slowly coming back to life, with the grass turning a pale green along the paths Sorrel often tread. The trees had begun to bud, and flowers nodded up at her as she walked. Sorrel was glad in her heart to see the green coming back but didn’t think to mention this revitalization to God-Mother. It seemed entirely natural to Sorrel. 

She did, however, begin to ask God-Mother for clippings of more exotic plants, which were happily provided. Slowly Sorrel began to build up her garden. When she first began the project she had been careful to find a plot out of sight of her parents, but one that wasn’t so far from the house that it was inaccessible. Now that she was acquiring more plants she decided to spread to other plots as well, slowly surrounding the house with green beauty. God-Mother shared most of her plant knowledge with Sorrel, who swallowed it readily and used it happily. 

Putting her growing herbal skills to good use, Sorrel planted many different useful herbs around her plots to keep her gardens healthy. Most of the herbs were clippings provided by God-Mother through their peculiar mail system. Pennyroyal for ants and fleas, ageratum for mosquitoes, rue for beetles and slugs. 

When she was eighteen, her parents found the blossoming gardens and burned them down with a madness in their eyes. The forest caught fire, too, and it spread outward until everything was ash. Including the lunar-bush. Sorrel was furious and heartbroken. Her only connection to the outside was destroyed, as well as the only things that gave her joy. She locked herself in her room for days, refusing to speak to either of her parents for the next two months. 

During those months of silence, she continued sneaking out at night, scavenging anything she could and storing bits of plants in a small hole she dug underneath her bed. Her parents kept a careful eye on her, but couldn’t see anything green left, so they let their guards down. 

It took some time for Sorrel to formulate a plan. She needed several specific plants and found only a small amount of three that would work. Foxglove, lily of the valley, dieffenbachia. Three beautiful plants that were deadly when ingested. She had discovered a way out, but it would need some finesse. 

After weeks of careful planning and powdering, Sorrel began her journey to freedom. God-Mother had offered sanctuary some days before the lunar-bush was destroyed, though she never told Sorrel where to find her. But Sorrel was determined to keep traveling until she found God-Mother. No matter how long it may take. 

The final day arrived, the first dinner she had eaten with her parents in three months. They looked decades older, their faces warped like she was in a dream. She tried not to look at them, focusing instead on the meal. The night before Sorrel had carefully laced every food item in the house with varying poisons. She did not speak or eat anything, but she kept a careful eye on her parents’ plates. The couple seemed happy to have her back at their table and didn’t press her for conversation. An hour passed before they shuddered, convulsed, and with choking gasps collapsed onto the table. Sorrel grimaced, turning her eyes in shame away from the sight, then stood up and left. 

The dark black of the sky welcomed her with familiar arms, the night sweet and clear as Sorrel began her march into a new life. Leaving the ashen wasteland behind, she walked until the world turned green again, then kept walking, pausing only to eat or rest and sometimes to admire the beautiful plants. Some she recognized, most she didn’t. Flowers, vines, trees. Plants she felt a longing to know and understand. 

It took seven days of wandering and surviving off the land for Sorrel to find a village. She asked the first person she met, an older woman who looked wise beyond her years, if she knew someone who went by the name of God-Mother. The old woman gave a sad nod, her eyes sparkling, and Sorrel realized she already knew her. 

God-Mother Gothel wrapped her arms lovingly around Sorrel, a long-forgotten scent flooding Sorrel’s nose. Lemon-sage, wisteria, peppermint. A beautiful smell that Sorrel realized she had longed for since her parents first took her to the dead forest. She wanted to ask Gothel a thousand questions, but as they made their way to Gothel’s hut, surrounded on all sides by a beautiful and blossoming garden, Sorrel knew she had everything she needed. Her questions could wait.