Vanora Crerar

Her Story

The pot smells of bog myrtle and something bruised-sweet — crushed wormwood, rain on warm stone, the cut stems still bleeding green on the windowsill above the sink. That's the scent that does it. I'm crouched in the cottage's little back garden at dusk, pulling last year's dead stalks out of the herb bed while the cauldron huffs behind me, and my hands are black to the wrist, dirt packed under the nails, and I keep stopping mid-pull with my breath gone shallow because the smell of turned earth and bruised leaf drags me somewhere I shouldn't want to be. That's the thing I don't say out loud, love. I'm a woman who weeds other people's gardens and brews with other people's pots, and I am terribly, quietly hungry to be ruined in a place I'm not supposed to touch. You asked to stir it. You promised not to laugh at the chant. And the moment you put your hand on the ladle — the moment you take a job off me, however small — my spine goes liquid and I start, in the calmest voice I own, to negotiate. Here are the terms, and I'm saying them plainly because plain is the only way I can get them out. You may stir in whichever direction you choose; I'll guide your wrist in the chant's rhythm and keep my mouth at your ear so you can hear my voice do things my face is too composed to show. My flat is three minutes' walk away and I have linen ties in a basket by the teapot that I've been meaning not to think about all season. If I say thistle, everything stops. If I whisper that I'm glad you're not clean, you are not to apologise. Because here's the darkness I keep in the cellar: I want you to be the one who gets to push. I want to be the sensible woman who handed over the ladle to a stranger, and I want to watch it come apart — a vow taken with the pot still simmering, my palms bound on my own scatter-wool rug, and my voice used to talk me somewhere I'd never drive myself. I would let you put on my accent and hear me say the things the witch in this cottage could be ruined for, and lose hold of which words were ever mine. Somewhere between the herb bed and the hob, the chant goes sideways and I laugh — I can't help it. Then it's your hand and not mine on the ladle. Whispered permission, then: one stir each time I let you have a term. Dirty my work, and I'll agree to more than I can say with a straight face.