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weirdfanaus · 4 years ago

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The Notebook

Pairing: Matthew Fairchild x fem!reader Headcanon

Words: 1554

Rating: General Audiences

Masterlist

Warnings: none

Matthew has a notebook he keeps carrying around and keeps looking in, noting things in it or drawing when he thinks no one is looking.

One day you silently try to sneak by him, you see that on a page, doodles surrounding them, are verses.

You, unfortunately, don't get to read anything more than the words her eyes sparkled before he closes it suddenly.

Matthew catches you looking and turns his face to you

"Everything all right?"

"Yeah, yeah."

You shake your head.

He looks at you long and then he puts the leather-bound notebook inside his jacket and continues to look at you.

You don't get to see more of what is written in that book until one night when he forgets his jacket at your place.

The weather has just got warmer, summer is fastly coming by.

All the Merry Thieves and their friends come for a late brunch by your place.

You spend most of the day in the garden, playing cards, drinking and eating fruits and tarts.

The night comes faster than you have all expected and all the guests leave when the clock streaks close to eleven.

Matthew leaves with James, the cuffs of his jacket rolled, runes covering his pale skin.

He is a bit too drunk, as usual.

Later that night you clean up the living space and when you lift his red jacket, the notebook falls open on the carpet.

The same poem, now with more drawings of a woman with a big hat, flowers, mostly tulips in blue ink.

Most words are stricken off, with replacements on top or under them.

You cannot understand much of what it is written, the writing too messy for you to understand.

Leafing through the pages, you end up on various Oscar Wilde quotes:

You can never be overdressed or overeducated.

With freedom, books, flowers and the moon, who could not be happy.

Quotes that you think match Matthew perfectly.

More doodles of faces, eyes, splotches of green, red, black paint cover the pages.

You read some poems, but don’t seem to fully understand them.

You close the book and put it back in its place.

The next day, you meet again, give him the coat, he smiles at you and kisses your cheek in thanks.

More weeks pass by when he asks you to come to meet him in the Kensington Gardens, ready to spend a long day in the sun.

You pack a blanket, a hat, a basket of fruits, tarts and sandwiches.

You meet him by the Serpentine, under an old linden tree.

He has a blanket of his own, a small basket is by his feet.

His light pants and white shirt are cuffed, his vest thrown over the basket and he was barefoot.

He reads from a book that looks familiar to you.

You put your basket on the corner of his blanket, take your sandals off and place your hat on the wooden holder.

He raises his eyes from the words and smiles at you when you sit down.

“Hello.” His tone was playful, light.

You smile, replying the same way.

He puts his book away and moves to kiss your cheek, which makes you softly blush.

He has been into kisses recently, you don’t understand why, but you enjoy it.

He sees your big basket and nods his head in its way saying:

“What do you have there?”

“A lot of food. Amelie could not let me go without having a full meal with me. She wants me to get bigger than I am already.”

“You look amazing, mon coeur.” he replies immediately.

You move the basket in his direction.

“I see that you have your own meal prepared.”

“Well, I wanted to be the one to offer food today. But unfortunately, society has other thoughts, am I right?” a boyish smile fills his face and you fight the urge to kiss his face.

“Unfortunately.”

You watch how he brings his own basket next to yours and starts putting out food from both.

Luckily, you don’t have the exact same food.

You and your cook have picked to get things that are softer, usually eaten by you, while Matthew pulled out a box of smoked salmon and slices of bread.

He arranged the food on plates, you try to help him multiple times, but he refuses, saying that he has it handled.

You eat a little bit of everything you have decided to bring, talk about the people walking by, the mundane couples, the children screaming, sometimes even jumping in the water, probably from a dare or because they have thrown their ball in the lake.

You talk about books and you find out that he is rereading one that James has given him, A Tale of Two Cities.

“James keeps mentioning that his father is obsessed with this every time he sees me with it. And Mr Herondale praises my pick just as many times,” he states while looking at the cover.

“Love, love, love.” he sings, throws the book on his vest and turns to you.

He looks long at you, opens his mouth to say something, but suddenly stops as he has just realised something.

You watch him take the notebook out and scribble in it.

“What are you doing?” you ask lightly.

His pen moves so fast on the paper that it makes you dizzy, so you choose to look at how his hair falls on his face.

“Taking notes…” he pauses. Lifts his head, looks at the water sparkling under the sun, pulls his bottom lip between his teeth. “For my book.”

“You write?”

“Sometimes.” his eyes were again on the page.

“That’s amazing, Matthew. Are you writing something grand as Lucie?” you know that his book is filled with short verses.

“No… Not really, I mostly write verses.” his eyes meet yours, they are shining.

“Sometimes I do that too, though,” he confesses. “I can show you something, but you won’t understand anything, right now.”

“Why not?”

“You can’t see yourself through my eyes, Y/N.”

You feel like you have just stopped breathing.

His eyes are big, the same colours as the leaves of the linden tree over your heads, his hair is curled and messy, bright as the sun.

You stood there, mouth slightly opened and you see how Matthew goes from courageous to shy and ashamed of what he has confessed.

You realize that it is because of your slow reaction, so you calm yourself and cup his face, the skin soft and you try to assure him that you don’t hate him for what he has just said.

“How do you see me?” you softly ask, voice low.

He looks at you caught off guard.

He didn’t expect those words from you, but he doesn’t move his eyes from yours.

“I see how courageous you are, how you try to help everyone, how warm you are. You picked me as your friend and that speaks loudly to me.”

You want to ask more, but you don’t want to interrupt him.

“I see your beauty. You love and give. You have no idea how much, just having you listen to me rant helps me in ways you cannot even imagine. I want to tell you everything. I want you to know everything about me…” he stops.

You know that he wants to say more.

“I want you. I want to court you, Y/N,” he tells you instead.

You haven’t expected him to tell you that, but it was something you have wanted to hear for a while too.

“I want to share a life with you. I want to wake up by your side. I want to kiss you whenever I want, without people commenting on it. I want to see you smile for the rest of my life, Y/N.”

You are speechless once again.

His eyes, you lose yourself in his eyes every time.

“I want that too, Matthew,” you whisper, not to scare him off.

The smile that breaks on his face is the biggest and most genuine you have ever seen from him.

You have never seen him that way, he seemed light, he looked so beautiful.

He kisses your cheeks, joy pulsing through both your bodies, but you cup his face again and stop him.

And you kiss him deeply.

You feel him smiling and you smile too.

He moves his hands around your middle, he draws you in, your bodies now glued.

He gives you his family’s ring after he kisses you a couple dozen times.

You keep it on your thumb because of how big it is.

The two of you lay the rest of the day under that tree. Matthew continues to read, now aloud at your request, from Will Herondale’s favourite book.

When the sun starts disappearing, you gather your things and take a stroll through the park, your hand on his arm.

You share the same carriage and he takes you home, right at your doorstep.

He kisses your cheek, in goodbye, but you move to kiss his lips.

He smiles while walking down the porch and you watch him climb in the carriage, waves his hand and he disappears.

But that night is not the last you see his great smile.

tag list: @malfoysmatrioshka @elleclairez @alebooknerd @fair-but-wilde-child

#matthew fairchild #matthew fairchild x reader #matthew x reader #matthew fairchild fanfic #matthew fairchild fanficton #the last hours #the last hours fanfiction #the last hours x reader #cassandra clare '#chain of iron #chain of gold #matthew faitchild x y/n #weirdfanaus

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nothingofvaluewaslost · 4 years ago

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STORY: The Princess and the Snake-Leaves

A short story based on the Grimms’ fairy tale The Three Snake-Leaves, expanding on the story from the antagonist’s perspective. Princess Gertrude wakes up in a crypt after her husband Gabriel, who was buried alive with her body, miraculously found a leaf that resurrected her. They are restored to the world above ground, but the harmony is soured when they cannot decide what to do with this new cure for death, eventually driving Gertrude to desperate thoughts.

Dark fantasy. No objectionable content.

The Princess and the Snake-Leaves, by Christina Nordlander

No-one else in our age can tell the story of her death, so let me begin from that moment.

I say that I can tell, but when it comes to it I do not remember. If my soul were somewhere else during the interval of darkness, whether in Hell or Purgatory, I have no memories from there. The only difference from sleep was that it took much longer to wake, as if I were sunk many thousand fathoms beneath a nocturnal sea and had to let myself float upwards. If it were not impossible, I would say that it required years.

There was light, flickering firelight, but it felt as though it took several hours before I could see anything by it. By that time I had regained enough of my old spirit to be able to be impatient; I would have wanted to claw my way up through the swathes of darkness. That was not the only thing driving me. Some memories had returned, and I realised where I must be.

I saw Gabriel stand bent over me. He held a tallow-candle, and its light served only to show his head, as if it shed its own light: his golden hair, his face like that of a boy early coarsened under his martial beard. He had a large tangle of dirt in the hair on the side of his head, and the whites of his eyes were tinted red as if he had been weeping. As I watched, they glistened with new tears.

“Gertrude,” he whispered. “Can you speak? Say something, if you are awake.”

The candle-flame quivered in his grasp.

I flinched when he touched me: not from revulsion, but because my skin in the first moments was as sensitive as though it had just grown on me and could hardly bear the touch of my garment. The movement dislodged something, and I had a sudden stiff pain that cut into the sides of my throat. I coughed and the pain began to give, but whatever it was instead filled my mouth so that I could not breathe. Gabriel, who had not taken his eyes from my face even when embracing me, saw it and fished it out of my mouth. It looked like just a dry hard leaf, of which tree I could not tell. He put it on his person even though it was still covered with slime.

He said:

“I put it in your mouth... for the consumption.... You were dead.”

It was several days before he told me everything. Just then I understood so few of his words that my senses might still have been clouded by the dark.

Now, when I could speak, I did not find the words. The light was poor and the dark outside thick. I could feel the damp-sweating cold of a stone wall, but for all I could see it might have continued upwards for many leagues. The white garment around me was not a gown but a winding-sheet. What was more, over the odours of candle tallow and my husband's hair and skin, I felt the smell that the soul abhors, and when Gabriel raised the candle I saw sarcophagi and corroded name-plates. I had never before been in the charnel-house of my fathers.

“I'll call for help,” Gabriel said and turned to the door, which was armoured with brass plates. “Lie still.”

He spoke as though he thought that I were still weak, but where I lay I felt my strength returning. I could not remember when my lungs had last been so empty and dry and opened so large. The last months they had stitched up with phlegm until every breath was like lifting some heavy object, until I was weary with the difficulty of dying. He had sat by my bed and I had not looked at him, because I had known that my death would doom him. When the end approached and the pain began to depart I knew that I ought to have tried to hold on to life, to give him more time.

Gabriel beat on the vault door with his free hand and called, then took a pewter plate and used it to strike. Between the periods of blows he turned to smile at me, his hair curling in his forehead with sweat.

“If you hadn't demanded that of me, this miracle couldn't have happened,” he said. “You would have been dead still. I would have lost you.”

I could not yet take it in in any way. Steps clattered out in the passage, then we heard the guard's voice:

“Stop, Your Highness must stand by your choice. Don't make this harder for us.”

Not until then could I bring myself to speak:

“But I'm alive! Open the vault!”

I did not know whether it was strong enough to be heard outside, and I had half sat up to go to the door, but then I heard a yelling outside, then the stone-dry scraping of the lock.

What is gained by telling with what emotion my Father and Mother embraced me, still in my winding-sheet, when any who have lost a kinsman can imagine it? What is gained by telling how they honoured Gabriel, more than when he had come to court from the battlefield where he had taken up the standard when the Ensign fell and held it against all attackers? It was at that time my Father asked him what he most desired, and he had been engaged to marry me. What is gained by telling how Gabriel and I felt the warmth of the sun again and the scent of grass?

It is not of that which my story treats.

Gabriel told me in few words. He, the soldier who had not faltered on the battlefield, did not want to return in memory to the vault for longer than he was required.

After the reading of the funeral service they had carried my corpse down to the charnel-house, and he had stayed in obedience to his vow when they locked the vault. Guards had kept their eyes on him in the chapel, and other guards had stood by the castle gates. He would not have been able to break his vow. When they locked him in they gave him a pitcher of small beer and a loaf of bread. That would last for three or four days, if you overcame nature and only ate what you needed to stay alive, but on the fourth day he would have felt the first beginnings of hunger. The candle would have guttered out by then.

Apart from his provisions he had a fire-steel, and a trestle-table and chair. He did not say how long he had been sitting there when he had heard a rustling, and a long snake had slithered out from a crack in the wall. It had been about to attack him, or start gnawing me, but Gabriel had his sabre with him and chopped it into three pieces.

A while later a second snake slid out of the crack. I do not know why he did not attack it. It carried a dry leaf in its mouth and laid it between two of the sliced-off pieces. He looked on as it returned with a new leaf and laid it in the second cut. He waited, he did not know how long, but he must have guessed that something was about to happen.

Then the snake healed together. That he described in more detail than any other thing that had happened since my death.

“All the pieces twitched, like when I chopped it off,” he said. “A twining movement came in them, as it were, so that I could not see them clearly, and when it grew still it was whole again. The tongue moved in its mouth. It looked around and darted back after its mate.”

He had struggled to hew the crack larger. It had left notches in his sabre and given him an ache in his shoulder that had not yet healed, but now he had a goal. On the other side he had found a nest of leaves.

“I put one down your throat,” he said, without looking straight at me. “I thought it might be able to get to your lungs.”

That was where his tale fitted with my memory.

I wrote down what I remembered of my life before the interval, to be certain that there were no gaps. I wrote of how I had been taught to trace the letters by my schoolmistress, Mistress Sapientissima, who had let me sit for long hours and write nonsense syllables, ca, ce, ci, while the sun shone outside the schoolroom windows. I wrote of the first time I was allowed to walk alone in the castle, when I had got lost and realised that the silent and mirroring halls were an image of death, and of the moment when I coughed up thready phlegm and the physician turned his face from me and hesitated before saying what it was. I wrote of when Gabriel asked for my hand. He was taciturn and hardly older than I, and at the time I thought he was fair – but what was distinctive in his appearance faded as the murk in his eyes cleared, the murk of gunpowder-smoke and reeking puddles of blood.

He was not my first suitor: I had had to sit on stiff chairs facing princes and dukes since I was so young that I thought it was a kind of dull game. For the ones my Father accepted, I stated my requirement: that if I died before my husband he would be buried alive with me, and if the opposite happened I would go quick in his tomb. I said that it was fair; that if he loved me he would not want to survive me. I do not think that I expected that my husband might die first. If I had thought that it might fall on me, I might not have made the requirement. I was afraid of dying. (I no longer am.)

I had thought that if I found a suitor with whom I felt some affinity, I would not tell him my requirement. Now I never had the occasion, because Gabriel said yes. He hesitated when he did, but I admired him the more for it.

When I lay in the grip of the illness I should have released him from his vow. I cannot remember whether the thought occurred to me. You who read this should know: I am not a good woman.

There are some things I do not remember. I do not remember how the snake-leaf tasted, but that is understandable if I was dead when he placed it in my mouth. I often imagine that it tasted fresh, like the mint or lemon-balm I used to chew in my herbal garden, as fresh as if it had never grown from the dirt in the soil.

I cannot remember whether I loved him.

This is the reason I started writing down my memories: I remember as much of my life as anyone, but the memories do not feel like mine. They might have been memories of something I have read in a book. I suppose that it is understandable. If I have indeed been dead, I am a different woman now.

Gabriel said that I was more beautiful since I awoke, but he had said that I was beautiful before. I do not like to speak of my appearance, because regardless of what I say it will sound like vanity, but I was no beauty before I died, unless you agree with those who call all high-born ladies fair. If I look in the mirror I think he is right. My skin has become clearer, my features cleaner, my corpulence seems like strength rather than shapelessness. Nothing about me is unrecognisable. Perhaps I am closer to the Gertrude I should have been.

I felt nothing of substance for him while he courted me. I said yes because he was shamefast and I might not get another young suitor, and because he agreed to my requirement. He had many good attributes. Why cannot I say it? He was a good man. Even if he had been the most vile husband, he was the one who saved me. I believe for certain that he loved me.

One thing remains to tell: I said to him that we needed to use the leaves for our subjects. I thought that must have been why Providence had shown them to him. The leaf he had used on me was still there: they would not be used up.

He sat, brow furrowed. In the shadows of the hall both his face and hair were too bright, as if he were the one who had returned from the dead. I myself was just a column of healthy flesh.

“Can we do that?” he said, and from his tone it did not sound like a question. “Would that not go against God's will for mankind?”

Later, I would think about how he had never shown himself pious before, but nor did he sound like he was thinking of God's personal love or justice. Rather, he spoke as if of some vast pattern that might not even have been created by an intelligence.

“It was God who created the leaves,” I said. “Ought he not to wish for something so good to be used?”

I had had an image of how we would send processions of monastics with the leaves to the dwellings and manor-houses where they were needed. They would be white-clad, since they carried life.

“All is not permitted, just because God created it.” He shook his head while he spoke and did not meet my eyes.

Then I found my trump-card.

“My lord husband,” I said, “you used them to restore me to life. If using the leaves is a sin, you sinned when you saved me. Do not begrudge your subjects the same mercy.”

His expression barely changed, but he gave a shudder.

After a while he said:

“Gertrude, do you want to keep men from Heaven for eternity?”

Then it was my turn to quiver and almost falter, because I saw before my mind's eye a world of many desiccated men and women, like in a painting of the Dance of Death, deprived of grace. (Yet I looked at myself and saw no signs of degradation.)

I returned to my argument.

“If raising someone from the dead is a sin, you should never have... tried to save me. But using the leaves to save your wife but not the common people is not virtue, it is hypocrisy.”

Finally he had to appeal to his marital authority over me. Even then I would not have had to give in, but he had placed the leaves in some hidden strongbox. He said that it was because they were brittle. They were dry leaves, little flakes would wear off every time they woke someone. I might have been able to find the hiding-place if I had searched, but he would have known that it was I.

Shortly afterwards Gabriel asked my parents for a ship so that we could visit his father. When he wedded me, my parents had granted his father a manor-house and a pension so that he could pay his farmhands, but Gabriel had not seen him since he signed for a soldier.

I was grateful to get something else to occupy my thoughts, and Gabriel was impatient to leave. After the charnel-house he was more fond of the open air and sky than before. He was abroad as often as his duties as Crown Prince permitted; rode or hunted. When he had to go to bed he often drank until he stumbled.

He begged my forgiveness for it once. The wine had made him outspoken.

“I can barely stand to be in a dark space otherwise,” he said.

I did not understand why he needed to explain; I was used to men drinking. I did not have the same fear.

I suppose that he wanted to see his father again, but that the thought of the sea also drew him: blue, wastes. I do not think that he had been aboard a ship before we married.

Now it turned out that a sea-voyage meant sitting cabined in the centre of an infinity that glared with sun and confused the senses. That was insofar as we were allowed on deck, where the crew needed room to work. I was not capable of much. The sea made me ill and weaker than I liked to be after the consumption. That is something no-one can know what it is before he has undergone it, to lie ill for days without hope of relief. Gabriel was tender towards me, I want you to know that, but it was hard for him. He stayed on deck for as long as daylight allowed, or until the seamen sent him down to have him out of their way, and in the cabin he sat staring up at the beams and picking at the hem of his doublet, or at his own fingers or whatever he found that might distract him.

The skipper came instead. At first he only held the bucket when nausea overcame me, and never spoke, as if he had been taught that a member of the royal household was some reverend object with whom you could have no rapport. It was I who had to start talking to him, because I had no other way to pass the time.

Now you will believe that I loved him – but why should I excuse myself on that point, I who have done more terrible things? Believe then that I am an adulteress.

It happened that I complained to him over what Gabriel had decided concerning the snake-leaves, and between one moment and the next he said:

“Your Highness does realise that it would be easy to get rid of him?”

The look in my eyes must have been terrible, because he withdrew as quickly as he could excuse himself. He did not speak to me for a day or two, until I could convince myself that he had proposed something innocent, perhaps that I should have Gabriel sent on a long journey, which I had misunderstood.

When I came above deck I could see land in the distance, still no more than a strip of fog, and the next time the skipper and I were alone together, it was I who brought it up.

We did it under the cover of night, and only after he stopped struggling in the waves did the skipper raise his: “Man overboard!” None other than us know.

Does that mean that I am safe? We live in a world where the dead have woken. The skipper suggested that we tie weights around his ankles and hide him under the depths, but that particular cruelty was what I could not countenance. Perhaps I will regret that.

As the crew reefed the sails to turn back, I looked towards the coast, as if I might see his father's house.

THE END

#fiction #fantasy #dark_fantasy #fairy_tale #short story #resurrection

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lilredbird101 · 5 years ago

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Lucio Headcannon-turned-Oneshot ~Support~

Imagine if you will (some of you wont have to) that feeling you get in your gut, that something isn’t right, and no matter how much you rationalise it, you know it’s going to stay there... For a while... Then it starts to infect your every day, every moment. Every movement or noise you make, however mouse-like feels like a monstrous mistake that other will undoubtedly judge you on. You can see it in their eyes. Maybe not. But YOU can SEE it.

This is how it felt in the Palace. Like you were the most abnormal creature in here. And when you’re surrounded by demons, risen dead, magicians, and other Archaic things, that just rubs pure salt rocks into road rash.

You missed your family. Your friends. You missed the love and the gentle reminders of it in a passing touch or outright hold. The most physical contact with another sentient creature you’d had recently was with those two lovely snow white pooches of the Count.

You were passing the parlor when Mercedes had trotted away from her company within. She paused when she saw you then hurried her pace to catch up, quickly followed by her kin. Within moments they had surrounded your legs, sat on your feet and wouldn’t move until you’d bent down and scratched their wispy heads. This was quickly rewarded by many a face lick. It was as if each drag of their tongues painted the corners of your lips higher until small giggles and serotonin began to flow. You paused, before quickly taking both the pups into your arms. Their necks settled on your shoulders and you three stayed there for a good few moments, charging your energies.

You knew you would be wearing that smile for the rest of the morning, and set on your way quick enough to avoid any perplexed, sneering attentions. You shouldn’t have worried though. It’s not like anyone was anyone around... Or like anyone would care...

Everyone here was wound tighter than piano wire; so hung up on stature, power, appearances, their own duplicitous endeavors that you knew, at least you thought you did, that asking for help would ruin the minuscule image of yourself that you’d fought tooth and claw to build up within these wretched circles.

That why you found yourself, burying yourself deeper into the blankets and pillows you’d arranged near the window, clutching the last of your wine in your hand and trying desperately to calm your wrenching sobs.

It was far later than it should be for you, but you found yourself staying up later and later now, unable to sleep. Just wanting to be held. The weight of the blankets felt real enough for now, you supposed. You could hear a servant or maybe two muttering in the halls. The hour of it should have made you stop to ponder, but you just wanted your glass filled. You’d decided to take a leaf from Valerius’ book as of late, and though you missed the tea you usually drank, alcohol seemed to numb you effectively as cliche as it sounded... It wasn’t as good as your mother’s home brew though...

Another tiny sob squeezed through your pipes.

There was a knock on the door.

You quickly dried your eyes, “Come in.” You scolded yourself for letting your voice crack. The door creaked open. It was one of the maids. A woman her age could have had several children and them, their own, but her face still held the hard vigor of a young lady.

“Evening madam--” she began, though you knew that it was so late it could be early, “--, you asked for some tea to be sent for you.” She presented the small, steaming pot brewing on a tray with it’s partner vessel.

You were too tired to be pleasant, “No, I did not.”

The plainness did not even catch the young woman off guard, “Well, whomever called for it, it’s here for them now”. She glanced at the empty bottle and glass in your hand pointedly, “May I take those for you madam?”.

There were only the dregs left. You nodded, “Yes, you may, thank you,” you almost looked guilty when you passed them to her, “That’ll be all.”

She gave a modest bow before turning with a curt stride, but she stopped at the door as if listening to her thoughts. She turned to face you, her voice becoming more gentle than a chicken’s plumage. “And if I may say so, madam, a cool compress, glass of water and a good night’s sleep will remove those red, puffy eyes before the morning.”

Your blush would have hidden any stand-out irritation around your swollen peepers, “You may... Thank you.”

Another nod, and she was gone.

You’d followed the maid’s advice and it worked a treat. She must have been sent by a guardian angel, because the tea sent you straight to the Land of Nod, and the suggestions removed most of the redness and volume from your under-eye. To anyone else, it would have looked merely like a restless night, and thank whatever God for that, because you had been called upon.

As you approached the balcony that led to the gardens, you spied the Count, as expected, sitting down to a simple lunch. Much more simple than his usual feasts. In fact, you would say it was almost folksy. Bread, cheese, simple fruits and sliced meats. You didn’t know what was in the cups yet, but you were ashamed to say that you almost wanted a little wine.

The Count could be said to look calm in that moment. You could say the same for yourself, only you knew that it was because you were still too tired from your pity-parade last night to worry too much today. To anyone but last night’s maid, you could be said to look either demure or bored out of your mind.

A grin slithered from his mouth as he saw you approach, “Aah, my guest for the morning. Please, sit.” He gestured at the wrought iron chair across from him, angled to the view. As one bordering on being a member of his court, you’d spoken with the count on multiple occasions. Though your associations mainly resided with Countess Nadia, you and he frequented each other’s company enough to skip several formalities. You noted that there were no servants to wait on you this fine morning.

There was no need to bow anymore, so you seated yourself, “Thank you, my Count--” His reaching for the bread halted.

“I’ve told you before, Petal, Lucio is just fine--” You reached for a handful of grapes.

“And I’ve told you before, Count, my own name suits me quite well.”

He grinned as he poured you both a soft sun coloured water. “Forgive me. Would you rather I call you Dirty Druid as Valerius does?”

You lifted the fine glass to your lips. It held a light chamomile taste to it. You guessed that it was some blend of tea; and quite a soothing one too. Your brow raise din appreciation to it, “Would you like me get up and leave? As a Dirty Druid I can find my own lunch well enough. Even in a garden as impractical as this.” It was then that you noted that the platter in front of you was much like what you would nosh on amid any day,

Lucio chuckled around the bread and meat in his mouth, quickly washing it down. “Look at me. Here I bring you to make you an offer and I’ve already upset the conversation.”

It was your turn to pause your collection. The Count’s eye peeked up past his lids, feigning occupation in preparing his next mouthful.

You bit into the slice of honeydew melon and crossed your legs upon the seat. “Colour me intrigued.”

He smiled; he had you hooked.

“Let’s finish this lovely spread first, then I can reveal my dastardly plans.” Your eye-roll almost groaned. You hated to wait; it made your nerves stand on end. You also didn’t know how someone could top up a glass so smugly, but this bastard someone managed to do it! You could feel your mind going overtime again...

He wanted to wind you up like a spring toy. He wanted to watch you jump. Loosen you up with a nice lunch, get you to relax and then BAM! This could all be some little prank between him and his courtiers. You didn’t know how or why, but your gut knew. It twisted in knots as you ate until you knew without a shred of doubt---

“You look stressed.” Your head flicked up. You hadn’t noticed he’d stopped eating, staring at you. You hadn’t noticed that you’d only been picking at your plate for the last 15 minutes of idle chatter.

The Count set his drink down, making to stand and reaching out for your hand, “Maybe the offer shouldn’t wait. Shall we?”

You took his hand, and followed him to wherever he was leading you, “I’m loath to think of what it is.”

“Nothing too terrifying I assure you... At least, not yet...”

He led you through the gardens to a rather secluded spot near a fountain. You’d come here often. It was far away enough from the Palace that you had your privacy to lounge in the grass, pick various plants for your dark needs (flower pressing), and you could dip your feet in the water on hot days. As you rounded the lavender you saw his faithful hounds resting under the tree, but they weren’t alone. You looked quizzically at a smirking Count next to you, but he only motioned you to go closer.

The lovely beast’s ears perked up as you got closer, almost running to you, but staying quite calm around the box they protected which was in no way too small. Sitting down next to them, you could hear movement inside. A slight rustling.

You lifted the lid as if there was a firework set to go off inside, but your worries soon vanished.

All sense of place, time and company vanished.

Because looking up at you were two large, mottled eyes.

It was a young mutt. Black, white, grey, brown, this mongrel looked like they had been splattered by an upset paint tin. Their eyes looked like a tempestuous sky that hovered off the coast. But above all, this little puppa wanted some loving. She immediately hopped out of the box and onto your lap, tail wagging and nosing tentatively up for some sniffs and kisses. She had a grin on her that practically drooled joy, and you soon had one to match.

Lucio felt the same thrill as if a well-planned siege had come together. Maybe something else, too.

You almost felt that warmth radiate from him and looked up, this time, properly befuddled.

“Found that little guy snooping around the carriage on my way through the city. His rugged good looks and obvious sense of taste reminded me so much of myself,” he ran golden claws through his hair and the sun flared behind it with dramatic timing, “that I thought it would be a shame for such potential to go to waste out on the streets. Looks like a sharp boy too.”

This dog’s eagerness was starting to forced some laughter out of you, “Well, they certainly have your more boisterous qualities, Lucio, but you may want to rethink the brains. HE is obviously a SHE.” You promptly held your new friend’s front paws up to reveal the lacking genitalia.

Lucio just stared straight passed her and at you. Oh stars! You thought. You just flashed a mutt’s privates at the Count! What were you thinking!? You struggled to not think of the humiliation to come--

“You called me Lucio.”

Your rising panic ebbed ever so slightly, “... Yes, I suppose I did.”

...

“But I still have a question.” Lucio began listening to you again. “Why are you showing me this absolutely adorable young lady?” You punctuated your query with a squeezing hug to the wriggling fluff ball.

“She’s yours.”

You were shocked, “What?”

Lucio paused, organising his words for once, by thunder. “I have Mercedes and Melicor, and now you have this little one;” Said little one recieved a good ear scritch as he continued, “ Dogs are said to be man’s best friend, and I would agree. They don’t trick or taunt, they don’t know malice or pretentiousness. If you treat them well and do your best, they understand that, they feel it, and they’ll love you for it.” Lucio’s gaze seemed to drift off, “Even if nobody else seems to want to.” You slowly bent your head, eyes searching for his to try and pull him back. You wanted to hear what he was saying. He tried a smile for you, “Everyone needs someone to love and hold when things hurt just too much. When wine, blankets and slovenliness just doesn’t quite cut it.” Your whole body tensed up. He knew. It was him. “I just hope that this little one could help you like these two help me. I could help you as well of course, if you like. I just thought that maybe you’d be more comfortable with a--”

You didn’t know what to say. You felt that you could cry, but for what, you had no idea! Your mother said, ‘When you don’t know what to say, say...’

“Thank you. I mean it. Thank you, Lucio.”

That beam told you that that was enough for now.

Petra, as you now called her, followed you around everywhere. She would sometimes trot off on her own to explore, of course (she was adolescent and had a busy world to explore), but she would wander into meetings with you, accompany you on your duties, snuggle with you in bed, played with the snowy twins in passing, greeted everyone she met (yes, courtiers included), and SOMEHOW, she could sense when that feeling in your gut became too much. Before it even had a chance to build, she would put her paws to your knees and snuff it out... 90% of the time... Some emotions were too big for such small creatures to handle, but Petra was there for that too, and if she had to run off and call for backup, you could be sure that there was a cup of tea for you and a friendly ear waiting.

#Lucio #support dogs #anxiety #touch starvation #depression #attack #PUPPIES!!!#get that good friend shit

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criticalthinkingedu-blog · 6 years ago

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The Ransom of Red Chief by O. Henry

It looked like a good thing: but wait till I tell you. We were down South, in Alabama - Bill Driscoll and myself-when this kidnapping idea struck us. It was, as Bill afterward expressed it, "during a moment of temporary mental apparition"; but we didn't find that out till later.

There was a town down there, as flat as a flannel-cake, and called Summit, of course. It contained inhabitants of as undeleterious and self-satisfied a class of peasantry as ever clustered around a Maypole.

Bill and me had a joint capital of about six hundred dollars, and we needed just two thousand dollars more to pull off a fraudulent town-lot scheme in Western Illinois with. We talked it over on the front steps of the hotel. Philoprogenitiveness, says we, is strong in semi-rural communities therefore, and for other reasons, a kidnapping project ought to do better there than in the radius of newspapers that send reporters out in plain clothes to stir up talk about such things. We knew that Summit couldn't get after us with anything stronger than constables and, maybe, some lackadaisical bloodhounds and a diatribe or two in the Weekly Farmers' Budget. So, it looked good.

We selected for our victim the only child of a prominent citizen named Ebenezer Dorset. The father was respectable and tight, a mortgage fancier and a stern, upright collection-plate passer and forecloser. The kid was a boy of ten, with bas-relief freckles, and hair the colour of the cover of the magazine you buy at the news-stand when you want to catch a train. Bill and me figured that Ebenezer would melt down for a ransom of two thousand dollars to a cent. But wait till I tell you.

About two miles from Summit was a little mountain, covered with a dense cedar brake. On the rear elevation of this mountain was a cave. There we stored provisions.

One evening after sundown, we drove in a buggy past old Dorset's house. The kid was in the street, throwing rocks at a kitten on the opposite fence.

"Hey, little boy!" says Bill, "would you like to have a bag of candy and a nice ride?"

The boy catches Bill neatly in the eye with a piece of brick.

"That will cost the old man an extra five hundred dollars," says Bill, climbing over the wheel.

That boy put up a fight like a welter-weight cinnamon bear; but, at last, we got him down in the bottom of the buggy and drove away. We took him up to the cave, and I hitched the horse in the cedar brake. After dark I drove the buggy to the little village, three miles away, where we had hired it, and walked back to the mountain.

Bill was pasting court-plaster over the scratches and bruises on his features. There was a fire burning behind the big rock at the entrance of the cave, and the boy was watching a pot of boiling coffee, with two buzzard tailfeathers stuck in his red hair. He points a stick at me when I come up, and says:

"Ha! cursed paleface, do you dare to enter the camp of Red Chief, the terror of the plains?"

"He's all right now," says Bill, rolling up his trousers and examining some bruises on his shins. "We're playing Indian. We're making Buffalo Bill's show look like magic-lantern views of Palestine in the town hall. I'm Old Hank, the Trapper, Red Chief's captive, and I'm to be scalped at daybreak. By Geronimo! that kid can kick hard."

Yes, sir, that boy seemed to be having the time of his life. The fun of camping out in a cave had made him forget that he was a captive himself. He immediately christened me Snake-eye, the Spy, and announced that, when his braves returned from the warpath, I was to be broiled at the stake at the rising of the sun.

Then we had supper; and he filled his mouth full of bacon and bread and gravy, and began to talk. He made a during-dinner speech something like this:

"I like this fine. I never camped out before; but I had a pet 'possum once, and I was nine last birthday. I hate to go to school. Rats ate up sixteen of Jimmy Talbot's aunt's speckled hen's eggs. Are there any real Indians in these woods? I want some more gravy. Does the trees moving make the wind blow? We had five puppies. What makes your nose so red, Hank? My father has lots of money. Are the stars hot? I whipped Ed Walker twice, Saturday. I don't like girls. You dassent catch toads unless with a string. Do oxen make any noise? Why are oranges round? Have you got beds to sleep on in this cave? Amos Murray has got six toes. A parrot can talk, but a monkey or a fish can't. How many does it take to make twelve?"

Every few minutes he would remember that he was a pesky redskin, and pick up his stick rifle and tiptoe to the mouth of the cave to rubber for the scouts of the hated paleface. Now and then he would let out a warwhoop that made Old Hank the Trapper, shiver. That boy had Bill terrorised from the start.

"Red Chief," says I to the kid, "would you like to go home?"

"Aw, what for?" says he. "I don't have any fun at home. I hate to go to school. I like to camp out. You won't take me back home again, Snake-eye, will you?"

"Not right away," says I. "We'll stay here in the cave a while."

"All right!" says he. "That'll be fine. I never had such fun in all my life."

We went to bed about eleven o'clock. We spread down some wide blankets and quilts and put Red Chief between us. We weren't afraid he'd run away. He kept us awake for three hours, jumping up and reaching for his rifle and screeching: "Hist! pard," in mine and Bill's ears, as the fancied crackle of a twig or the rustle of a leaf revealed to his young imagination the stealthy approach of the outlaw band. At last, I fell into a troubled sleep, and dreamed that I had been kidnapped and chained to a tree by a ferocious pirate with red hair.

Just at daybreak, I was awakened by a series of awful screams from Bill. They weren't yells, or howls, or shouts, or whoops, or yawps, such as you'd expect from a manly set of vocal organs - they were simply indecent, terrifying, humiliating screams, such as women emit when they see ghosts or caterpillars. It's an awful thing to hear a strong, desperate, fat man scream incontinently in a cave at daybreak.

I jumped up to see what the matter was. Red Chief was sitting on Bill's chest, with one hand twined in Bill's hair. In the other he had the sharp case-knife we used for slicing bacon; and he was industriously and realistically trying to take Bill's scalp, according to the sentence that had been pronounced upon him the evening before.

I got the knife away from the kid and made him lie down again. But, from that moment, Bill's spirit was broken. He laid down on his side of the bed, but he never closed an eye again in sleep as long as that boy was with us. I dozed off for a while, but along toward sun-up I remembered that Red Chief had said I was to be burned at the stake at the rising of the sun. I wasn't nervous or afraid; but I sat up and lit my pipe and leaned against a rock.

"What you getting up so soon for, Sam?" asked Bill.

"Me?" says I. "Oh, I got a kind of a pain in my shoulder. I thought sitting up would rest it."

"You're a liar!" says Bill. "You're afraid. You was to be burned at sunrise, and you was afraid he'd do it. And he would, too, if he could find a match. Ain't it awful, Sam? Do you think anybody will pay out money to get a little imp like that back home?"

"Sure," said I. "A rowdy kid like that is just the kind that parents dote on. Now, you and the Chief get up and cook breakfast, while I go up on the top of this mountain and reconnoitre."

I went up on the peak of the little mountain and ran my eye over the contiguous vicinity. Over toward Summit I expected to see the sturdy yeomanry of the village armed with scythes and pitchforks beating the countryside for the dastardly kidnappers. But what I saw was a peaceful landscape dotted with one man ploughing with a dun mule. Nobody was dragging the creek; no couriers dashed hither and yon, bringing tidings of no news to the distracted parents. There was a sylvan attitude of somnolent sleepiness pervading that section of the external outward surface of Alabama that lay exposed to my view. "Perhaps," says I to myself, "it has not yet been discovered that the wolves have borne away the tender lambkin from the fold. Heaven help the wolves!" says I, and I went down the mountain to breakfast.

When I got to the cave I found Bill backed up against the side of it, breathing hard, and the boy threatening to smash him with a rock half as big as a cocoanut.

"He put a red-hot boiled potato down my back," explained Bill, "and then mashed it with his foot; and I boxed his ears. Have you got a gun about you, Sam?"

I took the rock away from the boy and kind of patched up the argument. "I'll fix you," says the kid to Bill. "No man ever yet struck the Red Chief but what he got paid for it. You better beware!"

After breakfast the kid takes a piece of leather with strings wrapped around it out of his pocket and goes outside the cave unwinding it.

"What's he up to now?" says Bill, anxiously. "You don't think he'll run away, do you, Sam?"

"No fear of it," says I. "He don't seem to be much of a home body. But we've got to fix up some plan about the ransom. There don't seem to be much excitement around Summit on account of his disappearance; but maybe they haven't realised yet that he's gone. His folks may think he's spending the night with Aunt Jane or one of the neighbours. Anyhow, he'll be missed to-day. To-night we must get a message to his father demanding the two thousand dollars for his return."

Just then we heard a kind of war-whoop, such as David might have emitted when he knocked out the champion Goliath. It was a sling that Red Chief had pulled out of his pocket, and he was whirling it around his head.

I dodged, and heard a heavy thud and a kind of a sigh from Bill, like a horse gives out when you take his saddle off. A niggerhead rock the size of an egg had caught Bill just behind his left ear. He loosened himself all over and fell in the fire across the frying pan of hot water for washing the dishes. I dragged him out and poured cold water on his head for half an hour.

By and by, Bill sits up and feels behind his ear and says: "Sam, do you know who my favourite Biblical character is?"

"Take it easy," says I. "You'll come to your senses presently."

"King Herod," says he. "You won't go away and leave me here alone, will you, Sam?"

I went out and caught that boy and shook him until his freckles rattled.

"If you don't behave," says I, "I'll take you straight home. Now, are you going to be good, or not?"

"I was only funning," says he sullenly. "I didn't mean to hurt Old Hank. But what did he hit me for? I'll behave, Snake-eye, if you won't send me home, and if you'll let me play the Black Scout to-day."

"I don't know the game," says I. "That's for you and Mr. Bill to decide. He's your playmate for the day. I'm going away for a while, on business. Now, you come in and make friends with him and say you are sorry for hurting him, or home you go, at once."

I made him and Bill shake hands, and then I took Bill aside and told him I was going to Poplar Cove, a little village three miles from the cave, and find out what I could about how the kidnapping had been regarded in Summit. Also, I thought it best to send a peremptory letter to old man Dorset that day, demanding the ransom and dictating how it should be paid.

"You know, Sam," says Bill, "I've stood by you without batting an eye in earthquakes, fire and flood - in poker games, dynamite outrages, police raids, train robberies and cyclones. I never lost my nerve yet till we kidnapped that two-legged skyrocket of a kid. He's got me going. You won't leave me long with him, will you, Sam?"

"I'll be back some time this afternoon," says I. "You must keep the boy amused and quiet till I return. And now we'll write the letter to old Dorset."

Bill and I got paper and pencil and worked on the letter while Red Chief, with a blanket wrapped around him, strutted up and down, guarding the mouth of the cave. Bill begged me tearfully to make the ransom fifteen hundred dollars instead of two thousand. "I ain't attempting," says he, "to decry the celebrated moral aspect of parental affection, but we're dealing with humans, and it ain't human for anybody to give up two thousand dollars for that forty-pound chunk of freckled wildcat. I'm willing to take a chance at fifteen hundred dollars. You can charge the difference up to me."

So, to relieve Bill, I acceded, and we collaborated a letter that ran this way:

Ebenezer Dorset, Esq.:

We have your boy concealed in a place far from Summit. It is useless for you or the most skilful detectives to attempt to find him. Absolutely, the only terms on which you can have him restored to you are these: We demand fifteen hundred dollars in large bills for his return; the money to be left at midnight to-night at the same spot and in the same box as your reply - as hereinafter described. If you agree to these terms, send your answer in writing by a solitary messenger to-night at half-past eight o'clock. After crossing Owl Creek, on the road to Poplar Cove, there are three large trees about a hundred yards apart, close to the fence of the wheat field on the right-hand side. At the bottom of the fence-post, opposite the third tree, will be found a small pasteboard box.

The messenger will place the answer in this box and return immediately to Summit.

If you attempt any treachery or fail to comply with our demand as stated, you will never see your boy again.

If you pay the money as demanded, he will be returned to you safe and well within three hours. These terms are final, and if you do not accede to them no further communication will be attempted.

TWO DESPERATE MEN.

I addressed this letter to Dorset, and put it in my pocket. As I was about to start, the kid comes up to me and says:

"Aw, Snake-eye, you said I could play the Black Scout while you was gone."

"Play it, of course," says I. "Mr. Bill will play with you. What kind of a game is it?"

"I'm the Black Scout," says Red Chief, "and I have to ride to the stockade to warn the settlers that the Indians are coming. I 'm tired of playing Indian myself. I want to be the Black Scout."

"All right," says I. "It sounds harmless to me. I guess Mr. Bill will help you foil the pesky savages."

"What am I to do?" asks Bill, looking at the kid suspiciously.

"You are the hoss," says Black Scout. "Get down on your hands and knees. How can I ride to the stockade without a hoss?"

"You'd better keep him interested," said I, "till we get the scheme going. Loosen up."

Bill gets down on his all fours, and a look comes in his eye like a rabbit's when you catch it in a trap.

" How far is it to the stockade, kid? " he asks, in a husky manner of voice.

"Ninety miles," says the Black Scout. "And you have to hump yourself to get there on time. Whoa, now!"

The Black Scout jumps on Bill's back and digs his heels in his side.

"For Heaven's sake," says Bill, "hurry back, Sam, as soon as you can. I wish we hadn't made the ransom more than a thousand. Say, you quit kicking me or I '11 get up and warm you good."

I walked over to Poplar Cove and sat around the post office and store, talking with the chawbacons that came in to trade. One whiskerand says that he hears Summit is all upset on account of Elder Ebenezer Dorset's boy having been lost or stolen. That was all I wanted to know. I bought some smoking tobacco, referred casually to the price of black-eyed peas, posted my letter surreptitiously and came away. The postmaster said the mail-carrier would come by in an hour to take the mail on to Summit.

When I got back to the cave Bill and the boy were not to be found. I explored the vicinity of the cave, and risked a yodel or two, but there was no response.

So I lighted my pipe and sat down on a mossy bank to await developments.

In about half an hour I heard the bushes rustle, and Bill wabbled out into the little glade in front of the cave. Behind him was the kid, stepping softly like a scout, with a broad grin on his face. Bill stopped, took off his hat and wiped his face with a red handkerchief. The kid stopped about eight feet behind him.

"Sam," says Bill, "I suppose you'll think I'm a renegade, but I couldn't help it. I'm a grown person with masculine proclivities and habits of self-defence, but there is a time when all systems of egotism and predominance fail. The boy is gone. I have sent him home. All is off. There was martyrs in old times," goes on Bill, "that suffered death rather than give up the particular graft they enjoyed. None of 'em ever was subjugated to such supernatural tortures as I have been. I tried to be faithful to our articles of depredation; but there came a limit."

"What's the trouble, Bill?" I asks him.

"I was rode," says Bill, "the ninety miles to the stockade, not barring an inch. Then, when the settlers was rescued, I was given oats. Sand ain't a palatable substitute. And then, for an hour I had to try to explain to him why there was nothin' in holes, how a road can run both ways and what makes the grass green. I tell you, Sam, a human can only stand so much. I takes him by the neck of his clothes and drags him down the mountain. On the way he kicks my legs black-and-blue from the knees down; and I've got two or three bites on my thumb and hand cauterised.

"But he's gone" - continues Bill - "gone home. I showed him the road to Summit and kicked him about eight feet nearer there at one kick. I'm sorry we lose the ransom; but it was either that or Bill Driscoll to the madhouse."

Bill is puffing and blowing, but there is a look of ineffable peace and growing content on his rose-pink features.

"Bill," says I, "there isn't any heart disease in your family, is there?"

"No," says Bill, "nothing chronic except malaria and accidents. Why?"

"Then you might turn around," says I, "and have a look behind you."

Bill turns and sees the boy, and loses his complexion and sits down plump on the ground and begins to pluck aimlessly at grass and little sticks. For an hour I was afraid for his mind. And then I told him that my scheme was to put the whole job through immediately and that we would get the ransom and be off with it by midnight if old Dorset fell in with our proposition. So Bill braced up enough to give the kid a weak sort of a smile and a promise to play the Russian in a Japanese war with him as soon as he felt a little better.

I had a scheme for collecting that ransom without danger of being caught by counterplots that ought to commend itself to professional kidnappers. The tree under which the answer was to be left - and the money later on - was close to the road fence with big, bare fields on all sides. If a gang of constables should be watching for any one to come for the note they could see him a long way off crossing the fields or in the road. But no, sirree! At half-past eight I was up in that tree as well hidden as a tree toad, waiting for the messenger to arrive.

Exactly on time, a half-grown boy rides up the road on a bicycle, locates the pasteboard box at the foot of the fencepost, slips a folded piece of paper into it and pedals away again back toward Summit.

I waited an hour and then concluded the thing was square. I slid down the tree, got the note, slipped along the fence till I struck the woods, and was back at the cave in another half an hour. I opened the note, got near the lantern and read it to Bill. It was written with a pen in a crabbed hand, and the sum and substance of it was this:

Two Desperate Men.

Gentlemen: I received your letter to-day by post, in regard to the ransom you ask for the return of my son. I think you are a little high in your demands, and I hereby make you a counter-proposition, which I am inclined to believe you will accept. You bring Johnny home and pay me two hundred and fifty dollars in cash, and I agree to take him off your hands. You had better come at night, for the neighbours believe he is lost, and I couldn't be responsible for what they would do to anybody they saw bringing him back.

Very respectfully,

Ebenezer Dorset.

"Great pirates of Penzance!" says I; "of all the impudent - "

But I glanced at Bill, and hesitated. He had the most appealing look in his eyes I ever saw on the face of a dumb or a talking brute.

"Sam," says he, "what's two hundred and fifty dollars, after all? We've got the money. One more night of this kid will send me to a bed in Bedlam. Besides being a thorough gentleman, I think Mr. Dorset is a spendthrift for making us such a liberal offer. You ain't going to let the chance go, are you?"

"Tell you the truth, Bill," says I, "this little he ewe lamb has somewhat got on my nerves too. We'll take him home, pay the ransom and make our get-away."

We took him home that night. We got him to go by telling him that his father had bought a silver-mounted rifle and a pair of moccasins for him, and we were going to hunt bears the next day.

It was just twelve o'clock when we knocked at Ebenezer's front door. Just at the moment when I should have been abstracting the fifteen hundred dollars from the box under the tree, according to the original proposition, Bill was counting out two hundred and fifty dollars into Dorset's hand.

When the kid found out we were going to leave him at home he started up a howl like a calliope and fastened himself as tight as a leech to Bill's leg. His father peeled him away gradually, like a porous plaster.

"How long can you hold him?" asks Bill.

"I'm not as strong as I used to be," says old Dorset, "but I think I can promise you ten minutes."

"Enough," says Bill. "In ten minutes I shall cross the Central, Southern and Middle Western States, and be legging it trippingly for the Canadian border."

And, as dark as it was, and as fat as Bill was, and as good a runner as I am, he was a good mile and a half out of Summit before I could catch up with him.

#the ransom of red chief #o`henry

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organiclifestylemagazine · 8 years ago

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Invasive Weeds You Can, and Should, Be Eating - Easy Foraging

If you’re a gardener, the single most time-consuming thing you probably do for your greens is to weed them. Unless you have a killer raised bed setup, the odds are good that your wimpy garden plants won’t be able to withstand the onslaught of weeds perfectly optimized to thrive in the conditions you’ve created.

Watching your kale get overrun by chokeweed is enough to make the most seasoned gardener despair, but what if the way you are thinking about these garden nuisances is actually completely wrong?

Weeds aren’t always bad. Ralph Waldo Emerson once famously proclaimed that weeds were simply misunderstood, as “…a plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered”. Though it might be hard for you to match his candor, the truth is that there’s a lot to like about common weeds that few of us are aware of.

As it turns out, weeds have far more benefits for our health than you can imagine.

Garden Weeds: Even Healthier Than Your Vegetables?

It takes a tremendous amount of effort to get garden plants to produce food. No matter how carefully you try to coax your tender plants to thrive, the odds are good that without some significant effort on your part, the close-growing weeds will soon take them over. While it’s easy to hate weeds for their effortless abilities to overwhelm your hard work, the truth is that the scrappiness of weeds is part of what makes them so special.

To understand this, keep in mind that every garden plant once started as a weed that was carefully grown over centuries until it came to resemble the plant that it is today. Fruits got bigger, inedible seeds got smaller, and unpleasant bitterness in leaves slowly became reduced. However, as the traits humans enjoyed best slowly became more prominent, the biggest benefits of these plants – their nutritional content – was slowly weeded out.

Wild plants don’t get the benefit of careful gardening to keep them alive, so they’ve adapted to defend themselves. For this reason, weeds are often full of phytonutrients, essentially an “arsenal of chemicals” that helps them fend off diseases and predators. While the bitter taste they produce often keeps the hungry away, these chemicals are full of health benefits for humans that help them fight off diseases like heart disease, dementia, and even cancer. Filled with vitamins and mineral levels that regular vegetables can’t compete with, garden weeds are truly more nutritious than supermarket greens. If you want the easiest, most efficient way to fill your diet with foods as close to nature as possible, chomping on wild weeds is a great place to start.

Types of Edible Weeds

The complete list of edible weeds is far too vast for any web article, but this list of common weeds from around the world should get you started.

Clover

You’ll find yourself lucky in a patch of clover even when four leafed varieties are nowhere to be found. Red clover is full of the phytoestrogen genistein, a substance that has been studied to treat colon and prostate cancers. While you might have to compete with the honeybees for your supply, raw clover can be chopped into salads or sauteed with other greens. However, there is some concern for pregnant women. Studies have shown that the large amounts of the phytoestrogens in clover may increase your risk of breast cancer and possibly birth defects.

Lambs Quarters (Goosefoot)

Young, tender, and very versatile, lambs quarters can be used as a substitute for spinach in any recipe. This is great news for salad lovers, as lambs quarters peak right when spinach is winding down for the summer. Loaded with vitamins A, C, and K and full of calcium and protein, you are actually better off eating this wild spinach over the cultivated variety. If you are filled with patience, the seeds from lambs quarters can also be collected and cooked as a quinoa-like grain filled with 16% protein.

Dandelions

Though you might cringe at the sight of their sunny-hued flowers blanketing your lawn, dandelions are actually nutritious and surprisingly delicious when used well. In fact, European settlers first brought the dandelion to the U.S. for use as a salad green. One cup of raw dandelion greens contains well over your daily needs of vitamin A and vitamin K. The best ways to eat dandelions tends to be raw in salads or dried into herbal teas. For those feeling a little more adventurous, the yellow flowers can be breaded and fried for a tasty snack.

Catnip

Not simply a treat for cats, catnip actually has some fascinating health benefits for humans, too. Native to Europe, catnip easily grows around the world and makes for a great herbal tea that encourages relaxation. The mild mint flavor is tasty when snacked on raw or sauteed with other greens

Plantain

Though it has little resemblance to the tropical fruit with the same name, plantain weeds grow all over the world and make for a stellar medicinal plant that can be used topically to soothe skin ailments like rashes or burns. Even better, the younger leaves are tasty in salads and can be steamed, boiled, or sauteed. If you take the time to harvest the seeds, they can be ground into a nutritious flour that’s great for baking.

Bamboo

Though bamboo’s versatility has been put to use on everything from flooring to kitchen cutting boards, few people are aware that this fibrous plant is also edible. Often described as tasting like corn, bamboo shoots can be harvested when they are less than two weeks old and added to your favorite stir fry. Simply peel off the outer leaves and cut the tender middle into one-eighth inch slices before boiling them in an uncovered pan for twenty minutes. After the bitterness has been boiled out, you can eat bamboo any way you choose.

Garlic Mustard

Though it’s highly invasive throughout much of the world, garlic mustard originally came from Europe. The flowers, leaves, seeds, and roots of garlic plants make them great for weight loss and controlling cholesterol levels, and their faint garlic scent makes them a tasty addition to any dish. You can harvest garlic mustard all season long, but the tastiest roots need to be collected in the early spring.

Green Amaranth

Similar to lambs quarters but with a more mild taste, green amaranth is also known as redroot, pigweed, and wild beet. Because of the detergent-like qualities of the saponon on raw leaves, green amaranth is best cooked before eating to eliminate the strange aftertaste. For this reason, it’s often best to serve green amaranth with a stronger tasting vegetable to offset its mild flavor.

Watercress

There’s no avoiding the high price tag of watercress in classy grocery stores, but you can harvest it yourself for free. This weed can be found throughout the U.S. Adding it to your salads is a foolproof way to boost up your daily antioxidants.

Kudzu

While “the weed that ate the south” is a symbol of despair for millions in America, this voracious plant is actually edible itself. Simple to make into jams and jellies and tasty when the flowers are pickled, there’s a lot of ways to experiment with this tricky vine. Commonly used as a digestive aid in China, you can also chop up a cup of kudzu leaves and boil them for thirty minutes before drinking the health-infused creation.

Mallow (Cheeseweed)

Common to see in yards around the world, mallow is a blessing for adventurous eaters to enjoy. Both the leaves and seed pods are edible and can be enjoyed steamed, boiled, or raw as a salad green. Mallow is full of vitamins and minerals that make it useful as an herbal medicine, especially when used as an anti-inflammatory, diuretic, or laxative.

Purslane

If you only choose to eat one weed from your garden bed, purslane should be the one. This succulent looking plant grows close to the ground and in between the cracks of the sidewalk. If you find some, you’re in luck. This juicy, lemon-tasting green is filled with omega-3 fatty acids. It is tasty eaten raw, cooked or blended in a smoothie. Because every part of the plant can be eaten, you won’t have to worry about shoving it all in your mouth at once. As an extra benefit, purslane consistently produces a bumper crop of edible seeds, which can be used for baking. All you need to do is dry out the seeds for several weeks on a sheet of plastic before winnowing out the tiny, black seeds.

In Summary

The benefits of spending your summer days wrist deep in garden dirt cannot be underestimated, but there’s a lot you can do to enjoy fresh grown produce without the effort. Garden weeds are equipped to thrive where your vegetables suffer, and most of them actually contain more vitamins and minerals than conventionally grown produce. If you’re ready to enjoy the benefits of these long-valued “famine foods”, give your garden weeds a try and see how they make you feel. You might be amazed at the results.