I keep plants. All sorts: in gardens, in pots, on the walls, in terrariums; I’m especially proud of the moss colony I’ve encouraged to take root in my roof. Some of them whisper, some of them sigh, some of them speak in voices that could only be heard if, at the end of the world, the audio of their lives were to be sped.
They are not solitary creatures, though each of them have their preference. The ferns like the shade of the shrubs and the trees. The trees don’t like anything taller than them nearby, although they enjoy the company of the mushrooms that grow on their bark and the Spanish moss holding loosely to their branches. I think they like the cats too, because the cats like some of them, purring as they push their itchy faces against the stalks, or rest in their forks.
So I make sure to bring home new plants often as I can, introducing them to the rest as I make a space for them. One plant I brought in particular…didn’t get along with the others. Plants understand the interrelatedness of all organisms better than people ever could, which is why I have no explanation for this one.
There was an old woman who went by “M” I bought many plants from, or traded, or took off her hands when she believed were too sick for her healing abilities. When I passed her home shop that morning, I was surprised to find the contents spread out on the lawn, and people milling in and out of the place.
Concerned, I went inside with some of the others, looking for M. Instead, I ran into her daughter.
“Elle,” I greeted as she hugged me. “What’s going on here?”
“Haven’t you heard?” she sniffled. “Mama left us last week.”
That took me aback. Hadn’t I seen M only a week ago? “How?”
She spread her hands. “Her heart gave out, I guess. She was 103, so it was coming, and she never wanted to live if she didn’t have her independence, but still, a surprise.” She sighed. “We’re on something of a timetable to sell the house. That’s why we’re doing the sale now instead of waiting. Do you want to stay, look around?”
“I’ve got some errands I need to run, but maybe I can stop by on my way back?”
“That’ll be fine, if there’s anything left,” she said, and put her hands on her hips. “Look at them, the scavengers.” She looked at me guiltily. “I’m sorry. It’s just, you know they weren’t very kind to her, the many years she lived here. But they all want a piece of her. She considered you a friend though, I hope you know that.”
“I did too,” I said.
I hugged her again and began weaving my way through the shoppers. I had only just made it to the front steps when I heard her calling after me.
“Excuse me, excuse me – move!” she said, squeezing between some particularly obtuse shoppers. “Dani, I almost forgot. She has something for you, in the cellar.”
“For me?” I asked, bewildered.
“It’s got your name on it,” she said, taking my hand and hauling me back inside.
There were fewer people in the back of the house, and the cellar was taped off from shoppers. We ducked underneath and the overhead lights buzzed on when she flipped the switch. Some of her plants remained under the grow-lamps around the perimeter, but there was a new plant, sitting on a stool removed from all the others and encased in glass without a top. A strip of paper on which was scrawled “Dani Edison” was taped to the bottom.
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Elle said. “And I know a little more about plants than your average bear, having grown up with my mother. My daughter set me up with this app on my phone that identifies plants, but it didn’t know either. Do you?”
I looked closer. What I before took to be a wide stem was instead many twisted together, each topped with fuzzy purple and black flowers that formed a solid bouquet in the middle. It smelled somewhat musty, but maybe that was the cellar.
“No, I don’t,” I said. “She had a few people she got specimens from from time to time, but nothing too crazy. I’ve not seen anything like it.”
She sighed. “Well, it’s yours,” she said. “And if you ever do figure out what it is, let me know. I’d be curious where it came from, too.”
After my errands I returned and picked up the plant. It gave me a strange feeling, even in its glass casing. I wasn’t sure if the growing numbness in my arms was from the weight, or something else.
“We’ll find you a good place to sit,” I told it. “M had you in the dark so I take it you’re not much for the sun? Or maybe she meant to move you and never had the chance. Any help you can provide would be helpful.”
I waited. The plant was silent.
I placed the newcomer on my dining table where I kept the ones I wanted to keep an eye on, carefully removing the glass casing. I checked again around the base to see if there was any labeling or care notes.
“You couldn’t have left any instructions, M?” I muttered, running my fingers over a long leaf.
I looked at my hand. It wasn’t quite a sting I felt, but almost a buzzing; the discomfort of nausea only in my fingers.
“You’re a little feisty, aren’t you,” I said, and wiped my hand on my apron, making a note not to touch that one again. “Be welcoming,” I told the others around it sternly before going to my bookshelf. I pulled down the ones about flowering plants. I’d been through these many times, but maybe there was something I missed. I followed the indices to no avail. My rare flora books and exotic flower books also came up with nothing.
Stumped, I leaned back in my chair.
“I could call up the college,” I mused. I hated to do that; I took pride in never having to ask an academic for help, but now I might have been more curious than principled. “I’ll think on it,” I said, rising, and waved a finger at it. “If you stay healthy I may not have to.”
The following morning, heading into the kitchen bleary-eyed for coffee, I stopped short. On the dining table a couple of my plants were turning gray. I moved closer and squinted. One small succulent was completely brown, and I knew for a fact it had been perfectly fine the day previous. A few larger plants around it had darkened leaves on one side, all surrounding the newcomer. It remained with no offer of explanation, as vibrant purple as ever.
“Hm.”
I continued into the kitchen. I wasn’t going to get anything done without coffee.
“So you didn’t like it here,” I said as I rehomed M’s mystery plant. “What do you think of a window seat? Now, this is very special seating, and very limited, so I’m going to ask that you play nice with the others here. See? I’ve given you some space, too. No need to hurt anyone else.”
I returned to the dining room to tend to my patients. I cut a piece of the smallest succulent. Completely dead.
“That was fast,” I said, taking the plant and pot to the burn pile. There was no point in reusing the pot on the chance it was some sort of spreadable illness. I would have to see what happened with the others the mystery plant neighbored. I pruned the graying plants of their darkened leaves, and gave them a little fertilizer of their preferred types. “I hope you all come back,” I said quietly.
The following morning those ones were mostly back to normal. One that had a piece of gray I hadn’t removed was doing considerably worse, but the others seemed to have recovered just fine. And then the moment of truth, in the sunshine by the window…the mystery plant seemed to like the light, and all the other plants, sitting apart, seemed none the worse for wear.
“A fluke, then,” I said. “I’m glad you like this spot a little better.”
Two days later though, the entirety of the window shelves was dead. I stared in horror. Many of these had been friends. My gaze moved slowly down to the mystery plant, still purple, still living. I picked it up, and for a brief flash I considered putting it in the burn pile. No, I didn’t kill plants, not if I could help it. And besides, this was a gift from a friend, a friend who was no longer with me. Even though right now, it didn’t feel like much of a gift.
“You don’t like it here at all,” I said. “What do you like?”
Immediately through my skull flashed cool dirt, worms feasting and roots spreading. I recoiled, and stared at it a moment.
“Okay.”
I went out away from my house, out to a field that nobody knew, or at least that I never saw anyone else go to. I took the mystery plant with me and dug a hole in the center of the field. I felt like I was abandoning a dog miles from home, but in this case the dog didn’t want to be kept. In this case, the dog told me where it wanted to go. Was that alarming? Maybe, but I figured stranger things had happened.
I loosened the roots from the shape of the pot and placed it carefully in its new home. I covered it with dirt and packed it in before standing back to inspect my work. Did it pulse, or was that my imagination?
“Alright, I hope this is where you wanted to be,” I said. “I’ll…be going now.”
And for awhile, that was the end of it. I cleaned up the dead by the window and I mourned, but new plants took their place and I kept busy as I normally did. Until one night I dreamed of that field, of rot and decay and of a bright purple flower.
I stood over the kitchen sink that morning, unable to swallow my coffee. I’d never thought a plant could be capable of malice, but what I felt in that one, and what I felt when it reached into my mind…maybe I should have put it on the burn pile.
I drove out the way I had done that day and parked on the side of the road. When I opened the car door I was smacked in the face with the smell of rot. I grabbed a bandana from the back and covered my face, heart racing.
The ground was spongey, grabbing for my feet at each step before I ever left the trees. I caught myself on one, only for my hand to sink into it and centipedes and maggots to swarm. I stumbled into the field like I might stumble into another world. The fumes were noxious. The ground was not only dead, but bare and rotting, gray and moist like the flesh of a dead beast. Even the trees on the perimeter were dead or dying. Even as I watched, one buckled under its own weight, falling not with a crash but with the sound of meat hitting mud.
In the middle, as before but with so much greater consequences, thrived the purple flower, the only color in the entire field. It did pulsate, with raised roots underneath the surface like veins. I wasn’t sure what I felt rolling off of it, if it was malice or if it was exultation.
And underneath, worms writhed.