Evaleah's Wild Rose - A Short Story - Part 1

I could have traced the path with my eyes closed in the darkest of nights, so often had I walked it. It was the way to Evaleah’s cottage.

It was a square, solid structure molded from nearby river stone and held together with beams hand-hewn by Evaleah’s father from the oaks that thickly overhung their long, narrow plot of land. My father was a furniture craftsman in town and I met Evaleah when I rode with him one day to pick up a choice load of oak lumber from Evaleah’s father. As little girls of the same age, we took to one another right away and became the closest of friends.

As we grew up, our families allowed us to be together as often as we liked. Invariably, we found ourselves in Evaleah’s garden. It was our favorite place. She and I would plant flowers and herbs, sail petals down the bordering stream, and talk about what our lives would be. Evaleah wanted a husband and dozens of bright, happy children around her skirts. I asked only for the distant seas, the dirty cobblestones of London— anywhere but our remote village that boasted a yearly fair, four dozen cottages, a few tiny shops and a broken down stone church.

In the garden I loved to grow herbs, pungent and rich; peppermint that bit your tongue and sweet parsley that we threw into the soup that simmered on the hearth. Evaleah’s unwavering favorite from the time we first met was the wild rose. She had a way with them and they grew like the stream that tumbled riotously beside us. She had the wayward vines creeping among the stones of the wall, along the front shutters of the house, everywhere where their roots could catch hold. They thrived on the touches she gave them, it seemed, and flourished.

But today I crossed the crashing waters of the river that edged the village and carried a violent dread in my heart for this particular visit to Evaleah’s more than any I had ever made. The bantering spring morning flung daffodil heads toward my passing skirts, and I breathed in the air that March winds seemed to pull from the moors beyond us and send cutting through the thin curtained windows of the cottages.

Overhead, to the west I could see slate gray thunderheads and I knew that it would rain today at Evaleah’s funeral.

Just yesterday I had taken my sister-friend’s newborn daughter and held her in my arms for the first time.

“Elise, remember…remember what I asked you to do…” Her pale blue eyes held me tightly in their wake. “Do it, Elise, for me…for her.”

What could I say?

(to be continued)