The Green Mist

Trudging home, she pulled her coat tighter across her shoulders. The cold was in her knuckles and the path muddied her skirts and boots. The trees around seemed solitary, indifferent, ignoring her as she passed below their still, dull branches. The only movement was the fluttering of the few lonesome leaves left clinging and trembling in the chill of the winter air. The only sound, her own footsteps and breath. How could this be the very same path which only a few months ago she had skipped and run along, laughing and chattering with her younger sister? With that summer sun smiling, they had startled birds with bursts of joy and exclamation, joining the billowing seedheads with twirling skirts. They had had no cares as they swung arms, baskets and gates. But now all was grey and she walked alone with the slow steps of worry and misery.

Calling out her sister’s name, she entered the small cottage. She wrestled her stony feet from her boots. Her sister lay in bed; her sickly face matching the grey view of the sky where it filled the pane with emptiness between the barely open curtains. The older girl gently pulled the quilt around them both.

“Did you give him my letter?” her sister asked, quiet and hoarse.

“I did, I hope you know that it was a nuisance to interrupt my day to play messenger. It’s so cold outside, and I lost my glove somewhere on the lane” she prattled playing her usual abrupt self to hide her anguish. Then suddenly, “Ma is scattering salt on the back steps and the little ones are eating all the bread whilst she isn’t paying them attention! Shall we go and see?” A desperate wish to have her sister back amongst the rest of the family took hold. She gathered the girl’s weak frame and propped her under her arm, steering her down the narrow stairs to the kitchen.

“What are you doing?” gasped their mother as her daughters appeared -one flushed from effort and the other pale and wan. “Take her back to bed immediately. She must not come down until the spring arrives. Then the warmth and light of those first sunshine rays will fill her and she will be strong again”

“But the green mist has not come and we have waited for it every day. The winter will never end!” cried the eldest girl. The little ones, mouths full of stolen bread, giggled at their sister’s dramatic exclamation.

“The winter will end,” reassured their mother, “It always does. The green mist will fill the valley and that shall be our sign that spring has arrived. Then the earth will warm, the leaves will unfurl and the flowers will bloom and your sister will regain her health.”

Their mother moved over to her daughters. She drew them close and whispered kisses into their hair. “Now back to bed.” she instructed. She turned towards the table, eyebrows raised and her youngest children, sensing admonishment, jumped up and ran squealing from the room.

But the winter went on. In the long evenings, they gathered by the fire together. Knitting socks and toasting toes, playing games and telling stories. Children and cats on knees, watching flickering flames till eyes grew heavy and sleep prevailed. But this cosy blanket of winter covered the quiet decline of their sickly child.

Every day the family watched for the green mist but all that they saw was the morning frost which seemed to glint and wink in spite as it lay on the ground.

One morning, woken early by her daughter’s coughing, the mother went in to her poorly child. Stroking her face, the contours now sharp, she brushed back the sweaty wisps of her hair. “The mist will come” she whispered.

Softly, the girl spoke, “Mother, if the green mist doesn’t come tomorrow morning, I can stay no longer. The earth is calling me and the seeds are bursting that will cover me. But if it would only come, I swear I’d ask no more as to live as long as one of the cowslips that grow by the door each Spring.”

But before her mother could reply, they heard shouting and the loud stamping steps of someone running and tripping up the stairs, ‘The green mist! The green mist! The green mist is here” puffed the elder sister, crashing through the door and into the bedroom. “Come! Look! Spring is finally coming!”

The mist curled through the valley. Hanging over the ground, spread thick, warming roots and bulbs, waking the buds to blossom and flower.

Spring’s light touch loosened Winter’s grip. The brightness of the sunshine, weak but radiant, lit the green and yellow shades of leaf and feather and shone iridescent and luminous. And as the sun climbed higher and higher, the frail girl grew stronger and stronger till her skin was flushed and glowing again and all declared that she was the halest and prettiest of maids.

The cowslips bloomed by the cottage doorstep, pale and crinkled at first, then tall, dancing, delicate in the sun. The mother, carefully, fearfully, cherished and guarded these flowers, stepping over them and reminding her children over and over, never to crush the low leaves underfoot or pick the fragile stems.

A young man strolled purposefully down the lane. He had set off that morning, wrapped up, expecting cool weather but as he walked, he happily shrugged off his coat and further down the lane he rolled his shirt sleeves and welcomed the warm breeze on his bare arms. He was to see his sweet heart. She had written to him in the deep winter to tell him of her illness and ask that he did not visit until the spring bloomed. Now, that time had come and the young man was keen to see her.

The gate latch clicked. The young man walked up the path. A pale yellow brimstone butterfly swooped over his shoulder. In the grass, he saw violets and bent to pick a few. A posy would be a lovely gift, he thought. He

added primroses from the path edge and celandine from the hedge and then spotted cowslips by the doorway. He picked those too. With a smile on his face, he knocked at the door.

She faded and died within days, the posy clutched to her. They always remembered her as she was in those days of green trees and sprouting grass. A beautiful, joyful maid, dancing like a bird in the sunshine amid the golden nodding blossoms.