Small Prayers for the God of Sow Thistle Hill

Linnea’s done it all properly: incense and banners, a white bull done up with ribbons. Mostly white, I should say. It had a brown spot behind one ear. I watched her paint the spot white, in the pre-dawn hour when no one else was looking. She pricked the soles of her feet afterwards, in penance. When she led the bull past my shrine to the mountain path, her shoes were full of blood. Clever girl. That’s the kind of detail Ranak loves. Much better than a bull with no brown spots. A bull is a bull, if you ask me. Not that anyone’s ever offered me one.

I’m not jealous. I know why she offered the bull to Ranak and not me. Things are bad and everyone is scared. It’s to do with borders, regimes, armies: big-picture things, and for that, you want the mountain. Teeth in the clouds, the sheer drop, the rock shaped like a maw. Proper holy. Ranak is red inside; he exploded once, not so long ago that they don’t remember. He has a whole buried city on him somewhere. You would think that might put them off Ranak, but of course it only makes them love him more. You like a god who makes you a little bit afraid.

I am small and old, a hill worn soft by many years of rain, and the only thing buried in me is a family of rabbits. On one of Ranak’s bad days, he made the earth shake and collapsed their burrow, three kits tucked under their mother. My little saints’ bones.

Linnea’s one of mine. Born in the hill’s shadow. Her mother came to me for sow thistles, to make her milk come in; Linnea a pair of bright eyes peeking over the top of her sling. As a child she used to come to me with small prayers. Climbed the hill to the spot where the trees make an arch over the spring, a small pool in a tangle of long-stemmed yellow flowers, prickle-leaves. Once not long ago, all grown up, she knelt by the spring, pushed the weeds aside, and drank from her cupped hands. Then she bent her head and asked, if it wasn’t too much trouble, though she felt a little silly with everything else going on, but if I might send good weather tomorrow, because Sara agreed to go on a picnic and this was her chance. A rabbit kit’s white tail flashed between the weeds, a puff of thistledown, sun on the water. I could almost touch her then, in that moment of asking.

The next day, there was sun.

What can I say: I’m an old gossip, and I do like to see young people work it out.

A day of sun, I can do. But enough sun to turn a harvest around, no. I can’t tell you why there’s less food, each year, can’t do anything about sickness or war. I can’t save people. I can only be here, which never feels like enough. Ranak can save them, but probably won’t. I think that’s worse, personally. But I understand why people go to him anyway, just for the chance. It’s easy for me to say that if I were the god of the mountain, I’d do it differently. Easy for me to say I’d change things if I could, when I can’t.

Anyway, what would I do with a bull? I’m sure it wouldn’t get along with the rabbits.

They were three days on the mountain, Linnea and the rest of them. Ranak was putting on a show: smoke, tremors, a strange fire on the black rock.

I went deep into myself for a bit, the way I do when it’s all too much. The rabbits are always there, curled at the heart of me. It’s so much easier to just let things happen, as they’re going to anyway. I won’t lie: it’s tempting, sometimes.

So I didn’t hear Linnea come back until she put her hand right in the spring. She sat by the pool with her bare feet tucked under her, like she couldn’t bear to see them. I didn’t want to know what Ranak had said.

“It hurts,” said Linnea. She closed her eyes. “Are you there? It hurts, and I’m scared.”

A rabbit poked its nose out of the ferns. Linnea held very still. The rabbit hopped towards her, whiskered her knees.

It’s unbearable, sometimes, to be here. To care what happens. It is all I can do, and it is never enough.

Linnea unfolded her legs, pain-careful. She cupped her hands in the spring and let the water trickle over her feet. I washed them, blood and dirt crusted over, until the water ran clear.

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Ⓒ Kate Francia