myth for kudzu

Once Rebecca saw the man in the woods by the passionfruit grove, he winked at her and turned around to disappear into the soft snow woods. One paw paw was gone off the paw paw tree.

When Rebecca returned to tell Sola the boy was gone. She slammed her scepter upon the ground, furious Rebecca could not tell her in what direction the boy went.

Rebecca seemed to draw even deeper into herself as she tried to explain that the empress herself had encouraged the boy to leave. But Sola could not hear it. Knowing her son was truly gone, was a wish she had made and did not know how to hold now it was granted. She had done everything she could imagine to do to protect him, and even though she knew the boy had to leave she had so wished for him to stay, for time to stop and for the world to be one inside a garden of gourds, quiet and always safe.

Sola burned down the house of ivy, so that when the sun rose on Sunday and she brought her army together as she did every Sunday dance for the sun from the moment it rose and breached the hill in the west. It was smoldering like a destroyed moon. The grass men all stood at attention, filling the square. She appeared before them so evenly you could not see a crack in her. They never wavered. They loved her the way a finger loves its hand, the way an ear loves a head - every one of them was exactly the same in the way grasses are. In the way emmer is, and emmer was always baking in that town, without pause, without end, as the carts of bread went out to every town as far away as anyone could imagine.

The grass men swayed and no one could have glinted that there was something moving within them. No, the sound of crickets was gone, but there was another sound, a whooshing in their midst. And Sola began a different kind of reign then. She saw no choice. She drew up language that proved she was made of sunlight and employed Rebecca in a tower.

“You must take my love, Rebecca, and weave it into something that will find him.” The protections Sola had once promised would free the woman now stifled her. She had to stay beside Sola as the only one who knew about Sola’s son, and the only one who could calm the terrifying empress.

Sola’s love twined the gates and tucked into door hinges. It developed heavy roots in the ground and grew and grew as kudzu rolling along the ground. It expanded in all directions in search for the lost boy. The grass people and the people who lived in the limestone quarry had to beat back the vines from covering the field altogether, but still it kept planting itself. She would stare at flowers, as if they were some telephone, as if they were some television in them she could see her son. If only the vines could twine around his feet, wrap around him, and bring him into safety. Every bit of love and pain she had for the child whose safety she could never secure ran wild.

The vines covered the whole town, so one could not see the ground for the leaves. Sometimes, if you listened closely, a person could hear the vines creak in the night, or squeeze in the day, the plastic sweaty sound of plants. And still Rebecca drew from the love. It was endless.