To the End of the Swamps

     The land was barren, the sky was black, as Muriel and Abe hopped from tuft to grassy tuft back to their hut.

Muriel's hand tightened around the bundle of herbs as she missed a step and skated over the mud.

"Careful!" Abe smirked over his shoulder, nimble as ever even in bare feet.

"It's your giant shoes! Holding me back, making me slip!"

Abe laughed. "Well, if you hadn't lost your own shoes in the mud back there, you wouldn't have to wear mine!"

"What kind of an herb-seller sets up shop in a swamp anyway?" Muriel huffed, now close enough to the hut for the firelight inside to guide her clumsy feet through the shadows.

She leaned against the hut to catch her breath, wiping her brow with her forearm, letting the scent of the herbs wash over her. Peppermint, yarrow, mugwort, mimosa. If they weren't enough to give him back his dreams, what would?

Abe peered through the window in the oaken door, and Muriel edged in close to him, pressing her forehead against the smooth wood. There was the old man, right where they'd left him, in the rocking chair he'd fashioned himself out of antler and bone; the chair where he'd once had his prophetic dreams. Muriel breathed deep of the summer night's air, smelling her own chill sweat, Abe's honeysuckle soap, and the earthiness of dried peat burning in the fireplace.

"We're back!" Muriel laid the bundle down on the kitchen counter, tugging loose the violet string so the paper fell open.

The old man narrowed his eyes and a crease dented the skin between his eyebrows. "I don't see why you've gone out! We've tried everything already and it's useless!"

"We haven't tried everything," Abe said, placing a pot of water on the grate over the fire.

"We have!" protested the man."We put extra bay leaves in the soup, choked down white onions at every blasted meal, turned all our cedar dishes to ash in the fireplace. I even purchased a bouquet of marigolds from that doggone door-to-door salesman last week! 'Scatter them around your chair,' says he. 'Dreams and prophecy will abound,' says he. Well, they're all brown and shriveled now, aren't they? And what have I to show for it!?"

Muriel plucked the herbs leaf from stem and tossed them into the water, just as the woman at the herb shack had shown her.

"I've tried tea before, if that's what you're up to!" the old man beat his fist on the arm of the rocking chair, then let out a hefty sneeze. The herbs steamed madly now, filling the hut with white smoke, and Muriel's eyes struggled to stay open to stir the muddled green sludge in the pot.

Enveloped in the steam, Muriel's head bobbed and her eyelids flickered, while in the rocking chair the old man began to snore.