[La Divina]: 115.Coriander.The Birth of Coriander

The Birth of Coriander, The Healing

The wife passed into death, sharing only one breath, one heartbeat with her daughter, a beautiful, healthy creature with wisps of gold on her head and pink cheeks. The father carried her, toothless mouth screaming, over the wall, placing her in her basket beside the plant that caused her birth.
“Coriander,” the Enchantress said calmly, taking the child up in her arms. Rose, nearly a year old, sat in the warm folds of her mother’s cloak, peering up at her new sister with curiosity. It was a shame, her mother lamented, looking from the wailing babe in her arms to the child at her feet, that Coriander would grow up to be more beautiful than Rose. Already the pink in her cheeks seemed to shape her face, her eyes settling on a morning blue color. Rose was pale, hair a mass of dark waves poking out like a demon’s crown, eyes the color of mud in water.
The man placed a hand on Coriander’s head, silently wishing that she would be stronger than her mother, wishing that she would not be as vain.
“I must take my wife’s body to be buried with her family. I will not return,” he said, weather to the Enchantress or his daughter it was not certain. Perhaps he meant it for them both. Rose, sitting with her feet in the soil and her tiny fist clutching her mother’s skirt, looked up, her head tilting from side to side, as though trying to make sense of the little drama taking place. At last the man walked away, leaving nothing behind for his child to remember him by. Coriander, perhaps sensing her father’s departure or else having inherited her mother’s strong passions, began to cry in earnest.
Leaving Rose to play in the garden the Enchantress went to fetch a clean rag and some goat’s milk for her.

Those first days were hard on us both. If I had dreamed of more children after Rose, Coriander drove those illusions from my mind. True that Cori was the prettier of them both, but Rose was a gentle babe, calm and modest in her tempers. Cori thrashed and wailed at all hours. She had an appetite that would satisfy two children, and woe to the smallest sound that awoke her from her slumber. She hated being too far from my embrace, and my arms were always sore from holding her. Rose learned to walk and soon could amuse herself for hours in the garden, though I was disappointed to see that she didn’t inherit my green hands. The little pea blossoms I gave her to tend were drowned in affection, water, and sunlight, but became brittle and bore no flower but one, and she cried when the thing finally died.

With each passing day Coriander became more lovely, and by the time she could stand on her own, she was a little cherub with rosy cheeks, a fair halo of blonde hair, eyes the color of precious blue sky. She was still foul tempered, spoke only “no” and hated to be too far from her adopted mother. Rose was the stranger of the two, always wandering barefoot in the garden, trying to help her mother with the plants. She was quiet, staring silently with bright hazel eyes at those who spoke to her, rarely uttering a word, though she spoke in phrases when she wanted. “Look at this” was frequently used, three words her mother came to recognize as a death toll of Rose’s failed gardening attempts. “Look at this,” she would say, tilting her head to one side, dark hair tangled and pushed behind her ears, holding out a withered something. “No,” Cori would protest, slapping the thing from her sister’s hand and crying for milk or to be held.
Rose seemed to regard Cori as another little plant to smother with affection, but Cori refused to be held by anyone other than the Enchantress. If Rose was offended by this treatment or jealous of the attentions her mother granted the little herb, she did not show it, but continued to bestow loving gestures in her own curious manner upon her.
She was a strange child, often found sitting alone, constantly pushing her thick dark hair behind her ears. She did not want to play with the other children, but was sometimes reluctantly dragged forward to pick flowers with the others, an area where she lacked talent. The bouquets she brought to put in the one vase they had were often marred with spots from insects or she brought them with the roots still attached.
Besides her odd little gestures of kindness and her serenity, there seemed to be no qualities that would endear her to anyone but her mother, and the Enchantress began to fear that the witch mark she wore had somehow affected the child.

In the garden Cori sits as close to me as possible, flinching and throwing fits when her skin is soiled with mud. Rose wanders, knowing that she’s of little or no use with the plants. The soil was starting to dry, and the roots needed to be properly attended to so that they would not choke. To free them I had a spade, thrusting it firmly to loosen the earth and pouring water in to revive the dying roots. Beside me, Cori plucked away a worm, screaming when it wiggled in her palm and crying “no” as she threw it off. Distracted by her crying the blade of my tool slipped and cut into my palm. Cori, seeing the blood, screeched “no” again. Rose came to my side, pushing her hair behind her ears.
“Mother,” she said quietly, touching my hand. The blood stained her finger nails and she pulled away as though hurt herself. Looking closer, I saw that she had, the wound the exact shape and deepness as mine. I looked to my own palm and saw that the cut had vanished, leaving behind only my blood, which was fast drying. She did not cry, but looked pained so that I put out my hand to comfort her. When she pulled slowly out of my embrace I saw that the wound had disappeared from her flesh as well. What kind of power is this? Have you given her the ability to take the pain of others onto herself?

Rose was curious of her power after that incident, but at the Enchantress’s warning, she did not use it again until one day when Cori, finally a little more content to leave her mother’s side, slipped and hit her head on the edge of a table. She began to cry at once, and for good reason. The blunt edge of wood had scraped a cut into her forehead, a ghastly shallow wound.
“Look at this,” Rose said, putting her hand on the wound and flinching a little when the doppelganger of the injury opened on her own brow. Cori slapped her hand away and cried even more feverishly. “No,” she wailed, even after putting her soft little hands on her head and feeling it smooth again.
The Enchantress watched, horrified, but intrigued to see the wound heal itself again. After several long moments, however, it seemed it wasn’t going to happen. Cori pulled a clean dishrag from the table and mopped up the dried blood on her forehead, then tossed it away and clung to her mother’s skirt, wailing for attention.
“Look at this,” Rose repeated, displaying her red badge.
Remembering how comfort had seemed to undo the craft at the last incident, the Enchantress shook Cori off of her skirt and pulled her young daughter up into her arms, but to no avail. Distressed, she found medicine and pressed a clean rag to the offensive thing to stop the bleeding. It healed in less than a fortnight, but left a scar.

I wondered after that if the first healing had been a fluke, but it did not explain how Rose was able to take the wound from Cori in the first place. It occurred to me, after much thought, that the first wound had healed because I had comforted her. Rose takes the pain onto herself when she wants to protect someone from hurting. In turn, I wanted to comfort her from it, and it was lifted. Cori is too young to show comfort or compassion in exchange for the healing.