The Mandrake Farm: A Novel

Prologue

My sister Lillian was fixated on getting a photo of a pair of swans that came to visit our pond. Every day she would see them and either she forgot to bring her camera, or they were too far away. But each day she tried, and she would sneak down to the edge of the water, they would see her and swim the other way. She tried all times of the day and one day even bringing down a lunch, she was determined to sit it out and wait for them. She sat there a long time and could see they were finally making their way toward her. She prided herself on the amount of patience she was able to maintain. She had a book with her but was soon able to set it down and finally pick up her camera. She began snapping shots and the swans didn’t seem spooked. Closer they came. Just at that point I decided to go down and keep her company, but I could see she wanted to scream at me to go back for fear I would startle them.

What I really wanted was for her to pay attention to the stag just twenty-five feet from her that was swimming across the pond and ready to step out of the water. She missed that rare opportunity, but I took advantage of it. As her swans took flight across the water in their glorious uproar of splashing and flapping feathers, she scolded me for my intrusion while I snapped my own camera repeatedly and we both watched the stag come out of the water, proudly showing off his magnificent rack. I know she felt like smacking me when I told my sister Lillian, that she just wasn’t looking in the right direction, again, and she took the back seat, again, so to speak; or so I thought.

Chapter 1

Lillian.

Home, in a monstrous old

Victorian affair

I have called this place Mandrake Farm since I was a little girl. And when my father allowed me to give it this name officially, together, we placed the sign that he had made in his workshop at our gate entrance. I suppose I was first intrigued by the Mandrake after reading a Harry Potter tale. They used it in a brew as a restorative for those that had been attacked by the monster in the Chamber of Secrets. In Egypt, the Mandrake is all about fertility and it is the symbol for the Hebrew tribe of Reuben, one of the sons of Leah and Jacob in the book of Genesis. It is seen as a magical enchantment. And then it is said that from the sperm of a hanged man, we will find it growing under the gallows. That screaming that we hear will drive a person mad. Then the next scary bit of superstition is to let a dog dig it up and pull it out of the ground while you cover your ears, but not a dog you love because it’s a death sentence for the poor thing.

But right now, I am busy looking into my mirror, playing games with myself. Oh Lillian, mirror mirror, on the wall, who’ s the fairest of them all? They say I have gentle eyes which is a nice way of letting me know I am homely. But I try and accentuate my better features, and today it is my hair. I could be the envy of some, my hair, so black and so shiny, just washed and rinsed with a lavender concoction that I made up myself from the plants in my herb garden. I have coiled it up and placed it all on my crown with a tortoise shell comb studded with green gems turning it into an ornament, a piece of jewelry. Those gentle eyes of mine can be outlined with Kohl. I must make the most of what I have and if I did not have a sister who was an absolute knockout, then I probably would not be looked on as homely.

Men just cannot take their eyes off her. My sister Rosemary and I were walking back from a market and as we passed a man who had been having a coffee at a café he began walking toward us. His googling eyes did not see where he was going, and he tripped while he was trying to make an impression and I laughed out loud. He could not take his eyes off my sister. It has always been like this. I always take the back seat, yet I love my sister. She has been whole heartedly supportive of me and helping me along in every endeavor I tackled. She might have all the looks, but I am the better cook. I am the better musician, the better seamstress and these things Rosemary knows. We even each other out. For years I wondered what would happen when we began to look at boys and start to date. Would I find someone who loved me, someone who I would not have to compete with my sister for his affections?

Living remotely on this bucolic patch of land, we thrived, Rosemary and I, with a flock of sheep, a few Border Collies, a bunch of cats, and our parents. Our father came from Persia when Persia was Persia. He claimed that country to be his country of origin and he brought with him all the old traditions, along with some Persian rugs. My grandfather lived with us until he died when I was just ten years old, and those traditions where not easily forgotten. We used to call him Emir. My mother said it was disrespectful, but he liked it. A few of my grandfather’s traditions were ingrained in my father. Some of them, I discovered over the years, were not traditions at all but his own made up rules he wanted to enforce.

His land here was precious to him, and there was plenty of space for both a grain crop to grow and for the grassy meadows that grazed our sheep. This was our family status symbol. Sheep. Rosemary and I always helped and even as little girls, we loved them, just being with them, watching the lambs born and their frolicking. And when we became older our mother taught us the methods of dying the wool, felting, carding and spinning the beautiful fiber these animals provided us with.

My mother was a descendant of the American Indian tribe of the Cherokee. Both of my parents had a beautiful dark olive complexion and fabulous thick dark hair and eyes. There was a beautiful sheen to our skin. It was an odd combination for parenting, a man raised in the Muslim faith and a woman with a unique belief system that honored Mother Earth and Father Sky. It was from my mother that I learned the meaning of plants, both healing and poisons and the delicate strategies she used in daily life she learned from her ancestors used for problem solving. Most worldly situations were looked at in a much different way.

It became obvious to me very quickly that I wanted to share those methods for fiber arts that my mother taught us with other women. Rosemary and I began organizing classes and we would gather and together devise new ways to create and use dyes to color the wool and teach women the joys and beauty of wool fiber. Great pots were set up under wood fires outside and we experimented with all sorts of leaf and vegetable materials recording the results in order to improve on the next batch. Blues from heads of a red cabbage, yellows from Goldenrod and onion skins, just a few of hundreds of ways to perfect upon. It’s a good day to dye, became our motto.

A very beautiful Cherokee prayer honors the four directions and with it the seasons and all that they pertain to. The last line, It’s a good day to die refers to the belief that if you lived your life in a good way and with the awareness of your death, then you could die in a good space. I loved that prayer and once I was involved with Wool Camp, I took that as our Logo, using a homonym I could happily live with.

When our father realized our love for the sheep, he turned that part of the land over to us once he felt we were old enough. Of course, he left my mother in charge, which she always had been anyhow. We immediately stopped selling these beautiful animals for their meat. He oversaw any breeding because he had the expertise in this field, but breeding became minimal once the lambs were no longer for sale. Father said we’d be in the poor house very soon if we didn’t sell the lambs, but we were ready to take that chance. We had a flock of beautiful animals and had names for them. Women liked this. It added a very personal touch to their craft.

Eventually my sister and I had ourselves a thriving business and we were sponsoring what we called Wool Camp. Women would come and stay for a few days and we would take them through the entire process of shearing a sheep, washing the wool, dyeing it, carding it and maybe even spinning it. Wonderful foods were involved, and we made these gatherings very social and educational and it became quite profitable for us. Wool camp was not cheap. We were earning our keep. My father just shook his head but was always willing to help us any way he could.

The house we lived in was a monstrous old Victorian affair. The upkeep was unending. It had some ‘Gingerbread’ trim that seemed to always need a coat of paint. Rosemary and I had our own wing once we became old enough to maintain our own living space. I always assumed my parents just didn’t want to hear our music. We always had our family meals together in a magnificent kitchen with a hearth and that kitchen made every woman who ever walked into it green with envy. Big, bright yet always cozy on a cool night. Our family home was big enough to accommodate five guests. My father had created little bedrooms out of his imagination. Under the eaves and at the end of a hallway that led to nowhere. These old homes were spacious and full of cubbyholes that were now turned into rooms. And lovely rooms they were. I searched antique shops and thrift stores and decorated these spaces with beautiful fabrics and furniture, lamps and accessories. We were delightfully pleased with what we accomplished.

Chapter 2

Birch for new beginnings,

fairy powdered trunks, a dream,

twigged besom, white bark

innocent and clean

helping me find the magic

I t was peaceful, this pastural picture of life that we were a part of. Fat-tailed sheep and Cotswolds. It is always calming just to sit with them while they wandered the meadow. Just sit and do nothing but think or meditate, plan a future in my mind, daydream. But today I was free to roam. All my chores were done.

This land was established, by me, as a refuge for protection and more than ever before, I embraced my home and the land surrounding. I thought the gate at the head of the driveway was protection enough but soon realized that I was looking for something else. Something more. Nothing ever really indicated this, I seldom felt threatened, or even came close to thinking there was any danger in the forest that surrounded me, so I questioned the reasoning to why I felt I needed something more. Something to protect against what I could not see. Like what? A talisman? An amulet? A guard dog? I was not afraid of the dark. But I was afraid of what I could not see. A black bear might startle me, or a snake slithering through the grass. But I think at this point I just wanted to learn. I loved botany; I loved the wildlife. I just was looking for a little magic, a little magical protection. Dad said the word magic was for day dreamers. There was no such thing as magic, he said, but for me there was. It was a simple matter of knowing what I wanted and doing whatever I could to bring it to reality. I saw it as an art, even a science where I could focus my will to effect a change. Sometimes I scared people with these ideas.

I packed a