Reap What You Sow

A Short Story for the Lunar Awards Prompt Quest #3

It’s my third time traveling the hills and dales of imagination in search of a story worthy of Prompt Quest, the brainchild of

Brian Reindel 👾⚔️

over at the Lunar Awards.

As part of the quest, valiant writers must choose a genre, either science fiction or fantasy, and write a short story based on a prompt. Because fantasy reigns over my heart and soul, I once again chose that option.

Fantasy Prompt: Write a fantasy short story that takes place in a mysterious village where the cultivation of a magical crop is the community's primary means of survival. A malevolent force threatens to destroy the crop and anyone who gets in the way. Can an unlikely hero rise up to save the day?

Level Up! (Optional) Make the hero very unlikely and very arrogant, in need of humility and loads of redemption.

The result: In a land of violence, warriors are revered, and the High Family, rulers of the realm, are the most fearsome of all. Their power, it’s said, rests in a ritual tied to vierbane. Without the blue-tinged root, the realm will fall. Tol grows the best vierbane in the land, but when a withering rot takes hold of first his neighbors’ land and then his own, Tol must seek out the guidance of the High Priestess. The cure she suggests has consequences that even Tol, proud and sure as he is, could never have anticipated.

Happy reading!

Image credit: Mike Hindle via Unsplash

In a time of blood and magic, there lived a farmer whose work ensured the survival of his people. His name was Tol, and he was the latest in a long line of stalwart, stern-faced men and women to till the soil on a small patch of fertile ground in the realm of Dymina.

Tol was far from the only farmer in Dymina. Theirs was a society of warriors renowned and feared across the plains and mountains and as far away as the southern seas. And all these fearsome warriors required inordinate amounts of grains, vegetables, and meat to sustain their vigor in battle.

Most of the people that worked the land of Dymina were regarded as lowly laborers. They were the ones that lacked the speed, agility, strength, and ruthlessness required to thrive as fighters. Farming in that bloodthirsty realm was for the dull and dimwitted.

But Tol managed to retain his dignity and pride; he was regarded with respect, awe, even fear. Because while Tol was indeed a farmer, the fruit of his labor would not grace any tables nor fill any stomachs. His was a special sort of harvest reserved for a select few.

It was called cyalium. Above ground, it grew huge tripartite leaves in a lush, deep blue. They were covered in soft hairs like a sheep’s ear and kept their suppleness for some time, even after they were picked from the plant. With a feel many times as luxuriant as the finest cloth Dymina’s weavers could produce, the leaves were sewn together into resplendent azure robes for the High Family to wear to victory parades, festivals, and holy days.

But the leaves, even with their unrivaled handfeel, were secondary to the roots. Below the ground, deep-blue tubers, the color of a midnight sky, stretched into the earth in groups of five so that when they were wrenched free from the dirt, they resembled a hand.

These went by many names, including queensroot and lady’s grasp. Tol’s family called it vierbane. Once the harvest was wrested from the ground, it was packed carefully in silver crates and taken directly to the High Family’s priestess, who ground the root into a velvety lapis powder. This she mixed with precious oils and unguents and, some believed, the freshly shed blood of Dymina’s enemies.

Then, underneath the new moon, the High Family appeared before her naked in the dark, and she painted them from the top of their heads to the tips of their toes. The vierbane paint sunk deep into the skin of Dymina’s High Family, staining them various shades of indigo and cobalt.

And in this way, the High Family was transformed from human to something more: ferocious godlike creatures, savage and merciless in battle. So it had been for generations, and so it would be forever more. For it was said that if the skin of the High Family were ever to be left unpainted, Dymina would fall.

Among the small number of farmers to cultivate vierbane, Tol’s crops were widely regarded as the best. The leaves of his plants were smooth and supple. The roots grew sure and deep into the soil, each set of five coming up from the earth fine and elegant, like the hands of the High Priestess herself.

The paint made from Tol’s harvest was reserved for the most senior members of the High Family, their skin glistening sapphire in the heat of battle as the blood of their enemies sprayed like rubies across their chests.

Tol reveled in the reflected glory of each Dymina victory. For everyone understood, it was his vierbane that infused the High Family with power beyond the ordinary. It was his vierbane that soaked into their muscles and bones, strengthening them. It was his vierbane that permeated the very air of their lungs so that their words were laced with glory, inspiring those they led into a murderous collective fugue.

But then the range came.

It started with the barest tint of ochre on the edges of the other farmers’ vierbane leaves. Tol couldn’t help chuckling to himself, for he did not understand what the affliction was or what it meant.

Obviously, thought Tol, his neighbors had left their fields too long untended. Perhaps they hadn’t set out the proper offerings or had forgotten to dig their fingers deep into the soil while sending their prayers down into the depths of Dymina’s rich, dark earth.

He told them as much when they came to him, begging for help. And he watched with no small amount of glee at his neighbors’ misfortune as the ochre-edged leaves withered to a crisp brown and the tubers, when pulled up on the next full moon, were a sickly sepia.

He turned his back on their incompetence, surveying his field of blue as the vierbane swayed in the gentle evening breeze. Tol had learned the care and keeping of the crops from his father, who had learned it from his mother, and she from her own mother, and so on through the generations, as now Tol taught it to his son Het.

Tol knew it must be his kin’s faithfulness to Dymina and the High Family that had kept his crops safe. It was a devotion that coursed through his own veins and permeated his soul. It was the secret, as far as Tol was concerned, to their bountiful vierbane harvests each year.

That’s why he felt it in his marrow when a flash of rusty orange caught his eye one midday as he worked the fields. He fell to his knees, cradling the plant with shaking hands as desiccated flakes of brown leaf stuck to his sweaty palms.

He rose, standing unsteadily on shaking legs. When he finally lifted his gaze, he saw the other vierbane farmers had gathered at the edge of his field. And in their midst was Het, looking anxious, uncertain. It was that look in his son’s eyes that convinced him.

It was time to seek out the counsel of the High Priestess.

Tol reached down and plucked the afflicted leaf from the plant, holding it before him like a kind of penance as he marched forward on unsteady legs. He didn’t pause when he met Het and the others. He knew they would fall into line behind him, a funeral cortege for Tol’s sense of superiority.

The High Priestess did not live with the High Family. She kept mainly to a cave on the northernmost hill bordering Dymina’s valley. When they reached her, the sun had set and a crescent moon smiled in the blue-silk sky.

Tol entered, the rest filing in on shuffling feet behind him, their heads bowed, half in reverence and half in fear. It was only after they’d all grown still, with just the crackling of the fire to break the silence, that the High Priestess lifted her head, acknowledging their presence.

She was dressed in the dusty blue of the spruce that covered the mountainside, and her wild, black hair was held back by a crown of antlers that seemed to sprout directly from her head. The flickering flames highlighted the sharp-edged planes of her face.

She was striking but unnerving. Before her, even Tol felt like one of the timid field mice that scurried in his field. He kneeled before her and raised the orange-limned vierbane up, holding his breath as he did so.

He thought perhaps the High Priestess might gasp, or shriek, or slap him across the face for his failure, and he braced himself, ready to withstand her ire. But after several moments passed, the only thing that Tol heard was a small sigh. It was the kind of sigh he’d felt pass his own lips when he readied himself to deliver fatherly advice to Het.

“The range comes,” the High Priestess said, her voice like the roll of faraway thunder, “once in a great many generations. It is an outward sign of the land’s inner thirst. This thirst can only be slaked by flesh and blood.”

“Flesh and blood,” Tol repeated. “Those should be easy enough to come by. Why, even now, Dymina slays the northern menace, laying waste to scores of their men every day. We can go there now and return with more than enough gore and viscera to put the fields right.”

The High Priestess shook her head. “The land of Dymina cannot be fed with anything other than its own sons and daughters.”

Tol swallowed. Still on bended knee, he turned to look at the others. They stared at him. Some with loathing in their eyes, some with cool detachment. But there were none among his fellows who looked upon him with kindness, none who he could call a friend. Only his son reached out a hand to help Tol stand.

But before he could lift Tol to his feet, one of the farmers stayed Het’s hand. “It seems to me,” the farmer said, eyes burning, “that the flesh and blood must belong to the one among us whose faith and devotion to Dymina is truest, whose sweat and tears have seasoned the earth so that it brings forth vierbane fit for our kings and queens.”

“Yes,” cried another. “The fate of Dymina rests in our fields. We cannot afford to offer the soil anything less than the most righteous, the most virtuous, the one whose skill in the field must proclaim his close connection to the earth.”

Although the words spoke of glory and honor, they felt like knives of recrimination. Tol shook his head, bleating half-formed protests, but the farmers only circled closer, shouting their agreement with the first two and calling for Tol’s life.

Tol stole a glance over his shoulder, hoping to find some solace in the eyes of the High Priestess. But the only thing he saw there was cold acceptance.

One farmer struck Tol across the face. Another kicked him in the side. Tol collapsed. Het yelled, swinging and punching, trying to help, but it was no use. Warrior or no, violence was woven into the souls of all the people of Dymina.

They tore Tol into twelve pieces, one for each plot of land. They buried his flesh in the field, sprinkled the soil with his blood. For Het they saved Tol’s heart. The boy carried it back with him to the soil his father had tended with such pride, and he dug a small hole and placed the red knot of muscle gently inside.

As soon as Tol’s heart touched the earth, it began to beat, strong and steady. It was a pulse that thrummed through the dirt, setting each part of him vibrating across the lands of all twelve vierbane farmers. It was a cadence that drove Tol’s blood through the veins of the blue leaves and bluer roots. It was a rhythm that circulated through the soil, lifting leaves and swelling roots, transmuting orange to blue.

And Het understood, as he shoveled dirt onto the still-beating heart of his father, that Tol might now live on. Lauded, respected, revered. A true son of the soil. Until the next time the range came to Dymina.

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Looking for more tales fresh from the witch’s oven? Check out my dark fantasy stories here.

Or maybe you’re in the mood for something a little longer? My serialized novel, Dark as Dawn, Bright as Night, is a literary fantasy with elements of horror, and you can find all the episodes here!

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