The Unrelenting Dreams of Mary Gold

For seventeen years, the good folks of Keeltown County enjoyed the lofty, undisputed reputation for producing the finest crop of marigolds. Plants with tall sturdy stalks, sharp bract leaves, and fat blooms that exploded across the county in fiery waves of tangerine and xanthous every May, and didn’t disappear until October, when the first frost curled their leaves.

The year Mary Gold won first place in a tri-county writing contest, however—taking home the blue ribbon, and an offer to apprentice as a wordsmith’s understudy—everything changed.

That summer, Keeltown residents watched the sun set behind hilltops shaded in hues of canary and cantaloupe one night, and woke up the next morning to find the same ridges carpeted in brown. Upon further investigation, they discovered that every bloom, stem, leaf, and bud—from Blue Ridge Road, all the way down to the Pontybridge Quarry (two counties over)—had failed, it seemed, overnight.

It was a catastrophe of Biblical proportions.

Members of the St. Phocas Holy Blossom congregation, who had gathered in the shady church yard for a summer potluck, could talk of nothing else.

“It’s not just that they’re dry,” said Deirdre Tarrow, Keeltown County’s midwife and resident herbalist. “Dry I can work with, but the crop is downright tasteless.” She ruefully inspected a dinner roll seasoned with last year’s marigold leaves, before taking a bite. (Keeltown housewives, it should be noted, no longer made anything with saffron.)

“There’s nothing useable about them,” Dr. Cherry, agreed. “No flavor, or luck, or even enough calendula to treat a bruise.”

“Husks,” mumbled Joe Barker, snapping a leaf off a dehydrated clump of what had been—until that morning—a perfectly healthy bunch of Durango Reds.

Above his head, a banner painted with the words, “Better luck next time, Mary!” fluttered listlessly in the breeze.

“Husks. Exactly.” Deirdre jabbed the half-eaten dinner roll at Joe, ignoring Dr. Cherry completely. “And how do you explain that?”

Joe lifted one shoulder and let it fall.

“Could it be blight?” Willie Gamble offered.

Murmurs traveled around the church yard, some agreeing with Willie, while others pointed out that blight usually hit corn, not marigolds. And besides, that was in springtime, not summer.

After blight was discussed and discarded, someone else suggested spittlebugs, while a few of the more practical folk thought rival farmhands were most likely to blame. That was when Patricia Huffy came up with the most sensible explanation of all.

“It was a witch,” she said.

“Ohhh, surely not,” pish-poshed Reverend Horace Bump, a slight man, who came from a long line of distinguished Keeltown reverends, and wasn’t entirely comfortable with his flock wandering into discussions about independent women, who read books and did things he didn’t understand.

“Hand to Bible, I saw her casting spells from the loft of the old, Blue Ridge barn only last week,” Patricia barreled over the reverend’s protestations. “She had a huge nose and three warts on her left cheek—I remember that part, especially.”

“You don’t say.” Deirdre’s eyes went wide.

“Indeed.” Patricia clicked her tongue. Flecks of apple pie crust were sticking to the second of her three chins, but no one bothered telling her.

“Is Blue Ridge where all those Tagetes grow wild?” Dr. Cherry asked.

“Sure is,” Willie said. “They cured my stomach cramps last year, lickety split.”

“But a witch!” Deirdre shook her head. “Lord, I always knew there was something funny about that barn.”

“Now, be reasonable,” Reverend Bump chided. “There’s no such thing as witches.”

“Says who?” Deirdre frowned.

Reverend Bump blushed, unsure how to respond, and settled for rearranging a basket of crumpets, instead.

“Say… didn’t Gwenivere used to dawdle up at Blue Ridge?” Charlie Hopper asked. “As I recall, the flowers failed that year too.”

Charlie’s wife quickly hushed him with a sharp elbow to the side, and a nervous glance at the pie table.

Patricia—who normally had excellent hearing—stabbed viciously at the pastry on her plate and said, “What was that now, dear?”

Charlie ducked his head, mumbling about there being no such thing as coincidences.

“Well I think we should have burned it down ages ago,” Dr. Cherry said, trying to make Patricia feel better.

“Can’t,” said Willie Gamble. “Not without burning down half the Tagetes, too.”

At the far end of the yard, Joe Barker whimpered, worrying the Durango leaf to dust.

“Would anyone like a crumpet?" Reverened Bump asked, brightly. "These are positively delicious!”

No one paid him any mind.

Everyone was thinking about the witch, the Blue Ridge barn, and pondering the possibility that Patricia Huffy might actually be right about something—for once in her life.

No one was thinking about Mary Gold.

***

In reality, the truth wasn’t as simple as blight, not as treacherous as rival farmhands, and, in fact, had nothing to do with witches. (Which wasn’t to say that there hadn’t been any magic involved, just that witches weren’t to blame.)

In reality, it came down to a matter of dreams.

It wasn’t that people in Keeltown didn’t have any. It was just that—somehow or other—they kept on losing them.

Jenny Lee, for example, had all the makings of a world-class actress. She used to practice lines with Benny Flynn—the star baritone in the Keeltown Barbershop Quartet—every afternoon. Until one day, they both called it quits, giving up their dreams in exchange for a cozy two bedroom off Harlow Road.

Then, there was Nathanial Chesterfield, a talented wood turner, who everyone thought would be selling dining sets in the capital one day.

Nathaniel now built coffins at the local lumber mill.

It was like that all across the county.

Deirdre Tarrow once dreamed of becoming a doctor.

Dr. Cherry, a surgeon at the Royal Academy Hospital.

Reverend Bump, a farmer.

Willie Gamble, a baker, and so on and so forth across the whole of Keeltown county, with everyone pining for the person they once thought they were, and whom they never actually became.

Keeltown was gripped by a widespread pandemic of dream mismanagement. A carelessness that eventually lead to the unintentional demise of that year’s marigold crop.

Unfortunately, however, the St. Phocas congregation were a reasonable and logical bunch. The kind of folks who might be persuaded to believe a witch failed their crop, but who knew, deep down in their hearts, that lost dreams did not—could not—have anything to do with their mysterious marigold plight.

But that, of course, is where they were wrong.

***

Mary Gold skipped down Blue Ridge road, first-place ribbon clutched tight to her chest, her head filled with flights of fancy.

If anyone at the potluck had bothered to ask her, she’d have said it was too bad about the flowers.

The truth was, however, she wasn’t worried. The marigolds would grow back, same as they always did. The way they had, seventeen years ago, when Gwenivere Huffy broke free of Keeltown, and made her way to the sea, becoming captain of her very own ship. The way they had fifty years ago, when Rashmi Dara accepted a position as an apprentice tailor at Lys de Nuit. All these decades later, the royal family didn’t wear anything that wasn’t hand-stitched by Rashmi, himself. And—what do you know?—the flowers had grown back that time, too, just like clockwork.

Mary Gold skipped on.

Up and down Blue Ridge Road, dried marigold stalks rustled together, nodding their wilted blooms at her passing, announcing her arrival, as she climbed the hill toward the old barn.

From a distance, it didn’t look like much. The fine, glossy coat of paint it once wore had long since peeled away, revealing slivered boards pocked with knots and splits. And its ancient frame seemed to tilt ever-so-slightly to the wind-side of the hill, making it look bedraggled and small against the line of mountains layering the horizon in shades of cobalt and indigo.

Even still, the old barn had lived many lives and been many things… a home for small, warm bodies… a roost for tired wings… a stall, a trough, a shed, and a hayloft. It had been a castle turret for wayward princes… a mountain prison for evil queens… an escape for some, a destination for others… the supporter of countless rope swings, and the shady resting place for sun-drunk nappers on hot afternoons. It was the place where dreamers came to cast wishes on shooting stars, and a temple for yearning hearts seeking strength.

It was, in fact, a place where a girl named Jenny and a boy named Benny came to practice lines, and then, did much more than that.

Where Nathaniel Chesterfield broke his right thumb.

Where Reverend Bump’s father caught him reading an old Farmer’s Almanac with his best friend, Joe Barker, then thrashed his son with righteous indignation for daring to stray from God’s intended path.

It was the place Patricia Huffy made fun of Willie Gamble’s first attempt at homemade bread, and where Lewis Cherry told Deirdre O’Riley she wasn’t smart enough to be a doctor (just after recieving a rejection letter from the Royal Academy Hospital, himself).

Over the years, Blue Ridge had become both a place where dreamers came to spin castles in the air, and a graveyard where many of those castles had been shattered or abandoned. Where the magic of belief and passion and longing had been collecting for decades, dusting joists and timbers. Carried out of the hayloft on warm summer breezes. Into the arms of star-speckled nights, and over a hill seeded with marigolds.

The marigolds, themselves, had pondered these dreams, weighing the magic of all that unspent potential… the power of those discarded wishes… and had come to the conclusion that any sensible flower would.

It would be a shame to let such good dreams go to waste.

***

Slats of sunshine split the barn floor in alternating bars of gold and brown, the air glittering with dust that drifted in listless circles. Twining around the forgotten corners of an old horse stall, which had once been the secret workshop of Rashmi Dara. Flitting up and around the same rooftop rafters that Gwenivere Huffy used to climb, pretending it was the crow’s nest of a fearsome pirate ship. The only place she ever felt safe from her mother’s suffocating disappointment.

Outside, there was a noise.

The old barn straightened, listening.

The sound rose in a swell up the hill. The murmur of a thousand, brittle Tagetes all brushing against one another. Uncurling in a gentle wave to tap against the old barn’s boards.

She’s coming.

A moment later, a creak.

The squeal of rusty hinges swinging inward.

Mary Gold stepped over the threshold. She crossed the room, stopping in front of an old milk stool, which stood in a swatch of buttery sunlight. A glow that warmed the two objects already sitting atop its worn, weathered surface.

A rusted sewing needle.

And a tiny, purple seashell.

Reaching into her pocket, Mary Gold withdrew her first-place ribbon. “Thank you,” she whispered, tenderly placing it atop the stool.

Outside, came a rush. The titter of dried leaves. The rustle of wilted blossoms nodding in tired satisfaction at seventeen years of magic well spent.

You’re welcome.

Smiling, Mary Gold climbed the rickety ladder, and settled into her favorite corner by hay door. She gazed out at the spectacular view. Marveling at the varying shades of chestnut, fawn, and ginger, which stretched all the way from Blue Ridge, to Keeltown, and as far beyond that as she could see.

Something sparked in her chest.

Opening her notebook to a blank page, Mary Gold reached inside herself and coaxed it out. Breathing life into the fragile, uncertain flame of a new story waiting to be told.

And then.

She wrote.

“Once upon a time, a barn grew on a hill surrounded by marigolds…”