The Thornbound Cradle of Evermere

The last hearth’s breath expired three winters past,
Yet one soul treads the moss-veiled lanes alone:
Elara, whose shadow bends beneath the mast
Of yew trees whispering secrets never known.

Her hands, twin ghosts, still spin the phantom thread
Of flax she gathered in a sunlit youth,
When laughter hung like apples, ripe and red,
And love’s first blush dissolved in honeyed truth.

But now her loom weaves only echoes—thin,
A shroud of muslin stretched on splintered bone.
She counts the cracks in walls where ivies spin
Their slow conquest of all that was her own.

* * *

Beneath the church’s arch, where nettles swarm,
A cradle rots, its wicker ribs splayed wide.
Here once she rocked a babe, her flesh made warm
By breath that misted dawn’s first fragile tide.

*“Hush,”* she crooned, *“the wind’s a lullaby—*
*The willows bend to kiss your moonlit brow.*
*No harm walks where fireflies stitch the sky…”*
But vows unravel. Seasons disavow.

The blight came soft—a mildew on the wheat,
A rasp in throats of babes who woke too still.
Midwives bore herbs, but roots turned black with deceit;
The graveyard’s maw yawned hungrily uphill.

When her son’s eyes grew dull as tarnished pewter,
She clutched him to the cliff’s wind-lashed verge,
Screamed at the sea—that vast, unfeeling suitor—
Till waves roared back the dirge she could not urge.

* * *

Now mark the night she bargained with the shade
That writhed within the elder grove’s black core.
No mortal tongue can tell what pact she made,
But dawn revealed the village plague no more.

Yet where her child had lain, a thornbush grew,
Twisted and cruel, its blossoms pale as skin.
Its branches clutched a locket—gold turned blue—
Enclosing curls as fine as spider’s gin.

* * *

Years crawl like beetles on a sundial’s face.
Elara tends the thorn with hands that bleed,
Prunes back the claws that crave her last embrace,
And whispers to the flowers’ balmless creed:

*“Grow not toward the house where we once dwelled,*
*Nor strangle what remains of this poor heart.*
*Drink deep my tears, but spare the shattered shelled—*
*The fragments Time refuses to impart.”*

The villagers, long fled in fear’s cold wake,
Become but rumors in far market squares.
Their names erode like chalk cliffs that lakes
Of years dissolve to unrecognizable airs.

Yet sometimes, wanderers swear they hear a tune—
A lullaby half-drowned in autumn’s sigh—
Or glimpse a shape beneath the haggard moon,
A woman binding brambles to the sky.

* * *

One eve, a cart creaks up the fern-choked road,
Bearing a youth whose brow seems hauntingly known.
His eyes—two pools where her past sorrows flowed—
Reflect the ghost of all she’d called her own.

*“Mother?”* he calls, though she has hid her face.
*“They told me plague took you… yet here you breathe!”*
Her thistle heart splits silent, leaving space
For hope’s sharp shard to pierce, to twist, to seethe.

*“Child of ash and mist,”* she rasps, *“depart!*
*This air is poison to the living’s breath.*
*What clasped you once now owns my flesh, my heart—*
*Walk sunlit paths, or stay and share my death.”*

He pleads—oh, how his voice, a mirror’s gleam,
Casts light on chambers boarded in her soul!
But in the thicket, thorns begin to scream,
And roots like fingers pluck his trembling toll.

* * *

She flees to where the thornbush drinks the moon,
Unclasps the locket, cold against her breast.
*“Take this,”* she weeps, *“but leave him life’s sweet boon—*
*Let my bones cage the curse. Grant him rest.”*

The earth convulses. Vines, envenomed, rise
To drag her down into their tangled keep.
Her son’s cry fades as soil fills her eyes,
And centuries of silence drown her sleep.

* * *

Now travelers skirt the vale where shadows brood,
Though some swear thorns still bloom with locket’s gold.
They speak of whispers in the elder wood—
A mother’s love, more relentless than the cold.

But stones forget. The river charts new trails.
The cradle crumbles where the brambles twine.
Yet deep beneath, where darkness ever prevails,
Two roots embrace a locket’s faint design.