Carrie Lowell sat in front of the hearth and thought about what an odd day it had been. One of the logs settled, the sound rousing her from deep thoughts and the movement sending a plume of sparks up the chimney. Carrie stretched and yawned, threw another piece of wood on the fire and stood up. The early fall evening was becoming chilly, and it was growing late.

She picked up her candle and shielded the flame, dodging hanging bunches of drying plants as she crossed the room to the corner which housed her narrow bed. She quickly undressed and pulled on her nightgown. Despite the fireplace, she was cold, and the sheets seemed to amplify the chill. She blew out the candle, pulled the featherbed over her and curled into a ball until she warmed up. The only sound she heard was the crackling of the fireplace.

But sleep was elusive, and the memories she'd tried to suppress all day now rose to the surface of her consciousness. Long-ago memories of a teenaged girl, in the throes of first love. Desperate for a man who wasn't aware of her existence. She'd visited the widow Harrington, who'd told her how to mix burdock and angelica and put it in a man's tea to make him mad for her.

She'd plotted and maneuvered for months to get that opportunity, many said she'd thrown herself at his head. But on the night of the harvest dance, when she'd finally gotten her opportunity to doctor his tea, she'd gotten more than she bargained for. Benjamin Hooker had taken her out into the bushes and had his way with her. She was disillusioned and bruised, but it wasn't until months later that she'd realized the true extent of her injuries.

Her family had teased her about Benjamin, about how obviously she'd chased him. She couldn't admit to them that he'd raped her. And she could never tell them that she was pregnant. The only person she dared confide in was the widow Harrington.

"Men are trouble, sure enough," the widow had said, clacking her tongue and shaking her head. She'd rummaged through shelves of cloth bags, each with its embroidered label, until she found the ones that she wanted. Black cohosh, rue, squawvine. "Stir this into a glass of cider, and a few hours later you'll be free of the little visitor in your belly." She cackled at her own joke as she scraped the powder onto a sheet of paper, then folded the paper securely.

Carrie told her folks she'd be helping the widow put up blackberry jam and left early the next morning with a jug of her father's cider under her arm. She walked a ways into the woods and found a comfortable glade. The herbs were bitter, even in the sweet brown cider. She waited so long she began to think that the widow's potion was false, then the pain came.

After the pain, the blood. More blood than she'd imagined her whole body contained. And then it was over. She rested for an hour or so, went to a nearby stream to clean herself up. She was home by dark, with no one the wiser.

Mary Kellogg hadn't been so lucky. She'd been the next to fall under Benjamin's spell, and hadn't had the sense or the courage to visit the widow. Her parents sent her back to Boston, to a workhouse. The baby was sent to an orphanage. Carrie heard later that Mary had done herself in.

The next morning, Carrie rose as usual, made herself a bowl of mush and some alder tea. After the breakfast dishes were cleared, she began pulling down bunches of the drying herbs to prepare them for storage. It had been a good year for chamomile, and the juniper bushes had been loaded down with berries.

Yesterday afternoon, she'd been called to the Hooker house. Benjamin had taken a chill and was now suffering from a fever and tremendous pains in his gut. When she entered the house, she heard his moans before she even went upstairs. In the bedroom, his mewling little wife and his doting mother sat crying.

Carrie knew from looking at him that she was too late, but at the family's urging, she gave him an emetic, a lobelia tincture, along with an infusion of alfalfa to try and bring his fever down. But in the end, all she could do was to brew him a tea of valerian, hops and chamomile to relieve the pain and bring him some rest while they all waited for the end. He died an hour after dawn.

Carrie had been bone tired, but this was the season to harvest the herbs she'd be using through the next year to minister to the folk who came to her door seeking help, just as they had done when this house had belonged to the widow Harrington. She had taken Carrie under her wing, after the incident with Benjamin, perhaps because she felt guilty for giving Carrie the aphrodisiac that had started the situation in the first place.

Over the years, Carrie had learned the old woman's healing arts, where to find the herbs, how to identify them, what they were good for. She'd been taught how to harvest and store them. When to apply them, how, and in what dosages. And when the widow Harrington died, she'd left her house to Carrie.

Carrie stopped for a moment and looked around her. The bunches of herbs, the jars of tinctures and sacks of herbs on the shelves along the walls were the symbols of her empowerment. She had survived what Benjamin had tried to do to her. Mary hadn't. And in the end, she'd survived Benjamin. The only remnant of what he'd done to her was a small pile of stones out on the edge of a glade, studded with branches of flowers and herbs in varying stages of decay.

Props to the CHPercolator List for the prompt(s)
March 30, 2001
996 words