The Green Edges

and the crack in the wall.

I have a favourite flower and, although it does not really matter for the purpose of this piece, I have yet to meet anyone else with the same choice.

For a long time, I wondered what it is about this particular flower which I find so entrancing, so alluring and comforting. The bloom itself is small, easily overlooked, but the plant is tenacious, appearing in cracks and crevices in each of the European countries I have lived in. It is a plant of the walls, of the windows and of the doors. And, only relatively recently, I realised this is what I love about it the most—it is a liminality made life.

Ivy-leaved toadflax (Cymbalaria muralis) is a native of the Mediterranean but invasive across the world, travelling freely wherever humans carry it. Invasive is the technical term but, to me, it does not seem precisely fair—it is not the plant’s fault, after all, it has not crossed those oceans on its own. Ivy-leaved toadflax’s Linnean classification can be translated as ‘cymbals to decorate walls’, and I love that. There are many other common names for this plant around the world, such as mother of thousands, Oxford ivy, wandering sailor or, here in France, Ruine-de-Rome. It has reported medicinal uses and can certainly be added to salads, both the leaves and the flowers.

It is ivy-leaved toadflax you can see in today’s photo.

There are other growing things which could arguably be classed as liminal. Other climbers, for example—ivy, honeysuckle, clematis. Or perhaps mosses, liverworts, and lichens, growing on other things, whether trees, rocks, or walls. Or fungi, springing up mysteriously, swelling into strange shapes, displaying odd or vibrant colours, then disappearing, just as quickly.

These are the plants of the margins, the edges, the passageways between place and time. They grow in caves, on gravestones, on mountain trails, alongside the paths and in the hedge bottoms. They twirl and grasp upward along trunk and stem, and they often do so unnoticed by the masses walking by.

These are the plants of the witch, of the shaman, the healer, those who aid in journeys to other places, or bring lost individuals home. These people have long inhabited different worlds and, I think, they still can, and do. Those of us who see the breadth of nature and understand at least a little of how we can use it are the students of a tradition stretching back so far into our prehistory as to blur species, no longer Homo sapiens, but perhaps a Denisovan, or H. neanderthalensis, H. heidelbergensis, or even H. erectus.

It is a study which never ends, nor does it have a temporal beginning we will ever trace. We have always done this. We always will.

I have great issue with those who call those early people primitive. This is not only technically wrong, but also carries connotations of imbecilic cavemen, uncaring, surviving by brutish chance rather than through the ridiculous amounts of knowledge they would actually have needed to possess.

To know your world, to truly, deeply, know it, and then to be able to use plantlife to bring the sick back or to dissolve boundaries is often viewed as a form of magic yet, in reality, it is the magic of science. Those healers and guides, using plants of the edges, were arguably biologists, botanists, and ecologists, a long time before we had those definitions. Knowing which plants to use, how and when to collect and prepare them, the correct dosage for each individual, and how to combine different methodologies of healing is, quite frankly, remarkable.

Do you have a favourite flower? Does it have any practical use, beyond beauty and attraction (to you and to pollinators)? Can you think of other potentiality liminal plants near where you live? What about the folklore of plants associated with doors—the holly wreath at Christmas, rosemary to protect against thieves, cinquefoil or rowan for protection, or elder branches to ward off evil. Have you experienced any of these, or heard of others?

If you are interested in the knowledge and skills of the forager, whether the archaic human, or someone more modern—perhaps you and definitely me— on Mondays I share Ancestral, Wild Empowerment (AWE), which is specifically focussed on this topic and how this can be used to empower in today’s world.

The girl sat motionless, watching the flames and the shadows they cast dancing around the irregular walls and roof above and to the sides. Every so often, a pine knot would spit and crackle, sending sparks high into the shelter, up out of the chimney hole, to chase the stars beyond.

She risked a glance at her brother. He was still alive; that much she knew. The fever wracking his small body twisted him this way, then that, in time with the flickering of the flame, in time with the soft drum from They Climb High.

It was all her fault. She had risked the ice, risked crossing when she should have listened to the others. She had been lucky, but Smudge had not, following her and falling through the ice her own passage had cracked. Somehow, she had managed to pull him free, get him home, warm him but, a night later, the fever had arrived.

‘Pass me the bowl,’ the shaman said, their voice rhythmic, in keeping with the constant beat. She did not know how they kept it up, especially not one-handed, carefully guiding the liquid into the mouth of her brother with the other.

He coughed, but swallowed more than he lost.

She looked away again, the light flickering across his sweat-drenched skin made her feel queasy, made him look like he had already passed through to the next world.

It was hot in the shelter. She did not like it, did not like feeling her own sweat running down her spine, knew the risk of wet clothing in winter which, in turn, just reminded her why she was here, of why Smudge was there.

She knew he would die. She had seen others with this fever, had seen them sweat, seen them twist and seen them fail. A tiny voice in her head whispered that this had been before They Climb High had arrived the previous spring, replacing old Voice of Gravel, who had disappeared whilst on vision quest the autumn before. How they had known to come from the lands of the Fox to fill the gap, she did not know.

Only fools tried to guess or question the shamans.

It was whispered that they were not entirely human, but something part of one world and a part of the others, seeking knowledge beyond, to return to the people and share it when needed.

It was dangerous beyond, the path lined with the teeth of big cats, of wolves, and of brother bear. Claws hung from the low trees and everywhere were skulls. At least, that is what her older brother had told her.

‘Add that pouch to the water, reheat it.’

Her thoughts snapped back to the present.

The drumming continued, the beat shuffling slightly now, altering from the constant rhythm she had felt thumping in her heart for the last day.

Or was it more than a day? She really did not know.

She reached for the tiny pouch and carefully knocked the contents into the bowl, stirring and mixing as she had been shown when first They Climb High had sealed the door to the healing shelter.

Setting the bone stirrer to one side, she used the scoop to swap the hot rocks, removing the one which no longer heated and replacing it in the fire, picking up another and tapping the ash off, before slowly lowering it into the liquid, which bubbled and hissed and rose up in the bowl. She moved the stone back, blowing on it until the water did not bubble as ferociously, heeding the earlier warning not to heat it too fast.

‘Leave the stone out and add the contents of the red pouch.’

The drumming was getting faster.

She knew that meant her brother was soon to pass out of the shelter, following the sparks above her head, reaching for the stars himself and leaving behind nothing more than an empty shell.

She knew he would be dead before dawn. And it was all her fault.

She did as instructed, stirring in the powder and moving her head back from the acrid scent. Whatever it was, it smelled potent.

Stirring, seven times in the direction of sun and moon, seven times in the counter direction.

‘Leave it and count to forty-nine.’

She did as she was told, wondering why that number, carefully pronouncing the magic counting words, one after the other. As she reached forty-nine, she realised that this was the total of seven sevens and, before she could catch herself, said as much out loud.

They looked at her briefly, sharply, then returned to her brother, the beat harder, more urgent. She could not read their face. She found they gave off little outward emotion and the paint did not help. How old were they? She had no idea.

‘Bring the bowl, hold your brother’s head and make him drink it all.’

She complied, careful not to spill a drop. Smudge’s hair was wet through and his eyes were open, but seemingly sightless. She placed the bowl against his lips, first checking the temperature with her own, careful not to burn him, then she tipped and he swallowed.

This time he did not cough and he gulped every mouthful.

The beat was almost deafening her. The drum seemed to echo through her chest, pounding somewhere deep within, beneath her ribs.

She sat, with her hand on her brother’s head and surprised herself when she started to hum a tune, a counterpart to the drum, something she did not know, something which seemed to fit the moment. She wove threads of the fire into her tune, of the strange scents from the bowl, of the smell of pine burning, of the herbs she had thrown on the flames earlier. She hummed and keened, carrying all she had witnessed to him in a wordless song. He closed his eyes.

This is it, she thought. He goes to the stars.

Then he coughed, once, twice, three times. And opened his eyes,

‘What happened? Where?’ He looked around, eyes wide. She looked carefully into them, placing the back of her hand on his forehead. He was no longer burning up.

‘The fever has broken. He will live.’ They Climb High said, the drumming slower again, softer, shuffling a short distance further then ceasing entirely.

The shaman looked exhausted.

‘You will watch him for a time, give him water, but nothing else. I will sleep and then—and then we will talk of what is to come.’ They carefully placed the drum on a hook on the wall, then laid down where they had been sitting, seemingly unable to move beyond that point.

‘What is to come? You said he will live!’

‘And live he shall. He shall be weak for a time, but I suspect he will be back hunting rabbits by the next new moon. No, we need to talk of you.’

‘Of, of me?’

‘Yes. Of you. Now, let me sleep, then I will explain why I have chosen you to be my apprentice.’

Her brother’s eyes went even wider, but she knew her own were larger still.

‘I…’ she began, and stopped. They Climb High was already asleep.