Eden Royce: YOUR CHILDHOOD WAS WITCHCRAFT • Cleaver Magazine

Flash by Eden Royce
YOUR CHILDHOOD WAS WITCHCRAFT

Remember?

When you licked the blood from your scraped knees and elbows, cleaning your wounds like an animal would, the taste of metal and salt on your tongue. The pulse of pain lessened as you soothed yourself, unwilling to go back indoors to seek the comfort of those who no longer believed in the magic that called to you.

When you were feral, in love with the outside.

And it with you. It kept your secrets, shared its own, even if you did not truly understand.

Dirt was a badge of honor on your clothes, your face, in your hair—a remnant of your communion with the Divine Earth. You felt free, like a wild thing. What does an animal give the world? Itself. What do you?

Your imagination, your awe.

The time you spent lying on the ground after a run or a bike ride, sweat pulsing from your pores, letting your essence wet the grasses, seep into the ground as you sucked on the fruit of the land you’d plucked: finger-staining berries, honeysuckle nectar, a sun-warmed plum or tomato.

All you did was wait and every flying, crawling thing came to you. You fed them: the mosquitos you didn’t see, buzzing in to take your blood; the butterflies you saw, holding still as they sipped your sweat and the tears on your cheeks from staring at the sun. Ants crawled away with the remnants of your feasts. You were training for your craft, reveling in what the Earth held in trust for you. Crickets and cicadas sang your praises as the sun went down and you understood that this…was magic.

Remember?

Remember.

Eden Royce is a writer from Charleston, SC whose work has appeared in Jellyfish Review and Longleaf Review. She is a Shirley Jackson Award finalist and a lover of cinnamon ice cream. Her debut novel, Root Magic, is a Walter Dean Myers Award Honoree and a Mythopoeic Fantasy Award winner for outstanding children’s literature.