Poppet

By Tabitha Potts

Alpine Fellowship 2022 – Writing Prize Honourable Mention

I'm in the fields building a den. Above me, the sky is blue, and it hurts to look for too long - if I half-close my eyes, all I can see is blue and the red-pink of my eyelids. I try to make the walls neat the way birds make their nests. You can weave the long grasses together and then pull them together over the top, so hardly anyone can see you. You have to watch out for things like cuckoo spit or grasshoppers. There's nothing on the land that can hurt me, Dion says. There are no adders; they like the moorland and cliffs near the sea. Just watch out for any of the farm equipment. The tractor is out of bounds. So is the old quarry.

Dion has a wispy beard and smells. I don't like him much. Mum likes him and the other grownups, and that's why we're here on the farm, it's a big old farmhouse, but we live in a small square house on wheels called a shepherd's hut outside. If I stood up, I could see it from my den.

There's rustling in the corn. Someone's making their way towards me. Rusty's face looks over the stems. The sun lights up his hair, so it looks like gold.

'Poppet', he says. I hate my name sometimes.

'I'm busy!' I say, although it's a lie.

'Your mum asked me to find you. It's almost time for the demonstration.'

'Ugh.' I get up.

'Maybe you should change', Rusty says. 'That dress is a bit - crumpled.'

My face feels hot, and I smooth my dress down. Willow made it like she made all my clothes. It's stupid. It's like something one of the Waltons would wear.

There is smoke coming out of the chimney, which means Mum is cooking tea, which means it's beans on toast, and I don't have to eat with all the others in the farmhouse kitchen. I wait for her to call me. I don't want her to know where the den is.

'Pop-pet!'

I crawl through the grass, keeping underneath the waving stems. It's prickly and uncomfortable, but I don't have too far to crawl. My feet are callused because I don't wear shoes in the summer. I can smell the earth, dark and hot. My legs are brown all over like the rest of me from sunbathing in the grass. Until recently, I would sunbathe with nothing on, but she asked me to stop because I was getting older.

'Here's your tea.' says Mum. She puts the beans on toast and some orange squash in front of me, and I start to eat.

'Her hands are filthy, Willow', says Brenda. Mum is called Willow. Brenda is drinking herbal tea from a mug. She looks like an old armchair with stuffing in all the wrong places and has long grey hair like a witch.

'You have to eat a peck of dirt before you die, isn't that right, Poppet?'

Mum says Brenda is an old cow and not to mind her. Brenda is a social worker, and we have to have her visit because I am home-schooled, and Mum had me when she was very young and is a 'single mother.' Mum says I'm her best friend.

'What have you been studying?' Brenda asks me.

'I've been reading books from the library.' We go on Wednesdays when Mum goes into town in Dion's rattly car. It's so old there are holes in the floor, and you can watch the road go past. All the money the farm made the first year, from selling homemade jam and corn dollies and vegetables and corn, of course, went to buy the tractor, so everything else is old and falling apart.

There are books at the farm, too, but they are boring ones about farming. I read them all anyway. I know how to make corn dollies because it's in a book I've read, so Mum sells them in a shop in town. Mum taught me how to sew, and I can make goat's cheese and candles. I look after the chickens and ducks on the farm, and I've learned how to cure them when they're sick. Once upon a time, my mum says, the wise women knew all these things, and now we've had to relearn them. I'd much rather be a Charlie's Angel or even dumb Daisy Duke in her hotpants.

'What books?'

I've been reading a story about a girl growing up in New York City. She wants to be a scientist, and her dad won't let her, and her brother wants to be a dancer, and his dad doesn't want him to do that either.

'I'm reading a book about witchcraft,' I tell Brenda. 'I'm going to put a hex on someone. An old cow who should be put out to grass.'

Brenda looks a bit pink.

'I see. Well, perhaps you should run along to the demonstration now. I need to talk to your mother.'

I've finished anyway, so I shove my plate in the sink and leave the hut.

The demonstration is another way we try and keep the visitors entertained. Mum does spinning on a spinning-wheel, Marion shows off her potting, Dion runs a meditation session where everyone sits in a circle and says 'Om', I sell my corn dollies and jam and try and look friendly in my Waltons dress. Rusty does skateboard tricks on his ratty old skateboard. He is desperate for a BMX, but he won't get one.

Today Dion has decided to give a speech.

'Soon, it will be harvest time', he says. 'This is a time for celebration and renewal. Traditionally, in rural societies, people made a corn doll which was the Harvest Queen'.

The visitors look all happy and interested and make approving noises.

'After harvest', he says, 'they believed that the spirit of the corn needed a home. So they made a corn doll for her. Her spirit was kept safe during the winter, ready to release again.'

Drone, drone, drone. I yawn, and Rusty winks at me.

'Poppet has been learning the traditional craft of doll-making, and her handiwork makes her part of an uninterrupted line of makers in the area. Would you like to show our visitors your technique?'

I step forward with my latest corn dolly in my hand. Willow is watching Dion with that pathetic expression on her face. Loads of the grownup women here are obsessed with him. I don't get it. He smiles at me, showing off his long, yellow teeth, like an old dog's.

It isn't easy, making a corn dolly. I had to read the book several times to learn how to do it. But once you have got the hang of plaiting the wheat straws, it gets easier. I show off how quickly I can weave. My fingers flick in and out of a shaft of light coming in through the door, and the plait grows longer. I think of nothing.

'The body of the harvest queen, the corn doll, was fed to the animals or ploughed back into the field, an ancient symbol of fertility.'

Or burned, I think but don't bother saying out loud.

I've finished quite a big part of the dolly now when I feel a sharp pain in my middle. I stop moving the straws, and for once, Willow notices me and says: 'Poppet, are you alright?' I must look pale because she gets Dion to take over selling the dollies and leads me back to the hut.

Once I've found the blood in my knickers, she gives me camomile tea and tells me to stay in bed. 'We used to call it the curse, but really it's the gift of womanhood', she says—some gift. I have to wear horrible pads which look like mattresses and something called a 'Sani-belt', which holds them in place. I am bleeding a lot. I keep thinking of that phrase, a 'stuck pig.' We all have to take turns to take baths in the big house, which makes it even more horrible. Willow wants us to have a Moon day party to celebrate, but I say no. I spend a day lying in bed with a hot water bottle, and then it's time for the harvest to begin, and everyone has to join in, even me.

We have ten acres of wheat, and by the time we reach the last one, hours later, we are all exhausted. It's hot and sweaty work, even though we have the mechanical reaper. I hate watching the rabbits and mice running out of the corn as it is cut, and I feel sad as I watch the last few rows of golden wheat disappear. As Rusty's dad Blue nears the end of the row, Dion appears and starts shouting at him. Blue turns off the engine so he can hear and grins, then he beckons me over.

'You're to pick the Mother.'

'What?'

'The very last bit of wheat, it's called the Corn-Mother. We'll take her back to the barn and dress her up.'

'That's silly.'

'Come on, girl, where's your sense of fun? Rusty, give her the scythe.'

Rusty uses the scythe for tidying up and awkward bits. He brings it over to me. The curved blade is wickedly sharp; I test it, drawing my finger across.

I've not used the scythe before, and Rusty shows me how to hold it, standing behind me and holding my hands. I feel hot and embarrassed, but after a few cautious swings, I get the hang of it and start chopping the final bit of corn down.

'There she is', shouts Dion, and we carry the Corn-mother back to the barn, where Rusty and I build her body, binding corn into sheaves and dressing her in a long nightie of Willow's. When she's finished, even I think she looks powerful, with her stiff yellow hair in a plaited coronet, woven with poppies and cornflowers. She's taller than a man.

Rusty and I drink some scrumpy and a glass of the special punch the grownups were drinking, which has made me feel a bit sick. The big fire is still roaring, and people are dancing around it. One of them is drumming, thumping away in a steady tattoo. I tell Rusty I'm heading back to the hut and stumble in what I think is the right direction. Suddenly it seems very far away.

When I open the door, I see Dion, naked, crouching behind Willow, who is leaning over the dinner table. Dion is grunting, his yellow teeth bared as he rears above Willow, who looks tiny and a bit sad, her little breasts jiggling as he pushes into her. Willow hasn't noticed me as her eyes are closed, but Dion does, his eyes meet mine, and I can't bear to look at them. All I wanted was to lie in bed and feel the coolness of the pillow against my hot head, and now I can't do that.

I stagger back towards the bonfire, which is even bigger than before, then I veer away into the barn. In the cool darkness, I can see the Corn-Mother, calm and beautiful in her white gown. I put my arms around her waist and inhale her for a second. Then I drag her out to the bonfire and throw her on.

'Burn the Mother! Burn her!' cry the adults as they stagger around the bonfire. The firelight distorts their faces; I can't recognise them. I feel a tap on my shoulder.

'Want a ride, Poppet?'

I turn around, and Rusty is grinning at me. He sits astride an old motorbike which he tells me later is a Norton, the engine ticking over.

'Yes,' I say and jump behind him, putting my arms around his waist. He smells of petrol, cigarettes and scrumpy.

'Where to?'

'Anywhere', I tell him, 'that isn't here.'

The bike accelerates, and we bump down the rough farmhouse track. I look back once, and I see the Corn-Mother's arms waving as the flames take hold of her. It almost seems like a benediction.

About the author:

Tabitha Potts

Tabitha Potts’ short fiction has been published in literary magazines such as MIROnline, Elixir and Storgy and in various print anthologies. She was long-listed for the Sunderland University Short Story Award and the Pindrop Short Story Award, a Finalist in MIROnline’s Folk Tale Festival and Highly Commended in MIROnline’s Booker Prize Competition. She was the winner of Almasi League’s flash fiction competition judged by Courttia Newland.

She has an MA in Creative Writing from Birkbeck and a First in English Language and Literature from Oxford University. She runs Story Radio Podcast, (www.storyradio.org) and is currently working on a short story collection and a novel.

You can find out more about her on:

www.tabithapotts.com

Twitter: @tabithapotts

Facebook: @tabithaauthor

Instagram: @tabithapotts