The Honey Witch

by Sydney J. Shields

“How is it that you are not married?” Marigold flinches. “What makes you think that I should be?” “You are beautiful and full of life, like springtime,” Mr. Notley says. “And why should those qualities merit promising myself to another? Perhaps there is a reason you cannot marry the spring.”

“You don’t believe that I could see you?” “No. You see only springtime. What happens when I am winter? I will tell you, Mr. Notley. When winter comes”—she leans in close so their noses are almost touching—“you will freeze.”

It is better to be lost in a beautiful daydream than trapped in a dim reality.

“A life spent on only the pursuit of power is not worthy of eternity.

“Put away all thoughts of anyone else’s expectations. Only you have the right to decide your own fate.”

“Eternity is not a gift. It is a punishment. To outlive everyone you know, everyone you love, and everyone who once loved you—” She stops herself and swallows. “One hundred years is more than enough for me.”

“But shouldn’t she want more for her life than that?” “What any woman wants for herself is not for you to decide. You would do well to remember that.”

“I will warn you that this is a romance book. This next chapter is quite… descriptive. Shall I skip over it?” “Don’t you dare! That’s the best part. Go on,” Althea says with a weak motion of her hand, and Marigold laughs loudly.

“You can’t love anyone without the fear of losing them, without the forethought of grief. There is an inherent loss in love, but that does not mean that love is not worth it.”

Althea’s passing was peaceful, but Marigold’s grief was not. It never is. It is a mistake to think of grief as an absence. It’s more of a dark, shadowy thing that sits in constant periphery, always there, always stealing air and making it hard to breathe. It’s a demon that she has fought every single day, but it will not leave. Every time she encounters something that she would have once shared with her grandmother—a new recipe, a good book, a bad dream—she sees the face of that grief instead.

“I think I do. I think you are allowed to be angry. Perhaps that is the consolation for such a loss—you can be angry forever if you want. No one can ask you to move on from that. It’s like asking…” She stumbles over her words, her drink sloshing in her hand. “Oh, I can hardly be coherent. But it’s like asking the skies to stop holding rain clouds because they’re too heavy. It can’t be done. It doesn’t matter how hard it is to carry; that grief cannot be let go.”

“Grief is often too strange and too vast to fit into words.”