Memento Mori

By Sophia Rogan

The green canopy touched skies unseen by the life below. Every crevice of the forest floor reached lively shades, either vibrantly bold or tenderly soft, painting the world in one proud, beating color. In its center stood a wise oak, planted when the hills were still empty. Carved deep within its bark read MEMENTO MORI, though the letters were so worn with time that the phrase was nearly illegible.

Even with age, this law seeped within the sappy blood of the oak, through its mighty roots, and down into the earth of the forest. It was felt between every breath and pulse of life. Even when there is nothing else to know, a feeling remains within each drum of the heart, knowing time will come to pass.

Not entirely too far from the vast expanse of the forest, tucked away within a crevice of mountains, slept a lonely village. It had no roads leading in or out, no brickstones or structures above two stories high, and hardly anything colorful. The men left in the morning to dig within the coal mines and returned at night to a dirty, unpaved main street. Its women had no aspirations. The children did not go out to play, as the few roads were slick with oil and black dust. The village did have a church, although its wood rotted with the wear of its abandonment, and the pews were caked with dirt. It was far too lonely a town for even a gilded altar or stained glass to honor their Heavenly Father.

Irena had no future here nor there. Her house resided on the final corner of the last street. The green that surrounded the village had begun to reclaim her home as part of its body, with vines thick as rope and thick roots winding around the wooden panels. Many avoided her home, as the smoke that left the chimney was a rotten black, and the sound of her hammering against the wood was a chiming bell of death. Her brother was the carpenter, and Irena, the student, was the coffin maker.

Stories passed around the coal mines about the house at the edge of town. When the rats flee the mines, they run right to Irena’s to order us our caskets, the men would say. Wives despised Irena’s home, for the fear they might one day see their husbands go and leave in a box. Children sang rhymes and danced around the oily puddles outside the schoolhouse, telling tales of the witch in the cornerhouse.

Hack, hack, hack goes the saw,

The witch is a-chopping,

Her crows give a caw,

When the mines go falling the witch is a-coming!

Irena oftentimes only met her neighbors once they were shipped to her doorstep. Her life, tied so intimately to death, was assumed to be the bleakest of all. Those who did not fear her pitied her and her work that was buried in the ground only days after its final polish.

But the beating color of the forest pulsed through her heart and within the beat of every wood chop. It filled her with a comfort each time she finished a polishing of her wooden crafts, assured that both the creations of her worn hands and the men she laid to rest would return their own colors to the endlessly hungry earth.

It was half past nine when a gaggle of the neighbor’s children came creeping towards Irena’s doorstep. They huddled together, whispering amongst each other about the vine-covered house tucked within the vast expanse of trees at the end of town. Irena was in the front yard in the only patch of sunlight through the trees, draped over a hammock. Her eyes were half shut, enjoying the music of birdsong while the children dared themselves to take steps closer to the house of mystery.

“Go all the way up to the front door!” One boy said, giggling, urging his friend onward.

“Oh no no, that’s too deep in the trees,” his friend pleaded, whining. “If I go all the way in there, the witch’ll come out and get me!”

The gaggle of children laughed and giggled, pushing and kicking one another until one girl finally stood up.

“Fine! I’ll go!” She stomped onward amidst the gasps of the other children, of her own friends begging her not to go so far into the forest. Her little legs carried her towards the overgrown yard, the thick grass, and the vine-covered porch. Once the shadowy darkness of the overhanging trees passed, it was only dapples of sunlight hitting over the roof covered in pine needles. Wisteria weaved over the rafters of the porch, flowers grew in the patches of sun near the shed where wood planks and craft tables were organized. The small girl crept closer, closer, closer, until she reached the front door.

Her little hand balled into a fist. She took the deepest breath her young lungs could muster and rapped gently on the wood door.

She waited. Silence. No answers. The girl hesitantly knocked again and found the same response. Relief and disappointment bubbled in her chest, and she turned to return to her pack of friends.

A pair of legs stood right ahead. She gasped, glanced upward, and found a pretty lady looking down at her.

“Hi there. Did you need something?” Irena kneeled down to meet the girl eye-to-eye.

Her breath caught, and she fell back against the front door with horror. The witch! The witch was before her!

“I don’t bite,” Irena exhaled, frowning. She paused, and a smile crossed her face. “But my brother does, and if you keep hitting the door like that, you’ll wake him up from his nap. Then he’ll really want something to chew on. He’s always hungry when he wakes up.”

The girl whined, collapsing on the porch in a dramatic, childish fashion. “I don’t wanna be eaten!”

Irena laughed. “Well, you won’t be. Did you come here on a dare?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh. Did you think a witch lived here?”

“Are you not a witch?”

She rolled her shoulders. “Sure, I guess. But I’m not much of a witch. I don’t have a mole on my nose or a hunched back, do I?”

The girl examined her for a long moment, as if deciding whether or not she really was a witch, before her shoulders relaxed and she stumbled back up. “I guess not.”

“You sound disappointed.”

“I am.”

“Sorry to hear that. What’s your name?”

“Leah,” she puffed out. “Why aren’t you a witch?”

“Uh.” Irena gnawed on her lip. “I don’t care for the lifestyle?” She paused again. “Honey, they have plenty of stories about me. But I’m not an evil thing. Death isn’t evil, either. It’s just a part of life. You’ve seen all the dead come to this house, right?”

Leah nodded awkwardly. What a heavy topic for a girl so young. But in this poor town, with mine collapses and little medicine for the sick, death was not an unfamiliar idea to the children.

“I don’t do nothing to ‘em. I don’t eat their hearts or cook their limbs. I don’t capture any souls in jars or torture any men. Look,”–she motioned to the shed across the yard–“that’s where I make coffins. Comfy beds for the bodies they send my way. And then we bury them a little far from here, beneath the trees.”

“Aren’t they lonely there?” Leah sounded quieter. And just like that, for a brief moment,

Irena could see the same nose, lips, brows, even the hair of a woman she once built a coffin for. She made these connections often when she met the people in town. Her heart sank.

“No, I wouldn’t think so. The forest is big and lively. I know they say differently in town, and you’re probably used to the idea of the woods being all dark and scary. But it isn’t. There’s a million creatures in here. The trees themselves are living beings. And I make the coffins from the wood of the trees. Everyone put to rest out here is drumming with more life than they appear.”

The little girl considered this idea for a moment. She thought, the stress of it on her face, until she drew a conclusion that satisfied her enough to speak again. “You’re a little weird.”

“Yeah, I know,” Irena laughed. “It’s probably why people wait until they’re dead to come visit.”

Leah gave a little awkward chuckle. When the moment subsided, she rubbed her arms and looked behind her. “I should go. Before my friends think you ate me.”

“Good idea.” Irena patted her shoulder and finally rose up on her feet. Her knees creaked with the motion, and she was suddenly aware of her age. “Great heavens. I should start polishing my own coffin. Leah, lasse, come back anytime – tell your friends they can come too – sometimes I like to bake cookies over crafting caskets.”

The little girl only gave Irena a nervous smile before she was off, bouncing on her feet on the path back to the street. Irena could hear the gaggle of children gasping and hollering at their friend’s safe return, asking a thousand questions about the witch in the woods.

As the sun faded on that day, Irena had a hope in her chest that she would see that child again. Her and others, alive and well, excited to visit rather than fearful. There was nothing to fear about being so near to death, after all, not when there were cookies to bake.