Fire Flower

The first time I saw a marigold flower, I cried.

Now, I’m sure I know what you’re thinking. This lady cried over seeing a marigold? Yes, yes I did. And if you were me, you would too. You see, I live in northern Canada, outside the natural range of any member of the tagetes genus. It certainly didn’t help that, when I asked a stranger passing by if they saw the marigold, they gave me an odd look and told me that I should get my eyes checked.

So, I did the only thing I could think to do. Like a maniac, I dug up the plant and took it home. I was inviting trouble and I knew it, but I was also doomed to die a year from that day as it was, so what difference did it make?

Sorry, I’ve been told I tend to get ahead of myself when I tell stories, and saying that I’ve been cursed to die by seeing marigold probably proves that point. Let me start from the beginning.

In 1254, my ancestor and her neighbor had a rivalry. Now, this started out as the typical “Yes, the apples fell onto your yard, but the branch they fell from came from my tree, give them back” sort of rivalry, but it quickly escalated. So much so, that by the time the town harvest festival occurred, they were actively trying to cheat each other out of winning all the contests they were entering, whatever kind of contests 1254 harvest festivals had, I imagine it much like a modern county fair, but cooler. My ancestor had the bright idea to try to poison her neighbor’s entry, whatever the 1254 equivalent of apple pie was. I try not to know too much about that time period in history. Okay, yes, “those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it,” but I’m doomed either way, I’d prefer not to learn more about why.

Anyways, my ancestor wasn’t planning to kill the judge of the contest, just give them enough food poisoning that they wouldn’t choose her neighbor as the winner (neither of them cared about winning, just as long as the other didn’t). However, as everyone who’s ever had to cancel their birthday party because of a thunderstorm knows, things don’t always go according to plan. That, and it was 1254, there was a lot they didn’t know about poisons back then. My ancestor put some plant into the pie, what the plant was is now lost to time, but I’ve always imagined it being some kind of mushroom, since those are quite unpredictable. Her neighbor still ended up winning the contest, and my ancestor was incredibly bitter. However, fast forward to the next morning, and the judge of the contest was found dead in her bed. My ancestor confessed out of guilt to what she had done, and the town voted to banish her. Her neighbor, however, had a different idea.

“Let her stay,” said the neighbor, with a grin upon her face. “Let her stay and live here with the guilt of what she has done. But let her live not only her lifetime with that guilt, but all of her descendants lifetimes as well. And, for payment of the crime she has committed upon my sister, let every one of her descendants know they have a year till their final breath the first day the see a marigold flower.”

A lot to unpack there, I know. Yes, the judge was the neighbor’s sister, hence why the neighbor was so angry that she wanted my ancestor to stay in the village and suffer the anger of all the townsfolk. And if you’re confused by the fact that she seemed to be cursing my ancestor, that’s because she was. Yeah. She was a witch. She was a witch that cursed my ancestor with two punishments: she wouldn’t die until her bloodline died out, and all of her descendants would die exactly one year after they first saw a marigold flower.

I wondered for a long time why she chose a marigold flower, and after a little research (the first and last time I ever researched anything about that history), I discovered that marigold flowers ward off evil, and the witch likely assumed that my ancestor had evil blood and wanted it cut off at a certain point. How she’s managed to show my family marigolds at specific times in their lives, I’ll never know, as she died in 1262, at least according to my ancestor. Yes, she’s still alive to tell me stuff. Cursed, remember? I’ve tried to tell a few people about my family’s history in the past, but the only person who seemed to believe me was a girl I met when I was five, which might have been why she believed me. Five year olds are extremely gullible.

Back to the present in 2007. I now knew I was cursed to die on October 12th, 2008. Which, if you’ve ever wished to know when you die, don’t. It sucks. My mom saw the marigold when I was five and tried to escape to Canada, but she kept seeing them, right up until she got hit by a moose. Yeah, I said moose. It was actually a herd of moose, it was like The Lion King, but really weird, since moose don’t travel in herds. Moral of the story is, unless you’ve lived a really fulfilling life, if you know when you’re going to die, you’re going to try to prevent it, and it’ll never work.

I had always told myself that I would be different, that I wouldn’t fight my fate, but at the end of the day, I’m just as human as my mother, and her mother, and her mother before her. I was not only doomed to die but doomed to repeat history. I suppose I dug up the marigold in the hopes that if I planted it at my house and cultivated it, I would be able to ward off the evil of the curse. Because it was obviously evil, right? Like, come on, my ancestor accidentally kills one person’s sister, and now 750 years later, people were still dying because of one Bitter Betty? I don’t know, maybe she thought our bloodline would have died much sooner. I would have thought someone along the line would have decided to not have any kids and end the curse, especially since not one of them got married. I didn’t even know who my father was, and no matter how much I asked my ancestor, she never told.

It didn’t much matter either way, I suppose. But it would have been nice to have another parent after my mom died when I was six. As it was, the only person I had taking care of me was my ancestor, who was rather… odd company, let’s say, after 750 years of watching her descendants die, as you’re about to see.

“Ancestor, it happened today,” I called as I walked into the house. Yes, I call her Ancestor. She doesn’t permit me to call her anything else, which I think might just be because she’s forgotten her own name. She has a rather strange syntax from living through language changes of 750 years, but also knows a lot of languages. She looks like Mama Coco from Coco, but Native American rather than Mexican, and also wrinklier.

Going into the living room, where she spent most of her time, I see that she’s pretending to nap. After years of her pretending to fall asleep as an excuse to not have to talk about something she doesn’t want to talk about, I’ve gotten used to recognizing it.

“Ancestor. Focus. See? I brought it home.” That got her to open her eyes. I suppose no one had ever brought home the plant that foretold their death before.

“Ah! Why would you bring such darkness into my home?!” she muttered.

“Remember who pays all the bills next time you call it your home, Ancestor. You and I both know you’re perfectly capable of getting a job.” Funny thing about her curse, you would have expected her to have gotten weaker as time went on, like a normal old person, but apparently the witch had wanted to keep her young and spry physically and mentally. Aside from wrinkles and that old person mentality, there wasn’t much actual aging that had occurred. It was odd, but then, most things about her were.

“You can’t possibly be thinking that you can somehow reverse the curse, are you?”

“I don’t know what I’m planning to do with it, I just grabbed it. Besides, what difference does it make anyways, whether it’s here or out in the snow?”

Making my way to my room, I found a large mixing bowl to put the marigold in, although now I would have to go to the store to buy dirt for it. In northern Canada in October, it wasn’t going to be very easy to just get some dirt from outside. I was briefly tempted to go completely off the deep end, quit my job, become the village crazy lady, since none of it would matter anyways, and even imagined the conversation that would ensue with my ancestor, in which she would tell me that “our family does not behave so irresponsibly,” to which I would probably respond with something along the lines of “Well, maybe they’d be alive if they did,” and then I would get yelled at for an hour.

The sun had begun to go down by this point, and while it was only about 7:30 at night, I wanted the day to be done. I got ready for bed, but when I turned off the light, the marigold began to glow. If your first thought was of the flower from Tangled, you’re not alone.

“Ancestor!” I called. “The flower’s being…weird?” I couldn’t say for certain how weird it was being, given that I had limited knowledge on the regular behavior of curse flowers.

When Ancestor hobbled into the room, because yes, she does fake an old lady walk for no reason, I think it might be her idea of fun, she didn’t seem surprised in the slightest. Rather, she just sighed and said “There may be some things about the sisters that I neglected to ever mention. Starting with the fact that I am the third sister. I am Rising Sun of the Cheyenne tribe, and I poisoned my sister White Moon, and our sister Black Moon cursed me for eternity in retribution.”

I stared at her in shock. After all these centuries, and she hadn’t just killed some neighbor’s sister, but her own sister! It made me think that perhaps her whole story was a lie, because why would she and her sister Black Moon have been such terrible rivals?

“That doesn’t explain the glowing flower,” I reminded her, before I forgot to ask.

“It means-” she broke off. “I shouldn’t tell you; it’ll only get your hopes up.”

“Well, you definitely have to tell me now,” I demanded.

“It means you have a chance. It means that the spirit of White Moon’s daughter Fire Flower has seen you as worthy of saving. But that’s all I know. I don’t know how you’re meant to be saved, if it happens automatically or if it’s a series of tests you must complete, but knowing Black Moon, it’s likely the latter. That was all Black Moon ever told me. That if the flower glowed for anyone, it meant that Fire Flower had been reincarnated to help end the suffering. That she had deemed my punishment complete. That is why she chose the marigold, so it was easily recognizable as Fire Flower’s sign.”

“How do I find her?” I asked.

“I don’t know. The best guess I have is by first finding my father, also cursed by my sister. Tall Bull still lives in our homeland. Perhaps we should go and pay him a visit.”