Odarka and the Kupala night

A literary legend written for Ask the Signs. The witches are fictional and nothing in the story predicts a future.

Petro wanted to find the fern flower so he would get rich and Marusia would notice him. Odarka agreed to lead him, because she liked the walk.

In Konotop they said the witches there read cards better than anyone, but Odarka preferred to read meadows. From May to September she went barefoot, her hair smelled of mint and wormwood, and she laughed so loudly that you could hear her past the mill. She knew the name of every herb, and even, she claimed, the gossip the herbs told about one another. "Chamomile is conceited," she would say. "And wormwood sees everything and says nothing. That is why you tuck wormwood behind a beam. It likes to keep watch."

On the eve of Kupala night, when the whole of Konotop smelled of smoke and cut grass, Petro came to her. He was twenty-two, he had new boots that pinched, and he had a plan that seemed to him very good. "Mistress Odarka, I want to find the fern flower. They say whoever picks it will be rich and happy and able to do anything. Take me where it blooms." Odarka looked at his boots, then at his ears, which had gone red. "And what do you need to be rich for, Petrus?" Petro stared at the floor. "So that Marusia notices me."

Odarka could have laughed, but she only smiled. "Fine. I will take you. But first take off those boots, because in those even a hare would hear you coming. And tie this around your waist." She handed him a belt woven from yarrow and slipped a sprig of wormwood into his pocket. "For Kupala, yarrow is worth more than courage, and it smells better than fear."

The first was the Seven of Cups: someone standing with their back turned, looking at seven cups hanging in the clouds, and in the cups a castle, jewels, a snake, a dragon, a laurel wreath and a covered figure. "Wishes on demand," said Odarka. "Everything at once, everything in the clouds. Lovely, except you cannot eat dinner out of it." The second was Strength: a woman in a white dress gently closing a lion's jaws, the sign of infinity above her head. "Strength that does not pull. Remember it, Petrus, because tonight you will need it more than the flower." The third was the Knight of Wands on a rearing horse. "Courage. Hot, fast, sometimes too fast."

They walked a long time through the forest, through ferns waist-high and moss that gave underfoot like warm bread. Odarka talked the whole way about everything: that St John's wort gathered today holds the most sun, that wild rose does not like being picked without asking, that fireflies are only fireflies, though it would be nice to think they are something more. Petro watched the darkness for a red glow he had heard about in tales. Around midnight they stopped in a clearing. The ferns stood quiet and green. Not one of them bloomed.

"It will not bloom?" asked Petro, and his voice cracked. Odarka sat down on a stump and took a poppy-seed cake out of her apron. "Nobody has seen it in this forest for a hundred years. I look every year, because I like the walk and because every year somebody comes with the same question. Ferns do not have flowers, boy. They spread by spores, like a mushroom. But do not worry. People have been looking for it on Kupala night for centuries, and the wisest of them always find something. Just never in the ferns." And she took him down to the river.

By the river the girls were floating wreaths. They went one after another with little candles lit, like a small fleet of stars. The boys stood knee-deep in the water trying to catch them, because whoever catches a wreath is said to get the girl who wove it. Marusia's wreath, made of cornflowers and chamomile, caught in the reeds near the bank, tipped over, and the candle almost went out. Petro jumped into the water before anyone could say anything. Odarka called one sentence after him: "Set it free, do not grab it!"

Petro stopped with his hands just above the wreath. He remembered the woman on the card, who does not grab the lion by the jaws but lays a hand on them. Carefully he worked the wreath out of the reeds, straightened the candle, which flared up again, and pushed it gently into the current. The wreath floated on into the dark, in the direction Marusia had wanted it to go. The boys on the bank laughed. Petro came out of the water wet to the waist, with no flower, no wreath and no wealth, and sat down by the fire convinced that he had ruined everything.

Marusia sat down beside him when the fire began to die. She was quiet for a long time, and then asked: "Why didn't you take it? You could have." Petro shrugged. "Because it was yours. It was going where you wanted it to go." Marusia looked at him as if she were seeing him for the first time, though they had passed each other on the same street since childhood. They talked until dawn: about the river, about her grandmother, about his horse, about how they were both afraid of thunderstorms and neither would admit it. Toward morning they jumped over the dying fire together, because that is what you do on Kupala night.

Odarka walked home through the dew with an armful of St John's wort and wormwood, humming. Someone asked her afterwards whether Petro had found the fern flower. "He did," she answered. "It blooms once a year, in people who know what must not be taken by force. It looks exactly like courage mixed with respect. A very rare flower. This year it bloomed in one boy with new boots in his hands."

In Konotop they still quote Odarka when someone wants something at any cost: what flows to you on its own is yours, and what you take by force will flow away anyway. And the girls floating their wreaths are said to always watch for the boy who helps a wreath travel on instead of catching it. They say it is the best omen of the whole Kupala night.

What flows to you on its own is yours. What you take by force will flow away anyway.

Cards from this story

Her whisper for today

A forest at midnight rewards the people who stop running.

Whispers are lines to carry, not forecasts. They say nothing about other people, money or health.

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