Sweet Romance13 min read
Mandrake, Mud, and the Red Spider
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"I came to teach," I said, sitting up on the thin hospital mattress.
"Yes," Dane said, "you did."
"I'm a teacher," I repeated. "I went to the village to teach."
"You are," Dane Lindstrom nodded, looking at his notebook. "Start at the beginning."
"I already told someone else," I said. "But again—I'll tell you."
The fan above us whined. My voice sounded like the rustle of dry paper.
1
"When I first arrived, the air was clean," I told him. "The children were bright. I picked wild flowers and brewed tea."
"Those are the good parts," Dane said. He folded his hands. "Then?"
"Then a boy came at the field edge, pulling at a girl's sleeve like she couldn't leave. I told him to stop."
"You said his name?" Dane asked.
"I didn't know his name." I forced a laugh. "He told me. 'Ravi.' He said his father was the village head."
"And he touched you?" Dane's voice was steady.
"He brushed my hair," I said. "He smiled and said things a man shouldn't say to a woman alone on a road. 'You need a man to keep you safe,' he said."
"Do you remember what you said?"
"I told him to leave us alone," I said. "I took the girl and left."
"But later he followed you to the school," Dane prompted. He had been listening the entire time.
"He did. He always did. He found ways to make me alone, to 'bring' me gifts—flowers, tea. He was smooth at first. He seemed kind. He bought four houses in the county, people said. He smiled like a landlord."
2
"I found the first note on the desk after class," I said. "A single sheet, filled with one word."
"What was it?" Dane leaned forward.
I closed my eyes. "The word was 'whore.'"
"Written by a student?" Dane asked.
"It didn't have a name," I said. "But the room froze. They stared like hunters at a trapped animal."
"Who started it?"
"It was Ravi again." I clenched my fists, feeling the old anger. "He fed them jokes about me. He told them I had a city life that made me 'dangerous.' He made them repeat it."
3
"Why didn't you tell the principal?" Dane asked.
"The principal smiled and said he had no time," I said. "The parents... they were quiet, then cruel. 'She has reasons,' one man said. 'She won't be here long.'"
"Did you think of leaving?" Dane asked.
"Every day," I said. "But leaving felt like admitting defeat. I was there for the children. I liked them."
"Who were your two favorite students?" Dane wrote slowly.
"Lennon and Finley," I said. "Lennon is the older—bright, steady. Finley is small and fierce."
"I remember the names," Dane said softly. He didn't look at me with pity. He looked at me like someone trying to hold a map.
4
"They started cornering me in the schoolyard," I said. "One day, men came. They had hands like iron. They called me names and dragged me to the village head's house."
"His name is Wolfgang?" Dane asked.
"Yes. Wolfgang David. He walked like he owned the land. His son, Ravi Ferrara, laughed."
"You screamed?" Dane asked.
"I did. I cried. I tried to run. I was pushed into the pigsty, made to eat like a pig. They fit my mouth with a strap that kept me quiet. Someone mocked me: 'Our teacher is one of the pigs now.'"
"How long?" He breathed like he was holding his breath.
"A week," I said. "Maybe more. I don't know time there. I learned to breathe with the pigs."
5
"Ravi came every day," I said. "Sometimes Wolfgang came. Sometimes others. Once, Lennon came by the yard. She tried to help, I begged—Lennon."
"I remember her face in the files," Dane said. "She looked out of place."
"Lennon hated what she saw but she was scared," I said, tears cutting the memory thin. "She told me later how her father had begged her to keep quiet. 'He will ruin us,' she whispered."
"You did try to escape?" Dane said.
"I did," I said. "I ran. They caught me and dragged me to the kitchen. I fought like a cornered animal. I will never forget the iron in the air. The way the men watched like they were choosing which of us to break first."
6
"When I think back, I can piece it together and then it slips apart," I said. "One night, something inside me broke."
"What happened that night?" Dane asked.
"I took a knife," I said. "I remember thinking it would end my shame, my fear. Maybe I could scare them. Maybe I could make them stop. But I hit Wolfgang first. He fell and clutched his chest."
"You killed him?" Dane's pen paused.
"I did not mean to stop," I said. "Ravi turned on me with a noise I will always hear—an animal shout. I was trying to stop him. I remember the knife, and him on the floor. I struck again. I remember walking out to the yard and burning the house."
"You set the house on fire?" Dane's voice was quiet.
"Yes," I said. "I wanted the flames to make them forget their crimes. I wanted the fire to make someone come. I wanted someone to see a mad woman's grief and know the truth."
7
"In the chaos, I heard someone call," I said. "I remember putting out the fire with a pail or two, then stumbling. I don't know how long I walked. I remember being found later in the pigsty."
"By them?" Dane asked.
"By a patrol," I said. "They dragged me out. There were sirens. Men with badges. Someone called it an accident. Someone said 'house fire.'"
8
"At the county hospital they took me to," I said, "I had bandages, and a fever. The police brought me to a small ward that smelled like disinfectant and dust."
"That's when I met you," Dane said. "You were covered in mud."
"I couldn't remember things straight," I said. "But I kept thinking of the flowers Ravi had given me. The petals tasted bitter when I finally brewed them in my mouth—mandrake, he had said, like it was a joke. The tea made my head swim. Maybe it made me see things. Maybe it made me worse."
9
"Did Ravi poison you?" Dane asked.
"No," I corrected. "He slipped mandrake into the lives around me. The village used it like a joke, sometimes. But he loved the edge it gave him. The petals were dangerous."
"Someone tested you," Dane said. "The labs found toxin in your blood."
"I was told I had been poisoned," I said. "But I also remember the photo. A photo of me—half asleep—next to Ravi. It was on his phone. I could not hate him and love him at once. My brain was a field of sticks and mud."
10
"You killed two men," Dane said. "That's on record."
"I know," I said. "They were dead. I did what I did. But the rest—some of it was hallucination. The pigsty? The straps? The names? The boys writing 'whore'—those were real. The men who laughed at me—those were real."
"Do you remember placing the knife in the sink?" Dane asked.
"No," I said. "I remember taking photos, posting a staged note. I remember telling Lennon to run. I remember telling her to carry the proof, to run and save herself. I remember whispering to Finley how to hide. I do not remember everything."
11
"Afterward," Dane said, "they put you under observation. They said you were delusional at times. There were tests. I remember thinking—'I wish she could remember the same calendar as me.'"
"You were kind," I said.
"I had to be," Dane said. "You were in pieces. You wanted to confess at one point."
"Yes," I said. "I wanted to confess to everything. I thought I wanted to be punished."
12
"Listen," Dane said. "We ran DNA. We found traces of mandrake in your blood. We found evidence that Ravi had attacked Lennon and Finley. But he and Wolfgang were found burned. Knife wounds were present. Your story and the forensics didn't match in parts."
"I know," I said. "I was told later that I had been in the ward the day of the fire. People saw me there, they said. They said I was in class. I could not reconcile it."
"Because your mind stitched pieces together," Dane said. "Fragment by fragment."
"I hate that phrase—'stitched together,'" I said. "It sounds like someone sewing a lie."
13
"There was a memory—", I said, "Lennon giving me a bag of root and leaves. She said, 'If you leave, take this. I learned about it in the fields.'"
"She risked a lot," Dane said. "She told us how Ravi had hurt her. She came forward later. She said she had been forced to be quiet."
"When Lennon told me about that night, I promised I would protect her," I said. "I promised both girls I'd keep them safe."
"You acted," Dane said simply.
"I did." I closed my eyes. "But what I did... the law says one thing. The mind says another. The hospital had a different name for my actions. 'Severe persecutory delusions,' the doctor said. 'Mandrake intoxication may have amplified symptoms.'"
14
"How did you feel in the ward when they told you?" Dane asked.
"Confused," I said. "When they said I had been in the classroom the day of the fire, I tried to explain the marks on my arms. I tried to explain the strap. They said there were no straps. They asked why I was so sure."
"Why?" Dane asked.
"Because I had been taught to believe," I said. "In the city, I loved children. I had a baby before that died. I was raw with loss. I saw myself in some of them, and I wanted to cover them with my hands so they wouldn't be hurt."
15
"You were in a psychiatric ward for months," Dane said. "You were treated. You improved. The court read the reports and declared you not criminally responsible because of mental disorder."
"I remember the judge's face," I said. "He looked like a man trying to decide a question with no answer."
"After you recovered," Dane said, "you wanted to leave."
"I did," I said. "I wanted to go see the girls. Lennon came once at the hospital. She stood by my bed. 'You saved me,' she told me. 'You saved my sister.'"
"I remember her voice in the records," Dane said. "She was small. She cried when she spoke."
16
"We left the hospital," I said. "I left with a badge of shame and a strange calm. The village had burned. The files showed Wolfgang's graft, his team of men taking funds for land purchases. They had used public funds for themselves. People started to talk."
"Was there a punishment for them?" Dane asked.
"There was a slow burning," I said. "But people wanted a spectacle. They wanted the rotten family named."
17
The punishment was not what I had imagined. It did not come as a single dramatic scene at the courthouse. It happened the day of the reclamation meeting, in the square, before the public. I stood at the edge with Lennon and Finley. The air tasted like hot dust and the sweet scar of smoke.
"Everyone, come!" called one of the county officers on a loudspeaker.
The crowd gathered, hundreds of faces I recognized and hundreds I did not. They pressed forward like slow water. Some stood with folded arms, others with phones held high. The meeting had been called by the county, but the villagers treated it like a trial.
A tall man from the county—no name used by me now—pulled out a folder. He placed photo copies on the table.
"These are the files," he said. "These are the records of funds missing. These are witness statements. These are names of those who took from this village."
An old woman in the front row leaned forward and hissed, "Where are they? Where are the men?"
"They are gone," another voice answered. "Dead. But others remained to take their place."
Then the county man did something that made the square shift like wind through corn. He brought a projector and played video clips. Hidden recordings, voices admitting to cover-ups, men promising money for silence. The projector painted faces on a screen—faces we had seen in the council house, faces of henchmen, faces of men who had laughed in back rooms.
One video showed a man who had once been the head of roads telling a younger official, "Keep them quiet. Give them small sums and the teacher will leave." The young official grinned. A text message flashed: "Forty thousand. Problem solved."
The crowd gasped as the paper trail was read aloud. The clerk read names. Each name that fell into the square tightened the air.
"Do you understand what they did?" someone shouted.
"I want them found!" cried a woman near me, her fingers white on the strap of her bag.
"Stop!" a man yelled, slamming his palm. "No lynching. We will let the law punish them." But his voice was small.
Lennon clung to my sleeve. "They took so much," she said. "They took a future."
"Look!" someone cried. "They took money that should have gone to our students!"
Then a man in the crowd pushed a box forward. Inside were sacks of flour and a list—names of victims, dates, amounts. The list matched the projector files. The head of the county pointed at the screen and then at a group of men in the back row. "These individuals received transfers from Wolfgang David's accounts. They conspired to hide payments. They aided him in taking land. They promised silence for money."
A hush fell. A woman in a bright scarf stood and spat in the dirt. "My brother died because there was no ambulance. Where did that money go?"
The speaker's voice was clinical. "We will prosecute. We will seize assets. We will restore money where possible. But the law moves slowly."
"Slowly?" someone cried. "We can wait!"
A cluster of younger men pushed forward. They surrounded two older men who had served as deputies in the past. They were not Wolfgang or Ravi—those two were dead—but they had been the hands that kept things running. The crowd wanted names, and now they had them.
"These are the men who signed the forms," the county man said. "These are the ones who accepted payments."
The deputies tried to stand tall. They lifted their chins, looking for support. They received instead the crowds' hard stares. Phones pointed at them. A video clip showed a deputy laughing about "quieting the teacher." That clip played on the projector. A woman in the crowd rose and spoke with a voice like stone.
"You told us to take the money. You told us to be silent. We fed our children with crumbs while you counted gold. Today we tell you: you have to answer."
One of the deputies, face red, said, "This is a smear. We worked for the village."
"Where are the receipts for the schoolbooks?" another woman asked. "Where are the funds for the clinic?"
The deputy opened his mouth and then closed it. People began throwing questions like stones. The men shifted from defiance to confusion to fear.
"You stole our names," Lennon whispered beside me. She had flinched from the projector image. "You stole our years."
Someone in the back of the crowd began to chant. "Accountability! Accountability!" It spread like a small fire. The chant became a roar. Hands pointed, then phones, then pieces of paper waved. A man with a loudspeaker read a list of transfers—each amount and each testimonial lit a new flame in the crowd.
Then the punishment turned public and theatrical. The county officials announced that several local clerks would be removed from office that day, and arrests were made for obstruction. The sound of cuffs snapped like a cold clap. The crowd leaned forward.
A deputy, the same man who had laughed about the teacher, was led from the square with his hat in hand. The seller at the tea stall spat at the ground where he had walked. Children pointed. The clerks who had once been untouchable were now marched before the people. They stumbled under the weight of glares.
"What do you want us to say?" one of them cried, voice thin.
"Confess," someone shouted. "Tell us how you sold our children's futures."
The man could not say it. He trembled. The crowd's voice rose. People recited the names of children who had missed medicine, the names of families who had been forced to sell land. The clerks were made to stand in the center and hear, one by one, the list of the damages.
Phones recorded. The county official announced the legal steps while the villagers pronounced their verdict in their own way: shame, exposure, and the promise to follow the law. A group of women began to read names aloud—where the money had been diverted, where the contracts had been broken.
The men who had taken public funds were not physically tortured in the square. They were stripped of their honors, their pictures removed from the community board, and the county posted the videos on their website. The humiliation was sharp. Their children watched. Their wives looked away. A neighbor who had once sold them eggs spit as they passed. The people took away the sense of safe normal. Their reputations were gone; the list of their misdeeds was public for everyone to see.
"You will be tried," the county man said. "Seizure of assets is the first step. We will follow the law."
The crowd wanted more immediate justice—someone to make them pay in the square—but when the law moved, it moved in a way that would bite harder later. Archives were opened. Accounts were frozen. Men who had once walked with authority were left to walk with bowed heads. The public punishment was this: removal, exposure, a brand that would follow them to markets and wells.
Afterwards, Lennon hugged me. "They will feel it," she said. "They will be ashamed in every shop."
"Will it change what happened to us?" I asked.
"It is the only thing that can," she said. "We cannot take back the nights. But they can lose what they held."
18
"Was that enough retribution?" Dane asked later, when he read the reports. He tapped the page.
"Enough for some," I said. "The people watched them shrink. That mattered."
19
"After that day, the village changed slowly," I said. "Funds were reclaimed. Schoolbooks returned. Children who had missed meals were fed. The man in the square who spat at the deed office later stood up and apologized at a meeting for not speaking sooner. People who had been silent found their voices."
"But what about you?" Dane asked.
"I am still a tangle of guilt and memory," I said. "I remember the pigsty because I remember a smell. I remember the strap because I remember a wound. I remember the cries because I heard them in my sleep."
20
"At the train station, Lennon and Finley came with their simple gifts," I said. "Lennon gave me a packet of tea—her hands shook. She said, 'For when you miss home.'"
"Finley said she'd write," Dane said.
"Yes," I said. "I boarded the train with a small bag and a larger ache. I turned once on the platform and saw a red spider on the windowsill of the small shop. It was small and bright and patient. 'Don't forget the children,' Lennon shouted. 'Remember them when you go.'"
"I remember that detail," Dane said. "It was the last image on your file before discharge."
"I said something then," I told him. "I told Dane—'I am a teacher.'"
"And you are," Dane said.
"I taught them," I said. "I tried to save them. I failed in parts. I saved them in others."
21
"When you asked me if it was worth it," I said, "Dane, I remembered the baby that wasn't there anymore. I remembered the arachnid in the corner of my old room—the red crab spider that leaves her children with the body of the mother—how she gives everything. I thought of the mandrake in the fields and the bitter tea. I thought, I'm a teacher, and my class keeps changing—some days children, sometimes bodies, sometimes guilt."
"Do you regret it?" Dane asked.
"I regret pain," I said. "I regret the shape of the help I gave. But I do not regret bringing Lennon's name into the light. I do not regret taking the risk."
22
"In the end," I said, "the law called it a diagnosis. The village called it scandal. The children called it protection. The county called it an investigation."
"But you?" Dane asked.
I looked out the window at the hospital fence. "I am a woman who loved a child she could not have back. I am a teacher who saw danger and acted. I am someone who burned a house for truth and sat in a ward for madness. I am someone who will keep the packet of tea tucked in the bottom of my suitcase."
"Why keep it?"
"Because sometimes truth tastes bitter, like mandrake. Sometimes it keeps you awake. Sometimes it saves someone."
23
"When the train moved," I said, "I watched the platform shrink. I watched Lennon and Finley become small. I watched the red spider on the stall's windowsill blend into the maze of people."
"Dane," I said, "if you had to judge me?"
"I already did," he said. "I listened."
"Then close the file and forget me?" I asked, a tired smile.
"No," he said. "I'll keep the file. But I won't let the world break you further."
"I am a teacher," I said again. "And maybe that's all that remains."
The End
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