Long ago women got their children by digging around in the earth. So that’s how I was going to find mine. I had spent long enough in a house by myself, no husband or children to keep me company. At first I was put off by the idea of having children since they dreamed so big and I had no dreams of my own. I was afraid of being jealous of my own child. 

But I’d put that aside. Now I was on my hands and knees in my mother’s garden while she was at work, digging with only my hands through the soft dirt in hopes of finding a child with roots for an umbilical cord. My mother told me when I was young that I was one of those beautiful, innocent, wonderful children that came from the earth and that I was meant only for her arms. I doubted that, especially after all this time because of what I’ve turned out to be. Average, loveless, plain. A child could fix me. A child could help make me a woman. 

All I longed for as I pulled up the dirt from the back corner of my childhood backyard was to feel that innate, feminine urge to become a mother that I had never felt before. I wanted to know what it felt like to want to protect. To want to cradle soft skin against my own. A child would fix me. 

I cried out and tugged at my hair as my search seemed more and more futile. Piling the dirt back into the hole I’d just created, I moved closer to the fence. The corner was covered with bushes left to grow wild. My mother never kept her yard as clean as she thought she did. I pushed the bushes aside, hoping that a child would be buried beneath them for me to find. Falling back down to my dirt-stained knees, I peered past the branches. 

I gasped. Let the bushes go. Wiped my hands against my jeans and pushed the leaves aside once more. 

Two hands stuck up from the ground. They were pale and looked too fragile to be human. The knuckles were mountains and the nails chipped claws and the veins were so prominent I could almost see the blood flowing through them. Only the fingertips were blushed with red. 

Gently, I brushed my fingers across one of the hands. It twitched. I jumped a little and pulled my hand away, but there was no question as to whether or not I should dig. These hands were not the hands of a baby, but I felt sure that these hands were my gift from the earth, meant only for me. Quickly, I dug, uncaring for how uncomfortable it felt to have dirt cram up under my fingernails or sweat roll down my back and make my shirt stick to my skin. I would have these hands out of the earth long before my mother made it back from work; that I promised myself. 

Steadily, the person behind the hands began to show. Silver hair and white skin. I pulled the figure from the ground once I felt that I could and the person behind the hands gave a groan when they finally hit the top of the earth. It was a girl. A young girl, not even an adult, whose hair reached to her waist and who was draped in only a tiny black dress that looked more like a pillowcase than a piece of clothing. I would say she looked like a ghost if it weren’t for her figure. She was all bone. Her cheekbones were sharp and her neck so thin I could wrap my hand around it. Her arms and legs were sticks and her elbows and knees protruded from them greatly. She was more a skeleton clothed in flesh. 

The girl opened her eyes. 

“You’re alive?” I asked. 

The girl nodded. 

“Who are you?” 

The girl sat up and turned to face me. It looked she was thinking over her answer before she settled on, “I am the Queen of Bones.” 

It was a strange name but I didn’t press her about it, “Why were you in the ground?”

“I’ve grown sick of being a woman so I buried myself somewhere peaceful.” 

“And that somewhere peaceful is my mother’s backyard?”

“There is nowhere more peaceful than the place childhood is spent.”

I reached for her and helped her up and took her home. The Queen of Bones took a bath first thing when we arrived and I laid out an old dress of mine for her to wear. Then, I fed her. She didn’t eat, but she looked at the food I’d cooked as if it was something very far away. 

“Why won’t you eat?” I asked her, “You really are so tiny.” 

“I told you, I don’t want to be a woman anymore,” she said and she fixed her eyes on mine. 

“So you want to be dead?” I pushed her plate closer to her, “I say you’re lucky. I’ve never once felt like a woman in all my time of being one. No one has ever thought I’m attractive and I’ve never had a boyfriend and I just can’t seem to look right in the clothes I buy.” 

The Queen of Bones said nothing. 

“How is not eating going to make you less of a woman?” I asked her. 

“I want to return to the earth where I was taken. Then I will be free.” 

“How would you be free if you can’t move or talk?” 

“I will not be looked at anymore. I will not be touched. I will not be taken. I will be free.” 

We didn’t talk anymore that day. I let the Queen of Bones go to sleep after that. 

She wasn’t a child I could raise on my own, but I couldn’t let her go out into the world in the state that she was in. She was young and sad and I wasn’t sure she wouldn’t try to bury herself again. I couldn’t imagine wanting to become part of the earth. It seemed so somber to me to fade away into the things around you, to lose individuality and become merely a limb – no – nutrients for a larger entity. I think I wanted to be the sky. I wanted to be this large, looming thing above everyone’s heads. Something unavoidable, something serene and beautiful. I couldn’t imagine someone not wanting to be the sky. 

The Queen of Bones and I lived together awkwardly. We just couldn’t seem to fit with one another, and I was still struggling to get her to eat. It was only for a short moment every day that we would share something with one another. I wanted to know the Queen of Bones. I wanted to see what she saw. I wanted to know what it felt to be a woman like she was, even if she was really only a girl. 

“How old were you when you decided you didn’t want to be a woman anymore?” I asked her. 

“Fifteen,” she said, no hesitation. 

“And how old are you now?” 

The Queen of Bones didn’t answer for a long time. She stared ahead at the TV and I thought she’d ignored me in favor of watching whatever show was on. 

“I think I am very old,” she said after some time. 

I served her home-made pancakes the next morning. I thought it might make her feel more her real age. They were fluffy and sweet and coated in sugary syrup. I thought it would be more enticing that way. The Queen of Bones only fiddled with her fork until I had finished my plate. 

“You really should eat something. It must hurt to have to feel your bones all the time,” I told her. 

“I don’t like the feeling of flesh and I already told you- “

I cut her off, “I know. But I’m afraid there won’t be anything left of you if you don’t eat at least a little something.”

She dug her fork into one of the pancakes. “Why are you keeping me here?” she asked. She didn’t raise the fork to her mouth. 

I laughed, trying to seem lighthearted, “I think it’s because I want to be a mother. I was told when I was little that mothers would find their children in the ground. So I went digging and I found you.” 

“You want to be a mother?” the Queen of Bones looked up at me. Her eyes were big and brown and curious. They were alive, not at all like the rest of her. 

“There you are,” I pointed at her, at her eyes. 

She dropped her fork on her plate and slunk back into her chair. “There what is?” she grumbled. 

“A child.” 

Her eyes went wide once more. I liked seeing her eyes like this. They were so healthy and girlish. She really was from the earth; I could see it now. Maybe she couldn’t fly, but that wasn’t a sad thing.

“I don’t feel like a child,” she whispered, “I feel ancient, used.” 

I took her hand, felt her bones under my fingertips, “And I feel untouched. Unseen. Unheard of. Will you show me what it’s like to feel ancient? To feel like a woman?” 

The Queen of Bones looked into my eyes, so blue and bright compared to hers, and nodded. That night, she came into my room just as I was ready to drift to sleep and kneeled next to me. I sat up and took her hands in mine. 

“Have you ever been kissed,” she asked me. 

“No.”

“I have. I didn’t want to be, though. I was really young and my chest had only just started to grow and the boys my age only wanted to kiss me. I think that’s when I became a woman,” The Queen of Bones said. 

I would have killed for the boys my age to want to kiss me when I was that young. 

“It felt like it would never stop. That I would only ever be something to look at, like I was some sort of exhibit. A painting, maybe.” 

I didn’t know what to say to her. It seemed like she had lived so much longer than I had and she looked only about half my age. So this is what it was to be ancient. 

“When I was a girl, I liked to play in my mother’s garden. There were trees I could climb and the grass was just long enough to fit between my toes and there were so many flowers I felt like I had become one. I think I would have liked to be one, maybe red and bright and so thorny that I could never be touched. But I was plucked. A flower can’t live if she isn’t rooted in the earth,” the Queen of Bones shed one single tear and as it rolled down her face, I thought I could see in it the reflection of her life before womanhood. 

I let go of her hands and placed them in my own lap, “I am not a flower. I never was one. I feel like I was born a bird that never learned to leave its nest. I’m not bright and beautiful, but I see now that I wouldn’t want to be plucked either. If it were me, I would have fallen. And a flightless bird can’t possibly get back up.” I took her face in my hands, “But I understand now. You are not a woman.”

“What?” The Queen of Bones looked almost offended. 

“You are a girl.”

Another tear slipped down her face. 

“We are both girls. You and me.”

She brought her hands up to cup mine and leaned into my touch. 

“Just because your girlhood has been taken from you doesn’t mean you can’t get it back. Just because mine is still with me doesn’t mean I should be ashamed of it.” I was crying now, too. 

The Queen of Bones nodded. 

“Will you eat something now?” I asked her. 

She nodded again. I slipped from my bed and brought her a bowl of fresh strawberries I was keeping in the fridge. I figured she would like them better than anything I could make. I placed the bowl in her hands gently. She wouldn’t break, I knew that, but I couldn’t help but want to make her feel safe. 

“I promise you, the earth has as much to give you as you have to give it,” I raised one of the strawberries to her lips, “The earth can give you your flesh back.”

The Queen of Bones sobbed and bit into the strawberry. She took it from me and the juice ran over her fingers and down her chin. Suddenly, she had color again. She ate more and more and her hair turned from white to golden. Her flesh fattened, giving her shape. Her cheeks turned a pretty pink. From her shins grew long, healthy roots. 

When she finished the strawberries, tears still wetting her cheeks, she wrapped her full arms around me and snuggled into my shoulder. I watched as the roots from her legs grew over the edge of the bed and seemed to poke at my floorboards. 

“You have always had wings. I hope you learn how to use them,” she cried into my neck. 

I smiled and hugged her tight. I let us sleep that night. We were both exhausted. 

The next morning I carried her to my car and sat her in the passenger seat. Her roots were begging for the earth, but I had to find her a good spot. 

“Can you show me to your mother’s house?” I asked her and she nodded. 

It was a beautiful house. Tall and wide. Bright yellow with a huge yard. In the back, there was still a garden. It was wonderful. Bluebells and snapdragons, tomato plants and rosemary. It seemed like everything that could exist in a garden grew there. 

The girl’s still-growing roots were beginning to make the car feel cramped so I quickly let her hop onto my back and carried her out to the garden. She was so much heavier than that first day I dragged her from the ground and her roots kept digging into the earth as I walked. 

“We’re here,” I told her and dropped her off in the middle of the garden between a bed of daises and petunias. 

“Thank you,” she smiled at me and her roots immediately began to bury themselves into the rich soil, “I don’t think I’ll be able to move anymore.” 

“I hope you never have to again,” I said, “You’re home.”

She reached her arms out to me and I hugged her one last time, “Really I should be the one to thank you.” 

“Why’s that?” she asked. 

“You taught me what it’s like to be a woman.” 

She giggled, “I don’t think you’d want to be the kind of woman I was.”

“No,” I said and pulled away from her, “But there are so many different ways to be a woman. We’re just different kinds.” 

Roots sprouted from the girl’s arms and planted themselves into the ground, “I never told you, but my real name is Rose.” 

I smiled at her, “That’s a perfect name.” 

“I hope to see you in the sky when I look up.”

“I hope you will, too,” and almost like I thought I’d see myself, I looked up at the bright blue above us. The thin clouds rolling over the sun as if to give us some privacy. There were a few birds, small, low flying. 

“I guess I never gave you my name either,” I said, still looking at the sky, “I am Linnet.” 

Finally, I looked back down at the girl but all that was there was a single red rose tucked between the daisies and petunias. With my nails, sharp as knives, I carefully picked a single petal from her bloom and stuck in between the feathers on my breast. Then, I spread my wings and took to the sky to find my own mother’s garden.