The Herb Room - Part 3
If you haven’t walked through the Herb Room’s first whispers, begin with Part I
The Unweaving
Sonya woke up the next morning on the floor of the Herb Room. It felt different in daylight.
Not lighter.
Not safer.
Simply exposed — like a wound revealed after the bandages have been lifted.
Sonya scrambled to her feet just inside the doorway, her breath shallow. The jasmine scent drifted along the edges of the room, softened, almost mournful. The bindweed hung slack as though exhausted by the previous night’s tension.
She went to the stone table.
Last night’s ritual spiral remained, but it no longer pulsed. The herbs looked wilted at the edges, as if drained by Iris’s manifestation.
Something glinted faintly beneath a stray jasmine petal.
Sonya brushed it aside.
A shard of glass.
Thick.
Curved.
Darkened by age.
She picked it up.
A broken bottle.
Not one she had seen on the shelves.
Thicker, older — hand-blown, not modern.
And near the base of the table, almost hidden beneath dried leaves, she found a second piece. Together, they formed part of a rounded shape.
Her stomach clenched.
A belladonna vial.
She knew it instinctively — not by sight, but by the faint residue on her fingertips. A sticky sweetness tinged with bitterness.
The same scent she had noticed beneath the jasmine.
The same scent that clung to the dried petal in Iris’s journal.
The same scent that followed her whenever Alistair’s presence drew near.
Sonya stood slowly. “This isn’t what you meant to do, is it?”
The room held its breath.
She picked up the vial fragment again, turning it over.
Belladonna was never simple in herbal folklore.
Not just poison.
Not just delirium.
A plant of thresholds — a mirror herb, a veil herb, a doorway between worlds.
Used correctly, it revealed truth.
Used incorrectly, it trapped souls.
She walked to the back corner of the room, where shelves sagged under the weight of ancient jars. A rusted ladder leaned against the stone wall.
Something tugged at her memory — the journal entry:
“Some plants whisper louder during longing.”
Sonya climbed the ladder.
At the top shelf, half-hidden behind a stack of cracked clay pots, she found an old wooden box. Smooth walnut. Brass clasp. A symbol burned into the lid:
A jasmine flower encircled by three berries.
Her heart pounded. She opened it carefully.
Inside:
a dried braid of jasmine stems
three perfectly spherical belladonna berries, shriveled but intact
a scrap of paper covered in delicate script
She lifted the paper.
The ink was blurred at the edges, but still legible.
“For devotion across worlds — jasmine to open the heart, belladonna to open the way.”
“Two hearts together.”
“Two souls willing.”
“Never one alone.”
Sonya’s chest tightened.
She now knew the flaw in Iris’ plan.
“If one heart is absent, the herb would not bind both souls togeher .”
Her vision blurred.
Iris hadn’t meant to bind Alistair away from life.
She had meant for them to cross a threshold together — to share devotion even if distance separated them.
But she had cast the ritual alone.
And belladonna, unbalanced, had done what folklore warned:
It tethered the soul most anchored in grief.
A soft breeze brushed Sonya’s cheek.
Not cold.
Not warm.
A mixture of both.
A presence behind her.
Two presences.
Iris in the cold air.
Alistair in the warm.
Sonya whispered, “You didn’t understand. Either of you. You were trying to hold on to each other, and the ritual twisted it.”
The herbs rustled overhead, a soft, aching shiver of stems and leaves.
She felt Iris before she saw her — the sudden tightening of jasmine fragrance, the cool press at her shoulder, the sorrow heavy enough to bend the air.
“I didn’t know,” Iris whispered, voice trembling like a dying flame.
“I thought… if I could feel him again… if I could keep him near…”
Sonya turned.
Iris stood inches away, eyes hollowed by grief and memory. Her form flickered more now — not fading, but fraying, unraveling at the edges like cloth worn thin.
She was unraveling because her ritual had never been completed.
Because she had anchored herself to a mistake.
Sonya held up the scrap of paper.
“You needed two hearts for this. You tried with one.”
Iris’s lips parted in silent pain.
“He left,” she said. “The night I was ready… he left.”
“No,” Sonya whispered, voice breaking. “He left to finish the research for you. He planned to come back. He was on the road home when the ritual pulled him off the path.”
The air behind Sonya warmed, then dimmed.
Alistair’s presence stirred — protective, aching, unable to form words.
Iris shook her head violently, grief twisting her features. “He wasn’t there. He wasn’t with me.”
Sonya stepped closer.
“Neither of you were wrong,” she said softly. “You just weren’t together.”
The bindweed curled tighter around the rafters.
The jasmine trembled.
The belladonna scent swelled.
Iris choked on a sob — the cry of someone whose heart finally heard the truth too late. “I should have waited,” she whispered.
Her figure flickered violently — not dissolving, but unraveling, threads of pale-gold light peeling away like strands of mist.
And Sonya understood.
Everything Iris built — the ritual, the Herb Room, the bindings — was coming undone beneath the weight of its own truth.
And if the unravelling continued without care…
both Iris and Alistair would slip away forever.
_______________________
The Herb Room had gone still.
Not silent — still.
A terrible, breathless stillness, heavy with the weight of things that should have never happened and things that might still occur if Sonya chose wrong.
Iris stood before her in a trembling shimmer of pale gold and bruised violet, her form fraying like a garment pulled too many times through thorned branches. Alistair’s presence pressed warm behind Sonya’s shoulder — steadying, pleading without words.
Two ghosts.
Two kinds of grief.
And Sonya caught between them.
“Iris,” Sonya whispered, clutching the torn ritual instructions, “if you keep trying to finish this ritual alone, it will destroy you. It’s already unraveling you.”
“I can’t let him go,” Iris breathed, voice cracking. “I’ve waited too long. I can’t lose him again.”
The herbs reacted to her despair.
Bindweed writhed up the rafters, tightening like a noose.
Rosemary shivered in its bundles, shedding brittle leaves.
Belladonna berries — dried for decades — glistened as if plumped with life.
The room wasn’t just alive.
It was remembering.
The unfinished ritual pulsed below the surface like a second heartbeat, echoing Iris’s fear:
Don’t leave me. Don’t leave me. Don’t leave me.
Sonya shook her head. “I can’t finish this for you.”
The spiral on the stone table twitched — bindweed tightening, petals shifting. The room rejected the refusal.
Iris’s eyes flashed with sudden panic. “You have to help me. It has to be completed.”
“No,” Sonya said more firmly. “It has to be unwoven.”
The word struck the air like a bell.
The herbs rustled.
The temperature dropped.
The jasmine scent thickened into something sharp — like grief turning to desperation.
Iris’s voice splintered. “It can’t be undone.”
Sonya stepped closer, tears burning her eyes. “Not undone — unwoven. I can unweave the ritual. I can free you. Both of you.”
The room reacted violently.
Jars toppled from shelves.
Dried stems snapped in their bindings.
A low groan rose from the stone floor like the house itself was objecting.
Iris staggered back as if struck.
“Unweaving will unmake what’s left of me.”
Sonya swallowed hard. “Only the pieces that are holding you here against your will.”
“I am my will,” Iris cried. “I’m all that’s left.”
The bindweed lashed outward, wrapping around the stone table like serpentine hands. Jasmine vines slithered across the floor in slow, deliberate movements, curling toward Sonya’s boots.
Alistair’s presence surged behind her — warm, imploring, pushing back against the vines before they touched her.
The room shook from the tension of two ghosts pulling in opposite directions.
Sonya whispered into the chaos, “Iris… he loved you. But this—” She gestured to the spiraling herbs, the tightening bindweed, the frayed ghostly edges. “This isn’t love. It’s a cage built from fear.”
Iris’s face contorted.
And for the first time, Sonya saw her not as a ghost — but as a woman who had suffered too long in silence.
“I didn’t mean to cage myself,” Iris whispered. “I meant to cross with him. I thought… if I bound us, we could meet in the doorway between.”
Sonya stepped closer, breath trembling. “The doorway doesn’t need a binding. It needs a release.”
The room rippled — a tremor of air that made the lantern flame jump.
Alistair whispered behind her:
“Let her go.”
Iris flinched — the sound hitting her like memory sharpened to a blade.
The jasmine scent collapsed inward, turning bitter. Her form flickered, threads of pale-gold unraveling in spirals like smoke rising off a candlewick.
Sonya reached out a hand.
“Iris… let me help you unweave what you tried to weave alone.”
“I don’t know how,” Iris whispered, voice breaking.
“I do.”
Sonya lifted the torn paper, the one Iris had hidden from herself.
“I can unweave herbs. Threads. Bindings. Memories.”
A soft sound shuddered through the Herb Room — like a sob pulled from the walls.
The bindweed loosened its grip.
The jasmine vines paused.
Iris’s trembling steadied.
“Show me,” she whispered. “Please.”
Sonya nodded once.
The choice was made.
Not to finish.
Not to flee.
But to unweave.
_______________________
The Herb Room felt like a held breath.
A moment stretched too tight.
A spell caught between wanting and ending.
Sonya stepped toward the stone table, the torn ritual page trembling in her hand. Her pulse echoed through her ribs like the slow beat of a drum. Around her, herbs rustled in a restless whisper—too alive, too attentive, as though the plants were waiting for her next move.
Iris hovered near the table’s edge, her form frayed with pale-gold light, violet shadows pooling beneath her eyes. She looked at Sonya with terror and hope braided together.
“Tell me what to do,” Iris whispered, voice thin as unraveling thread.
Sonya shook her head gently.
“You tried to weave devotion into forever,” she said softly. “But devotion isn’t meant to be bound. It’s meant to breathe.”
Alistair’s warmth pressed at her back—steadying, anchoring her.
Sonya placed both hands on the ritual circle.
Jasmine blossoms trembled beneath her touch.
Bindweed tightened defensively.
Belladonna stains shimmered like spilled night.
The herbs recognized her.
They knew a practitioner’s touch.
And they waited.
Sonya closed her eyes.
She inhaled.
Jasmine — once devotion, now release.
She exhaled.
Rosemary — once remembrance, now forgetting what harms.
She touched the sprigs.
Yarrow — once protection, now separation without fear.
She laid her palm flat against the table.
The room tensed around her—vines recoiling, herbs rattling, bindweed snapping tight.
Sonya raised her voice over the hum of the awakening ritual:
“What was woven by longing will be unbound by truth.”
The lantern flickered.
Iris gasped, her form jerking as if pulled by invisible threads.
“No—no, it’s tearing me—”
Sonya reached out, steadying her ghostly form though she couldn’t truly touch her.
“It’s not tearing you,” she whispered. “It’s freeing you.”
Sonya swept her hand across the jasmine spiral.
The petals darkened, then dissolved into dust that spiraled upward like pale smoke. A soft sigh filled the room, as though the Herb Room itself were exhaling.
Bindweed lashed out in panic.
Tendrils snapped toward Sonya’s wrists, wrapping around her skin—cold, tight, desperate.
Alistair’s presence surged.
Warmth struck the vines like a ripple of fire. They recoiled, hissing in a way that plants should not be able to make.
Sonya pressed forward.
Her fingers brushed the belladonna stains.
They pulsed under her touch—the last remnant of Iris’s half-finished threshold.
“Iris,” Sonya whispered, “I need you to let go of what you tried to hold.”
Iris trembled like a candle flame in a draft.
“I don’t know how.”
“Yes,” Sonya said gently, “you do.”
She placed the torn ritual line on the stone table—the one Iris had wanted to forget.
“Never one alone.”
Iris stared at the words as though they were a blade pointed at her heart.
“I didn’t mean to die,” she whispered. Her voice cracked, unraveling into sobs. “I just wanted him to stay.”
Sonya nodded, tears stinging her own eyes.
“I know. And now it’s time to let him go so you can go.”
Iris reached out with trembling hands—not touching, but trying.
Sonya lifted a final herb.
Bindweed.
The plant quivered violently as though aware of its fate.
Sonya spoke clearly:
“Thread undone, circle unwoven.”
“Binding released.”
“Doorways closed.”
“Love returned to its own home.”
She tore the bindweed in two.
The Herb Room screamed.
Not in sound—but in air, in pressure, in a rush of wind that shook the rafters and blew open every jar on the shelves. Petals whirled like a storm. Dust spiraled upward in golden coils. Jasmine vines recoiled into themselves, shriveling like dying stars.
Iris arched backward, her form splitting into strands of light.
“Alistair!” she cried, reaching toward the warm presence behind Sonya.
His warmth flared—just once.
Soft.
Forgiving.
Final.
Sonya whispered, “It’s time.”
The ritual shattered.
Jasmine petals fell like snow.
Belladonna stains evaporated in a violet shimmer.
Bindweed unraveled into dust.
The entire room exhaled—one long, aching breath.
Iris’s figure softened.
Her edges unfrayed.
Her face smoothed.
Her eyes reached clarity instead of longing.
She looked at Sonya—really looked.
“Thank you,” she whispered, voice whole at last.
Then she turned toward the warmth in the air.
“Alistair?”
A breeze brushed the room.
Warm.
Silent.
Loving.
Iris closed her eyes and stepped into it.
Her form dissolved into pale-gold light, scattering like petals carried on a summer wind.
The warmth followed her.
And then both were gone.
The Herb Room went absolutely still.
For the first time since she arrived—
the air smelled like nothing.
Quiet.
Empty.
Free.
Sonya let out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding.
“It’s unwoven,” she whispered.
And the room, relieved of its grief, did not answer.
_________________________
The house felt impossibly quiet.
Not hollow… not abandoned… simply settled, like a deep breath had finally been released after years — decades — of being held.
Sonya stood alone in the Herb Room, her lantern dim now that dawn pressed its pale light through the cracked windows. Dust settled slowly in the air, drifting between the hanging bundles like tiny stars returning to the night sky.
The jasmine scent was gone.
Completely.
The air smelled faintly of old stone, dry leaves, and the cool clarity of morning. For the first time since her arrival, the room smelled like a room — not a memory, not a plea, not a lingering grief.
She took a step forward.
Her boot nudged something small and soft.
A jasmine petal.
Just one.
Snow-white with a faint thread of gold through the center, as if it remembered Iris’s light but no longer belonged to it. Sonya crouched and lifted it gently.
It didn’t crumble.
It didn’t vanish.
It didn’t pulse with leftover magic.
It simply rested in her palm.
A relic of something that had finally ended.
Her gaze drifted across the room — the bindweed now dry and brown, the once-shimmering herbs hanging limp, the ritual spiral erased completely. Everything looked older somehow, as though magic had been keeping it alive and had now, at last, let go.
She walked slowly through the room, fingertips brushing the rafters, the shelves, the cracked tiles beneath her boots. A place that had once heaved with longing now felt peaceful. Like a winter garden waiting for new growth.
Sonya whispered into the stillness, “Goodbye, Iris.”
A soft breeze brushed past her cheek.
Not jasmine.
Not warmth.
Just air.
Free air.
For a moment, she thought she felt a gentle press at her back — the faintest sensation of someone standing behind her, not as a haunting but as a farewell.
But when she turned, only dust motes drifted in the early light.
She stepped out of the Herb Room, closing the door behind her out of habit rather than fear. The hinges didn’t sigh. The latch didn’t cling. The room didn’t breathe.
Just a door.
Just a room.
Just peace.
As she walked down the hallway, morning sun stretched across the floorboards. Her boots left small prints in the dust — light, steady, human.
Her life’s weight returned gradually, replacing the supernatural pull she’d been under for days.
She paused at the front door, slipping the single jasmine petal carefully into her pocket.
A keepsake.
Not of grief —
but of release.
And as she stepped outside into the cool morning air, she thought she heard, carried faintly on the breeze:
“Thank you.”
Not a whisper.
Not a haunting.
Just gratitude — drifting toward whatever waited beyond the veil.
Offer whatever name you wish to be known by at the hearth today — real or imagined — we look forward to welcoming your words into the circle.