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Somewhere beyond Zashiversk, where the Indigirka freezes hard enough to remember, the plants grew as if they had learned history by drinking blood. Dane’s Blood—Dwarf Elder—rose wherever Vikings had fallen, its yellow flowers botched and luminous, as if the sun had tried to apologize and failed. Mannablóð they called it: man’s blood made botanical. Pulsatilla, taraxacum, oxytropis—names piled like bones, taxonomy pretending to be innocent.
The land was small, criminally small, a plot no bigger than regret. Yet it would not stay empty. Dandelions, carried by accident and love, crossed oceans on the Mayflower, crossed time itself, and refused permission. Outlandish plants broke the wax mold of intention. They grew because growing was irresistible.
Songs were sung there for no reason other than love. Not for gods, not for profit. Just because nightingales choose chaos when they sing.
Odin passed through once, wearing a cowboy hat stolen from a future that hadn’t happened yet, muttering about weeds and wisdom. Thor followed, thunder misfiring like a bad memory, Valhalla’s halls echoing with rain that felt like brains rattling inside skulls. Shoggoths of ectoplasm clung to roots; art itself was vaxandi—still growing.
During the winter fair, a chained chest appeared. The Yakut shaman demanded it be thrown into the river through a cut in the ice. The priest refused. When the chest was opened, jewels flashed, fabrics shimmered—and then black smallpox rose like a spell mispronounced. Zashiversk died, all but one girl, who lay under dandelions as if the weeds were guarding her.
They said she was a giant baby, last of the round rocky clan, raised on rain and stubborn seeds. She grew listening to insects slain in bottles, to thunder breaking its own rules, to magic poetry scratched into bark—galdrbok verses about choosing newness without permission.
In the end, nothing was saved but the plants. The bones of the Danes went down the drain of history, hated by gardeners who feared weeds more than death. Yet the weeds played music all night long. Metatron of weeds. Samael in the venom. Genius hiding in genus.
And the land kept growing—not to conquer, not to remember—but simply because it loved to.
