There�s a house, in which, no plant dares to grow. The lawn is bald and brown and dry. Stray dogs and cats of the neighborhood naturally avoid that place � for good reason: it wasn�t always this way.
Once the lawn had been lush and green, tramped upon by animals of all sorts and any number of the neighborhood children; once the brick walls had been covered in green ivy vines with purple and white clematis growing in bunches between; once a jungle of plants crowded upon the porch, growing unchecked � a wild tangle of green and brilliant bursts of color: flowers. Over it all, she ruled.
Her power radiated, consumed the whole neighborhood inside a fog so thick you could feel it. Things there grew, almost to the point of being out of control. Outsiders didn�t understand it; just beyond the boundaries of that neighborhood the overwhelming greenness just stopped. However once an outsider noticed this, it was promptly forgotten and put into the back of their mind. Only a strong willed few ever remembered, and even then they never acted.
There were� side effects. Children born there often had a faint greenish tint to their skin. These children were often found wandering in the gardens, talking in hushed voices to imaginary friends. As they grew their fondness of the outdoors tanned their skin a rich brown and that faint greenish tint was dismissed as never having been there at all.
Grass couldn�t be cut. Hedges and trees couldn�t be pruned. The tools that were used to perform these duties mysteriously broke. Their owners never got around to replacing them. However at a certain height the grass doubled over as if from weight. It would take a close look to notice. No one ever looked that close. The trees and hedges just grew in the shape they were supposed to: no pruning needed.
Perhaps the worst of these side effects was the one that no one, not even the green lady herself, noticed. The plants of the neighborhood, even though they came to be a hardy sort, depended more heavily upon the green lady than anyone cared to acknowledge.
One day when the city people came to pepper the lawns with pesticide to kill the strange strain of mold that was infecting the whole region, everyone tried to understand why the green lady objected. Wouldn�t she of all people want to protect her plants? With teeth clenched in anger the city people left.
That night the green lady didn�t hear the truck come, didn�t hear the laughs of the men who sprayed all the greenness heavily with their harsh chemicals. People say what she heard was the plants, heard their pain and went to them. She yelled at the city people, crying madly and pounding at their shoulders as they got back into their truck and drove away laughing. The greenish children and the tanned children who were once greenish, came to her, cried with her as they felt deep in their bones the pain of the plants as they died. The green lady turned a deathly shade displayed by nightshade in bloom and she uttered a curse without knowing what she did.
�Never. Never again, will plants die on this land where my blood and my sweat have watered their thirst. Never will man kill a plant on this land, never� never� never� never�� Her cries dissolved into sobs, the children tried to comfort her but after that day the green lady was never the same.
As her plants faded into brown, dry, skeletons, the green lady faded into a shell of her former self. Some say she�s still in that house, some say she left � couldn�t bear to be near the place where all that death clouded the air. Sometimes a child, born slightly green, would walk past that place, pause for a barely noticed moment, look at the house and the lawn and what wasn�t there but should be.
What she uttered was true: never again did a plant die on that land, they just wouldn�t grow there at all. The other plants in the neighborhood faded to a green dripping of normalcy, they had to be cut and pruned once again. The people went about these duties without a second thought. But once in a blue moon, a child would be born, with skin a creamy greenish shade, and that child would walk in the moonlit gardens, talking in hushed voices to friends the adults couldn�t see. No one mentioned it. It was the little secret of the neighborhood. And every now and then when she thought that no one was listening, a woman toiling in her garden would utter a prayer to the green lady in hopes that the plant she couldn�t quite get to bloom or grow, would grow strong and green. And every so often, although no one mentioned it, it did.