• Root Bound •

$220.00

They said the tree at the edge of the village had a memory for every broken promise.

One winter, when the snow refused to fall and the wells sank lower each day, a woman came to that tree with a bundle of clay, cloth, and herbs. She was a cunning woman, and grief, pain and love had taught her every lesson magic had to offer. Her lover had left with soft lies and a quick smile, and the echo of their footsteps still rattled through her chest like loose pins in a drawer.

At the roots of the old tree, she began her work.

She sculpted a head from a lump of earthy clay, smoothing its brow until it looked almost peaceful. She fashioned a stiff, pulpy dress for the body, something like armor and something like a shroud. For arms, she used cloth and scraps from old dolls - remnants of toys that had soaked up years of childhood wishes; and for legs, she chose roots from the dying tree she sat with, twisted and grasping.

She whispered into the hollow where a heart should be, and the poppet’s chest echoed back her chant, cold and empty. Not yet satisfied, she reached into her pocket and pulled out a small red thing made of earth, and twigs and thread - a tiny marionette heart. It pulsed quietly in her hand, not with blood, but with unspoken words and unshed tears. She didn’t put it inside the figure. Instead, she tied it on a delicate black string and let it hang, just out of reach of the poppet’s body.

“A borrowed heart,” she murmured, “to remind you of the fragility and risks of letting your own be stolen away.”

The final touch was the pins. She pressed them into the poppet’s chest with slow, deliberate care—pins for the vows that had been made to her, and broken, pins for the nights she had counted cracks in the ceiling instead of sleeping. The red-tipped heads gleamed like warning lights against the pale of the poppet.

When she held the figure out to look at her work, the doll was no longer just a sculpture. It was a boundary line, a spell, carefully crafted to ward off disloyalty, dishonesty and disaster. Before departing, she whispered firmly into the soulful tree, “the spell is cast.”

From that day on, anyone who might lie beneath that dying tree, found their chest inexplicably tight, as though invisible threads tugged at their ribs. Those who broke hearts felt a prickle at the back of their necks, as if watched by glassy eyes they could not quite see. And sometimes, in the hush between dusk and full dark, villagers swore they saw the branches twitch and sway, moving to the rhythm of someone’s newly dawning regret.

The woman didn’t used her poppet for curses, but hung it in her home, bare wall behind it, like a small, private altar. It became a quiet guardian of promises, a reminder that love, once mishandled, grows roots and remembers.

And the poppet remained there—half-girl, half-tree, arms borrowed from forgotten playthings, clutching at the red heart swinging from its string—forever holding the space between devotion and departure, forever keeping watch over the dangerous, fragile art of giving your heart away.

Root Bound features hand sculpted and painted head, hands, and heart, a recycled and repurposed, papier-mâché body, and real pine root legs. Measuring approximately 14 x 6 inches, with a ribbon loop on the back, for hanging. 

They said the tree at the edge of the village had a memory for every broken promise.

One winter, when the snow refused to fall and the wells sank lower each day, a woman came to that tree with a bundle of clay, cloth, and herbs. She was a cunning woman, and grief, pain and love had taught her every lesson magic had to offer. Her lover had left with soft lies and a quick smile, and the echo of their footsteps still rattled through her chest like loose pins in a drawer.

At the roots of the old tree, she began her work.

She sculpted a head from a lump of earthy clay, smoothing its brow until it looked almost peaceful. She fashioned a stiff, pulpy dress for the body, something like armor and something like a shroud. For arms, she used cloth and scraps from old dolls - remnants of toys that had soaked up years of childhood wishes; and for legs, she chose roots from the dying tree she sat with, twisted and grasping.

She whispered into the hollow where a heart should be, and the poppet’s chest echoed back her chant, cold and empty. Not yet satisfied, she reached into her pocket and pulled out a small red thing made of earth, and twigs and thread - a tiny marionette heart. It pulsed quietly in her hand, not with blood, but with unspoken words and unshed tears. She didn’t put it inside the figure. Instead, she tied it on a delicate black string and let it hang, just out of reach of the poppet’s body.

“A borrowed heart,” she murmured, “to remind you of the fragility and risks of letting your own be stolen away.”

The final touch was the pins. She pressed them into the poppet’s chest with slow, deliberate care—pins for the vows that had been made to her, and broken, pins for the nights she had counted cracks in the ceiling instead of sleeping. The red-tipped heads gleamed like warning lights against the pale of the poppet.

When she held the figure out to look at her work, the doll was no longer just a sculpture. It was a boundary line, a spell, carefully crafted to ward off disloyalty, dishonesty and disaster. Before departing, she whispered firmly into the soulful tree, “the spell is cast.”

From that day on, anyone who might lie beneath that dying tree, found their chest inexplicably tight, as though invisible threads tugged at their ribs. Those who broke hearts felt a prickle at the back of their necks, as if watched by glassy eyes they could not quite see. And sometimes, in the hush between dusk and full dark, villagers swore they saw the branches twitch and sway, moving to the rhythm of someone’s newly dawning regret.

The woman didn’t used her poppet for curses, but hung it in her home, bare wall behind it, like a small, private altar. It became a quiet guardian of promises, a reminder that love, once mishandled, grows roots and remembers.

And the poppet remained there—half-girl, half-tree, arms borrowed from forgotten playthings, clutching at the red heart swinging from its string—forever holding the space between devotion and departure, forever keeping watch over the dangerous, fragile art of giving your heart away.

Root Bound features hand sculpted and painted head, hands, and heart, a recycled and repurposed, papier-mâché body, and real pine root legs. Measuring approximately 14 x 6 inches, with a ribbon loop on the back, for hanging.