When We Plant the Apple Tree
Summary: Molly dies. Melody Farm falls into divine hands. A story about growing up, even if you're a god.
Flashbacks in italics.
IV: Rain
With springtime being as hot and dry as it had been, it was little wonder to anybody in Castanet when a thick haze of clouds formed on the eastern horizon near the end of the season. By midmorning, the haze had darkened to an ominous slate gray and a cold wind was gusting towards the ocean across the miles of empty, rolling hills. The weather forecasters predicted that the storm would blow in around late afternoon and last the entire night, bringing with it high winds, hail, and the occasional bolt of lightning. It would be too dangerous for anyone to be out in, and all over the peninsula the farmers and ranchers were spending the precious few sunlit hours covering young crops and herding animals back into barns for shelter.
"Come on in, Moojuice and Dandy!" Finn's tiny voice rang out from Melody Farm's barn. "You're going to get wet if you dawdle!"
Two black and white cows pushed their way out of the dry stalks of wheat waving in the largest field, meandering up the slope of the pasture to the barn. Finn shooed them further in and did a last minute head count. Cows, sheep, and horse—everyone was safely inside, chewing hay and watching him with liquid eyes as he closed and barred the doors. Molly usually took the opportunity bad weather provided to grind wheat or flax or coffee, but Finn couldn't bear the thought of working alone in the storm. He'd be staying inside with the animals tonight.
"It's okay, Leeman," he said softly as he settled down on the sheep's woolly head and patting it, more to assure himself than the animal. "It'll be sunny again soon."
Finn knew the crops desperately needed the rain, but he couldn't shake the uneasy feeling in his stomach that he got whenever he heard the distant, quiet, ominous rumbles of thunder.
The Harvest King had warned Molly not to return to Mount Garmon. If she had been anybody else, she would have heeded the direct order from the deity and stayed away from the King's Seat for the rest of her life. However, being Molly, she didn't.
"I have the entire town literally eating out of the palm of my hand," she told Finn one day as they staggered back from Marimba Farm with exotic seeds and rich fertilizer. "If he thinks he's chased me away by being standoffish, he's got another thing coming."
Finn flinched. "He can hear you, you know," he hissed at her.
"Good. Then he'll be expecting me."
She grew every fancy plant that she could of: strawberries and hyacinth, sunflowers and lilies, honeydew so round and mint green that seeing them covered with dew in the mornings nearly brought tears to her eyes. She set her best tasting milk aside in the back of her fridge and washed Leeman's wool until he ran away when he saw her coming with the brush.
At the end of each week, she'd button her coat and pull her wool hat down over her ears and take her selected gift up to Mount Garmon. Those living in the mining district grew accustomed to seeing her stormy, furious expression each time stomped down again, although they could hardly guess what had happened to put her in so foul a mood every time.
After a while, her gifts began to get more extravagant. Spaghetti carbonara, shining flax, a montblanc made with the finest example of a chestnut that she'd ever laid eyes on. Without fail, the Harvest God would give her—and her offering—a dismissive glance over his shoulder and instruct her to leave. There were no words of greeting and none of farewell. She felt like one of the sparrows she had shooed away during her first visit. After weeks of this ridiculous cycle, Finn confronted her.
"I'm worried about you," he squeaked at her one morning, fluttering by her shoulder as she weeded the smaller field on her hands and knees. Dawn was yet hours away. "You're not sleeping or eating and you're neglecting the farm. You know that the Harvest Lord isn't going to like anything you bring him. What's gotten into you?"
Molly's scythe swipes were steady and unhurried. "It's funny," she said, half to herself. "I was wondering the exact same thing."
"You're going to make yourself sick if you keep going like this!"
"Look," she said, more sharply than she intended to, "I know it seems stupid, but I've gotta do it. He just stands up there, and he's alone, and it's day after day, month after month of just existing. I know what that feels like, Finn. When I first got here, that's all I did, was exist. Some days I felt like I was dead, but I existed. And the only thing that kept me going was this run down, beat up, half dead piece of land. But what's he got? Nothing. A rock to stand on. Some fancy jewelry. That's it."
Finn blubbered. "But Molly, he's a god…."
She yanked out another weed. "Doesn't matter. He thinks he's got everyone fooled with that kingly and aloof manner of his, but I know better. You say he's a god, fine. He might be. But he's got a farmer's hands."
After she accidentally dropped her latest offering—raspberry pie with a lattice crust—while coming back down the mountain, she crossed 'pastries' off of her list and went to see Sephia.
"I'm at my wits' end. I don't know how much more of this schlepping I can take, Harvest Goddess. Doesn't he realize I'm trying to be polite? Is he even human?"
Sephia sat on the marble steps next to her pond, her feet submerged in the glittering water and the trailing hem of her skirt piled in her lap. Twirling a pinkcat flower between her fingers and watching the colorful little harvest sprites play in the grass around her, she was the perfect picture of spring. "I don't know what gave you the idea that he was."
"You know what I mean. If I had to stand alone in the snow on top of a mountain, day after day, I'd be thankful for the company and a present. Why won't he let me be nice to him?"
"Offering him things that he hates is far from being nice, Molly," Sephia reminded her with a smile, her diadem flashing in the sunlight.
"He's got to like something. He can't not like everything."
"He probably likes being alone, Molly."
Molly wasn't in the mood to be rebuffed. Somehow, despite being used to back-breaking farm work, the long morning of being hunched over planting turnips and cabbages already had her back and shoulders aching, she'd stupidly tripped over and spilled two canisters of milk as she was setting up to ship them, and there was an irritating tickle in the back of her throat that had formed as she'd descended the mountain the night before. She got sick all the time now, which killed both her performance at the farm and her social life. She was always at the clinic, chugging Irene's spicy-tasting cold medicine like it was tea, but whenever Doctor Jin told her that maybe she shouldn't make so many trips to the King's Seat, she wouldn't listen to a word of it.
It wouldn't be so bad if he'd just throw me a freaking bone, she thought furiously, and then continued aloud, "I'm running out of options. Soon I'm going to start bringing him weeds."
"Oh, definitely not," Sephia chided. "Do not be disrespectful to the Harvest King just because he does not behave like a fawning child when you offer him gifts."
"I don't expect him to fawn; I just want him to be civil. You're nice to me even if I bring you something you don't particularly like."
Sephia smiled at the drooping pink flower in her hand. "He has not interacted with humans for a very long time," she said, almost wistfully. "You'll have to forgive him for being so brusque. If you've made him upset, let him be for a while."
Subdued, Molly studied her workworn boots and scowled, chewing her dry lips.
Sephia looked up from dragging the pinkcat's petals in the water. When she noticed the faintest pink blush on Molly's cheeks, she smiled. "So that's how it is," she said softly.
Molly stopped scuffing her boots against the ground. "What?"
Sephia closed her eyes, listening to the crickets chirring in the long grass next to the pool. Molly had to wait several uncomfortable minutes before the Goddess spoke again. "A long time ago, the Harvest King spent almost as much time with humans as I do now," she told Molly solemnly. "Castanet was very young then, as were we. Harmonica Town was nothing but a grassy hill and the first diamond had not yet been mined from Mount Garmon. But there were a few farms, and a few farmers, and seeds were planted and crops grown. They were not the seeds of exotic fruits or delicate flowers. They were hardy seeds that produced simple and straightforward crops, like corn and cotton and apples. The Harvest King was pleased with how they grew and blessed the land. That was how his favor was won. That was how the farmers showed their love."
Molly had been absently nodding her head as Sephia told her story, but suddenly she stiffened as if she'd been struck, her eyes wide. "Say that again." she said.
"I said, the farmers showed their love by growing simple crops. You don't have to work yourself to death trying to—"
But Molly was already backpedaling away from the pond, interrupting her. "Ah, uh, yeah, I won't. T-thanks for the story, Harvest Goddess, but I just remembered that I have to go do something back at the farm, but thanks—thanks a lot!"
She spun and hurried out of the glade. A surprised Sephia listened to the clumsy crunching of leaves and twigs under the farmer's boots as it faded into the distance, and then burst into bell-like laughter.
Colin, the yellow soil sprite who was no bigger than an oak leaf, fluttered up to the Harvest Goddess. "Jeez, Sephia, what's gotten into you, telling on Lord Ignis like that?"
Relaxing her fingers, the Harvest Goddess dropped the pinkcat into the glassy pool. "I wonder," she said with a sly smile.
Molly ran all the way back to her farm, her heart pounding in her chest with equal parts exhaustion and excitement. She had not yet stopped to consider the fact that Sephia had just accused her of being in love with the Harvest God. Her mind was filled with triumph. Apples, she thought, exhilarated. Apples, apples!
The orchard had been planted long before she had purchased the property, and the apple trees stood tall and gnarled in neat rows on the west side of the farm. They were the easiest trees to take care of, resistant to disease and drought. A sickening amount of apples grew on the boughs, round and beautiful, shiny skins patched with red and gold and green. Every summer, she spent days turning them into pies and jams and cakes. She threw them by the handful to her animals at the end of the season and left barrels of them out for passerby to snack on, and everyone who attended the New Year's Festival looked forward to drinking Melody Farm's Almost Famous apple cocktails.
Grow your apples, he had instructed. She should have thought of it before. He'd already told her what he wanted. Breathlessly, she turned the sharp corner off the path onto her property, calling, "Finn! I need a basket!"
"Oh! Molly!"
The voice wasn't Finn's. Molly tripped to a halt as somebody came around the corner of her house. Somebody wearing a pink dress and the fisherman's straw hat. Renee.
"I've been looking for you. Do you have a moment to talk?"
Renee's voice was so hesitant and soft that Molly had a hard time hearing it over the mild breeze. She swallowed hard, fighting down the sudden anger that had surged in her chest. Clueless Renee had no reason not to come to Molly for advice. Hadn't the two of them spent hours together when Molly first came to Castanet, talking about raising animals, racing horses, the importance of family? Hadn't Molly introduced Renee to Toby, saying that she needed to make friends?
Seeing the way Renee's eyes were shining and the easy smile on her face, Molly already knew what her unwitting rival was going to ask her about.
"Sure," she said brightly. "Do you want to come inside for some tea?"
The night that Renee told Molly that she intended to confess to Toby, Molly scaled Mount Garmon with a single apple in her hand. She was nearly in tears when she reached the top, although she didn't understand why.
He sat on the steps of his throne, head tilted towards the stars. She must have caught him off guard, for when he saw her ascending the stone steps, he stood quickly, as graceful and silent as a stag.
Crunching up to him, she stopped just outside the radius of his glow. His ruby eyes scanned her shivering frame as if she was some insect who had wandered into his palace. She wanted to tell him what she had told Finn, but her voice was as frozen as the rest of her. It was all she could do to raise her gloved hands and offer him the apple.
If this doesn't work, I'll never come back up here again.
To be alone here, to be separated from the sun and the soil and the rain, to be the bringer of the harvest but not the harvester, to live above the world when he belonged in it—this was something she could not accept.
"I want you to take this," she begged.
His gaze dropped to the piece of fruit. It seemed to her like the whole world was holding its breath.
But when the Harvest God reached out to accept it, she thought, No, it's just me.
It was the last day of summer. Half a year had already passed since their first meeting.
Already their time together was running out.
The storm was as fierce as any Finn had been through. All through the night, the barn was pummeled with sheets of rain that sounded like the ocean was trying to pour through the roof, the wind found every crack and seam in the walls and screamed through them, and each crack of thunder shook the ground and nearly deafened the little sprite. Fortunately, the animals were calm creatures, bothered by no mere springtime storm, and they waited it out with patience that made Finn feel embarrassed by his fright.
When it was finally over, he went outside to assess the damage. The barn had lost beams from its roof, all the windows in Molly's house had shattered, and the makeshift water tower behind the chicken coop had been reduced to a pile of timber, but by far the worst damage was in the orchard. Finn flew slowly down the once-neat rows, marveling at the destruction the storm had wrought. Four cherries. Half the oranges. Eight chestnuts and as many coffee trees. All uprooted, they lay on their sides like beached ships, branches tangled together, mangled fruit smashed into the ground. They'd all have to be dragged into a pile and burned, and new trees planted in their place. He'd need Lord Ignis's help with all of that.
To his relief, the apple trees had fared better than the rest. Their roots were too strong, their trunks too sturdy to be disturbed by a passing tempest. Their branches still held leaves and were heavy with fruit. Finn was just about to congratulate himself on his good luck when he came to the place where he and Ignis had planted Molly's seed.
The little sapling had been split in half.
A.N. No excuses for the time it took me to post this. Forgive me.
This story will probably stop at eight chapters, so we're halfway there!