In a rural town near the sleepy heart of Maine, autumn was just beginning to exhibit her brightly colored clothing. The leaves of maples blushed to a brilliant crimson, sighed, and drifted slowly down to the chilled ground. Birds were flying south in great flocks, fat pumpkins were ripening in the fields, and the pride of the town, the apples, were turning rosy in their orchards, the nippy October wind bringing out the color in their cheeks.
The orchards covered forty acres, and at the front of them stood a cider press and a little apple store. School children arrived from miles around to go on tours, learn how cider was made (it was not an appetizing process), and to pick apples. In a section of the orchards, not far from the little store, there were about forty majestic trees dripping with Empire apples. The apples were a splendid sight, especially when the sun shone on them and dewdrops sparkled on their crisp skin.
On one gnarled tree in the center of the Empires, a very beautiful apple grew. Though green in her youth, she had ripened recently into plump applehood, and was entirely red and smooth without a single blemish. She grew on a branch which was high off the ground, but still within reach of a human. This apple was sweet as well as beautiful, and she thought nothing could be better than her life as a prized Empire apple, the best of the crop, with the friendly breeze rustling the leaves above her and the warm sunshine kissing her flawless skin. Every day was better than the last in her eyes. “Ah,” she murmured dreamily, “Who could ask more from life than this? I must surely be the happiest fruit in the world.”
But her mother, the tree upon which she stood, had overheard her and spoke to her in a hoarse, creaking voice. “My child,” she said, “Sweetest of the Empires, enjoy this life while you can, for the time you have is short. All too soon the barbarous humans will come to this regal orchard, leaving ruin trailing behind them. For apples to them are good to eat, and they rip you from your mother tree, they take no notice of your screams of pain, and even as you lay lifeless in their great hands, they bite your flesh and eat you, while your mother stands watching in agony, helpless, and mourns for you. She sees her child, whose very breath was entwined with hers, who she watched and guided from bud to flower to mature apple, be torn from her at the whim of a little child, at the grumblings of a cavernous human stomach.”
[To Be Continued..]
