Anne and the Pear Tree

Anne was a little girl when she learned not to talk about her tree with adults. No one believed the four-year-old when she told them the tree tickled her fingers. Tickling was what she called it when she was small. Now she knew the tingling sensation was the tree’s way of letting her know it was alive and that it was her tree.

Anne and her parents lived in the house her great-grandparents built. The big, sturdy, leafy green tree grew near the home. Her great-grandmother planted it. When they moved in, it was already a full-grown pear tree, producing cooling shade in the summer for the house. The tree stopped bearing fruit long ago. Two years after they arrived, the tree started growing while mom was pregnant with her. It visually spread out, shading more of the house as its trunk and branches grew larger.

They installed a baby swing on the tree. Anne loved to swing so much her mom put her in the swing any time. No matter how upset she was, the baby calmed down the moment her bottom touched the basket of the swing. She would stop crying and swing back and forth until she went to sleep. Her parents would take her out of the basket and straight to bed. Eventually, they moved Anne's bedroom to the front of the house. The small girl enjoyed looking at the tree and watching the visiting birds, who would rest there high above the ground.

She tried to tell the adults that she felt calmer and strong and worthy when the tree spoke in the back of her mind. Adults continually dismissed her declarations as the musings of a small child’s imagination. She struggled to divulge that she could make ice and fire with her hands. No one believed her, as everyone knew magic was found only in the highborn.

Her tree was always there when she needed it. The tree taught her, listened to her, and counseled her in times of trouble as she grew up. Her mom liked to say that when Anne was born, she looked like a pear with her tiny shiny face, gleaming white skin, light green eyes. Anne was almost a spitting image of her great-grandma. She had the sweetest disposition until she thought something was unfair.

When Anne was five years old, the tree bloomed. No one was more surprised than her parents, especially her mom. Mom grew up in that house, and the tree had never bloomed. On Anne’s fifth birthday, the family woke up to a horrific smell. The house smelled like rotting fish. Outside, her tree was covered in thick layers of beautiful white flowers. The fish smell was emulating from the white flowers. Oh, it was terrible.

The flowers eventually fell from the branches. Dad raked them up, and they forgot the flowering until mid-fall. One morning, they awoke to yet another surprise. The branches were bent with gold and green pears. The green pears were the color of Anne’s eyes with a bit of red on the bottom of their bulbous shapes. The pears tasted even better than those from the magical trees owned by the wizard Yertle, near the riverbank. Dad sold the pears for ten times the price of other pears. Once a person tasted the fruit, they kept coming back for more until the pears sold out.

The next year, on her birthday, Anne’s parents were happy to have the fishy smell of the pear blossoms in their home. Both were smiling and giggling like children. Anne, Mom, and Dad danced around the tree. Anne hummed a song she told her parents she made up, but she learned it from the tree. The tree told her to share the music. She was a hit. As expected, the succulent pears arrived in time for the harvest. The yearly arrival of the pears allowed her Mom and Dad to move up the village social ladder. Everyone knew of and wanted the special pears each year. The family’s day-to-day lives became better.

When Anne was ten, she chose warrior-protector as her profession. Like all children, she would spend the next eight years apprenticed in her selected work. Her mom warned her there were few female protectors, but Anne would not change her mind. The tree told her to be a fighter. It sent her a dream of her great-grandmother fearlessly engaged in a battle.

Anne would be a great warrior, as was her great-grandmother. She trained with confidence, becoming one of the best. She no longer needed to tell others about her ability to create fire and ice. Instead, she showed them. They sent her home when she went to mage school, saying she already knew everything the school could teach her. The tree had done its training well. Back she went to fighter training.

At sixteen, when it was time to forge her sword, the tree showed her where to find the heart of a star for the metal. It was a large lump of black material. Anne wanted to make the sword handle out of pear wood. When she asked her mom and dad about using part of the tree, they forbid her to cut anything from the tree. The following day, a large branch of her tree had sheared off. It had fallen off. There was no scar on the tree where the limb was formerly attached.

When she took the branch to town, the carpenters offered her money for the branch. Pear wood is so hard; furniture makers love to work it into complex objects. Pear is not the preferred wood for a sword handle, but Anne insisted.

When she took the finished sword from the metalworker, it hummed in her hand and told her its name was Guinevere. By the time she rode home, the blade had gained tiny intricate runes on both sides. Anne let her parents think a skilled artisan had decorated her sword for her. The runes appeared out of thin air whenever she held the sword in her hands.

Whatever had been in the tree was now in the sword. The tree was now just a pear tree, but the sword was a wonder. With her magic and her sword, Anne rose through the ranks until she was second in command, when she was twenty-nine. It was said that she could vanquish five men by herself. Anne fought for justice (most of the time).

On her thirtieth birthday, the sword told Anne it was time. Evil was coming, and she must prepare. That day, Anne quit the command ranks and rode off into the world with her sword in hand. She was ready to do whatever must be done.