For Your Heart

"Do you think me beautiful?" she asked, holding a pear between her hands lightly as if her grip would bruise. She turned towards me, starlight gleaming in a cascade of curls over her shoulder under the evening sun.

"No more than a sunrise thinks of its reflection," I answered carefully. Adjusting the basket on my arm, I wiped my hands on my apron and braced myself to meet her eyes. They shone with gold and silver in an evermoving pool of light, but after months of practice, I no longer needed to squint. "Why do you ask today?"

"I had thought you might answer," she shrugged, the movement fluid and graceful in a way a person could not be. It was more akin to the bend of a river than a body's motion and she bit solidly into her pear with the same grace. The juice did not dare to run down her chin.

Rather than follow that dangerous path, I turned back to the gnarled pear tree before me, asking lightly enough to land safely on her ears, "Do you plan to help with the harvest again? Or will you return home?"

She smiled with a terrible joy at the question. I did not know why, but it still sent a cold spiral into my gut. Had I misspoken? I must have made some mistake.

Each tooth was straight and white, bleached bone gaping out of her flawless face as she leaned in closer, hovering a hand over my heart.

"Do you want me to stay to help?"

Her fingers lengthened greedily towards my chest, but did not touch.

"No more than a tree wants to grow," I whispered, unable to push my voice past the inch between us when my heart had made itself at home in my throat. Her breath scattered across my cheek a moment more.

Shrinking back, she withdrew her hand and laughed, an awe-striking sound that brushed warmly against your heart yet shattered in the air like broken glass.

"Adelaide, you are so clever."

Her voice was spritely as always, but twisted into the stone roots of the earth on the last word, cold and unyielding. None of it showed in her face, but her hands flexed unnaturally long at her side for the briefest of instants.

Was this the end of her patience? How long would she play this game?

I reached for another pear from the tree, voice shaking, "No more than a hand at the weave."

Her hand caught mine with imperceptible speed and she smiled again as my fingers fluttered like a caught bird, inches from the fruit I'd sought.

"I will help with the harvest again," she said, pressing a petal soft kiss to my knuckles. Her eyes were nearly dim beneath impossibly long lashes as she smiled up at me.

I did not thank her. I did not stay to watch. I nodded and retrieved my hand, walking in a measured pace that wanted to be a run more than a fish craves the sea. I latched the cottage door behind me and sat on my bed with trembling knees.

As I had everyday for a year now, I pulled my grandmother's diary from beneath my pillow with cold hands.

She came from the east with the rise of the moon. As the first ray of its light struck the fields, so too did her feet touch the earth on the stump of an ancient pear tree. She asked my name and, believing her to be a messenger of the gods, I gave it.

"Adelaide," I whispered in near ritual, closing my eyes briefly against her mistake. Even after hundreds of repetitions, the ache of what might have been did not fade. Still I returned to the words Adelaide had left for my mother.

She did not return it until I married your father, a man steeped in the traditions of the gods. Even then she haunted our fields, turning crops to blight and the soil to salt when we failed to answer her questions to her satisfaction - or if we refused to humor them at all.

She is a curse on this land you must never truly answer, nor ever ignore. As we learned five terrible nights ago, answering correctly brings much worse than a ruined harvest.

The date atop the page was burned into my mind, and that of the entry five days before. The shortest and worst thing my grandmother had written.

She asked if he loved her. Then she ripped out his heart.

Outside, I could hear the roar of wind with her passing, the wild laughter that slammed into the roof and walls of my small home. Her eldritch joy battered the building like a storm as she worked and I repeated the words to myself in a constant reminder.

"She is only here for my heart," I murmured, dowsing the fire in the hearth and dragging dry, scratchy blankets over me for the night. Sleep was necessary if I wanted to wake early enough tomorrow to receive my visitors. I closed my eyes, repeating, "She is only here for my heart."

As was usual in the morning, she waited outside as I emerged from my home. Something in her respected our weak locks and splintering walls enough to treat them as sacred. She had lain the harvested crops in neat piles with the pears first and foremost near the door. Crystal jars, clear like I had never seen aside from perhaps the memory of a dewdrop caught by the frost, lined the edges of a dark cauldron and the firepit she had constructed.

It appeared she wanted to start canning preserves today and was unwilling to use my human equipment as I had last year.

Her hair was curled neatly atop her head, darker than the shadows within the deepest caves today, but her eyes glowed the same as always. She looked up from the too-thin branch upon which she perched, "Do you think me beautiful today, Adelaide?"

"No more than the sun so thinks as it splashes on the sea," I told her quickly, looking away from her gaze. "I'm expecting someone today."

She leaned forward, hands falling on the edge of the cauldron as she balanced precariously between branch and rim, "Visitors? Your sisters have been gone for so long."

That didn't sound quite like a question. It was probably safe enough.

"My sisters are all married and far from here," I reminded her, trying to work up the courage to reveal the truth. The identity of the visitors wouldn't truly matter to her, anyway. Still the words danced at the tip of my tongue and refused to leap free. I hesitated and wrapped my arms around my middle, finally pushing out, "The man I am to marry and his family are coming. They will take me to the church since I don't have a cart, much less a horse and carriage."

She froze. Every moment of her was still, stone in every sense but texture.

Slowly, she thawed. Her lips moved slightly out of sync with her voice as she repeated slowly, "They will take you to church to marry."

It wasn't a question, either.

I nodded.

"They will take your name from you," she ventured, stepping toward me like the rumbling start to an avalanche. "They will take your land from you. They will take your faith from you."

Her eyes blazed, brighter than the first night I had seen her. Fingers lengthening, she drove a hand towards my chest, stopping an inch away but drawing a flinch from me nonetheless.

"Do you want this?" she asked in a low voice. Her fury had stilled into a silence that haunted.

I hadn't expected such a response and tears burned at the edges of my eyes. This was just a predator losing their prey, nothing more. I reminded myself of that in desperate circles in my mind.

Looking down at where her sharp fingers lingered above my breast, my voice cracked as I managed to answer, "No more than you want my heart."

For the first time since I had known her, she flinched back. Her mouth softened to something human and broken. But only for a moment.

With renewed strength, her ethereal beauty shattered like prismatic glass in the sun as her fingers shrank and she strode towards me, taking my chin in her hand and making her eyes my whole world.

"In the past, I have protected your grandmother against those who would do her wrong. And I was spited for it. I returned in this year when you became an adult to take my revenge."

The coldness seeped from her tone and her words softened as she continued, "In this year, I heard your songs. I have treasured your work. I received your companionship. You say I am here for your heart as your grandmother and mother claimed before you."

I could hear the rumble of wheels beyond the hill. It would only be moments before my husband-to-be arrived.

She searched my eyes for an infinite instant, her voice arriving from all sides as the wind that caressed the trees, "Instead, would you have mine?"

She had asked me many questions in the year since she'd joined me on my farm. None of them could I have answered honestly if I'd dared.

But hearing the near tremble in a voice that defied earthly tones cracked the seal on my truth.

"Yes," I breathed.

Her smile was always terrible and glorious to behold.

When the carriage reached the fields, there stood no cottage, no orchard, no sign that humans had touched the earth.

But two new stars shone so bright as to be seen in the midday sun.

And a single sapling grew from a pear buried in the soil.