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Ripe

One day, the tree will bear fruit.

By Addison HornerPublished 2 years ago Updated 2 years ago 10 min read
2

The cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years, but one night, a candle burned in the window. Yesenia wondered why Diós would send a little girl like her to a place so cold and desolate. She had spent a thousand nights in that clearing, staring at the darkened windows, waiting for the sunrise to bring her back from her dreams.

Now there was a single flickering light. A divine invitation.

Yesenia stood at the door. She gripped the rusty doorknob in her tiny fingers and twisted. The door creaked open.

The floor was dirt, cool and dry under Yesenia’s bare feet as she entered. To her left, the candle on the windowsill cast a dim light on the barren interior. In the center of the room, a crooked sapling grew out from the dirt. It was two feet tall, nearly up to Yesenia’s chest, with a handful of bare branches.

Hola.”

A little girl, like Yesenia, sat cross-legged in the corner by the door. She had long black hair, like Yesenia’s, and wore a green knee-length dress with white embroidery along the sleeves. Unlike Yesenia, she had pale skin.

“Do you like my tree?” the girl asked in Spanish.

Yesenia tried to smile. The girl smiled back.

“I just planted it,” the girl said. “It’ll get bigger one day. You’ll see.”

~

Yesenia opened her eyes. She was lying on a thin mattress, back to back with her mamá under the ratty blanket they shared. Her papá slept on the floor of the apartment.

They had fled Bolivia on the eve of the revolution, after the riots had started but before they spilled over into the affluent neighborhoods. Yesenia missed her four-poster bed and comfortable sheets, but Mamá always reminded her that Diós used hardships to bring blessings to His beloved. Yesenia trusted her mamá.

The air conditioning in the American public school was broken. Yesenia sat sweltering in the Miami heat as she struggled to make out the English words on the chalkboard. The children around her whispered to each other in unfamiliar phrases, but never to her.

During lunch, Yesenia sat with her back to the chainlink fence, under the shade of a decrepit palm tree, and thought about her new friend in the cabin in the woods. At least she spoke Spanish.

~

Yesenia returned to the cabin that night. The little girl was inside, carefully patting down the soil around the roots of her little sapling.

“You’re back,” she said. She looked like the pretty American girls in school, but she spoke Spanish as fluently as the friends Yesenia had left behind in Bolivia.

Yesenia sat down next to the girl and touched the soil. It was crisp in her fingers, like charred bits of wood from a bonfire.

“How does it grow?” Yesenia asked.

The girl pointed to the candle on the windowsill. “It just needs a little light,” she said. “Will you come back tomorrow?”

Yesenia nodded.

~

English and friendships seeped into Yesenia’s life over time. Her papá worked hard as a construction laborer and became a foreman after a few years. Her mamá got a job in a carnicería and often came home with a bloodstained apron clutched in one hand and a bag of meat scraps in the other.

By the eighth grade, Yesenia could barely remember her old four-poster bed. She now had her own twin mattress and superhero sheets bought from a thrift store. She went to sleepovers and laughed with her new friends long after they turned out the lights. Then she would go visit her old friend in the cabin in the woods and stay until the sun rose.

~

“Do you speak English?” Yesenia asked.

She sat next to the girl under the window, watching the shadows that the candle cast on the opposite wall of the cabin. The sapling had grown nearly four feet tall and sprouted a few leaves.

“I do,” the girl said, switching languages. “But you speak Spanish, right?”

“I speak both now,” Yesenia asked. “I’m good at it. Usually. Sometimes I forget words.”

The girl smiled. “We can practice here if you want.”

They spent the rest of the night trading silly words and phrases. Yesenia laughed until her eyes teared up and her stomach ached.

~

Yesenia tore open the letter and squealed so loudly that her mamá nearly dropped the plate she was putting away.

¿Querida?Mamá asked.

“I got it!” Yesenia said. She held up the paper to show off the Princeton letterhead on the top left. “Full ride! All four years!”

Yesenia leaned into her mamá’s embrace and imagined herself walking across that enormous stage, wearing black robes and accepting her diploma from the university president. She couldn’t wait to tell her friend.

~

The girl hugged Yesenia and kissed her cheek.

“I knew you could do it!” she said.

Yesenia grinned as she sat down underneath the spreading branches of the tree, which had risen to six feet. It grew more slowly than trees in the real world, but she accepted that things worked differently here. After all, her friend lived here all the time and never had to eat.

“What do you do when I’m not here?” Yesenia asked.

The girl’s smile faded, and she rubbed her pale arm with a trembling hand. “I wait,” she said quietly. “Until you come back.”

Yesenia’s heart sank. “Is there anywhere else you can go?” she asked.

The girl shrugged. “Why would I go anywhere? The world is a frightening place. And you’re here, and my candle, and my tree. One day it’ll grow fruit.” She tried to smile. “And then everything will be better.”

~

Yesenia met Pascal in medical school. His mother was also from South America, and his Spanish wasn’t horrible, and they could trade endless stories about their weird childhoods. Once they stayed up all night, just talking, and as the sun peeked through the blinds over their bed that morning Yesenia felt a pang of guilt at leaving her friend alone.

She took a quick nap that afternoon between classes, but the cabin didn’t show up in her dreams. It only appeared at night.

~

“I was worried,” the girl said, twisting a lock her raven hair between her fingers. “I thought you would never come back.”

Yesenia appreciated her friend’s honesty. People in the waking world were shifty. They wore masks. Her friend – no longer just a girl, although Yesenia still thought about her that way – never deceived her.

“I’m sorry,” Yesenia said, taking the girl’s hands in her own. “I was with Pascal. He’s nice. But I’ll always come back.”

The girl nodded.

“What happens out there?” Yesenia asked. “In the world beyond the cabin?”

The girl shivered. “Violence,” she whispered. “War. Death. The world is ending every day.”

Yesenia caressed her friend’s hands with her thumbs. “Can’t you escape?” she asked. “It’s just a dream, after all.”

At those words, the girl yanked her hands away from Yesenia and clutched at her arms.

“You don’t understand!” she shouted. “This is your dream. It’s my reality.” She pointed at the tree, which now towered above their heads with leafy branches and flowers sprouting from dozens of points. “One day, one day soon, it’ll grow fruit. And maybe, just maybe, I’ll understand why I’m here.”

~

The wedding was beautiful, the decorations cheap, and the joy abundant. Pascal’s enormous extended family and Yesenia’s stateside relatives celebrated with them on a budget strained under twin piles of student debt. Their love had blossomed and borne sweet, sweet fruit.

At the end of their wedding night, Yesenia closed her eyes and smiled, ready to celebrate with her friend.

~

The girl stood at the door, peeking out as Yesenia approached.

“We did it!” Yesenia called out. She couldn’t contain her grin.

The girl smiled back and waved her inside. “I have good news too,” she said.

She pointed to the lowest-hanging branch of the tree, weighed down by a blackish-greenish lump with ridged skin.

“An avocado!” Yesenia rubbed the fruit with her fingers. “We had these back home in our garden, before we came to America.”

The girl nodded. “Want to try it?”

Yesenia plucked the avocado from the branch. It felt perfectly ripe.

“You don’t have anything to peel it with, do you?” Yesenia asked.

The girl shook her head. “Just take a bite,” she said. “As it is.”

Yesenia tried to dig into the avocado’s skin with her fingertips. Even though the consistency was perfect, soft and slightly squishy in her grip, the skin refused to part no matter how much she scratched at it.

“Take a bite,” the girl repeated.

Yesenia shrugged and raised the avocado to her lips. Her teeth split the skin with surprising ease, and the flesh of the avocado melted like fragrant butter on her tongue. It was the most delicious thing she had ever tasted, pure ecstasy that sent warmth flooding into her chest and goosebumps crawling up her neck.

“It’s good,” Yesenia said. She offered the avocado to the girl. “Want a bite?”

“I’ll try the next one,” the girl said. She smiled. “I’m really happy for you.” Yesenia realized something.

“I never asked your name,” she said. “You’ve just been my friend. As long as I can remember. What’s your name?”

The girl held up a hand in front of her eyes. Her skin had darkened somehow, almost as naturally dark as Yesenia’s own. Actually, it was exactly the same shade now.

“My name is Yesenia,” the girl said. “And I know why I’m here.”

Yesenia frowned. “What do you mean?”

The girl embrace Yesenia tightly. “Thank you for everything,” she whispered. “For surviving. For working so hard. For finding love. And for being my friend. I’ll miss you.”

“Why?” Yesenia asked.

The girl gave Yesenia a peck on the cheek. “Because it’s time for me to wake up,” she said.

Then she vanished into thin air with a tiny pop. Yesenia nearly fell over from the shock. She looked around the room, but in the flickering candlelight and the first rays of morning sun, she was alone.

The tree in the center of the cabin crumbled into dust, branches cracking and breaking and dissolving, leaves shriveling, roots pulling themselves out of the ground as they disintegrated. Yesenia rushed forward and clawed at the dry soil, but every trace of the tree had disappeared. The avocado had dropped from her hand and rotted away into slivers of dust.

There were noises outside. As the sun rose higher into the sky, Yesenia huddled in the corner of the cabin and hugged her knees. The noises clarified into screams, tortured yells, the clanging of metal on metal, explosions grinding like fireworks over and over and over again until Yesenia’s ears bled. She sat in the corner and screamed her throat raw until the sun set twelve hours later.

Hours into the silent night, there was a knock at the door. Yesenia scrambled to her feet and ran up to the door, opening it to reveal the girl. She was wearing silky pajamas that Yesenia had bought herself as a wedding gift.

“Let me out,” Yesenia whispered.

The girl shook her head. “I just came to say goodbye,” she said. She patted Yesenia’s shoulder with her left hand, which now bore a thin wedding band with a pair of inset diamonds. Yesenia realized that she now wore a green knee-length dress with white embroidery along the sleeves.

“It’s as wonderful as you said it was,” the girl said. “Thanks for letting me take it from you. I won’t be visiting, I’m afraid. Pascal and I have a life to enjoy.”

“You’re a monster,” Yesenia hissed.

“And you’re the best friend I could have asked for,” the girl replied. She smiled one more time before turning away, crossing the clearing and disappearing into the misty woods forever.

Horror
2

About the Creator

Addison Horner

I love fantasy epics, action thrillers, and those blurbs about farmers on boxes of organic mac and cheese. MARROW AND SOUL (YA fantasy) available February 5, 2024.

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  • Michele Hardy2 years ago

    Awesome story! I love the twist. Wonderfully written.

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