The Pairing

Those are my bones they’re digging up over there. They will make some assumptions about my life, my health, but they will only get an abstract glimpse of a picture of me, what my life was. The man, boy really, though some would argue not even a boy just an insufferable ass and that’s fair, mostly anyway.

Will they ever know that I was buried beneath the pear tree? Or that a pear tree ever stood there? The last remnants I could sense of the pear tree rotted away a good three centuries before they started digging. The pair tree meant a great deal to the village, much more to me. But it will be a less than a mystery to these grave robbers here, these archeologists. A puzzle piece they don’t even know to look for, don’t know that it’s missing

I died before I was ever able to make much of myself. I had hopes of being a decent man, steady if not great. That good man I was to be though, he needed a good woman. I knew just the one, Gwynneth. She was short and stocky some of the other women said she was more handsome than pretty. She had set my heart racing every time I saw her ever since I was just a schoolboy. Obviously, I tried to win her heart the best ways I knew how, tugging her braids, teasing her mercilessly as we got older, I made sure to have quite the reputation as a ladies’ man so she would know I was skilled in the arts of love. She never paid me any attention. She was a serious soul. Often reading late into the night after working all day in her father’s bakery. She had made something of herself already even though she was 3 years younger than I. She was easily the most educated person in our village, she baked the tastiest pastries in several townships. She was a skilled healer and the sweetest person I had ever met. She was relentless in improving herself so she could better serve others. I was just hoping she would be good enough to save me.

The town had a tradition, the pairing ritual. A young person secluded themselves for a week, sundown on Friday until sundown the next Friday They were alone, allowed only water and porridge that had a sleeping powder mixed in. They were to sleep as much as possible the sleeping powder encouraged dreaming. When the sun went down on the final Friday Nona would come to them to talk of their dreams. She would give them a drink of pear cider with some herbs mixed in. Then they would sleep and dream once more. In the morning they would walk across town through the grazing meadow to the pear tree on the hill. There they would pick a pear and eat it. The first bite was said to clear away the secrets of the dreams. The second bite would clearly show them their path. The thing or things that needed to be achieved or obtained to make their future a happy one. Finishing the pear would bind them to their path and ensure a happy future.

Gwynneth went into her seclusion, it drove me mad. 7 days without seeing her, she was what I saw as the key to my happiness in my pairing ritual. When I could get away with it, I sneaked to the shelter where she slept and slept just outside the walls where I could hear her softly snoring. I’d wake early in the morning shivering in a covering of dewdrops. Shaking them off as I crept back to my own hut to start the day. That Saturday morning, I woke rushing to a spot on the hill just out of sight of the shelter. There was underbrush enough along the hills so I could follow her and remain unseen. She walked softly and slightly aimlessly still half in a trance to the pear tree across town. She studied the tree looking for the right pear. The one that was just ready enough. Just ripe enough to symbolize a youth at the start of their life. I had just picked the first one that caught my eye, low hanging fruit that it was. She took her first bite, and it was as if she came into full bloom. Her eyes more alive, shining more brightly than I’ve ever seen them before. She took her second bite. The knowledge and satisfaction that filled her expression, I’ve never seen anyone look so beautiful. I leapt from my hiding space embraced her and took a bite of her pear. In my head it was an announcement of my love for her, how our futures were to be ever entwined. Her face went from bliss to sheer shock and anger. She shoved me away from her I fell hard. The fall would have knocked the wind out of me, but something was wrong. I couldn’t breathe. The bite of pair had lodged in my throat.

That was how I died, choking on a bite of the future I had stolen from the girl I loved. She was angry with me to the end of her days. She lived in the village and was as amazing as ever. Baking and healing. She had a family and all the things she had ever dreamed of came true, but she could never be truly fully happy, never perfectly content or completely satisfied. She always felt there was something missing, something small perhaps, but something, nonetheless.

One of the people digging up my bones calls the others over to her; she’s found something odd.

“Look there’s a stone here, looks like it may have been in his throat, and it’s shaped like a pear.”