The boy pushed himself up, his cheek blazing where his mother had struck him. My teeth chattered. My lips cracked. I was cold. So cold.
“He wished he had been stronger,” the Spirit said. “The frail boy with hair so long he was often mistaken for a girl—condemned to chores like a servant, destined never to become a sorcerer.”
The father motioned for his son to make himself useful and disappear. But instead, the boy stepped forward toward the tree and stopped beneath its shadow. The tree seemed to murmur a mournful, funereal melody that echoed in my chest. The parents’ eyes widened, suddenly empty and hollow.
“Come here, my boy,” his mother called softly.
He hesitated. She smoothed his hair with a tenderness that made him grimace.
“I know what could save us.” She took his hands in hers with trembling fingers. His father gave a weak smile, patting him on the back before wiping his hand on his shirt. “You’re going to eat an apple.”
He stepped back. “Why me?”
“You’ve never eaten one,” his father answered. “And they’re still magical. Perhaps you truly are a sorcerer! If you?—”
“But the sucre d'or mustn’t be eaten raw!”
“Stop with your insufferable know-it-all airs!” his mother screamed, her tears gone. A sweet, almost sugary smile then stretched across her face. “If your heart is pure, perhaps the magic will awaken in you. Our ancestors descend from the first confectioners, after all. Your father and I are the only ones who didn’t inherit the curse, but maybe you did! If you show the witch these apples aren’t cursed, then we’ll be saved. We cannot eat them ourselves, we’re far too?—”
“Your souls are blackened,” the boy muttered, pouting.
They descended from a line of confectioners. It was almost tragically ironic.
The father shoved him toward the tree, whispering in his ear, “Prove to those little sorcerers in the village that they were wrong to call you worthless, to mock you with their tricks. Show them you deserve to study alongside their masters.”
“All right,” the boy breathed, resigned.
“No! He mustn’t!”
I reached out my hand, but my arm moved as if through frozen honey. Heavy and slow. My legs dragged, as though the ground itself had begun to crumble beneath my feet.
“He has nothing to lose,” the Spirit said. “A life without love. Without taste. Without magic. Death might not have been the worst of fates.”
His grip on my hand was iron, but I tore myself free with a sharp jerk. The boy had already climbed the tree, his frail body hidden among the twisted branches. He reached the apple and plucked it. The stem blackened instantly beneath his fingers, and the branch withered further.
“Are we really going to let him do it?” the mother asked.
“It was your idea,” the father reminded her.
“Because you never have any!”
I pushed past them, brushing aside their insubstantial shadows. I wanted to run. To scream. But my legs faltered, my breath snagged in my throat. I was too slow. The water pulled me back, dragging me down.
Not now.
The boy bit into the apple. A jolt tore through me. Sharp. Cold. Like a blade to the chest. I choked. He staggered. The apple slipped from his fingers and crashed to the ground at their feet. The flesh split into dark pulp, its juice staining the earth like sugared blood.
He screamed with all his strength. His veins turned a deep violet, dark and venomous.
“Catch him! Do something!”
The boy’s body struck the ground right before me.
His father couldn’t even meet his eyes. I fell to my knees, coughing up a rush of icy water, my lungs aflame.
“He ate the sucremort,” the barefoot Orchard Spirit said, his voice as calm as ever. “He wanted revenge. Revenge on humans and sorcerers who always scorned him. Revenge on his parents, who saw him as a mistake. He wanted to become so powerful that no one would ever dare mock him again. But now…”
“What can I do?” I asked, my throat tight, tears blurring my vision.
