by Jeff Wheeler
“Bringing the boys in anyway,” Rick said.
“Oh, shush!” Margie said, swatting at her husband playfully.
He hugged her and planted a kiss on her plump cheek. “I’m just saying, my girlish figure ain’t going to draw in crowds.”
Watching them made me smile. It made me wonder if my parents would have been like them if my mother had still been alive. Would they have been jolly and full of love for each other? How I wished this were my family and this town was my home.
* * *
Everything made me think of home. One day in class when the biology professor mentioned an apple blight in passing, it made me think of home. It made me wish an apple blight had taken out my mother’s tree long ago.
The old homeless woman I saw on the street reminded me of my papa’s stories about Baba Yaga. I tried not to think of him. I didn’t miss him. He probably hadn’t even noticed I was gone. Yet my heart ached for him anyway.
One day, the old baba shuffled into the store. Her silver hair stuck out from under a kerchief, and her long nose resembled a witch’s. Her weathered lips curled around her toothless gums, silently working out words as she perused the A–D aisle.
The stench of urine and garbage followed her into the store.
Margie and Rick told me if the homeless woman came in asking for money, I was to offer her a pudding or applesauce from the mini fridge in their office. So far, she hadn’t asked for anything, just read the Bible and used the bathroom.
She brought a box of matches to the counter, a book that had Jesus’s picture on it. Usually the boxes said something inspirational like “be a light unto others,” or “he who follows me will not walk in darkness.” This one looked like a misprint. It said, “Be true to your nature.”
A chill settled over me. I was being true to my nature—the nature I wanted to choose for myself. I wanted to be a normal girl with friends and a family. I wanted to go to church and live in a big town, not the farming armpit of America.
The baba counted out her change.
“Oh, so you’re buying matches? Do you, um, smoke?” I tried to make conversation as I breathed through my mouth.
She shook her head and cackled. “Ni, ni. I have other uses for them.” She nodded to the window. “He’s watching you again. He’s out there as much as I am.”
Lucas stood at the window again, examining the preseasonal Christmas tree. It was hard to imagine anyone could be that interested in little light-up crosses. Rick sometimes teased me when Lucas came in the store, saying the boy had a crush on me. Considering Lucas spoke in one-word sentences, I doubted it.
“It’s uncanny how much you two are alike,” the old baba said.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“I suppose you’ll have to have a conversation with him and find out.” She shuffled out the door.
I ducked behind a bookshelf and watched Lucas.
Lucas was bundled up in a red-and-yellow scarf that matched the autumn colors. He shivered in his denim jacket. His brown eyes reminded me of Mama’s, so full of shining joy it could warm you with one glance. He greeted the old woman in her tattered rags and took something out of his bag and gave it to her. She smiled and shuffled along.
I suspected he was Eastern European like my parents, from his dark Slavic features. I hadn’t ever been interested in boys back home. And why would I when they asked me insulting things like if I was easy like my mother? Only this young man wasn’t like the boys I’d known.
What was I doing, hiding behind a bookcase? I could be anyone I wanted. I didn’t have to hide from boys or a scary tree. I could be normal like everyone else here.
I slipped around the shelves and opened the front door. “Would you like to come in and look around?”
He smiled, and his cheeks flushed like ripe apples. He followed me in and stopped at a stack of books.
“Looking for anything in particular?” I asked.
“Um, no, not exactly.” He cleared his throat. “I was wondering . . . Um, I hope you don’t mind if, well . . .”
My heart fluttered in my chest. This was about to be the turning point in my life. A boy was going to ask me on a date!
He cleared his throat. “Um, do you have any books about Christmas in yet?”
I escorted him to the aisle we stocked for holiday merchandise, trying not to let my disappointment show. I wondered if I’d misunderstood his reason for standing outside for so long.
He picked out a book and lingered at the counter after he’d bought it, making awkward chitchat about science class.
Finally, Rick shouted from the back. “Lucas, ask her out on a date and get it over with!”
* * *
I stared at the looming trees shushing in the wind above us. “It’s November. It’s too cold for a picnic.”
If I’d known Lucas’s plan for a date was to sit in the park, I would have thought up an excuse ahead of time. Why had I even agreed to this? Because some old baba had said we were a good match? I was such a duren!
Lucas smoothed out a wool blanket over the grass. “That’s why I brought warm things for us to eat.” He took out two thermoses and Tupperware containers and grinned. It was hard not to smile back.
I sat down on the blanket. I would ignore the trees and the sensation of grass growing under the blanket. I could pretend I was normal. For him. I kept on pretending until I realized the cup he poured for me was apple cider. My stomach churned.
“I don’t eat apples,” I said. The branches above us creaked with laughter.
“Oh, yeah?” His eyes widened, and he looked mortified. “Apples, yuck. What was I thinking? I hate apples, unless we’re talking about pie. Or strudel. Or crisp. Or fresh apples. Okay, I really do like apples.”
I laughed at his nervousness. He was cute.
He opened the other thermos. “How about coffee instead? I brought that too.”
We sat in silence. I tried to think of something to say, but it was hard to concentrate with the way the trees chittered above. Their words were half-formed, whereas the ones back home had been clearer, speaking in a tongue I could sometimes understand.
“So, what did you bring for lunch?” I asked.
He’d brought apple pie and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. The jelly was apple butter.
“It’s all right. I’m not hungry,” I lied.
He twisted the edge of the picnic blanket. “Yeah, me neither.”
“So, um . . .”
The conversation was full of awkward starts and stops. More than ever I wondered if agreeing to the date had been a mistake.
Lucas asked me about my classes and where I was from. His father was a professor at the college, and he attended for free. “This has always been my favorite place on campus, even before I started going here. It’s peaceful in the park. I love the sound of trees in the wind.”
If he heard their whispers, I doubted he would have felt that way.
“So . . . I see you at church sometimes,” I said. “I go with Margie and Rick.”
“Yeah,” Lucas said.
“Do you remember when they first introduced us?” I asked.
“Yeah.”
“I didn’t think you liked me since you’ve never spoken to me there. Or in class.”
“I do like you, but I felt too intimidated.” He swallowed. “You know how it is when you look at someone and you feel drawn to them and you start making up this story in your head about how they’re your soulmate and you already see yourself married and having children and then you realize you don’t know that person at all and she probably has a boyfriend because she could have any guy she wants?”
I laughed and shook my head. He was even stranger than me, and that was saying something.
He laughed too. “Well, I guess I don’t usually know what that’s like, but I do with you.” His cheeks flushed as red as apples again. “Do you know what it’s like to want to do something, but you chicken out, and you’re afraid everyone will notic
e how stupid you are? You keep trying to do all the right things and make yourself feel normal, but no matter what you do you feel like a fake?”
“Um . . .” A shiver stole down my spine. I wasn’t sure where he was going with this.
He bit his lip. “Do you know what it’s like to not belong?”
I swallowed. “Yes, I do.” Suddenly the world made sense to me. I wasn’t alone. There was someone else out there like me. Different, but the same.
I placed my hand on his and decided I would go on another date with him. The trees above me snickered again.
* * *
For Christmas Rick and Margie bought me a bicycle.
“It’s so you don’t have to walk everywhere,” Margie said, giving me a hug.
Tears filled my eyes. “I’ve never had a bike before.” This was what a normal American family would give their daughter for a present.
Rick teased, “And if you want, I can put training wheels on it too!”
They were the parents I’d never had. I didn’t know what I would have done without those guardian angels.
Lucas’s family was just as kind. They welcomed me at their house during Christmas. It was odd how much Lucas was like his parents and so opposite at the same time. Their features were fair compared to his dark ones.
“You look so different from your mom and dad,” I said.
“Yep, he looks more like the mailman,” Lucas’s father said.
Lucas rolled his eyes. “I’m adopted.”
“But we love you as much as our own,” his mother quickly added.
I could see she meant it. They were a true family. Lucas and his brothers and sisters were polite and kind to each other. They showered me with presents and acted like an American family in a holiday special. It didn’t feel real. I was afraid I would wake up at any moment and find myself back home in that little farm shack without a mother and with a delusional father who spoke in broken English and reminisced about his broken heart.
I was happy when I was with Lucas. He made me feel normal and forget about my past. The old baba winked at me when she saw us together in the bookstore, like she’d known what a good match we’d be all along.
* * *
“Don’t you love how peaceful it is here?” Lucas asked, staring up at the trees.
The perfume of flowers laced the air. Alders murmured and yawned like they were waking up. The childlike voice of baby buds sang above me. Birds chirped, and the breeze sighed through the boughs. My park bench wasn’t enough to protect me from the earth pulsing with magic, even when I tucked my feet underneath me so I wouldn’t touch the ground.
Lucas draped an arm around me and rested his head on my shoulder. Light danced over the sunshine of his smile. “I love the way the trees speak to each other.”
My back stiffened. “What do you mean?”
“Nothing. I was being poetic,” he said quickly.
That’s when I knew he heard them too. And he liked it. I pulled away from him.
“How can you stand it?” I asked.
He bit his lip. “Stand what?”
“How they talk to each other? How they snicker and chatter away.”
“Are you saying . . . do you hear them too? Isn’t it the most beautiful lullaby in the world? It’s like hearing people sing hymns in Latin. It’s like . . . what’s wrong?” His enthusiasm evaporated like mist.
Was this what the baba had truly meant when she’d said we were alike? “You and me,” I said. “We’re different. We aren’t like other people. Maybe there’s a reason we get along so well.” Papa had once told me Mama had been an orphan. Lucas didn’t know about his true parents either. Like it or not, we came from something old. Something not normal. I didn’t want to say we were both witches or vila or some Ukrainian fairy-tale creature, even if that was the truth.
“There’s something I have to tell you.” I took a deep breath and gathered up my courage. He didn’t have to know everything, but I didn’t think I could keep going on walks in the park with him and retain my sanity.
He took my hands in his. “I know,” he said. “I feel it too.”
My eyebrows twitched in confusion.
“I love you too.” He dropped to his knees. “I knew it from the first moment I met you. Please, Lily, marry me.”
“What?”
Now it was his turn to look confused. “Oh no, that wasn’t what you were going to say, was it?”
“No, I mean . . .” I considered what I had been about to say. I did love him. That was the reason I wanted to tell him why I felt uncomfortable in the park. I wanted to continue to spend time with him. But it was more than that. I wanted to unburden my heart and confide in someone. Only, I didn’t know how he would react.
I swallowed. “I have a secret. I don’t know if you’ll still want to marry me when I’m done. You might think I’m insane.”
I only meant to tell him about the trees not being peaceful, but once I started talking, it all came out: the reason I hated the taste of apples, why I felt like such an imposter, my childhood memories of the tree, and my mother’s death.
He held my hand all the while. His brows knitted together in concern, but he didn’t interrupt. He didn’t tell me I was weird or that I was a witch. He circled an arm around me and drew me to him.
“I’m so sorry,” he said. “I’ll never give you apple cider again. I didn’t know the trees bothered you. I wouldn’t have brought you here if I had.”
My throat tightened, and I nodded. His arms squeezed me with a fierce, protective embrace. I felt safer than I had ever felt before. My heart swelled in my chest when I thought about how much I loved him.
“Lily, you know it wasn’t your fault she died, right?”
“But it was. I told you. I—”
“No, listen.” He pulled back enough that I could see the vehemence in his eyes. “Your mother was dabbling in magic, probably something she didn’t understand. She shouldn’t have been out there in the first place if it was so dangerous.”
I looked away and wiped my eyes.
“It wasn’t your fault she died.” He repeated it a second and a third time. The words sank deeper, taking root.
I nodded. Silent tears fell down my cheeks. He lifted my chin until our eyes met. He kissed me, and the sorrow lifted from my heart.
Lucas reached into his pocket, pulling out a tissue. “That tree haunts you still, even here, doesn’t it? There’s someone I’d like you to meet. He’s like us, but . . . different. I think he can help.”
* * *
Over the last few months I’d met Lucas’s friends from the youth group. But I’d never met Jared, the theology major. He reminded me of a laid-back surfer dude, so out of place in the Midwest. And out of place in how he glowed with sunshine. He was like Lucas, but not like Lucas.
“So, dudette, it sounds like we’ve got ourselves a tree with some seriously bad mojo,” Jared said after Lucas introduced us.
My gaze cut to Lucas, who had apparently told Jared more than I would have liked. At least his friend didn’t laugh and tell me I was crazy. Jared sat us down at a table in the cafeteria and explained his idea for overcoming evil.
I listened, becoming more suspicious by the moment. “Your plan is to kill the tree spirit with snowballs made with holy water? You do realize this is a nature spirit, not a demon?”
“We have to start somewhere. Process of elimination, little dudette.”
Lucas introduced me to his other friends, the pagans he had befriended in his classes. Squished into a candle-lit dorm, they looked like a motley crew of goth hippies. A bear of a boy slapped Lucas on the back hard enough to send him stumbling into me.
The boy took my hand to shake it. I prepared myself for my fingers to be crushed, but his touch was gentle. “So, you’re Lucas’s sister?” he asked a little too hopefully.
“Girlfriend,” Lucas said firmly.
Touching the boy’s skin was like running my fingers through blades of grass, a strange
electric pulse that made me uncomfortable. I pulled my hand away.
“So we hear you have a magical problem. Let’s see if we can help,” the bear boy said.
“Mother Nature has been angered,” a girl with dyed purple hair said as she consulted a book.
“It isn’t about Mother Nature,” I said. “The tree is male. He’s . . .” I hesitated, not wanting to show them how un-American my family was. “He’s a leshii, a kind of Ukrainian tree spirit.”
“Cool! Let’s do an internet search on my phone,” said a small, imp-like boy.
After a few hours, they had devised several ways to “uncurse” the woods and banish the evil from the apple tree by lighting candles and chanting.
Naturally, I was skeptical.
“Now you have to go home and see if it worked!” said an enthusiastic girl.
I frowned and looked to Lucas.
He circled an arm around me. “Don’t worry. You don’t have to go back.”
I wasn’t so sure.
* * *
What if the answer wasn’t magic, but science? What if I found a fungus that could infest the tree to kill it? Of course, that meant I’d have to go back.
I took botany classes and horticulture. I didn’t like the way the vines snuggled up to me in the greenhouse as I worked. I made myself concentrate on the professor’s words, not the plants’ exotic lullabies. I needed to learn more about my enemy’s weakness.
“Wow, you really have a green thumb,” the professor said. “What did you use to get these apple tree grafts to grow so fast?”
“Magic,” I said, my voice sounding dull and dead compared to the songs around me.
She laughed and waved me off.
I stocked up on toxic herbicides. I collected samples of fire blight from infected trees. I prayed in church and let the pagan hippies chant their nature magic spells. During the first week of summer vacation, before my newfound friends dispersed to their homes across the country, we would pay the apple tree a visit.
* * *
I locked the door of the Christian bookstore and was about to hop on my bike when I noticed the palace made of cardboard boxes in the alley. I walked my bike over. The old baba sat in the shelter. She lit a candle with a match and then lit another.