Chapter 21
The sucremort was born from an apple rotten to the soul, and from the cruelty of men. But it does not exist without light. For every shadow is born from a spark.
LEMPICKA
Iwas at the heart of an enchanted forest, my fingers intertwined with those of the orchard boy.
“Long ago…” His voice rose, soft as a song of rain. “There was a golden apple tree, the most magical of all.”
I lifted my head. Its height seemed to pierce the heavens, its vast branches able to shelter an entire village beneath their embrace. Its trunk and roots were so thick one might have believed it had cradled the very first confectioners. The sweet nectar of its apples shimmered with flecks of gold.
“It was the heart of an entire kingdom,” the boy continued. “But something crept into the sap. Something wicked.”
A shiver crawled along my nape. The apples had turned a deep violet. Thorned brambles wound around the branches, slowly strangling the life out of the fruit.
“Above all, don’t let go of my hand.”
I nodded, though my throat burned. I lacked air. I was still under the water. And air, even inside a memory, never lasted long.
“How will we survive?” a woman wailed at the foot of the dying tree. “For generations our family never had trouble with this cursed tree, and now it withers! The winter harvest is in one week! Without it…”
Her frantic gaze turned to the farmer at her side, her trembling fingers nervously playing with the jeweled bracelets and rings that adorned her wrists.
“There is no cure for a curse,” her husband replied flatly. “We’ll simply have to explain to her that the tree rotted from within. Surely, she’ll understand.”
“Understand?” she shrieked, throwing her arms skyward in exasperation. “Fool! The Wish Witch paid us a fortune for our golden apples! If we break her contract, she’ll…” With a sharp gesture, she dragged her finger across her throat. “I won’t die for this! We need a plan!”
“Dinner’s ready,” piped a small voice behind us.
The orchard boy and I turned.
“It’s you…” I breathed, seeing the boy standing in rags on the threshold of the modest cottage.
Steam rose from the warm bread he had left to cool on the windowsill. Was he a confectioner too? The Spirit’s grip on my hand tightened. My body went numb. Not now.
“I had forgotten about the runt,” the mother grumbled.
“It’s true he isn’t entirely useless. He can cook, clean, and mend clothes.
He has my eyes, though he’s far too scrawny from climbing to the top of the tree like some wild animal.
If he had been a girl, we might have gotten something from him, but as he is… ”
“Come now, darling, don’t torment yourself like that.”
My heart hammered. They were vile.
“It must be sorcerers who cursed the tree with dark magic,” the boy muttered, frowning as he wiped his hands on his tattered clothes.
“Since when do you think?” his mother hissed.
The boy’s fists clenched. Tiny cuts marked his palms, scraped and bloodied. “The Wish Witch has enemies. Powerful sorcerers who want to take her place. A sorcerer without the magic of confectioners is weak.”
His father blinked. “And how do you know that?”
“I read it in a book.”
“You can read?” his mother sneered, narrowing her eyes with suspicion.
The boy nodded gravely. “When Father takes me to town to flirt with the young milkmaid, because she likes children, I slip into the bookshop and read about magic. One day, I’ll be a sorcerer too—”
The slap landed before he could finish his sentence.
He crumpled into the grass from the blow, as if it were his fault that his father’s eyes wandered. I wanted to run to him, but the orchard boy’s Spirit held my hand. His whole body trembled, yet he shook his head.
The father swallowed hard without a word, touching his neatly trimmed beard as though it were his most prized possession.
“You have no magic! You’ll never be a sorcerer! You’re useless!” spat the mother before burying her face in her hands, tears shining in her eyes. “We are doomed. The witch will kill us all!”
“Then let’s flee,” her husband suggested weakly, patting her shoulder as if he hadn’t touched her in years.
“Flee? Into poverty? Survival is not living!”
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.
“His heart. It still beats. You can save us.”
The boy looked at me one last time. His body broke apart into a rain of translucent moths. It was like each fragile wingbeat erased a fragment of his pain.
“But I didn’t give you your sugarplums! I didn’t keep my promise! You can’t go now, you—”
“You already did,” he whispered. “You’re the one who healed me.”
And he was gone.
White snow covered the ground, stained with red.
I shivered, my breath fogging in the frozen air.
The two bodies of his parents lay curled in the snow.
Their hands clenched still around cursed apples, pressed so hard that the pulp had burst between their fingers.
In their hollow sockets, worms crept without hurry.
His mother no longer had a face. Only a lighter remained.
“She isn’t waking. She’s crystallized!”
“Lempicka!”
Arawn? Aignan?
The boy was still alive. He crawled toward the lighter, his blackened fingers trembling.
He clutched it to his chest, then slipped it beneath his skin.
His gaze fixed where the snow crunched. A figure approached in the white, dragging a long fur cloak.
A red carriage, gilded with gold, waited behind her. A scent of poppy and ashes.
The Wish Witch.
“So it’s true,” she said, disgust curling her voice. “The tree has been corrupted. Pitiful humans. Too cowardly to face me, they chose to kill themselves instead.”
She stopped before the kneeling child. He hadn’t lifted his head. He seemed nailed to the spot, his legs unable to move, his brows furrowed with pain, as though the tree behind him had driven its roots into his back, keeping him captive.
“Oh… a survivor?”
The wind slapped me, whistling between my ribs. It wanted to tear me from this place. The memory was slipping. I reached out, but I was pulled away. No. I dug in my heels, arched back against the gale, teeth clenched. I would not leave. Not until I had seen everything the Spirit meant to show me.
I had promised to save him.
“The apple should have killed you long ago,” Zelda breathed, pulling aside the tatters of the boy’s clothes to reveal his chest—there, his human heart beat faintly, besieged by the curse that had left a violet mark across his skin.
The boy stared at her, his throat dry. “I want… to live.”
“Live? For what?”
“Revenge.”
The witch draped her heavy fox-fur cloak over his trembling body. “How could two wretches like them ever have birthed a boy as marvelous as you? A boy with a soul so resilient?”
His eyes widened, as if no one had ever spoken to him that way. As if no one had ever given him affection or respect.
Arawn, no…
I staggered back, tears floating in the air, my vision dimming. Just a little longer. Just a little more.
“I lost my family once too,” the witch said, unrolling a parchment, sealed with a feather, which she held out to him. “Perhaps you could join mine? I can grant your wish. If you become my apprentice.”
The boy started, gasping. “And what do you want in return?”
The witch burst into laughter. “I will save you from your miserable fate. I will teach you everything you must know. And then, you will become my right hand. My protector. With your curse under my command, you will become so powerful that all who cross you will tremble. But the price will be far greater than you can imagine. You must renounce your humanity and endure suffering beyond anything you have known.”
The boy pressed his lips together before weakly biting the enchanted feather, too frail to hold it in his blackened hands. The witch’s smile deepened as the child signed the parchment.
“The day your fragile human heart submits, and your dark heart takes its place entirely…” She traced a finger across his chest, where two black hearts tangled together, beating at different rhythms.“…You will remain at my side for eternity. More powerful than you could ever dream.”
The witch lifted him into her arms, and before the abyss swallowed me whole, her final words rang out:
“The cursed apple of the original tree has chosen you. You are precious. The boy who survived sucremort. From now on, you will be a son to me, and your human heart will belong to me.”