2. If You’ve Got No Apples, Pears Will Do
IF YOU’VE GOT NO APPLES, PEARS WILL DO
Her cakes the next year were slightly better.
Sahar had slumbered peacefully for twelve months with no one discovering his talisman or true name.
With no one to answer to but himself for too many years to count, the world had grown dull.
He told himself he had no intention of seeing the amusing human girl again, but curiosity and the scent of currants and spices drew him back to the same tree.
He found another cake, another letter, and a delightfully horrifying little doll woven together from sticks and colorful string.
Dear Jack O’ the Tree,
How I have missed you!
I do hope you will come back and see how my writing is coming along. It is the only thing Mrs. Donovan says I do well but I’m not simple, I just do not care for sums or history.
You are older than me, Jack, do you know why history is nothing but men and killing? Can not women kill too or better yet do lovely things to get into history books?
Please tell me all of your adventures wherever tis you go away for the year. Mine are quite dull but I am taller and can snap with both hands now!
Love, Bea
Dear Little Bea,
You do buzz most fine this year. I can very nearly read your writing. It is no great crime to be inattentive to an instructor such as Mrs. Donovan with a mind as active as yours.
Perhaps you might ask her about Julia Tofana, the most infamous poison maker of all Rome who specialized in punishing men who were cruel to their wives.
You might continue your education with Hungary’s Elizabeth Bathory who, while accused of crimes so gory and cruel I will not damage your young mind by describing them here, was in fact no more murderous than your average woman inheriting a title and property desired by men.
You women have all the universe within you, it is only that the men speak louder.
I have no adventures to convey as I am very old and very tired, and very hungry too, you must pay for another letter this time with two cakes.
Thank you for the doll, although it looks nothing like me.
Dear Jack, Silly goose!
The doll is not of you but of me. Did you not see the yellow hair? It is to take along with you when you go off and leave me. I would so love to go along, or just to hear more.
My village of Barleywine is very small, and I think I should like the far East where the spices grow. William Portlock called me a fat freckled witch last week and when I shoved him in the pond. Twas me that got punished for it.
Mrs. Donovan said it’s because words cannot hurt me but if that’s so, why can I still hear him say it so many days after? Come to the All Soul’s festival with me so I can see what you look like.
Love, Bea
Sahar felt a strange burning in his rib cage. Who is this William Portlock and where does he get such nerve to insult my friend—well, my…writing companion. Before he took up his own letter, Sahar decided to pay a visit to this young cretin.
Never mind about Mr. Portlock, Little Bea,
I dare say his own words will torture him in time.
The East is far too dangerous for young girls, and I fear the West is worse. Stay where you are and I am certain adventure will find you anyway.
I must decline your generous invitation, for if you should see what I look like your hair would go all white with terror.
Beatrix frowned at the last line before looking up to see a commotion by the fountain where William Portlock was howling in pain, covered in red welts and shouting about bees.
Jack O’ the Tree cannot be that terrifying to look at, she reasoned. He’s my dearest friend.
The letters came year after year in the same way—a flurry of correspondence for three days when the veil was thinnest, followed by an entire year of silence.
Bea grew so quick that there was more to share with every note—reports of her accomplishments, as well as her many lapses in good behavior which her dear Jack was never inclined to scold her for.
Her writing turned from scrawled block letters to a fine cursive hand as her reports on the village turned from which bugs she liked best and how the children who’d insulted her became mysteriously ill, to things like being fitted for new, strange dresses and dances in the public house.
In every letter she’d ask about Jack. What was his true name?
What were his favorite foods? Did he read or listen to music?
Where was he born? Did he have any family?
Many of these questions were simply ignored, and what he had revealed only made his secrets more tantalizing.
More often, rather than telling Bea stories of faraway lands, strange animals, or deadly encounters, he’d write just enough to make her mouth water for adventure before telling her to stay home and not get into trouble.
Bea found it more maddening with each passing year until it reached such a pitch she felt like kicking the old letter tree since she could not kick Jack.
Sahar hadn’t changed much at all. A creature as old as himself had learned to view years as tiny moments—that is, until he had a way to mark their passing.
Bea changed from one year to the next so quickly that an unfamiliar sensation began gnawing away at his chest; cold and hot at once, punching against each other while eroding his bones and crawling up his throat.
Time had meaning now.
Bea had grown from an amusing little joke into a voice upon which he depended.
She’d become his only tether to the physical world in so short a time that it left Sahar breathless.
He’d hidden his talisman where no man on earth could find and call upon him with a wish.
Yet more and more the idea flitted past that he could offer it to Bea, bind himself to her, and be there for her even on the days of the year when his kind were not granted access to the human world.
His sojourns to the mortal realm on All Soul’s Day were once a blur of debauchery where he’d return to his slumber sore and sticky and full and still drunk.
He’d often carefully extricate himself from a lattice of nude beauties to sneak off before dawn.
This had slowed to a standstill of late.
Instead, he found himself watching Bea between letters as she sketched birds and insects, or snuck off from her governess to read a novel about an innocent young lady kidnapped by a murderous pirate and sold to the King Of Skulls.
He saw her at those public dances, too proud to sit and be shy, but also too damaged by the rejection from her family and peers to put herself forward.
At fifteen, she still had those soft features he’d first seen when she was so tiny—wide brown eyes in a round face scattered with freckles, teeth that ever so slightly struck her bottom lip.
He was confused and alarmed when her style of dress changed to fitting more snugly at the waist, her hair from an unruly tangle to an attempt at curls, and the boys from throwing crab apples as she passed to catching at her skirts with sticks.
Soon after such a stunt, the three boys in question found themselves walking into low hanging tree branches and arriving home with broken noses.
That was the same year Sahar received the first letter that truly shook him.
Watching Little Bea grow had already given him an alarming sense of the mortal’s impermanence, how time zipped along without mercy, crumbling everything from men to mountains. Even seeing the evidence for himself, he’d never imagined that he would lose her.
Sahar almost prepared himself to be annoyed at whatever new nonsense this letter might contain—another description of a social gathering or synopsis of a fanciful book—but after reading the first line his heart stopped a few painful thumps.
My dear Jack,
It may be some years before I can write you again. It seems I’m being sent away to the city for an education, although what education I might receive at my aunt’s home apart from how many drams of gin to pour her before midday, I couldn’t guess.
I’m sure I will be introduced to young men even more self important and intolerable than these at home.
At least it will be somewhere new, and however I may resent being sent off to become a lady, I will relish any adventure I can grab hold of.
Perhaps by the time I return I will be old enough that you can finally tell me some of yours.
I will miss you dearly each Hallowe’en that I am away.
With affection,
Beatrix
Sahar stared at the paper for a few long moments, telling himself that there had to be more, that she must be tricking him somehow.
This was the first letter she hadn’t signed Love, Bea, a silly, girlish salutation he had often sneered at, but now its absence felt like the paper had a hole cut through it.
There was something so carefree and limitless about the way a child showed friendship.
Now she was a guarded young lady, protecting something she did not yet know the value of.
Well.
If she insisted on going away with such coldness, let her.
Let her stay gone.
He had far better things to do than remain friends with some foolish mortal girl.
Bea checked back at the tree with a heart that skipped and chittered like a squirrel.
Jack might be sad, might ask her to stay, might finally offer to take her away to those far off lands he’d only ever hinted at.
Her bags were already packed in her room but she’d leave everything she owned behind if he made her the offer.
She snatched at the letter poking out of the hollow of the tree, tearing it slightly in her haste to open it.
Be gone to the city, then.
Enjoy the coal infused air and endeavor not to come down with consumption—a vain hope.
Bea’s hand shook as she held the paper.
Her eyes stung and blurred.
The autumn air that had felt so crisp and clean and delicious when she’d left her house. was now cold and damp as creeping fingers of frost worked their way into her skin.
Jack’s rudeness had always amused her because she’d known it was all in fun. He still listened to her, as no one else in her household would do. He had never spoken to her as if she didn’t matter—as if she were just a child.
She crumpled the paper and left it there in the knot of the tree, hoping he would check back and see what she thought of him.