Crab Apples
I plunder crab apples from the wayside. They are small and round, each one fitting neatly into the palm of my hand. I hold them up to the light, inhaling their strange scent as I feel for the faint heartbeat at each apple’s core. Those with a pulse are tucked into my basket where they nestle between their fellows and the straw lining. Those whose hearts are silent find their rest upon the dew-damp grass. Food for the birds and the insects. A passing villager would mistake them for windfall and carry them home in grubby aprons.
Basket laden, I leave the trees behind and head out along the rocky path leading up into the hills. Heather covers the rolling land. The world becomes carpeted in rich swathes of reddish purple – the furthest reaches look almost blue beneath the dissipating mist. Mountains rear up in the distance, their ridges and peaks like the abandoned palaces and citadels of the gods.
There are no gods in this world anymore. Not in their true forms, anyway, and they are very much without their once great powers.
Around the next small outcrop of rock is a meadow thick with wildflowers. The sheep grazing there drop the grass from their mouths and stare when I come around the corner with my heavy basket. Not one moves, though I see faint tremors in the otherwise stiff legs of those nearest. I put my hand to my hip and shake my head.
“That,” I say, sternly, prompting a collective flinch from the sheep, “is most unconvincing behaviour. Real sheep would flock to their shepherd, not fear them.”
It makes no difference. Only one dares to move, bowing its head as if to gain my favour with its feigned agreement. The rest only stare back at me dolefully with their vaguely human eyes. I wipe the smile from my face with difficulty and pick my way to the hollow tree where I have stashed my crook and cloak. The golden crook almost glows in the dim light.
That their freedom is so close as to be almost visible beyond the split bark, and yet remain unreachable, is a source of great amusement. None are small enough to fit through the crack in the trunk, and even if they were, they could not grasp the crook with their cloven hooves.
I pull it from the tree and as I do the solid gold turns to gnarled wood. At once, my maiden’s visage is concealed by the bent-back and withered features of an old shepherd. I don the cloak with its tattered hem, then head to the mossy rock jutting out of the ground near the top of the gently sloping meadow – my usual perch.
It is only when I am settled, basket by my side, that the first of the flock approaches. This one is a ram with huge horns protruding from its scalp and curling around its face. He is always the first – the bravest of them all, though I hear the fear riding his heart when he looks upon me. Braegar, mightiest of all gods, now no more than livestock. The rest of the flock follow along behind him.
They may fear me, but they have no choice but to creep up with bowed heads to take the offered apple from my hand. The souls of the spirits within each fruit are what keep them alive in this form. Grass and flowers only fill their stomachs. The apples are their true lifeblood.
They keep to the meadow once they have retrieved their prize, though still moving right up to the border, as far away from me as they can get. The villagers do not dare come into the heatherlands. For the sheep to wander too far away, closer to the village or the woods, would be to risk being cut down and taken home for roasting. That would be such a shameful way for them to die. For a god to be slaughtered and consumed by those who once worshipped them.
I bite into a leftover apple and savour the taste of the soul fizzling out on my tongue. The world is a safer place without the gods running amok, and here in my meadow, they are as safe and as harmless as gods can be.