As told by Sebastian Demascus
And yet I wait.
I was five. The manor stood behind me then — whole, looming, watching as it always does. But I wasn't in it that day. I'd wandered deeper into the woods, farther than I was meant to go, past the dead creek and the broken stone arch that no one ever spoke about.
There, tucked into a clearing where even the wind seemed hesitant, was a tree.
A apple tree, though barely recognizable. Gnarled and brittle, with bark like cracked bone and branches like fingers that had forgotten how to reach. My family had long given up on it. Said it never bore fruit. Said some trees just don't.
But I felt something in it.
So I stayed. Day after day, I returned. I cleared the bramble at its roots. I brought water in a rusted can. I whispered to it, sometimes. Other times, I just watched. It didn't matter that no one knew. It was mine.
And eventually, it bloomed.
Green buds, slow and trembling. Then fruit. Real fruit. I plucked the first when no one was looking. I hid by the edge of the woods and ate it with my hands. Sweet, tart, juicy... Refreshing, red just like the family's color, alive. I'd never tasted anything like it.
I didn't tell anyone. I brought the fruit back in pieces, sometimes in my pockets, sometimes in baskets made of old cloth. At first, I shared with my brothers. Then I began trading it with James in secrecy, so he could bring it to the village — wrapped, quiet, like something sacred.
But one morning, much of the fruit was gone. Half-eaten. Scattered.
I saw the prints in the dirt. I knew it was a raccoon — small, clever, always watching. It had found the tree. My tree.
I built a snare from sticks and wire, like Uncle Neey once showed me. Rough, but sharp.
It didn't take long.
The raccoon set it off but thrashed so hard it snapped the wire. I heard the break — its leg, sharp and quick. It dragged itself under a fallen log near the roots, snarling. I tried to catch it, but it slipped into shadow.
I waited.
Hours passed. My brothers called from the edge of the forest. I didn't answer. I didn't move. I let the stillness settle into me.
And finally, it came out. Limps and breath and hunger.
It saw me. It knew. But it was desperate.
So was I.
I caught it.
It screamed. It clawed. But I was stronger. Maybe not by size — but something else held me up. Something cold and old was watching.
The merciful thing would have been to end it.
But I didn't.
I kept it.
It lived for some time. In a box lined with cloth. It never stopped watching me. And I never stopped wondering if it knew — that the tree had whispered to me first. That something had whispered through it.
Sometimes, even now, I go back to that clearing. The tree is gone, cut or rotted or taken.
But the ground still smells like apple.
And I still wait.