The Collected Supernatural and Weird Fiction of Elia W. Peattie by Elia W. Peattie

Author:Elia W. Peattie [Peattie, Elia W.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781782821557
Publisher: Leonaur
Published: 2016-01-03T05:00:00+00:00

The Blood Apple

(A.k.a. The Curse of Micah Rood)

In the early part of the last century there lived in eastern Connecticut a man named Micah Rood. He was a solitary soul, and occupied a low, tumble-down house, in which he had seen his sisters and his brothers, his father and his mother, die. The mice used the bare floors for a playground; the swallows filled up the unused chimneys; and in the attic a hundred bats made their home. Micah Rood disturbed no living creature, unless now and then he killed a hare for his day’s dinner, or cast bait for a glistening trout in the Shetucket. For the most part his food came from the garden and the orchard which his father had planted and nurtured years before.

Into whatever disrepair the house had fallen, the garden bloomed and flourished like a western Eden. The brambles, with their luscious burden, clambered up the stone walls, sentinelled by trim rows of English currants. The strawberry nestled among its wayward creepers, and on the trellises hung grapes of varied hues. In seemly rows, down the sunny expanse of the garden spot, grew every vegetable indigenous to the western world or transplanted by colonial industry. Everything here took seed, and bore fruit with a prodigal exuberance. Beyond the garden lay the orchard, a labyrinth of flowers in the springtime, a paradise of verdure in the summer, and in the season of fruition a miracle of plenty.

Often the master of the orchard stood by the gate in the crisp autumn mornings, with his hat filled with apples for the children as they passed to school. There was only one tree in the orchard of whose fruit he was chary. Consequently it was the bearings of this tree that the children most wanted.

“Prithee, Master Rood,” they would say, “give us some of the gold apples?”

“I sell the gold apples for siller,” he would say. “Content ye with the red and green ones.”

In all the region there grew no counterpart to this remarkable apple. Its skin was of the clearest amber, translucent and spotless, and the pulp was white as snow, mellow yet firm, and without a flaw from the glistening skin to the even, brown seeds nestling like babies in their silken cradle. Its flavour was peculiar and piquant, with a suggestion of spiciness. The fame of Micah Rood’s apple, as it was called, had extended far and wide, but all efforts to engraft it upon other trees failed utterly; and the envious farmers were fain to content themselves with the rare shoots.

If there dwelt any vanity in the heart of Micah Rood, it was in the possession of this apple tree, which took the prize at all the local fairs and carried his name beyond the neighbourhood where its owner lived. For the most part he was a modest man, averse to discussions of any sort, shrinking from men and their opinions. He talked more to his dog than to any human being. He fed his mind upon a few old books, and made nature his religion.

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