The Silver Bough (25 page)

As she continued to walk, she was puzzled by the increasing emptiness of the landscape. She saw a few low, creeping plants here and there among the rocks, but no grasses—even the heathers had disappeared. The ground was hard and dry underfoot, as if it had been weeks without rain instead of only a few days. Pausing to bend and examine it she found not solid rock, as she’d half expected, but soil that had dried to a fine, powdery dust, having had all moisture leached out of it. It was like a desert. For a moment she could make no sense of it, and then she understood: there must have been a fire. Of course, wildfire, caused by lightning or a hiker’s careless match, might have destroyed all local vegetation. Presumably the presence of so many streams and waterways had kept the fire from spreading very far.

She sniffed the air and realized it held an acrid, smoky tang, suggesting that the fire was very recent. She wondered if it could still be smoldering somewhere, although, looking around, she could see nothing left to burn.

Just ahead of her rose a small, bare, rounded hill. It had an odd appearance, as if some sort of path or channel had been worn into the sides, incised in a winding spiral from the base to the top. She had the vague sense that this meant something she should know, but she could not think why. The sight of the oddly shaped hill in this desolate landscape, the silence (there were no birds) and the lingering, unpleasant scent of burning on the hot and heavy air all combined to create a growing sense of unease.

Checking her map, she found the hill was named Cnoc na Beithir, and although she’d never seen it before, she remembered the name from a winter’s evening of map-reading.
Cnoc
was a round hill, and her Gaelic dictionary had given four distinct definitions for
beithir
. It was “a prodigiously large serpent” and “lightning bolt” and “bear” and something else she couldn’t remember—some sort of fish. It had made her wonder how people could have managed with such an unnecessarily confusing language.

Which of the four definitions had given the name of beithir to this hill?
she wondered. Maybe this little
cnoc
had a reputation for attracting lightning. Maybe the dead, burnt-over look of the land was not due to anything recent. But that hardly accounted for the smell. Looking up at the clear blue sky—no chance of being struck today—she ignored the urge she felt to run away, and kept walking toward the hill, bearing slightly to the left, where the spiral path—if it
was
a path—seemed to have its beginning.

At the base of the hill, just before the path began, she saw an opening, a cleft in the rock that was almost twice as wide as an ordinary doorway. She stopped short, her stomach churning. Although it was too dark to see anything inside the cave, she was
sure
there was something lurking in the darkness. The smell of burning was much stronger here, and she became aware of a sound that made the hairs stand up on the back of her neck: a low, sinister hissing.

She felt rooted to the spot by the horrible threat conveyed by the sound. Impossible, of course, but it sounded like a huge snake. Of course, there were no really big snakes in this country—adders, although poisonous, were small and shy. Maybe a nest of adders, amplified by the rock walls around them, could sound like that, but she didn’t believe it. She imagined a prodigiously large serpent, more gigantic than any python she’d ever seen in a zoo, uncoiling within that dark recess, preparing to emerge and wrap itself around the hill, unwinding into the grooves it had worn in the sloping sides on other days when it lay there, torpid in the sunlight, digesting whatever it had devoured.

Only today it had not yet eaten, and would be hungry. And there was nothing in this barren region for it to eat. Nothing, except her.

Nell ran for it. There was nothing to be gained in stubbornly waiting to see what came out of that hole, and potentially everything to lose. She ran even though she didn’t believe in the thing she was running from, and her steps did not slow until she reached an area—lush, green, heavily overgrown—that looked familiar to her.

She didn’t know how to think about what she’d just experienced. She hadn’t actually
seen
anything—she might have imagined it—was it possible that she’d been hallucinating, maybe because of heatstroke? It didn’t feel that hot to her, but she had been out in the sun for hours, without a hat—maybe that was all it was. She was eager to get home, to sit in the shade and sip something cold and sweet while she read one of her library books and forgot everything else.

She was already halfway there in her mind when, approaching the garden gate, she saw someone, or something, crouched on the low stone boundary wall: an odd figure, like a gargoyle, knees raised and back hunched.

Her heart lurched and she faltered, fearful that she might be forced to turn and run away again, this time from her own house, until she recognized Ronan. The reason for his odd posture was the large book he was poring over.

She felt a strong, half-guilty pleasure at the sight of him, which put her on her guard. Even if he wasn’t a con artist, he certainly wanted something from her. She had to stay sharp, which could be difficult in the throes of physical attraction. When she was near enough to speak without shouting, she said, “What do you want?”

He looked up and smiled as if he hadn’t heard the warning in her voice. “I’ve got something for you.” Unfolding lithely, he slipped down from the wall and held out a large yet slim book, taller than it was wide, and bound in a hard-wearing, dark blue material.

She frowned and crossed her arms.

“It’ll interest you,” he said and, when she didn’t respond, he opened it and held it up so she could see a beautiful, full-page color print of an apple. It was not just any apple; she recognized it at once as her own mystery fruit. It was yellow-gold with a freckling of reddish blush, surrounded by soft green leaves and creamy, pink-tinged blossom all on the same branch.

Her arms came down and she took an involuntary step forward. “What
is
that?”

“James Alexander Wall’s
Pomona
. There’s everything you could possibly want to know about the apples that grow here.” He pressed it into her hands, and, unable to resist such a lure, she took it.

Although she’d promised herself she would not invite him in a second time, she could not send him away with his book in her hands. The thought of standing here and quickly leafing through the book did not appeal; it was too important to skim. She was hot and tired, and still a bit shaky, after the experience on her long walk, and only wanted to rest. She took a deep breath and spoke politely. “May I offer you something to drink?”

He smiled and followed her into the garden. She stopped beside the table where she’d had dinner with Kathleen, put the book down, and gestured him to a seat. “What would you like? Something cold? Iced tea or water or…some sort of fruit juice, I think. Wine? Or would you rather have coffee?”

He was watching her with a disconcertingly close gaze, as if trying to commit her to memory.

“Well?”

He gave his head a small shake. “Whatever you’re having.”

“Fine. I’ll just be a few minutes.”

As soon as she was inside, she dashed to the bathroom. She fought the temptation to shower and change out of her sweaty old clothes, to brush her hair and spritz on a little Issey.
Really, Nell, could you
be
more obvious? You’ll keep out of sniffing distance. And he is
not
coming in.

She mixed the last of a jar of instant peach-flavored tea with cold water and added all the ice cubes she had to the jug. Her stomach growled, and she remembered she hadn’t eaten lunch. She quickly sliced some cheese and half a dozen ripe tomatoes and put them on a tray with crackers, and carried them out to the garden. Ronan was sitting with his eyes closed, head thrown back to the sun, and at this sight of him, looking so vulnerable, she again felt the treacherous stir of desire. She bit her tongue so hard it hurt.

She set the tray down, suggested briskly that he should help himself, and took up the book. “Where did you get this?” Her suspicion that the dark blue cover was a library binding was confirmed by the old-fashioned bookplate she discovered on the inside of the front cover:
PROPERTY OF APPLETON PUBLIC LIBRARY
. Beneath it was a square red stamp:
RESERVED STOCK
:
FOR REFERENCE ONLY
.

“The library.”

“And she let you take it out?” This book was surely too valuable to be let out on loan; it must be irreplaceable.

“I got it for you.”

She felt a twinge of guilt as she imagined kindly Kathleen even after Sunday’s disaster still thinking of something nice to do for her, asking Ronan to deliver it—yeah, sure, right. Give a valuable book to a passing stranger? The library wasn’t even
open
today.

She looked at him through narrowed eyes. “And I’m supposed to return it to the library when I’m through with it? Or give it back to you?”

He took a drink and shrugged. “As you like.”

“What did you bring this to me for?”

“You had questions.”

“I certainly do.” She looked down, turning the pages. The text was a shock. It was in Latin, set in a heavy gothic typeface in at least eighteen-point. She’d been made to study Latin at school, and although she’d done reasonably well at the time, she wasn’t sure how much she’d retained. She looked across at him. “Can you read this?”

“My Latin’s pretty rusty, but I can probably remember enough…” He reached for the book as he spoke, but she pulled it away.

“Never mind. I expect I’ll be able to puzzle it out myself.” She turned to another colored plate, which showed the golden apple from different angles and also cut in half, pips appearing like sad eyes in an owlish visage. There were other colored illustrations, but they were of different varieties, including crab apples and several varieties of domesticated red apples.

“That’s the Fairest,” said Ronan, tapping one picture. “That’s what I remember eating.”

“So you never ate the golden?”

He shook his head. “I had the chance, but…no.”

She closed the book and set it safely to one side before eating a cracker and cheese. She was trembling slightly, which she hoped was simply a physiological response to low blood sugar. She drank a whole glass of tea and poured some more before she addressed him again.

“Why’d you come back?”

“To eat the apple with you.”

She shook her head impatiently. “Why bring me this book?”

He sighed. “You won’t take my word for it, so I thought, if I could show you it’s true, there’s the history—”

She laughed, startling them both. “Just because something’s in a book doesn’t make it true! Just because some ancestor of yours believed in magic apples—oh, honestly, trying to
reason
me into accepting the unreasonable…Given the state of my Latin, it’ll probably take me weeks to work my way through this little book. By then the apple could have rotted away. You’d have been better off relying on your native charm.”

“I don’t know; you’ve been pretty resistant to it so far.” He spoke dryly and as their eyes met she had the sudden pleasurable sense that she’d met a good match, someone who appreciated her strengths and wasn’t simply out to exploit her weakness.

Carried along on the strength of that feeling, she said, “I’ll tell you what. You don’t have to try to convince me of anything. I’ll give you the apple.”

He shook his head. “That’s not—”

“Don’t push it, buster,” she said sharply. “It’s the best deal you’re going to get.”

“It’s no good to me without you.”

“Now you’re being silly. Look, I don’t even believe this stuff about the apple, but from what I’ve heard, it’s not limited to certain specific people; it’s any man and any woman.”

“Yes, of course it could be,” he said, a touch of impatience in his voice. “And I’ve just said—I’ve made it clear, haven’t I?—I want that man and woman to be
us
.”

“But I don’t.”

“Then you don’t understand,” he said. He leaned forward, looking across the table into her eyes. “You’re saying no to life and happiness—to whatever you want most in the world. You can have your heart’s desire. You’ll also be saving this whole community, bringing prosperity and good fortune back to Appleton, although I don’t blame you if you don’t care about the rest of them, since
I
don’t—never mind that,” he went on quickly as she opened her mouth.

“Nobody else knows about this apple, or cares—although they should. But this town has forgotten that its fate is tied up with the apples. The old orchards are gone; the Apple Fair hasn’t been held in decades, and everyone has forgotten the real reason behind it. But the magic is still here, deep in the land—and the land knows. Every so often, it offers up a magical gift. The last time, that gift was rejected, and things began to go wrong. If this one’s rejected, too—” He stopped, and shook his head impatiently.

“Forget the past. I’ll tell you whatever you want to know, but all that really matters is we’ve been given this chance. There’s a golden apple growing, first one in over fifty years, and it’s
ours
. Things happen when it’s time for them. This is
our
time—that’s our apple. There are cycles, seasons, whether we understand it or not, and that’s why
you
were drawn here to plant apple trees again, so it could happen as it’s meant to, and it’s why I woke up one morning a few weeks ago and knew I had to get back to Appleton. I thought I’d find the apple.” His gaze became very tender. “I had no idea I’d also find you.”