I was on one of my solitary evening rambles through the countryside, pondering my rather common, but at the time monumental, troubles–dearth of riches; when or if I would ever find love; a quarrel with a friend I had considered close but who, as it turned out, understood me not at all–when I happened upon an old man standing beneath a hoary apple tree. He wore a dark cloak, and in the gloam I couldn’t make out the features of his face. Just a white beard, stark in the light of the lantern he held.
“Young man,” called the stranger. “What brings you to my part of the world?” As we were in the first clutches of winter, the old man’s breath whispered like frost before him.
Now, I had long accustomed myself to wandering wheresoever I chose on the public paths and walkways. I knew the area well, but in all my years, I had never before seen this tree. I tried to recall the trail that had led me here, through some forgotten, seed-blown field, but could not remember the steps leading to this moment.
“I live nearby,” I answered, as evening fell to night.
The lantern glowed like honey, and the old man smiled. “There must be a reason you’ve found yourself at my tree tonight. Here.” He reached up with his free hand and plucked an apple. Then he offered it to me. “I’ll share my harvest with you.”
I took the apple, and a sweet, good scent rose to meet me. A smell like summer. Like long, warm days. The skin, however, was puckered and tough, and I recoiled despite my manners–as though the old man had given me his own severed hand.
“Go on,” said the man, sensing my hesitation. “It will benefit you. Greatly.”
I nearly took a bite under the weight of the man’s gaze; his eyes, from beneath his hood, seemed to burn like two ancient stars. I could just make out the pearl of his teeth, flashing in a smile. Those teeth…I couldn’t help but imagine them biting into my own flesh, stripping the meat from my bones. It was an ungenerous fancy, but I couldn’t get it out of my head, and the apple in my hand seemed to pulse.
There are worms inside. Once this thought took hold, I couldn’t even consider eating it, and in fact, dropped the apple to the dead grass below.
“I’m not hungry,” I told the old man, as politely as I could, and moved on with my ramble–leaving the stranger and his lantern behind me.
I looked back once and though it should have been impossible, I swear it was his eyes, not the lantern at all, that glowed. Then the light went out, and I was left with just the illumination of the rising moon and the far away glimmer of the newborn stars.
For some time, I considered myself lucky to have avoided a mysterious, dark fate. But as the years passed, and my troubles changed from the fleeting worries of youth to hard, bitter kernels of grief and disappointment–still common, but from which I would never fully recover–I thought about that apple.
The sweetness I had never even tried to taste.