Archive of Our Own

There’s an orchard growing up against the Beast’s wood, trees running in neat lines, creating archways of verdant green through which dappled lighting plays during the afternoon. 

It’s an insult.

Enoch is too oblivious, tangled up in the bureaucracy of his little town, to recognize it for the slight it is. His orchard is, to him, simply that, an orchard, not an indignity, a sacrilegious perversion of the Beast’s woods, trees cleared away, earth tilled and flattened, only for trees to be grown up there once again in a mockery of wildness. Evenly spaced trunks, blight trimmed away, tended by mortal hands to bring them to fruitfulness where the wood once grew untouched. 

Pottsfield was invasive, a creeping rot in the heart of his forest, ever eating away at the wild, but it was one thing to clear trees to grow pumpkins or put up houses and another thing entirely to grow more trees. 

Once, the Beast had been sure it was intentional, a barb the Harvest Lord had carefully crafted to catch under his bark. 

But that wasn’t Enoch’s style at all.

The old Harvest Lord had a morbid streak a mile long and could be cruel like the tomcat skin he wore. But Enoch enjoyed watching his victims squirm, liked watching their reactions to being held beneath his claws before, inevitably, he lifted his paw and let them scuttle back to whatever protective darkness they favored. This was not the teasing he so often enjoyed turning upon the Beast in some effort to drag… whatever it was, the Harvest Lord wanted from him into the light, this was not the catch-and-release the Beast was used to. 

This was not some pestering remark, some teasing gesture. This was something else entirely. 

Something that made him seethe from the shadows of his forest, eyes furious and triple-ringed.

It was something he wouldn’t tolerate if it had been anyone else.

But this insult, obscene and contemptible, was unintended, and so the Beast handles it with a grace he reserves for Enoch, because Enoch is queer and old, and is due some extra measure of respect for reasons the Beast cannot entirely articulate in a way a human might understand.

He ignores it. 

Or tries to. 

The Beast cannot say what found him in this league of his woods on this particular night, prey is thin here, though the encroaching camps of high-spirited settlers tell him it will not be so in a few decades, but now, there is little to interest him in the stretch of his forest that Enoch calls home to. 

But perhaps there is some part of him (chasing that smell of apples and sugar and liquor and contentment, weak as a mortal against the pull of death) that does not mind a night without hunting if it means he can find a voice to put his own against. 

It is unfortunate, then, that Enoch seems too tied up in his town’s affairs to spare time for the wolf pacing his borders. 

The Beast creeps among the shadows of aspens and oaks. He’ll circle the border only once, watching among fields and houses for a pair of pointed black ears, and if he doesn't find them, he'll disappear into his woods, and feign ignorance if the Harvest Lord mentions it when next they meet. 

He finds nothing but pests, rats, and mice moving as silently as him, stealing food where the Beast steals glances. 

The Beast does not begrudge them it. They are trespassers as much as he is, risking themselves just to be here, but ever drawn back by addictive plenty. Another night he might betray their presence to the warden just to watch Enoch’s eyes go sly at the mention, but tonight he holds the truce of starving things, of scavengers in the night. 

He does not see them, and they do not see him, and with any luck, the magistrate will be as willing to turn a blind eye to them both. 

Slowly the fields get taller, as he works his way against the motion of the clock around Pottsfield, the low sprawl of pumpkins giving way to swaying wheat that shimmers in the wind, silver moonlight plucking out the gold of them, before the wheat yields to corn, nearly as tall as the Beast himself. Above the corn rises the canopy of Enoch’s orchard, marking the sign for him to leave, and so he parts, veers from the threshold dirt where only brave brambles and intrepid pumpkin vines dared to grow, and enters into the familiar foliage of his own woods. 

He’s not far from Pottsfield when he hears it, only a few tree lengths away, close enough that he could mistake the orchard for his own forest if he caught sight of it through the branches.

A flutter of movement and a whisper of low voices draws his attention, and the Beast goes still, tipping his head to catch the sound more clearly. A chime of laughter and the clatter of bone, the smell of pumpkins and warm hay alerts him that perhaps Pottsfield’s fields are not so abandoned as they seemed. He creeps towards the border, his steps silent as he picks his way through the dead leaves of autumn before he comes to a stop at the place where forest becomes orchard, one hand coming to rest upon one of Pottsfield’s fence posts in a brazen disregard for their borders.

He stalks along the edge of neatly rowed trees, peering between trunks until he at last spies the gathering. 

Pottsfielders, twelve in number, without the chaperone of their Harvest Lord, stand gathered in a loose ring around a single tree.

They are without their pumpkins and hay, disregarded in a pile to one side, naked bone bared in the light of the moon, leaving no room for any misconceptions about what lies beneath their usual costumes. 

It is a sight not unlike a witches' gathering.

That’s what he mistakes it for, under the purple velvet of night. 

One of the skeletons breaks the circle, dancing forward, in something halfway between choreography and instinct, a flowing line of ivory, reaching up, grasping a low hanging branch, and swinging up into welcoming boughs. 

The Beast sips the air, entranced. 

He can taste excitement, tepid, faint, drowning beneath apple-richness and the echo of Enoch’s presence. 

The branches shake and shiver, and between a knit of limbs and leaves, he can barely glimpse the stretch of pale bone. 

The Pottsfielders have begun to sing. The words are lost, perhaps there are none, but the chant pours out, broken by giggling, laughter, clear and bright, but no one turns to hush or scold. Whatever ritual this is, it is an informal one. They’ve begun to dance too, a loose irregular movement, not one in step with their neighbor, and yet, as a whole, composing a rhythm that gives the impression of years of practice. Through the trees, he can hear the click of bone, can see the abandon with which they dance, and now they begin to circle, like the hands of a clock, revolving around the apple tree. 

There’s something hypnotic in the casual rhythm, a pattern drawn lazily. 

The Pottsfielder in the tree drops to the ground. 

They are turned away from him, but when they twist to peer at the revolving circle, the Beast can see the apple held tight in their teeth, the profile of their face utterly beautiful, haunting, deep empty sockets, pale nake bone, and the apple, blood red, held proud between their teeth. 

They break from the tree with a click of their heels, smoothly rejoining the dancers, falling into the cadence of the circle instantly. 

But they are not lost in the joyous tumult, no longer anonymous like their fellows. As they toss their head, whirling and casting their arms out wide, they hold that gleaming apple in their mouth. The Beast’s eyes are drawn to them, but so too is every skull in the circle turned. 

And then, as if moved by some unspoken signal, the apple-bearer turns, spine twisting, though their feet still trace their inevitable path, leaning in towards their neighbor, who in turn leans in towards them, they are close, close enough that if not for the apple, they could be sharing a kiss. 

They disappear behind the trunk of the tree, and when they emerge on the other side, the apple is held in the mouth of the other skeleton. 

Part of the apple is missing, the Beast can see the swipe teeth made through the flesh, leaving pale fruit behind. 

The air is electric with anticipation, delight, rapidly overcoming the smell of fruit. 

The Beast watches as they pass the apple around, from one set of ivory teeth to the next, round and round the apple works in a circle, moving against the movement of the Pottsfielders, its ruby skin peeled away, stripped down to its core, flayed a little further with each flirting snap of teeth. 

Time melts away, runs like ink on a wet page, losing meaning in this moonlit slice of orchard. 

The fence beneath the Beast’s claws has started to fracture. 

He doesn’t know what he’s watching. 

But it hardly matters. 

He knows what it means. 

Eventually, there isn't enough apple to sink teeth into anymore. It’s inevitable, really, that eventually, when two skeletons lean close, the core falls between them, landing on the ground between their feet, and they fall into each other. 

They catch themselves on clamoring hands, kept upright only by leaning into the other, phalanges tangle in ribs, a hand catches the hook of a hipbone, and the Beast can hear the clack of their skulls together from his distant position. The dance has stilled, the circle grinding to a halt, as whooping delight and laughter replace the hand-wrought melody of voice and the clap of bone. The pair twist together, closer than two humans could be, pressing past the boundaries flesh would mark, hands clasping, ribs interlocking, teeth clicking, their attention focused entirely on each other. 

But not everyone’s is. One of the others, no longer caught in the trance of their ritual, sends a glance out beyond the bounds of their circle and catches sight of his eyes through the trees. 

The Beast can hear the yelp of surprise, watches as skulls swing around to follow a gesture and catch sight of him. 

He rears back, eyes flashing, ringing with color.

He expects running, fear, perhaps anger, Enoch’s people were nearly as bold as their magistrate, perhaps shouting and rage for daring to trespass, fright to learn they had been watched without their pumpkins covering vulnerable bone. 

Laughter sounds, delighted tittering he doesn’t quite catch snatches of, they peer at him and glance towards one another, the air is filled with surprise and humor, spiced and sweet, and he takes a step back, releasing Enoch’s poor abused fence. 

A Pottsfielder, perhaps the one that sighted him, lifts a hand and waves. 

It’s simply too much. He covers his eyes with a hand reflexively and whirls, covering ground as quickly as he possibly can without admitting to fleeing, trusting sound and smell to guide him well enough not to do something to add to the humiliation, like walk straight into one of his own trees. 

When he finally removes his hand and glances up, Pottsfield is far enough behind him that he cannot hear even a whisper of distant laughter, and he is surrounded by the privacy of his woods, and something that feels distinctly like embarrassment.

The forest around him is lit faintly by the purple tinge of his eyes, confirming his suspicions. 

The color deepens as he thinks of the Pottsfielders, slipping back into their pumpkins and homes, leaning out their windows to recount to their neighbors their sighting in the orchard. 

A kaleidoscope of violet plays through the delicate frost clinging to the trees. 

He snarls in the empty air. In Enoch’s den of gossip, there would be little chance word would not get back to the Harvest Lord. Caught sulking at the borders, he should be ashamed of himself.

Never again, he swears. 

He won't be caught so flagrantly at the borders, leaning in like a child at a window, looking every bit the desperate, hungry thing he is, intruding, eavesdropping on the secrets of the peaceful dead, pretending to be the thing he'll never be, lingering at the only place he doesn't belong.

He swears to himself as he stalks away from Enoch’s grove that it won’t happen again.

Somehow, it always does.

The apple tree sprouts right in the center of the path into the town, too tall for it to have simply gone unnoticed in such a place of heavy foot traffic. That's what first makes him suspect it's intentional. A few meters away, another sapling, of similar height, sprouts, and a few meters past that another, the Beast follows them curiously in the tight circuit they make around the town, any thought of surveying for prey set aside to investigate. They’re young trees, not to the point of flowering, and too irregularly spaced to be an orchard.

He pauses when he finds himself back at the first. 

He reaches out towards it, expecting a spell erected between the trees, a strange living fence, but finds no charge reach back for his outstretched hand. 

Perhaps preparations for a festival, perhaps a custom that had sprung up in his temporary absence. It is strange. He cannot help but wonder. 

There’s a change in the air that alerts him he is not alone, a subtle shifting of scent, the heavy smell of the forest bowing towards the empty smell of the sky, a storm brewing on the horizon, thick with damp. 

“Good evening, Star Catcher.” The Beast greets, though he does not turn to face her. 

“It’s a ward,” The Queen of the Clouds replies, neatly forgoing pleasantries. 

“Against?” He inquires, though the mystery is far eclipsed by the Queen of the Clouds seeking him out. 

“You, I believe. They are of the impression the apples will keep you out.” 

“I have no idea where they could have gotten such an idea.” He says, and his tone is an accusation. 

“You cease chasing them at the edge of orchards.” She replies crisply and levels an accusation of her own. “I have seen it.” 

“I cease to chase at the edge of orchards much the same way I cease to chase at the edge of towns.” The Beast replies, surveying the sapling with new eyes, it’s only barely taller than he is, and he wonders if it knows that it’s been set apart, removed from his forest by new hands, set to a new purpose, meant to keep him out. 

When he reaches for the forest, when roots reach back, and brambles snake up to steady his feet, the apple tree does not. 

He suspects it knows. 

“They do not know that,” The Queen of the Clouds replies, and the air has taken on the crisp flavor of cold. Amusement. “Fearful and panicked, they never notice the moment forest becomes orchard, but they do notice that when they stop, when exhaustion cores them open, the trees have grown friendly, offering them fruit to nourish them, and you are chasing them no longer.”

He does not look at her. 

“They assume.” He surmises and reaches a dark-fingered hand to caress at the edge of green leaves. “The apples become the cause of my relent, as they explain my disappearance to themselves, and then they are made into a refuge.” He probes for confirmation. She doesn't offer it. 

He doesn’t need it. 

Already it’s become clear to him, the snare of superstition cast around his throat, he knows, and he does not need her to speak it into existence. 

“They’re wrong,” He rasps after a moment, dropping his cold caress from the apple tree as he turns towards her. 

She would not have come to tell him this. 

There is something more she wishes to impart.

She is as beautiful as she is terrible. Her teal hair is stolen from the noon sky, tressed up, and held in place by the arches of her crown. The sweep of her dress only maintains the illusion of fabric down to her bust before it becomes a loose sprawl of clouds. He can see her feet, elegantly crossed at the ankle, adorned in glass slippers, floating several feet above the ground. 

Her eyes are fixed upon him, brows angled up in humor, though she wears her face like a mask.

"A pity." She says cooly. " I had hoped to give this to you if the rumors were true." From the swirl of mist and dew, she produces an apple. The shape of it is unmistakable, but the coloring is distinct. She offers it towards him on the tips of her fingers, as if unwilling to sully her hands with something ad demeaning as organic matter any longer than she must. 

The green of it looks at place in her hands, surrounded in shades of pale blue and pink, colors lifted right out of dreams. 

He makes no move to take it. 

“What am I meant to do with this?” He sneers, but does nothing to disguise his intrigued step forward. 

“What do I care?” She retorts with a sneer, but the Beast can see it in the shift of her eyes that she has more than a few ideas. “Plant a garden. You’re so fond of your trees,” 

The Beast makes a hum of dubious acknowledgment. 

The air tastes like petrichor and ozone, sharpening into liquid fire. 

“Give it to the Harvest Lord.” She shrugs, and it speaks volumes that she’s deigning to venture so low as body language. The presence of the motion undermines anything casual about it. “I’ve heard he’s taken up apple cultivars. I doubt he has something like this growing in his garden.”

“You could give it to him yourself,” The Beast murmurs and tips his head. 

“I’m sure it would mean all the wrong things coming from me.” She replies crisply, lifting a brow. “But that is beside the point. I am giving it to you .” 

He understands. 

A gift wrapped beneath a barb, a kindness hidden in a cruelty. 

“My many thanks, Wind Catcher,” He says and reaches out. 

Their hands do not brush, it's better if they don’t, but she lingers a moment, still holding the apple’s stem before she releases it into his claws. 

“I wouldn’t dream of accepting them,” She says and smooths down the place where silk melts into steam in a gesture far more about cleaning her hands than straightening her attire. “I rather enjoy this new superstition,” The Beast hums. “I believe I shall nurture it. Old Winter.” She says and nods her acknowledgment to him. 

And that is all the warning he gets before she disappears and it begins to rain. 

He casts one glance back toward the ring of apple trees, and then one to the apple in his hand, beading with water, and sets off in the direction of Pottsfield.

There’s something obscene about Pottsfielders bobbing for apples. 

The Beast can’t quite put his finger on it. Maybe it’s naked bone, masks cask aside to reveal ivory white beneath, puncturing through the blush-warm flesh of an apple. Something cannibalistic, something about the white of the apple hidden beneath its skin, something about boney fingers reaching up, something about the wrench of the head, the crack of fruit giving way, life relenting to the teeth of death.

Maybe it’s the water, tar dark, reeking of charcoal, dark drops sliding down white bone. 

Maybe it's the fact that in the low light of the barn, where the lack of iridescent shine can be missed, it almost looks like oil. 

Maybe its the vivid contrast, red as deep as witch hearts bobbing in a sea of black, skulls polished to shine like fresh snow disappearing beneath a slick surface of sable, emerging dripping off tar, darkness bleeding out of their eyesockets spilling down the angle of sharp cheeks, to bead along ruddy flesh, falling back into the basin in chiming plinks.

It’s obscene. 

It feels like something he shouldn’t be watching, something secret, something sacred, something nakeder than the bone laid bare, something not intended for his eyes. 

So he turns his head away, away from laughter and delight, away from apples cleaving in pearl white teeth, away from dark stains and darker liquid, and he does not watch, does not impose to view something not meant for him.

There’s something even more obscene about Enoch bobbing for apples. 

The catskin on its hind paws, its front pair hooked on the edge of the barrel, whiskers heavy with water, fur dyed double dark, eyes yellow with laughter, stem held triumphantly in his fangs. 

This image, this scene, the Beast knows, is meant for him.

It's theatre. 

Pageantry.  

But he turns his gaze away and watches the hems of hay skirts spin, and knows exactly why Enoch with fruit between his teeth is obscene.  

He simply stands there, swaddled in darkness, and knows.

He can smell when he’s not wanted, more present than the scent of fear or hope, apples. 

The smell clings to the hands of schoolmarms and mothers embossed itself into the suit coats and hat brims of gentlemen, reeks from the hair of young children anointed with applesauce in the bath, all for the vain, foolish hope it will turn him back. 

The symbol of it hangs in windows, apples cut horizontally, hung from the tips of one of their five-pointed stars. 

They spin slowly in the wind, pale disks ringed in red, no different from any number of superstitions that have been wielded against him in the past. 

Little girls run through the streets with apple-skin ribbons tied in their hair. 

Little boys smile apple-colored smiles, pale slices clutched between their teeth, and give them red and yellow grins.

The Beast has never been welcome in mortal homes or towns. It is simply the nature of him, to remain wild, and his prey afraid. They resent him, work against him, whether they know it or not, ever trying to be the architect of his downfall as he is crafting theirs. The simple mortal desire to live, opposed to his own desire for the same, and over it, they wage a terrible war of attrition. 

Apples are just another tool in an arsenal of ineffective superstitions.

They are an advantage, one he presses eagerly at first, mortals growing bolder when carrying false confidence, wrapped in the illusion of safety. Their despair is so much more potent when he finally shreds it. 

But the oil has begun to taste faintly of apples, perfuming the smoke of his fire and lingering on the back of his tongue as it burns in the lantern, a potent reminder of his unwelcome. 

In a way, the apples work. 

He chases different prey, something that will burn without an aftertaste, turns his nose up when he can afford to, and grumbles when he cannot. 

The boy is Appleonian, long, gawky human limbs, led up to human shoulders that gave way to a thick neck and the head of a horse. His soft dark eyes are panicked and rolling, nostrils flaring as he scrabbles through his pack, voice wavering between a beg and a winnie. His lineage alone should be enough to make the Beast wary, but the young man, barely older than a colt, had hopes so sweet, and beneath them a fear so deep, he hadn’t been able to stop himself, a song already in the air, as he stepped out of the shadows. 

That hope is long gone, fear maturing into despair on his tongue, and the Beast spares a vicious delight for the thought of this tree, far removed from the orchards of its youth, an apple seed twisted into an edelwood. 

He advances, and the boy scrambles back on one hand ineffectually, his other stuck in his satchel. 

And then hope crashes across his palette, so vibrant and thick he stops where he stands. 

The boy pulls something out of his bag, half an apple, cut vertically down its center, browning at the edges, its pale face turned towards him.

Nothing more than a snack for the road turned into a ward, a charm to hold back the dark, made from the humblest of fruits. 

Triumph glints in the young man’s eyes, and he shakily makes his way to his feet, fingers curled tight about the fruit. 

The Beast stands there, tips his head towards the sky, and wonders if he’ll be able to stand it. 

He wonders which is worse, the taste of apples, a whole tree tainted by it, oil run through by tart-sweetness, months of it on his tongue, or the shame of turning back now, disappearing long after he’s already been noticed, offering confirmation to false belief, living with the story of retreat on his antlers. 

He stands there and looks up to the stars and seethes. 

But eventually, he turns away, and storms back into his woods without a word, and he doesn’t stop walking until he can no longer smell apples or horses or fruit.

The apples work.

They keep him away. 

He lets them.

That’s the part he hates the most.

For as cheery a facade as Pottsfield put on, they certainly had a great many deep shadows. The Beast is not entirely sure what to make of it, whether it is in deference to him, an act of hospitality subtler than Enoch’s effusive greetings, or if its a reflection of the more sinister leanings of Enoch’s nature manifesting in long puddles of inky darkness where lantern light dare not skirt. 

He never asks the Harvest Lord about it, certain that he will get an answer that's not an answer at all if he puts the question to Enoch. 

There was a saying mortals had about gift horses anyway. 

Late autumn has brought storms this year, torrential rain that has even the Beast seeking somewhere to dry out. 

There would be no hunting in this weather, the din of raindrops against the ground was so cacophonous his voice would be drowned out before it reached mortal ears, and in any case, mortals would get themselves lost in this mess with or without his help. Better to find somewhere to wait out the rain and then do his hunting after, when the storm had already done his work for him. 

So when Enoch extends an invitation (A pumpkin root spearing out of the muddy ground and snaring his ankle as he passed by and tugging him insistently across the border through sheets of rain and mud-slick fields) to join Pottsfield for their late autumnal festivals, the Beast really doesn’t have any reason to refuse. 

He finds himself grateful for Pottsfield’s long shadows. 

There are fewer Pottsfielders here than there have been in past festivals the Beast has been dragged into. 

Enoch had said something on the matter… his citizens celebrating in their own homes to keep from having to brave the storm. This was the spinster’s party, for those who had no family under the grave but above ground. 

Which marks it as characteristically different from the spinster parties of the living, this one filled mostly with the newly dead. Newly being a relative term. 

This is Pottsfield’s youth, which means not a single one of them is a day younger than fifty.

Enoch and the Beast together bring the average age of the room up by centuries. 

They do that most of the time they’re together.

Barrels of apples dot the barn, fruit carefully sculpted into faces and animals decorate the banisters, and all across the floor is littered with the long stripes of apple skin. In one corner, a cluster of Pottsfielders lounge on haybales, with fine paring knives carving dizzying patterns into apples, peeling away skin in places and leaving it in others. There’s a platter of apple slices on one table, sitting as the centerpiece among buns and tarts and pastries, formed into an elegant radial design, more art than food. 

Between the dancing and conversation, a group of Pottsfielders venture over to the barrels to select apples. 

The Beast watches from Enoch’s shadow as they titter, making their way over to the edge of the party. 

One pulls a knife out of his apron, and the others cluster tight about them, leaning in as apple and blade spin, skin peeling off in a long swath of red. 

Beneath careful hands, hay shoved back to reveal nimble bone, the apple comes undone, swathes of yellow fruit revealed in fluid movement. Laid bare, the apple is set aside, blindly passed from hand to hand until it comes to rest disregarded on a table by a dish of cookies, all attention on the ribbon of apple flesh, suspended between the hands of the carver. 

With trembling hands, the carver gathers up the ribbon, spooling it in one hand, then turns away. 

For a moment, the group seems to hold the breath they don’t have. 

And then a flutter of red flashes through the air, sinuous twisting of pale underbelly and red back, curling in a heap on the floor, tossed backwards by the carver. 

A whoop of delight, and the group rushes to it, crowded so tightly about that the apple skin is hidden from the Beast, but he can see the carver, receiving claps on the shoulder and congratulations. 

Enoch speaks up as if on cue.

“An old superstition neighbor,” Enoch purrs, and suddenly there’s an apple pressed into the Beast’s hands, ribbons cinching tight around them as if to ensure he doesn’t drop the fruit. The streamers recede with a rustle, and Enoch’s humor blooms faintly alcoholic through the air, spiking the flavor of cider already hanging there. “If they skin the apple in one continuous ribbon and toss it over their shoulder, it will land in the shape of their future spouse’s initials.” 

The Beast blinks. 

“Does it work?” He inquires. 

Enoch tips the maypole’s head into something that approximates a sly smile. 

“Only when they already have someone in mind and are willing to be rather generous with what constitutes a letter.”  

The Beast hums, and Enoch’s ribbons slip off him as he gazes fondly across his people. 

A cry has gone up somewhere in the crowd, trying to decipher meaning from swirling peels, more Pottsfielders gathering around to throw in their own guesses, tease and congratulate. 

The air colors with the flavor of the apple skins that fly through it.

Beneath the Beast’s furs, his dagger is cold as ice, frosted on its edge. Enoch watches across straw hats and crooked stems as another group of Pottsfielders turn paring knives against fruit. 

The Beast wonders if he has a chance at subtlety. If subtlety is worth it.

Somewhere, someone has begun to sing.

Enoch’s attention snaps over to him the moment his dagger catches a stray slant of lantern light. The Beast can feel Enoch’s attention settle like a palpable thing on the blade of his dagger, one that cuts itself on its edge and oozes molasses sweet across his palette. 

“Would you care to give it a try, neighbor?” Enoch asks with that teasing lilt of his.

The Beast pauses, glances up to the party around him, to the dead who are so young their bones have not yet bleached, to the excitable tossing long red ribbons of apple through the air, and thinks of the same ribbons, with their pale side turned up, set in circles like salt, like iron shavings, like a warning, like a wall. And then he looks down to the apple in his hand, not quite the solid glossy color that the fruit comes out in the woods, by design, its patchwork colors, its striping painted on by a practiced hand that sowed seeds and introduced blossoms, tended under watchful eye that trimmed and pulled back branches to let in light. 

Enoch waits patiently, toying with the Beast’s antlers in amused silence. 

The Beast does not set his blade against the apple’s skin, though he thinks of it, thinks of the long fluid movement, thinks of skin peeling away, curling at his feet, but he does not consider laying the flat of his blade against its painted skin.

Enoch’s ribbons dither in ribbons of apple, and the Beast drives his knife directly into the heart of the fruit. He wrenches it free and makes another incision to the left, and, in one precise movement, cleaves the slice from the apple. 

He lifts it to just beneath his eyes and sniffs it. 

He holds it out in the light once more, within its as artful as its exterior, pale, closer to snow than the honey yellow that colors the cores of the apples he finds strewn along the footpaths of his forest. He flips it between his claws, and watches the play of light through its thinnest edge, runs his thumb along the thin border of flesh and fruit. 

With a smooth flick of his wrist, and a smoother movement of the knife, he removes the lanceolate of apple flesh that backs the slice.  

He scents it once more, and his eyes fall closed as he savors the sweet nectar aroma that bursts on his palette. 

Splendour, he thinks, is very much the Harvest Lord’s style. 

And yet, there’s a tang to the odor, something tart. 

Criterion, maybe, or one of Enoch’s little pet projects. The Harvest Lord had a fascination with crossing trees that was nearly indecent, but the Beast could not deny there was something to his little experiments. They smelled stronger, and he has been informed they tasted richer too. 

How much of that had to do with the seed and how much had to do with the soil it was born in was a matter the Beast privately disputed. 

Enoch is still waiting for an answer. 

“No.” He says crisply after he throws one more inscrutable glance towards the gathering of the young dead. 

Enoch makes a sound that is neither chuckle nor hum and falls somewhere in the territory of a purr.

He crushes the fruit, releasing more of its sweet perfume, and inhales deeply, sipping the scent. He stares at the messy pulp in his hand as sticky juice drips down the whirls in the wood of his arm and drips, in quiet, solitary drops that only he can hear to the dust of the ground. He flexes his claws, and he does not look up at the gathering of merry dead again.

No.

Not criterion, not criterion at all.

Something sourer. 

Something with a hint of green.

The Beast has never known a tree quite as rebellious as his own antlers. 

Nothing he'd ever grown was quite as rebellious or revealing as his antlers when they caught up to the program that they were indeed attached to a living, albeit not particularly standard, tree. 

No amount of cold frost or poisonous oil could tempt them to drop their leaves a moment earlier than they were going to already. 

So he allowed it, let them grow out whatever leaves (Mimicry. He wasn’t sure what exactly swayed their growth year to year, but they always came out pretending to be something they weren’t. Oaks and aspens and birches, and pumpkins, but never edelwoods) and occasional flowers they dared to grace his crown with for the few months it took for the new greenery to wilt, and dealt with the damage done to his reputation after as swiftly as possible.

But this was not just irreparable. 

This was traitorous . 

The blackberry bushes that surround the silver surface of this small lake have sharpened to match his temper, knit themselves tight and hostile, turned their thorns outward to deter any mortal seeking to drink from the lake he’s using as a mirror. 

His claws a trembling with anger when he reaches out to gingerly trace the edge of a delicate petal. 

The blossoms shiver in the gentle breeze, little velvety things, each one nearly as white as his eyes, blushed on their fringes by the lightest touch of pink. 

Apple blossoms. 

The yellow of his eyes glints off the water of the lake. 

Apple blossoms were for the future. 

They were symbols mortals clung to, an icon of new chances, of long futures, and endless possibilities. 

They weren’t intended for him. 

It wasn’t a symbol for him, not like it was for them. On his crown, next to him, it meant something entirely different. 

Something unnamed, something long hidden in winter darkness, where apples did not blossom. Something poets and scholars and magistrates would have a field day working out, something watered by superstition and nurtured by curiosity that wouldn’t die out within a generation. Something tangled up halfway between Stay Out and Welcome In , caught between forest and orchard, confused and malnourished and all too revealing to ever be trusted to probing eyes. 

Something unacceptable. 

What he does to his antlers in that clearing goes far beyond the realm of pruning and bleeds straight into savagery. 

His blade scores along bark, sends shavings of wood coiling in his lap, stains white blossoms black with the oil that clings to the blade. He parts leaves from himself with ruthless abandon, cuts through budding branches, and aggressively slices away each blossoming flower. 

The pain radiates out through his antlers and pierces straight through his head, but he grows only more furious. 

The leaves and flowers pile up around him. 

When he can no longer reach the furthest blossoms, he snaps his antlers, breaks whatever branches have greenery he cannot reach, and discards them in the pile. He works until his antlers are a naked, bleeding mess, oil oozing from them, shattered shards of bark dotted like scales across the carpet of leaves skirting him. 

He stares down at the blossoms, and his eyes fume a furious yellow. 

But he still gathers each flower, and presses them flat between river stones to preserve them. He’s bitter to be doing it, but he does it still, spits out the taste of his own tepid hopes, and saves the blossoms for a future they belong to. 

Should it ever come.

“Catch, Hope Eater,” Enoch calls cheerfully, and that is all the warning the Beast gets before something that shines a shade of autumn crimson is lobbed in his direction.

His hand flies out before his head catches up to the fact that Enoch would not throw something at him that would cause any harm. It is only luck that he does not pulverize the fruit as soon as his claws close around it on pure instinct. Enoch chuckles at his evident surprise, and the Beast prickles in anticipation of a teasing remark, but the maypole only turns back towards whatever Enoch has chosen to busy himself with among the apple barrels littering his barn.

Enoch’s attention turned away, the Beast huffs out a breath, and his furs settle about his shoulders as he inspects the offending fruit, holding it an arm's length away as he turns it about in the hazy light of the barn. 

It’s an apple, certainly, though it has that strange quality that all produce seems to take on here in Pottsfield.

Its red flesh is striped through with highlights of yellows and gold, and it seems to shine as if someone has taken the time to burnish it no matter which way he turns it.

To visual scrutiny, it is an apple only. 

But visual scrutiny amounts for little both here in Pottsfield and out in the Beast’s woods, and he prefers to trust his nose where his eyes fail. 

He sends a sidelong glance back at the maypole, close enough to reach out and yank down, should he want to, and then, once contented by Enoch’s distractedness, brings the apple up to sample its scent. 

He can taste the sweetness of apple blossom, faintly tinted by dregs of cinnamon, and hidden by the cloying sweetness of the apple is a smell of decay, rot.

It’s not indicative of what’s inside the apple. The Beast can say with certainty that if he were to slice it open, it would be as inscrutable within as it is without, but it’s a smell that seems entrenched in Pottsfield, a scent of Enoch that seems to work its way into everything, clinging to fabric and dirt, bones and woods, a perfume that sinks into everything, hanging like a fine cloud. 

There's a quality of contented death in everything here, a taste of overabundance that simply did not occur in the Beast’s woods. Enoch worked hard to put it there. 

And wasn’t this the fruit of those efforts.

Grown here, in this dark rich soil, fertilized by corpses rotting away, roots reaching deep into the earth and drinking deeply of plenty himself, growing into the very essence of the harvest, a tree with no need to want, no lean season when it reaches for more from heavens or earth and is yielded nothing.

The Beast suppresses a shudder.

Lucky apple tree.

He glances back up at the maypole, which has managed to turn back around entirely silently and is stooped towards him, indicating a level of attention the Beast was rarely comfortable having leveled at himself, but it’s Enoch, and the Beast has made greater excuses for greater offenses on the Harvest Lord’s behalf, so he allows it.

“You’re staying for the festivities, aren’t you, neighbor?”

“Do you intend to release me before they’re finished?” The Beast replies, gesturing towards the ribbon laced high enough on his leg that it would have bordered on scandalous, had he been human or Enoch anything other than what he was. 

It was still bordering on scandalous as it was. 

“I hadn’t made any plans for it, no.” Enoch purrs, clasping two ribbons innocently, the ribbon fastened around his leg cinching tighter. 

The Beast’s claws tighten on the apple.

He prays that Enoch doesn’t notice. 

“Far be it from me to end your celebration early, then.” The Beast says, and Enoch laughs, ribbons shaking with his amusement, a rolling rustle that drowns out the first Pottsfielders entering the barn, and carries the Beast in a haze of warm contentment through the beginnings of Enoch’s party. 

Slowly, Pottsfielders begin to trickle in through the barn's open doors, stopping at apple barrels to collect fruit before they fall into the familiar cadence of a Pottsfield festival.

He watches, through time-blind eyes, skirts whirl, orange masks tip this way and that. He blinks, syrupy, and the world slips by, the barn suddenly crowded. Music and voices swirl past, Enoch murmurs something to him, and the Beast is distantly aware of himself dismissing him with a nod. 

The catskin leaps down from the maypole head, weaves its way between legs and aprons, into the crowd, and the Beast leans back and basks in contentment.

When the drunken sensation of Enoch’s amusement clears from his head, he finds the festival well underway, Pottsfielders tangled in some sort of strange dance that involves tossing halves of apples between each other. They’re singing, no group of whirling Pottsfielders in tune with the next, their songs terribly staggered into a blur of noise that the Beast isn’t able to pluck anything but a few words from. A snatch of lyric whizzes past him, only to be caught up in the tumble of a new verse begun by another group. 

At the fringes, something far more sedate, bordering on intimate, is occurring, pairs of Pottsfielders leaned in close together, most without their pumpkin heads, a tentative hand offering half an apple, eagerly accepted, as bone fingers clasp and jaws click with murmurs drowned by the song. 

It was an odd custom, but most in Pottsfield were. 

It was strange, the Beast muses as he watches Ploughman Gilligan exchange apple halves with Spinster Thompson (each of whom he recognized only for the outrageous yellow stripes they painted on their pumpkins), that none of Enoch’s citizens had approached him. Typically he found himself swarmed by their hospitality, each of them eager to introduce him to their peculiar customs, and yet the party was already in full swing, and he had yet to be approached.

Some days, he barely manages a word in edgewise with Enoch, so besieged by conversation, asking after his health, his work, his friendship with the Harvest Lord, and on festival days, he could not go a step in any direction without being invited to join some tradition or partake in some custom he's only passingly familiar with.

Enoch is halfway across the barn, sitting on the shoulders of a Pottsfielder the Beast should recognize but doesn’t, and addressing a pair of aproned Pottsfielders, each with a halved fruit in hand, with his ears tilted in just such a way that the Beast knows he’s offering congratulations. 

He scans across the Pottsfielders, picks out a few that he can recognize by distinctive paint jobs or hats, and allows his gaze to roll over the rest. 

A rustle draws his attention, and he finds a Pottsfielder far closer to him than they’re usually able to get unnoticed. 

On the haybale, a few feet away, a Pottsfielder in a burlap dress sits, the delicate vertebrae of their spine and the pale expanse of their skull exposed, an apple cradled in one of their hands, a knife in the other, two twin pale crescents marring the apple’s skin.

The Beast only recognizes her by her head, a pumpkin with round eyes and painted lips, its long pigtails pooling around it, sitting by her feet. The flat-brimmed straw hat is still perched on the pumpkin, even though it's been parted from her head.

“Miss Clara,” He greets. 

“Mr. Hope.” She says, turning towards him, voice warm with a smile, though her porcelain features remain impassive. “I’m glad you could join us this evening,” 

He dips his head respectfully. 

“It’s always a pleasure to observe Pottsfield’s ceremonies,” He intones politely, and she is kind enough not to call him on the lie. 

“Oh, this is hardly so formal. I’d liken it more to…” She pauses a moment, looking out to consider the celebration again as if to assess it through his eyes. “... a game.” She says after some hesitation, sounding as if she intended to say something else. 

“A very strange game.” The Beast says, and she laughs. 

“Oh, yes, it is.” She says, voice twinkling, teasing. “One with such complicated rules,” 

“Are you…” He hesitates. “Participating?” He settles on finally, making a half gesture towards the crowd, now rapidly thinning down as pairs of Pottsfielders drift off to the sides of the barn or out the door, cradling apple halves.  

Miss Clara laughs, and her jaw does not move, teeth pressed into the grin of death, so long removed from her life that her voice and her mouth had ceased to hold any connection to each other. 

“Mr. Hope,” She teases, leaning toward him, shifting her head in the way that would make straw braids dance with amusement had she been wearing them. He appreciates the gesture regardless. “If I didn’t know you so well, I would say you were propositioning me.” 

He blinks at her. 

“Luckily for us both,” She says with a tip of her head that might have been a wink if she was wearing flesh. “That I know you so well, Mr. Hope.”

She lifts her apple to her mouth and takes a bite, teeth punching through thin flesh, leaving pale gouges in their wake. 

The Beast does not see where the sliver of fruit goes, only that it disappears behind the snap of her smile. 

There are times that the Beast finds talking to Miss Clara a distinctly unsettling experience. It’s because, he supposes, she is so much like Enoch, clever and crafty and ever so astute. Sometimes he wonders if she knows what he is better than Enoch himself. 

At times like this, he’s almost sure of it. 

“I shall take that as a no.” The Beast says, finally. 

“I don’t have much inclination to, no,” She says, glancing out towards the crowd. “Lavender is a lovely color on you,” 

The Beast growls, and she giggles but looks away as he lifts a hand to his eyes until they fade back into empty white. 

“You’re participating, of course,” She informs him, and he tips his head. 

“Of course,” He echoes, unwilling to argue. 

‘You’ll need to halve that,” She says, indicating his apple with a flick of the knife sitting on her lap. “Come here. I’ll assist.”

Obediently he takes a step forward and finds himself stopped short, snagged by Enoch’s ribbon, still wrapped around his leg. The maypole, hanging empty from the rafters, shouldn’t be able to keep ahold of him. 

He lifts his furs just high enough to see the foppish bow Enoch has neatly tied around his thigh and sighs. 

Miss Clara titters. 

“Oh, dear, I’ll come to you then,” She says, one hand lifting to cover teeth that can’t possibly emote the smile she instinctively hides. The Beast wonders if Enoch picked it up from her, or if she picked it up from him. 

She stands with a sweep of her skirts, reaching down to steal the hat off her abandoned head and settle it over bone before making her way over to him, reaching out, hands cupped, waiting for him to give it to her. 

The Beast takes a moment to decide that he’s entirely correct for liking her so much more than any other Pottsfielder and sets the apple in her waiting hands. 

“Thank you, Mr. Hope,” She says, and in one neat motion, cleaves the apple in two and places each half in one of his hands. 

“My thanks, Miss Clara,” He replies as she wipes her knife off on her apron, retreating back to the hay bale. 

“You’ll want to give that to Enoch,” She says, plucking up her apple again, nodding towards his hands. “Though he’s likely to take it before you have the chance.” 

The Beast hums dubiously, and she giggles, then glances out over the thinning crowd. 

“Goodness, look at the time. I had better be moseying along home now. I won’t keep you any longer-” She says as she bites into the apple, holding it in sun-bleached teeth as she stoops down and picks up her mask. She fits the pumpkin on over her head, apple still held in her mouth, vanished behind a painted smile and dark sockets. “Good evening, Mr. Hope.” 

“Good evening, Miss Clara,” He murmurs, and she tips her hat towards him before ducking into the crowd, skirting couples offering apples to each other and evading snares of conversation with unparalleled ease. He envies her ability to deflect. 

At the door, the catskin is seeing Pottsfielders out, chattering on with folks as they work the clasps on their shawls and draw each other close before finally bidding their goodbyes. 

Miss Clara wishes Enoch a good night the same way she wishes it to the Beast, with a tip of her hat and a gentle word, and he returns it with a flick of his tail and a burble of molasses-thick laughter.

The Beast leans back, lets the barn wall support him, and feels the ribbon around his leg pull taught with the slight motion. 

Tension hums in the streamer, and the Beast sees the catskin’s yellow eyes cut across the room towards him. Enoch isn't entirely out of the maypole, then. 

Mostly, Pottsfielders exit the barn in twos, a few leave alone, and a few meander out in small groups, bent together in rapt conversation, but all are holding apples, most of them only halves. The last Pottsfielders out are a pair that don’t seem to realize they’re the stragglers, hands clasped together, pressing apple halves together so that the place the fruit is split is nearly seamless. They tell Enoch goodnight, but they don’t look away from each other, as they step shakily into the night, fingers wrapped so tightly that it dents the flesh of the fruit.

The door swings shut behind them, and the catskin pivots instantly, trotting towards him as the maypole shakes itself into life. 

The ribbon around his leg grows tighter, yanking suddenly, and the Beast tips over backwards as one leg is pulled up. 

He snarls, eyes flashing a splay of colors that slice through the dark haze of Enoch’s barn, but his back never slams against the packed-earth floor, falling into a slump on a haybale instead, the maypole looming over him as Enoch tries to hide his chuckles behind insincere apologies. The Beast grunts and pulls himself up into a sitting position (hindered greatly by the ribbons the Harvest Lord pretends to be ignorant of) as the catskin leaps up onto the bale beside him. 

Enoch’s yellow eyes fix on half the apple, the catskin sniffs, whiskers quivering, and suddenly the maypole is a flurry of ribbons, wrapping along the Beast’s arm, worming between his claws and the fruit, loosening them to pull one half away.

“You make the cider, neighbor, and I’ll fill the table,” The Harvest Lord purrs, as he sweeps the apple half up into his nest of ribbons, sounding every bit as if he’s in on some joke the Beast isn’t privy to.

If the maypole could wink, the Beast would wager it would be.

He doesn’t elaborate further when the Beast subtly probes for more, only laughs, and draws the Beast into a discussion of the worst storms they’d ever weathered, until the apple half in his lap has faded into the background of their debate and soon it’s nearly forgotten entirely, along with the strange custom it was attached to, lost in the simple delight that comes from arguing with the Harvest Lord.

A very strange custom indeed, he muses as he strips the flesh from the core of the fruit and plucks out the seeds.

His feet lead him to a secluded league of his woods, where the ever-invading creep of mortal hands has yet to reach, and bramble barely breaks for a clearing. The moon alone bares witness as he selects a patch of soil that smells like it might have some meager nutrients. 

At his distracted direction, just a flick of his hand as he stares down at the cluster of seeds, the forest overhead leans back, and silver light slants in to paint the bare soil. 

The hole he digs is not particularly deep, a shallow grave in the heart of winter before he drops the seeds in and kicks soil over them. 

A strange custom, yes. 

But perhaps not so strange that winter could not adopt it. 

He could grow a tree when it suited him, after all.

It takes Enoch’s orchards a decade to spring from seeds. The Beast has watched him sow enough of them to have grown familiar with the growing of apple trees. It takes his tree three decades, but that’s to be expected, kept locked in winter’s embrace, fighting against the hand that nurtures to thrive. He’s impressed by its resilience the first day it drops a bitter, undersized fruit at his feet. 

He sits by its roots and butchers the meagre offering with his knife, drinks in the nuances of its scent, and tries to think of what it’s missing. 

It’s a tart flavor.

It needs something sharp to compliment it and sugar to bring out its subtler notes. 

He mulls over it, lingers by markets and towns, and sips the air around abbeys and breweries, and plucks apart the scents on his tongue. 

Half a decade later, when the stunted apple tree finally fruits something worth eating, he commissions a witch to help him. 

She’s a lank thing, with short hair perpetually shorn shorter by fire and hands creased black by soot, but she agrees to be his errand girl in exchange for a sip of whatever he’s making.

He offers her money, but she insists on a taste of whatever spell Old Winter felt was worth brewing. 

He’s not sure she’ll still be alive when he’s finished aging it, but he agrees and sends her to find the best cinnamon money can buy and the sharpest spice to be found on this side of the sea. They spend a month arguing over trade maps, long growling arguments over price and bounties, and what dictates quality before she finally leaves, leaving him to puzzle out the other half of the flavor.

Whatever he stores the cider in will have as much influence on its flavor as what he mixes into it. 

There are wise choices, maple would bring out the sweetness, apple or cherry would compliment the base, oak would add a richness. 

But the decision he settles on is not one made from any thought of flavor profiles or alcohol content. It’s one made out of a streak of envy he’ll never admit to, a sudden thought of how utterly intolerable it would be to watch over apple cider aging in an apple barrel, of opening it up and having it smell nothing like it had grown in his woods. 

He cuts down an edelwood tree. 

The barrel, when he’s done constructing it, is pale, though the creases of woodgrain are dark as ink. 

It smells like despair, flavored with the lingering remains of hopes dashed open. 

It smells like starvation, a snapping bite that will seep into anything within it, something unsuitable for mortals but perhaps exotic enough to intrigue the Harvest Lord. 

The witch returns two weeks after he finishes the barrel. 

They lay out a hundred little vials, small leather bags, and squares of cloth tied up with twine, spreading them across the huge oak table in the center of her home. 

Slowly, painstakingly, with a combination of his sharp nose, and her discerning tongue, they try each one. A fine dusting of red and yellow powders cling to her sleeves, the smell of cinnamon has worked its way beneath the Beast’s bark and will likely dwell there for years, and the witch will live in the scent of peppers for as long as she dwells here. Some of it they toss out, some of it is repackaged and stored away amongst the witch’s ingredients to be made into perfumes and potions, and some of it remains spread out on the table as they separate what’s tolerable from what’s good. 

It takes them longer after that to work out ratios and balance flavors, but several weeks later, the witch is grinding up cinnamon sticks and powders, crumbling dried leaves that smell of something woody and sweet beneath mortar and pestle. 

The Beast hands her three honeycombs before he leaves. They glitter gold beneath the thin candlelight. 

She looks up at him from beneath lashes stained by their work, her cheeks smudged with the brown of cinnamon and holds them carefully. 

“Not a spell, is it?” She asks, as the honey oozes down into their mixture. 

“No.” He says. “A gift.” Then he hesitates, unsure if that’s right either. “Half a ritual.” He amends. 

She nods sagely, turning the honeycomb over in her hand. 

“I still want to try it.” She restates, and he hums an acknowledgment before leaving to fetch the barrel and the apples.

She’s afraid of him. 

She’s wise to be. 

But still, she shares her space with him, chatters, and ventures to say things bolder to him than any mortal outside of Pottsfield has in decades. Her hands touch his, her laugh rings in his ears, and when he takes a step away for space, she steps forward. 

She’s emboldened by superstition. 

She wears an apple beneath her frock. He can smell it.

Even though they’ve shared her home for months, even though she trusted him to keep it while she was away, she is scared of him, and the only thing that keeps her working with him is the security of an apple, hidden on her. 

For that reason, she cannot be allowed to see him handling apples. 

So he gathers them alone, caresses the twisted gnarls of bark in a tree of Pottsfield stock, growing up alone in the thick of winter. He plucks fruit down out of its bark and admires the sheen, holds them close to his face, and scents them past their skin. He cooks the liquid out of them on an iron stove in an abandoned cottage with one wall caved in and filters out the pulp with a thin sheet of cotton stretched over the mouth of the barrel. 

When he brings it to her, she has a bowl of something spicy and sweet, a thick brown paste that glitters beneath the light with little flecks of red and gold. 

Her nose isn’t as sharp as his, it cannot pick out the smell of apples beneath the sharp bite of cinnamon and peppers, the sticky sweet taste of honey in the paste as they pour it into the edelwood barrel, and so the safety of her superstition holds, protects her against him, as they stare down into the depths of the barrel, where the light dances in shimmers of gold across its surface. 

He stirs the mixture up with the handle of a broom, and she seals the barrel closed when it finally takes on a uniform color, shimmering faintly. 

“Keep it here,” She tells him with a friendly smile, “I’ll watch over it for you, and you can come by every few years and give it a sniff to see if it's ready.”

It's an offer he hadn’t been expecting, considering the potency of her fear.

He nods his difference and leaves her to her potions. 

It becomes a game, he will visit, and she will invent excuses to stall him from reaching the barrel, but when he does and declares it undrinkable, she laughs and offers him something more acceptable to his palette. 

They sit at the table where they had spent so long wringing flavors together and sip wine so old it borders on vinegar. 

She drinks, and he holds his glass in the rough approximation of where she expects his mouth to be, drinking the scent out of the air, and at the end of the night, pours it back into the bottle. 

Year by year, she relaxes around him, her teasing coming easier and easier, and he grows to have a fondness for her. 

 She doesn't ask about  the cider, and he doesn't offer up any information.

Together, mutually, they don't speak of it except to declare it not ready.

The smell of apple still hangs around her each winter he comes to visit, but her confidence in it grows, until he finds her waiting for him on her doorstep a year after his last visit, throwing her doors open and welcoming him in like an old friend. 

It’s a novel sensation, to be invited into a home that reeks of apples. 

And then, one year, when her hair is beginning to see touches of white in the places where ash no longer maintains its color, he steps through her door and can already smell it. 

There’s a rich apple scent, thick with sweetness and spice, and beneath it, the sharpened edge of something potent, alcoholic, and hungry. 

“It’s ready,” He says before greeting her, and her eyes crease at the edges with the force of her smile. 

“We should taste it then,” Her lips curl around the shape of a grin. “Make sure it's up to standard.” 

She winks. 

“It would be negligible not to.” He replies, and she laughs so hard it almost drowns out the smell of apples on her skin.

It takes both of them to get it up the stairs from her cellar and both of them to transfer its contents into heavy glass jugs. It fills five, and they leave four on the floor by the basement door and take the last to sit at the table. 

She pours him a glass first, then pours her own. 

“A toast,” She says and tips her head, eyes glittering, inviting him to finish it. 

“To half a ritual,” He says, and she clinks her cup against his, before lifting it, lingering before she takes a sip. 

“You must tell me what the other half involves. I believe I’ve earned the right to be curious.”

He hums and looks down into his glass. 

His own shadowy countenance, recreated in shades of gold, peers back. 

It's the closest they've come to discussing it since the night he enlisted her help.

He has no more answers than he did then, despite seeing the Harvest Lord nearly every season.

“It’s not my half to fulfill,” He says instead of answering, and when he glances back up at her, her mouth shapes an o sound she doesn’t give voice to, and her eyes look terribly like she’s seen more of him than he had intended to reveal. 

She composes herself quickly. 

“Then we drink to one half tonight, and we’ll drink to the other half another night.” 

He hums, neither a confirmation nor a denial. 

Her smile is gentle as she lifts her glass slightly towards him and then brings it to her lips. 

He breathes in time with her sip, lets the sweetness wash over his tongue, followed by the fullness of apples and chased by the sting of alcohol and spice. He watches her expression twist as the flavor of apples touches her tongue, sees her unravel her own confidence, unmake the refuge she had used as a handhold while reaching her other hand out to him. 

“Oh,” She says and looks at him with horrified eyes. 

One trembling hand reaches up beneath her shawl and presses against the apple charm above her breast. 

He looks at her over the rim of the glass and suddenly feels very tired. 

Her chair tips backwards, and clatters against the floor. 

Despair surges across his palette. It blooms, the poisonous fruit of a poisonous tree, an apple tree, finally bearing fruit, laying seeds, growing new saplings. Anguish, sorrow, fear, darker than loam and richer too, good soil for a tree to grow in. 

He doesn’t have to do a thing. 

Her belief is so deep, and her safety so severely destroyed that he couldn’t have stopped it if he had tried. 

She grows the edelwood up around herself all on her own.

Bark fuses over skin, wells up from within, as if it had been waiting just bellow flesh, emerging like armor at first, like she’s still trying to protect herself from him, but soon it’s hardening over joints, locking them in place, forcing her to look on him as her veins darken with the oil maturing within. Her flutter closed, the complicated furrow of her brow set in wood, the thin line of her mouth, twisted into something too stubborn to be a wail but too scared to be a smile, leaves a tragic expression in the bark.

Roots punch through wood floors, branches sweep across cobweb-decorated ceilings, and splinter through the shingling.

When he finally stands, the house has begun to cave away, making room for the vast and terrible tree. 

He pours his glass back into the uncorked bottle sitting on the table and puts it back on her shelf, and reaches down to pick up her fallen cup as well, replacing it beside his own. 

He stands in the ruins of her house and tastes apples and fear. 

After a moment, he takes the glass jug from the table, and pours the entire thing out over the roots of the tree. 

It cascades in a waterfall of gold, flecked with specks of red and brown. 

The air fills with the fumes of cider and hunger, drowning out the smell of despair. The taste of it settles heavily on his tongue, apples and an emptiness so bitter it nearly drowns everything else out, swallowing down sorrow and fear, vanishing them behind sharp teeth. The grey-orange leaves of the edelwood shiver as the cider splashes across its roots, the sound of it is crystalline, one long splash spun out eternally, his eyes burn in his head, but he closes his eyes so he doesn’t have to see their color reflected in the cider. 

The sound dies down into drips, then into nothing, and slowly the scent recedes, condensating over glass, beading up on the raw edges of bark, leaving nothing but the smell of apples behind. 

He leaves one of the jugs nested between the roots of the tree, for another night, should it ever come. 

The last three jugs he takes. 

He hangs two in his antlers, one in each, and the last he cradles in dark claws and leaves this place behind.

The smell sticks to his fur for weeks.

Apples meant Come No Further in the woods. 

But here in Pottsfield, they meant something different. 

A gift of cider in the woods was a wish for safety, and that’s why the Beast waits to give it to the Harvest Lord. He lets himself be led in through rutted roads and budding fields, holds a single jug close to the heart he doesn’t have, even though he can feel the weight of Enoch’s curiosity, can smell it hanging in the air. 

He waits until they’re in Enoch’s barn, in a place that can’t be mistaken for his forest in any way, a place where the trees that compose it are long dead, a place where apples aren’t a warning, a place he's never been turned away from, before he finally pulls the jug from beneath his furs and lifts it up towards the maypole. 

Light shines in from the lanterns, catches the cider within the glass, and ignites it up from within, fire bottled in his hands.

“Cider,” He says, and doesn’t trust himself to say anymore. 

He’s not used to talking in symbols, not like the Harvest Lord is, and these symbols are not the ones he’s familiar with. This is a second language of a second language, and he worries about losing something in translation or worse, revealing too much.

He smells surprise.

Enoch damps it under the smell of apples. 

“This is more than half an apple’s worth of cider,” Enoch says, voice carefully mastered. 

“Half an apple can grow all of a tree.” He says and wonders if growing trees means anything here in Pottsfield. He wonders if it means anything like what it means to him. 

He hopes that even if it doesn’t, Enoch is willing to understand it. 

For a long moment, Enoch doesn’t say anything, the maypole so frozen that if the Beast didn’t know it would tip over on its own power, he might have thought Enoch had left entirely. 

Finally, the maypole stirs, a rustling of ribbon that fastens itself around the cider while another streamer wraps around his wrist to encourage him to let go. He does, but the ribbon around his wrist doesn’t loosen, just pulls him a little closer. 

“I’d like to sing you a song,” Enoch says, and his voice is careful, cautious. “One, I don’t think you know.”

The Beast nods his acquiescence, worried about the things he’ll say if he dares to speak. 

The maypole’s fabric pulls at the edges, crinkling into a smile that Enoch rarely puts in enough effort to convey, as he pulls the Beast a little closer, ribbons wrapping up to greet him like water, encircling him down to the waist. 

Enoch’s voice is a croon, low and private and oozing molasses sweet.

“The harvest comes and leaves us wanting,” The Beast almost scoffs, only the gentle pet of ribbon down his spine hitches the sound in his throat. “Fields are empty, trees are bare.”

It’s clear this song is meant to be sung at a faster tempo, something to dance to, something to laugh to, something that’s supposed to be a chant, a reverie, but Enoch sings it like a serenade.

“Winter comes and leaves us hungry, but my love and I make do.” There’s a ribbon at his jaw now, cradling gently, pulling his gaze up to meet the maypole’s. “I can mend and he can clean,”

The Beast has heard the next line, a snatch of it on Pottsfielder’s lips, the night they’d been offering apple halves.

“With nothing less we make stone stew.” The Beast is choking on the smell of apples, biting back the taste of his own hope. “If the season coming leaves us with a single fruit,” Enoch is still singing slowly, oh so slowly, the maypole’s head tipping to the side, even as it leans closer, allowing no room for misunderstanding, no room to misinterpret.

“Split an apple down the center, I shall bake and he shall brew.” There’s a ribbon around his hip pulling him further in towards Enoch, and the Beast wonders if Enoch is trying to be cruel. “My love will make the cider.” 

The bottle in Enoch’s ribbon sloshes gently.

“To tide us through the night. And with my half I’ll bake the tart,” The maypole’s head is close enough now that the Beast can taste the cornsilk and cobwebs that knit it together in the air. “That warms my lover’s winter heart.” 

Enoch punctuates the last syrupy lyric with a ribbon tapping gently, intentionally, on the Beast’s chest. 

And then the maypole is pulling back, drawing back up to its full height, and the ribbons are receding. 

“Do you understand, neighbor?” Enoch asks, and his voice is rougher than the Beast has ever heard it.

No. 

Yes.

He’d misunderstood. 

Or perhaps he’d made the mistake of understanding. 

It hardly mattered if he understood or not, if Enoch hadn’t expected him to. 

Hadn’t wanted him to.

“Ah.” The Beast says, and really that’s the only thing to say. 

There’s a part of him that wants to reach out, to take the cider back, and pretend he hadn’t known what it meant, pretend he hadn’t been trying desperately to speak Enoch’s language instead of his own, but something in the way Enoch is holding the bottle stops him. 

Enoch’s ribbons are tight around the neck of the bottle but also fastened through its handles, wrapped around its curve, pulled close to the maypole’s heart, held high, almost like Enoch is reluctant to give it up, reluctant to let him take back the offer. 

And that’s a language of its own, still not the one the Beast is used to speaking, but perhaps, it’s one he’s grown good at reading. 

So he listens to what the stoop of the maypole is telling him, ignores its blank face, and reads between the lines of Enoch’s ribbons curling around his feet, the maypole nearly wrapped around him, unwilling to draw back any further. 

“You said you’d fill the table.” He croaks, voice creaking like brittle wood. 

Enoch is perfectly still a moment, the maypole’s stitched expression inscrutable, and then suddenly he’s straightening ribbons shuddering. The Beast hears him take a breath he can’t possibly need, and when Enoch speaks again, his voice is urgent, thin, and a little wild, and edged in something that tastes damningly like hope. 

It smells remarkably like apples. 

“Come back tomorrow,” Enoch says. “Tomorrow,” He repeats like a promise, almost to himself, the maypole’s gaze tipped above the Beast’s head, far away, looking through wood and darkness towards his orchard. 

“It’s not apple season.” The Beast says, and it’s true, the trees are barely flowering. He’d seen them, illuminated lilly-white beneath the moon.  

“I’ll feed you,” Enoch swears, implores, a ribbon tangled around the Beast’s hands, knitting them into a clasp of pleading Enoch can’t create with his own ribbons. 

“I’ll return.” The Beast swears, and the ribbons relax a fraction. 

“Tomorrow,” Enoch repeats. 

“Tomorrow.” The Beast confirms, and the ribbons release him entirely. 

“Let me see you to the border,” Enoch says, his voice filled with an uncharacteristic uncertainty. 

“I can make my way out, without an escort,” The Beast replies, and wonders what language they’re meant to be speaking now. Enoch doesn’t seem to know any more than he does. 

“I’ll see you there, regardless,” Enoch says, sounding a bit more himself, and the Beast acquiesces with a tilt of his head. 

The walk through dark fields is silent but comfortable, the Beast walks a step closer to Enoch than he ever has without the excuse of borrowing the maypole’s shadow, and a ribbon lingers in his antlers longer than Enoch is usually able to justify. He doesn't make even the slightest of justifications tonight. Maybe the justifications have already been made. In the distance, Enoch’s orchard is tipped in blossoms, glowing sterling in the moonlight, Enoch sends a glance towards them, and the Beast would swear the air colors faintly with the Harvest Lord’s annoyance. 

The Beast feels like laughing. 

His eyes are blue. 

Enoch stops at the border, but his ribbons linger reluctantly on the Beast’s shoulders. 

“Good evening, Harvest Lord,” He says, and then after a moment, adds. “I’ll see you tomorrow.” 

Enoch laughs. 

“Bring your appetite.” The Harvest Lord says like it's a promise, and it’s the Beast’s turn to laugh. 

“I shall, Harvest Lord,” He says and slips away between the trees. 

When he finally looks back over his shoulder, safely deep enough in his woods, he won’t be caught looking back, the maypole is still there, holding the bottle of cider up to the moon and staring at it, ribbons curling and uncurling slowly around it. 

Despite himself, he stays there, one outstretched hand resting on an aspen, looking over his shoulder, until the Harvest Lord comes out of whatever trance has a hold of him and slowly begins to make his way back into Pottsfield. 

Distantly, the Beast can hear him humming the very same tune he had sung in the barn.

Enoch catches him by the antler before he’s even part of the way out of his trees, a ribbon tossed across the border, tugging him forward with flattering eagerness.

“I’m bending the rules, of course,” Enoch tells him before bothering with a greeting, picking up as if there hadn't been any interruption in their conversation. “I don’t still have the half you gave me,” The Beast hadn’t expected him to. It’s been decades. 

Still, he cannot help himself. 

“What happened to it?” 

Enoch answers without hesitation. 

“I buried it. Much too deep to sprout a sapling, you must understand.” 

The casual confession stops the Beast more effectively than a snare ever has. 

Enoch buried it. 

Like a mortal returned into the earth it had sprung from, without any intent to raise it up again into a new tree, without any sort of intention to let it go again. Had taken the fruit and moved soil and rock to get it as physically close as he could to his metaphysical heart.

There’s no misinterpreting that. 

“Ah.” His throat clicks around the sound. 

Enoch shepherds him into the barn with more ribbons than are strictly necessary, but the Beast allows it with far less protest than’s usually customary, so perhaps they’re even. 

The door barely latches closed behind them before Enoch has got the jug in his ribbons again, the jug, and something else. Something he hands to the Beast wrapped in ribbons, ribbons he doesn’t remove automatically, and the Beast wonders if he’s not the only one worried about translation. 

The Beast strokes the arch of a bow in Enoch’s ribbons and traces it down to where it gets lost beneath the snare of a knot, stalling or savoring. He’s not sure himself. 

He tugs on the knot in a way that makes Enoch hum something between delight and impatience, and then, with a chuckle that stains his eyes cobalt, slides the ribbon free with a hiss of cornsilk. 

Cupped in Enoch’s ribbons is an apple pie, no bigger around than a teacup, with a latticework of pie crust knit together like branches and leaves, the five-pointed shape of an apple blossom at its center. The design is so intricate and so carefully laid the Beast wants to accuse Enoch of cheating, of having one of his Pottsfielders do the work, but the way Enoch is holding the cider bottle, wrapped so tightly in a cocoon of ribbons, held like it’s more precious than any set of bones he’s ever pulled up, stops his voice dead in his throat. 

“I don’t expect you to eat it,” Enoch informs him. “But I thought you might enjoy the smell.”

“I will,” The Beast says, and stares at the little pie, filled by only half an apple’s worth of filling and more symbolism than Enoch’s entire orchard. 

They don’t make it as far as the loft, they don't even make it as far as a corner, the maypole simply collapses down into a heap of affectionate ribbons, and the Beast collapses into the maypole’s head like an understuffed cushion, a seat that isn’t really possible to recline elegantly in, and is entirely impossible to get out of, even if he had wanted to. 

The catskin is suddenly in his lap, along with an apple pie that barely qualifies as anything other than a tart and the bottle of cider. 

The Beast pries the pie out of the tin, a feat considering how distracting Enoch is dedicating himself to being, ribbons curling up along his legs and whiskers brushing against his wrists, a paw planted carefully between two eyesockets in his chest, claws biting into his bark. He sets the confection delicately on one knee and pries the cork out of the jug one-handedly. 

Enoch only pauses, ribbons stilling to a crawl while the Beast pours into the pie-tin. It pools like molten gold, sharp with spice, glinting with flecks of red and brown, swirling, dancing. The catskin’s eyes catch the color and take on the same quality as the cider, rich and alluring and as hungry as the edel-soaked drink is. 

The Beast watches the catskin lean across his lap, fixated. 

Enoch’s nose twitches as it hovers above the gilded surface. 

The sound Enoch makes when the catskin’s pink tongue finally makes contact is too guttural to be a purr and twice as pleased. It shakes up from the earth and rattles in the hollows of the Beast's body, making ripples dance across the cider’s surface. 

And then those cider-bright eyes are turned on him, watching with the same attentiveness the Beast had leveled at the catskin. 

The catskin’s tongue flashes out, whiskers drooping under golden pearls of cider, and some of Enoch’s excitement bleeds past the scent of apples in the air. 

And it's the Beast's turn to inspect the gift Enoch had made for him. Turns the pie over once in his hand, traces the place golden brown matures, and darkens where the pie-tin once cradled, until he finds his own patience much shorter than he anticipated. He breaks it slowly, watching a crack spread down the middle, splitting the pastry branches and apple blossom down the center, and pulls the halves apart slowly. Cinnamon oozes up between the gaps in the lattice, a thread of molasses and sugar stretching out, bowing, and eventually breaking under its own weight as it spans the gap between the halves of the pie. Sugar and spice and rich apple spills across the air as the pastry cracks open, the lingering warmth of the oven escaping in pale whisps of steam that carry rich bursts of flavor, curling past the chunks of apple that slowly slide down and stick to his fingertips. 

The Beast doesn’t make a sound, but his eyes are so blue that the light from them catches in the cider and in the shine on the filling, dying the pale color a rich indigo. 

And then the distinctions between who made what and for whom are melting away, and Enoch is licking the mixing flavor of pie and cider off his fingertips, and the Beast is drunk on molasses and alcohol and Enoch, all mixing, blending into each other in the air. 

The smell sinks into his fur and the catskin’s, it shelters itself in the hollows of his bark, weaves itself into the fibers of Enoch’s maypole. 

The Beast finds he doesn't mind the smell of apples, sticking to his hands, soaking into the grain of his body, as long as it embosses itself as deeply into Enoch. 

The kiss he steals between the catskin’s ears doesn’t taste like apples. 

It tastes like an invitation. 

It tastes like welcome.