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Soil.
Air. Sun. Water.
Dawn. I unfurl. Buzzing, fumbling. A fat, clumsy bee. I welcome her in.
Some in the garden say they can remember being a flower. Nonsense! Nobody can remember being a flower. Before pollination? Before fruit set? Once the fruit is set, the mind is set.
That's my theory, anyhow.
My first memory was not of my flowerhood; it was of the goddess. My goddess. She visited me each morning with a tin watering can. She wore only black. Her eyes were cornflower blue. Hair like the creeping yellow pimpernel. Her smile cleared the morning fog.
After a hearty watering, she would inspect my vines. She removed any slugs or snails that had left little pockmarks on my still-tender rind. She turned my leaves over and swept away aphids. She pruned my wilted stems and secured my new growth against the trellis. Scattered wood ash and fish scraps around my roots. And she talked to me, too. Sang quiet songs. Hummed. She told me stories, and I drank in her every word.
Sometimes she brought along another. Or rather, he'd trail along behind her like a fledgling robin. He was nothing like the goddess: tall and lanky as the climbing beans, dour and wan as the potato flowers. He possessed a dark aura about him, as if he were dry and mealy on the inside. He sported shaggy black fur on top of his gourd, and above that, an odd-looking chimney that never smoked. He followed behind my goddess, mumbling, always keeping his distance but never leaving her side. Proper spacing for ideal pollination, perhaps? He wished, surely.
When my goddess busied herself, he stared too hard. When she turned around again, his gaze darted skyward. No doubt he was envious of my lustrous rind—growing thicker, glossier, and more rigid with each passing day.
I called him Eggplant. Away from the aubergines, of course; I don't aim to offend.
"You always fuss over that pumpkin," Eggplant said one day. His face was especially dull. I'd reckon his roots were rather parched, if he ever cared to check.
"This one's very special to me," my goddess crooned. She ran a gentle hand across my flesh, the soft pads of her fingers tracing my ridges, ribs, and bumps. "It's magic, you know."
Epplant wheezed and coughed like a bird that had swallowed a damselfly. "Will it turn into a carriage?" His tone did my goddess a disservice. Perhaps I could sneakily cast a tendril around his ankle and make him trip.
"Well, we shall see," my goddess replied, far too generously. "I purchased the seeds from a wise witch in town; she told me they would grow pumpkins big enough to feed us all winter." The goddess turned her radiant face back to me. A fondness in her expression made my tendrils curl tighter against my stem. "But now that it's grown this big, I can't turn it into a simple soup or pie. Just look at it." I swelled with pride at her flattery.
Eggplant wrinkled his stupid eggy nose. "What good is a pumpkin we can't eat?"
What good is an eggplant that never turns purple? I wanted to say. But, sadly, I was not gifted a mouth. Only the ability to absorb all in my vicinity. A form of situational photosynthesis.
"We will find our friend Pumpkin a place of honor," my goddess said with melodic laughter. "If I cure it properly, it should keep until the end of winter." Her fingertips then dug into the earth at my side. Lily white and earthy brown, like happy grubs encrusted with mud.
Though spoken with care, her words left me with a grave wound. Winter. I deflated ever so slightly. So there was to be an end to me, after all.
The moment my goddess delivered the news of my fate, I was filled with a sudden, novel desire to achieve something substantial with the time I had left. Her prophecy lent a particular significance to my remaining days. I couldn't simply spend them sitting in the dirt, growing fat and swollen in the garden. Something had to be done.
One fine autumn evening, my dreams were finally realized. It began like any other—the owls called sweetly to each other and, with a quiet swoosh, made their near silent descent from the trees to secure their meals. The crickets droned sporadically, signaling the waning summer and encroaching fall. A toad bellowed somewhere in the bushes. Moths chased the moon. I counted ants beneath my pebbled skin. I waited patiently for daybreak and for my goddess's return.
Then, a flash almost too fast to spot. A streak of light shot across the night sky, scattering a trail of dust behind it. From that dust, silver sprinkles of mercury showered me with effervescent, twinkling light. It glittered on my leaves and fruit. I was overcome with the sudden urge to stretch, to climb into that night sky, to ascend from my mud-caked patch. I flexed my tendrils. A triumphant sensation of limitless potential overcame me. Quite forgetting that I was a pumpkin, I extended my leaves. I moved. My woody stem slipped from the belly of my vine, and I found myself instantly freed.
I reached for the trellis with my tendrils, and I grasped it with fingers instead. I pushed against the ground with my roots, and I discovered feet beneath me. I took great, gulping breaths. I snapped bones together. I pulsed with blood. I erected myself on tall, spindly legs, and I took my first shuddering steps.
Finally! I ached to shout into the night. I will find you, my goddess! Alas—I had been granted a body, but my head remained a pumpkin. I had no mouth.
Still, with no knowledge of how long my semi-human form would last, I aimed to make the most of my gift. With jerky steps, I propelled myself in the direction of the treeline, past the garden gates. I wobbled on tingling toes through yards of rose hedges, marveled at the gurgling fountain, and stumbled with arms outstretched towards the only source of light I could locate. It came from a lamp that had been placed on the front steps of a ramshackle wooden shed. I walked forward, quite out of kilter.
When I turned the corner in pursuit of the light, I saw her. Perched on that very stoop. My goddess. She sat hunched over, gazing at the moon. She appeared despondent, and my cucurbit heart was stirred. Despite lacking the ability to speak, I was compelled to comfort her, just as she had done for me since my seedling days. I approached, snapping twigs and crunching leaves in my wake, desperate not to cause her alarm.
She turned to me. Rather than recoil in horror, her face lifted. It sent a thrill through my now flesh-and-blood frame. My hands trembled. Her lips curled into a playful smile; her eyes softened. Behind them, desire simmered—the effect was far more striking than the nurturing, tender gaze to which I had grown accustomed. It displayed a longing that was entirely too intense for a newly hatched being such as myself.
"What are you doing out so late, you silly man?" she chided, her voice gilded with a playful lilt. Even in the dim light of the evening, her eyes sparkled with mischief. A man? I looked down at my hands, and they were gloved. My feet were encased in narrow leather shoes. I wore trousers and a jacket, and with great horror I felt above my gourd to locate the very same chimney I had grown to recognize well over the last several months.
I was him! I was Eggplant. The only man I had exposure to, save for an elderly gentleman who occasionally pruned the rose bushes. The closest human to my beloved goddess's heart.
Mortification overcame me. Still, I could not leave her side. Something in her eyes drew me ever closer, and I found myself pulled forward by her spell.
"Did you put this on just for me?" she purred. She stood, then descended the steps, dry leaves catching on the hem of her nightgown and trailing behind her. I quaked like a rabbit under a fox's stare, but I stood my ground. She drew near, then lightly poked the front of my pumpkin face with her forefinger—the space where my nose would have been, had I been gifted such an indulgence. "Seems safe," she murmured. Her reassuring tone warmed me to my pulp.
And then she grasped me. With hands on either side of my squashy cranium, she pulled me close to her face. She lightly parted her lips, and she kissed me. A cold wind swept about our ankles, threatening to dissipate the heat between us, but all in vain. The spot where her lips rested, if only for a few fleeting moments, was left searing as she retreated and held me still.
"A clever trick," she muttered with a velveteen voice. "Even if you had to purloin my pumpkin in order to pull it off." She leaned close, soft lips brushing my rind once again. "If this is how it must be, so be it." As she spoke, her lips swept against my flesh. When she retreated again, her expression took my breath away and stilled my newly bloomed heart.
She was flushed, her eyes boring into the space where mine would be, a sultry smile playing at her lips. She brushed a thumb across my ribs and sighed, the heat of her breath condensing on my rind. I shivered and, for a fleeting moment, wondered if the intensity of her gaze would turn me fully human. When my logical thoughts revived and I found myself still cucurbit in form, my heart plummeted. I took several unsteady steps backwards.
With a sinking in my pulpy guts, I knew it at once. Her expression was not intended for me.
She did not call out as I stumbled back towards the garden, the ghostly sensation of tears pricking at my eyeless face. I may never receive such a chance again to capture my goddess's heart. Likely, my human form would dissipate by sunrise, or so magical logic dictated. And with a return to my original form, I would be long lost and forgotten by next spring.
The crushing burden of my own impermanence weighed heavy in my thoughts. I wandered aimlessly amongst the pines and birches, weaving between the branches, clutching my ponderous head. I did not pay mind to my trajectory until I stepped out into a woodland clearing. Grass swayed in the delicate autumn night breeze. The yowl of a fox carried across the field. I lifted my head, only to feel the caress of sweet, cool air on my temporary human skin. The stars filled my magically gifted vision, and I fell to my knees, overcome by the natural sublimity that surrounded me.
As I sat, knees hiked and curled into the crooks of my arms, I released my hold on the ephemeral nature of my awareness. Though it had gone unspoken, I knew in my bones—at dawn I would become a pumpkin once again and sit helplessly awaiting my goddess's return. Still, the evening was genial, and as I stared at the stars, they seemed to twinkle brighter than they had in the garden. Someday perhaps I would be bread, or soup, or pie, but that evening I savored the gentle wind on the grass and the celestial light of the moon. It would have to be enough. No, it would be enough. Just that night. Just that brief encounter with her. I stubbornly deemed it so.
I had the memory of her lips, at least, to comfort me.
I stayed in that meadow, staring up at the stars, for the remainder of the evening. At the first blush of dawn, I returned to tuck myself back into my garden bed. I pulled the spent leaves and brittle vines around me like a blanket. My body dissolved directly back into the dirt that birthed me, and I was, once more, a mere pumpkin amongst the others.
I was stirred later that morning by the melodic voice of my goddess and the familiar sight of Eggplant trotting at her side. He adjusted his odd little chimney as the wind threatened to knock it off his head. To think, only hours before, I had borrowed his likeness! How very embarrassing!
My goddess paused as she approached my bed. Confusion graced her gentle expression. "Oh! I thought you'd taken this one."
"Which one?" Eggplant said.
"This one, here." The goddess pointed to me, and I blushed upon the recollection of our evening prior. "For your head. You came to my shed last night wearing the pumpkin on your head, did you not? Asking for a kiss?"
The words immediately flustered Eggplant beyond what I'd witnessed before. He choked and stamped and gawked, eyes bulging like a toad. "I—I did no such thing! Why on earth would I wear a pumpkin on my head?"
Well, what do you know? I thought. Eggplant can turn purple.
"Well, for the kiss, of course," the goddess said with a giggle. I ached from my stem to my blossom end to tell her what had transpired between us, to ease the confused crease between her brows. But the vision of her longing gaze replayed in my memories, and I realized that allowing her to believe would be the kinder path. "Someone visited me in your form, then. Same clothing and physique, only with a pumpkin for a head."
Eggplant shrugged. "A dream, perhaps?"
"Perhaps…" The goddess seemed unconvinced. "If so, it was a very vibrant dream. Though I have been known to conjure those from time to time."
Eggplant made a snuffling noise, like a hedgehog rooting for mushrooms. "A—anyways," he stammered, "you said you needed my assistance?"
The goddess then produced something wickedly sharp that glinted in the morning light. A knife. I quivered. Would she carve me here and now, in the middle of the garden, with all the other vegetables and fruits witnessing her sacrificial bloodlust?
No. Of course not. She rapped her knuckles against me to produce a hollow sound. She tested my adhesion to the vine. She slipped the knife behind my dry and brittle stem, and with a painless tug, detached me completely.
"Help me carry it inside?" she requested of Eggplant. Her voice was soft and pleading. He didn't deserve such a delight for the senses.
"Well…alright. I don't see the harm in it, now that it's off the vine. You and I will need to keep our distance, though."
"You take that side, I'll grab here, and we'll pace ourselves." Eggplant nodded, and together they lifted me and carried me past the garden gates.
She'd prepared a space for me in the gazebo. She wiped down my tender flesh with a damp towel, then applied vinegar to clean and polish me until I displayed a stunning orange glow. I was to wait for two weeks, she explained to Epplant, until my flesh could no longer be dimpled with a fingernail. Then I'd be brought inside the mansion and bestowed a place of honor.
Honor. It sounded like a wonderful way to spend my remaining days, growing more stale and more wrinkled until I'd eventually be tossed in the compost heap. But still, there was honor in it.
And I'd remain with her until the end.
True to her word, my goddess returned two weeks later with a wheelbarrow in tow. She and Eggplant hoisted my girth into the cold metal basin, then wheeled me to the mansion steps. While I celebrated the change in scenery the gazebo had offered me, I had grown tired of viewing life from beneath it. The rain and sun never beat down on my rind, the wind rarely tickled my stem, and my goddess's daily visits had lapsed. I looked forward to my life in the house and awaited the end of my days with a cheerful heart.
"Well, if not the kitchens, where do you plan to take it?" Eggplant was huffing under the weight of the wheelbarrow. He'd insisted my goddess not sully her hands with the labor, even though we both knew she was plenty capable and had done so many times before. Still, it showed a soupçon of deference to her that I had not noted prior. Perhaps he'd be a good guardian for her after all. A brotherhood formed between us from that day forward. I believe my advanced age had compelled me to consider such things.
"Here," my goddess directed as they hoisted me past the threshold to the manor. "Follow me into the dining room." Immediately, a stagnant wall of air struck my exterior, tinted with the scent of cut flowers and long-harvested wood. A strange smell permeated beneath, somewhat like dirt, but desiccated. The din of insects and birdsong extinguished as the doors closed on my final resting place.
Tomb-like as it all seemed when compared to the garden, my goddess had prepared a lovely place for me at the center of a grand mahogany table. She scattered acorns around my base and adorned me with autumn leaves dipped in beeswax to preserve their vibrant colors. She wove stalks of wheat around me like a wreath. A few smaller cucurbits were tucked against my side—stripey, warty things that could not possibly pass as food for these beings. Their hides would be far too thick, and their interiors nothing but seeds. They did, however, provide me with good companionship, and I was grateful for the consideration.
"Why here?" Eggplant asked as he observed her efforts. It seemed his own skills were better used moving large pumpkins than creating picturesque arrangements.
"So it can join us for meals, of course," my goddess said. "You will be thankful for the memory of the garden when the snow is deep and the days are short."
Eggplant pulled his face beneath the stiff black collar of his jacket. "Does that mean you'll eat with me more often?" His voice was small and shrew-like.
My goddess paused and straightened. "Of course, Bocchan. That is, if you will eat here more often and not take all your meals in the music room."
Bocchan. Hmm. I liked Eggplant better.
"Well, since you've gone through the effort of decorating, and you really have created quite an intimate space…" His voice trailed off as his eyes roved the dining room. "I have struggled to eat in formal dining rooms before, but I think I can make an exception."
My goddess smiled, and it both pained me and enthralled me to see a shadow of her joy from our secret rendezvous return to grace her visage. "Good. I need your help keeping our new friend company. We must break bread with this pumpkin every day to receive its blessings."
Epplant laughed. He smiled. It seemed like an omen of good fortune to come.
And break bread we did. I shared many beautiful meals with my companions that winter. The snow raged outside, but we were well within. Through my quiet presence I absorbed their laughter, their conversation, and their gentle praise. All the while, I grew tough, and spotted, and wrinkled, and even sagged in places. But they loved me regardless. And when it was time for my goddess to deliver me to the compost heap, when my ribs and shoulders could no longer support my frame, she did so with a tender reverence beyond what I deserved. Even Eggplant accompanied my final trip beyond. They thanked me as they set me down, outside again at last, and I carried that gratitude with me. I held it close as I slowly returned to my beloved dirt—as the flame of my awareness dwindled, sputtered, and bedimmed forever.
The world began to blur, but I held fast to the image of her face. I would keep her memory, cherish it for as long as I was able.
As long as I could think.
Water. Sun. Air.
Soil.
Her.
"Say, Alice." Viktor set down his rake and wiped his face with a cotton towel. "Do you see that?"
Alice straightened from where she had been bundling sticks and twigs, clearing last year's garden plot. "The compost heap, Bocchan?"
"Yes, but more what's on top of the compost heap."
Alice dusted her hands and approached his side. She inspected the crusted surface of refuse that had sat deteriorating behind the villa all winter. "Something green, I see. Do we perhaps have a volunteer?"
Viktor crouched low. "Round, wide leaves. What do you reckon it is?"
Alice cocked her head and smiled. "Could be a cucumber, but I made them all into pickles this year. I don't recall throwing any in the compost." She hummed. "Rather, it appears to be a squash seedling, Bocchan."
"Squash?" he said. "Like pumpkin?"
Alice nodded. "Perhaps a gift from our friend." She gently scooped the earth beneath the seedling in her palms and carried it to the garden beds like a freshly hatched chick.
"Think this one will be magic too?" Viktor asked as he followed her.
"Suppose we'll have to wait and see." Alice set the seedling down, pushed aside a small divot in the soil near the trellis, and pressed the seedling's roots firmly into the ground. She sprinkled it with water from her watering can.
"So more inappropriate visions of pumpkin men visiting you in the night?" Viktor grumbled. The wide smile she shot in his direction made him flinch.
Well," she responded, softly teasing. "One can only dream."